John Stanislaus Keane, murdered Sydney bookmaker…

I keep on looking for John Joseph Keane, our hard-to-pin-down Adelaide bookmaker / bookmaker’s clerk / nitkeeper. However, my search keeps getting tangled up by the 1933 gangland murder of Sydney bookmaker John (‘Jack’ / ‘Jackie’ / ‘Mustard’) Stanislaus Keane. The 01 Oct 1933 Brisbane Truth hauled the story out into the light in its normal breathless style:

Jack Keane, third-rate bookmaker, inveterate gambler and friend of gangsters, threatened to commit the unpardonable sin of the underworld and it was decided that he should die. He had threatened to tell police the full story of the shooting of Jack Finnie and Micky McDonald, so a gunman sealed his lips for ever in death. It was a merciless, cowardly and brutal crime carried out in the deliberate modern manner of Sydney’s underworld human wolves.

And despite having a “pretty young wife” in Waddell Road, Undercliffe, Keane was (if you believe the Truth) seduced by “a gangster’s girl”, who possibly – the Truth insinuated as hard as it could – led him to his execution but had since disappeared. He lived his life, claimed the Truth, as part of the Sydney ‘talent’:

Gathered on the fringe of the underworld and its habitual and professional criminals, gangsters, gunmen, blackmailers and women of the town is a community of men, mostly young men, known as the ‘talent.’ To this social order belonged Keane. Racehorses, poker, billiards and women of their own circle are the main interests of those who comprise the ‘talent.’
They lead a precarious existence, sometimes penniless, and sometimes enriched by their constant gambling. They will do anything except work. Work is an abomination. It is regarded as a form of disease which infects.

The Sydney Truth ran a more bulked-out version of the story, with the femme fatale now described as “married and extremely attractive. She lives in a different locality to where Keane’s body was found.”

There’s a picture of Keane’s tragic death-scene, which I found here:

(According to the Sydney Daily Telegraph of 02 Oct 1933, Keane seems to have met his death after refusing to hand over his winnings to gangsters, a story which seems likely to be closer to the truth than The Truth.)

Mrs Alice Keane was so outraged by the Truth’s coverage that she then wrote them a letter (which they sneeringly called an ‘epistle’) most of which appeared in the 08 Oct 1933 Truth:

You stated that my husband was one of the class of people known as ‘talent,’ by this meaning that he was an associate of criminals and was not following in an honest manner the occupation of a bookmaker. May I inform you that my husband was rarely in Sydney during the last 12 months, and before that time he had an A.R.C. Ledger license as a bookmaker. I know and have been informed by all his friends that his honesty and integrity in his calling could not be questioned, and if he had the misfortune to lose his money and was forced to have a No. 9 license, surely his poverty should not be a reason why he should be designated as a friend of criminals, none of whom I know he was friendly with, but some of whom he might have been known to. You stated that my husband was leading a double life, and may I be permitted to say, for your guidance, that whilst in Sydney my husband rarely ever missed coming home of a night. He was a most upright and loving husband, and one of whom it could never be said that he had led a double life. Your paper stated that he had threatened to give details of the McDonald and Finnie shooting to the police, and that he was known to be a stool pigeon. It will prove how wrong the whole of your story is respecting my husband’s conduct, when you learn that at the time of the shooting my husband was in the country and, I am sure, knew or cared nothing about this gun play. He has always been regarded by his friends as a man to be respected, who keeps his opinions to himself, and one in whom any confidence reposed would be carefully guarded. As my husband had worked in the mines out west until 1920, and had since then been carrying on the calling of a bookmaker in the country, and as be was respected by all who knew him, I am sure that you will help to clear the falsely besmirched name of my dead husband.

By the 15 Oct 1933 Truth, Alice Keane was (apparently) in a terrible state: and, I’m sorry to say, the police investigation into her husband’s murder was never satisfactorily concluded. Looking back (in 1936), Keane’s murder had become merely one of a long series of unsolved Sydney gangland murders:

After seven months of investigation the inquiry before the City Coroner was closed when Detective-sergeant McRae declared, “The police do not desire to give any further evidence on this matter at this juncture. There is a certain amount of silence among those we have spoken to and we are not prepared to say anything further until we break this down. We can only say we have no evidence to offer.” It was a shocking admission of futility.

So why write all this up here? To a large degree, I think the story highlights why relying so heavily on newspapers can sometimes be problematic for historians. Clearly, the Truth’s Aussie brand of yellow journalism (one of Frank Luther Mott’s defining aspects for which is “dramatic sympathy with the ‘underdog’ against the system”) shows that the desire to sensationalize stories at (almost) all costs is far from a recent phenomenon.

And yet I also don’t quite believe that the Truth completely fabricated its stories of Sydney’s ‘talent‘ (even if John Stanislaus Keane himself wasn’t one), who we moderns would perhaps see as ‘hustlers’, ‘players’, or maybe even ‘gangstas’ (as opposed to actual gangsters). So perhaps there is a glimmer of historical gold to be found in the bottom of even this mine-dark media coverage.