BY STAFF WRITERS
Curtis Woodward’s FootyTown app is out, about and in full-swing, with over 1200 locations and now available on the App Store and Google Play.
While we’re always adding new locations on a daily basis – it’s hard to ignore one figure who features heavily already.
That man is Frank ‘Bumper’ Farrell.
Newtown’s legendary enforcer and leader – Farrell is also Sydney’s most famous and infamous beat cop and later detective in Sydney’s Darlinghurst at the height of the area’s debauchery.
‘Bumper’ ruled Darlinghurst’s streets and laneways with an iron fist.
Farrell currently features in 25 locations across Sydney.
Here’s ten of the best…
“WORST RIOT EVER SEEN IN SYDNEY”
An exclusive club for African American soldiers on furlough in Sydney during World War II. In ‘Bumper’ Farrell’s book written by Larry Writer reports of a recorded interview Farrell did in his later career and recounts of the “worst riot ever seen in Sydney”.
“There was a black American who escaped from a stockade in Townsville after murdering three other black soldiers. He made his way down to Sydney and the American military police got the tip that he was hiding out in this Booker T. Washington Club. [Colonel] Burroughs came to me and asked for help. He said, ‘This might get a bit nasty tonight, might be a few gunshots…’ and I said, ‘That’ll be alright.”
Farrell and the Darlinghurst coppers were forced to wait outside as American MPs entered the club. According to Farrell in Writer’s book, the American finally dragged the man outside and was ‘about 6 foot 5’.
“Suddenly the murderer broke free and away he went, ran off. Well, bullets went flying everywhere … we chased him and eventually got him down off Marshall Street in Surry Hills and we brought him back to Darlinghurst Police Station.”
Upon arrival, there was a large group of drunken African American soldiers who believed they’d got the wrong bloke.
“Well, this black mass who were sticking by their mate converged on us in Flinders Street and guns were drawn and they had knives and they pulled paling off the fences. Some of our blokes were afraid they were going to get their bloody head cut off. They tried to tip the police car over. It was the worst scene ever I’ve seen in Sydney. Anyway, we beat them off and the escapee was incarcerated and I don’t know what happened to him after that.”
Farrell said years later that its infamous peak, the Booker T. Club could get that wild that ‘Bumper’ saw soldiers whip out knives and slash so deep that he could see the bones.
PRINCE PHILIP, DUKE OF EDINBURGH
A young sailor named Prince Philip was enjoying every bit of Kings Cross in 1940 when late in the evening, Philip decided to relieve himself in a back alley.
“Bumper” Farrell spotted the drunken[princely sailor, committing an act of indecency [urinating in public] and flew into action. The burly cop apprehended the prince, lifted him off the ground and pinned him, with appropriate force, against the wall. The prince had the “wherewithal to give Bumper a false name; a prudent decision given that an announcement of his title of ‘Prince’ and a surname Schleswig-Holstein- Sonderberg-Glücksburg might have been taken as an attempt to ‘take the piss’ out of the young policeman”.
“Bumper applied his unique brand of physical policing and, having terrified the bejesus out of the young English officer and (figuratively and literally) given him a ‘kick up the rear’, let him go without formally laying charges. Job done, lesson given; Farrell moved on and thought no more about another commonplace street encounter with a drunken sailor” – John Staats.
JOHNNY REGAN
Bumper Farrell and a colleague were cruising through Kings Cross when Bumper spotted vicious crook and child-killer Johnny Regan underneath the Coke sign with two prostitutes. ‘That’s Regan, pull over, i’m arresting him’.
‘He isn’t doing anything wrong Bumper’.
At that moment, Regan belted one of the girls.
Bumper jumped out of the car, knocked Regan out and tossed him into the wagon.
Regan wasn’t long for the world and was executed soon after near Henson Park in Marrickville.
One whisper is that Regan was murdered by a police hit squad that included a young Roger Rogerson.
According to the Australian Crimes website, Long Bay Prison cheered as one at the news of Regan’s death.
TILLY DEVINE
Long-time home of the imfamous Sydney crime boss Tilly Devine. Has since been knocked down. At her 50th birthday party at this address while carving up a roast, Devine quiped, “I wish this ‘ere pig was Bumper Farrell!”
REG’S
Reg’s was a nightclub in Double Bay which would become Casablanca [now demolished]. Former Wallabies captain Sir Nick Shehadie and future Sydney Lord Mayor, was invited to Reg’s in 1949 with Australian teammate Col Windon. On this night, at the illegal club, Frank ‘Bumper’ Farrell and fellow copper Ron Walden burst through the door. According to Larry Writer in ‘Bumper’, Sir Nick got lucky as Ron worked for the Wallabies on their ’49 tour. “Okay nobody move! Both of you [Shehadie and Windon]… piss off!”
GUIDO CALLETTI
Address where Sydney gangster Guido Calletti was murdered in 1939. Calletti had drunkenly gatecrashed a Brougham Street Gang party and threatened them. Frank ‘Bumper’ Farrell accompanied two detectives as the first police on the scene.
FRANK FARRELL
Frank ‘Bumper’ Farrell’s family home in North Narrabeen. Story goes that Farrell would finish his shifts and get water cops to drive him up toward his home and Farrell would jump out of the boat, fully clothed, swim to shore and go home.
BERWICK LANE
Newtown Bluebags legend and captain Frank Farrell, the toughest copper in Sydney, would use young cops like a Mr Roger Rogerson as a driver to clear out scum in the back streets of Sydney on Friday and Saturday nights. Lanes like Berwick were full of drunks, abusing young prostitutes trying to invite them in to old houses, long knocked down. Farrell would sit in the back of a car, and then order Rogerson to flick the lights on and charge down the ally with Bumper using the car door to knock down as many drunks as he could. Those left, would feel Farrell’s wrath when he stepped out of the car.
BUMPER FARRELL
In the late 1930s, Newtown Blueebags tyro and feared Darlo copper Frank Farrell cruised the streets late one night with two fellow policemen in the front. Noticising a street brawl of up to 12 men on Wentworth Avenue, Farrell demanded the wagon be stopped with ‘Bumper’ into the fight, bashing the drunks before the other two policemen could get out of the car. One cop told Larry Writer in ‘Razor’ that he accidently hit Bumper across the face with his baton – splitting him wide-open. Farrell turned to his colleague and quipped, “please be more careful with your baton”.
BELLS HOTEL
According to Larry Writer in his book ‘Bumper’, The Bells Hotel was a “notorious blood-house, a haunt of gangsters, thugs and sailors and wharfies on a spree”. At closing, many cops struggled with the chaos and often called on young policeman and Newtown Bluebag ‘Bumper’ Farrell. The man himself enjoyed using an uppercut to the jaw or a powerful jab to the stomach. “I aim for the area between the shit and the wind”. On another night, colleagues requested Farrell at the pub as a giant sailor with a huge knife was causing mayhem and eventually locked himself in a room upstairs. Farrell stormed in, went upstairs, bashed down the door and knocked the sailor out with two punches.
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