Throughout inner Sydney in the 1920s and ‘30s, fabled vice queens, Tilly Devine and Kate Leigh battle for underworld supremacy. But there was only room for one woman at the top…
It’s 1927; Sydney, Australia and the gutters were running with blood as the underworld exploded in violence. Vice in the harbour city was dominated by two powerful women – Tilly Devine played by Chelsea Preston Crayford and her bitter rival Kate Leigh played by Danielle Cormack, an Aussie battler who’d built an empire out of sly grog, thieving and cocaine. Tilly, a sharp-tongued cockney, who was born into poverty and became a prostitute at 15, runs the biggest brothel network Australia has ever seen. Her husband, “Big Jim” Devine, leads a team of hired muscle to protect their lucrative business. Tilly’s rival is sly-grog proprietor, Kate Leigh, who capitalised on the law that forced pubs to cease trading at 6pm, opening numerous saloons to provide liquor to punters after hours.