Running amok Dennis was initiated early into the mischief and misdemeanors of the Newtown streets. As a young teen he used to run bets for the bookmaker: He’d give you these addresses and you’d collect their bets, and they’d have thruppence each way, a penny each way, things like that … each day you’d be going back and forwards, taking people their winnings and taking a lot of bets. There were other benefits to having kids around for the bookmaker. If he got a tip-off from Newtown police that there’d be a raid, he’d get the girls to hide the betting slips down their Bombay bloomers. The punters would slip out via the back fence, leaving the girls innocently skipping rope when the police turned up. When the police would come the girls would be skipping, there’d be cordial and fairy bread, and the bookmaker he’d say, What you talking about? It’s a kids’ party, no gambling here. And that was the routine. There were lots of ways Dennis made money as a kid back then, some honest and others not. He told me a bloke at the University of Sydney would pay Dennis and a couple of his mates two shillings for every stray cat they brought him to dissect. ‘You tell people that, they’d deny it’, he said, aware of how outrageous it sounded by today’s standards. They’d collect glass bottles in a cane pram and sell them to the bottle yard. Full of cheek, they’d steal copper from the metal yard and sell it back to the owner. Collecting vine leaves for the Fish and Chip shop window display could earn Dennis two bob or a serve of chips. And he would keep an eye out for the coppers while his Dadda ran two-up rings after the races and for the brothels on Riley Street of a weekend. He remembered blushing when the Madame of one of the brothels smothered him in a busty embrace and teased that she had made the little fella’s night. Dennis and his little brother, Noel (technically Shirley’s son), looked after the horses at Harry Cohen’s stables. It was their job to clean the
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