Rightly or wrongly, there wasn't a lot of sympathy for George Edward Barrett after he was shot dead during a Fitzroy brawl in Melbourne one night in December 1947.
Barrett, a notorious thug and standover man, had after all "shot more than a few in Sydney and an odd one down here", according to his own girlfriend.
Just four months before his death, Barrett had faced trial over the shooting of a man in St Kilda, but beat the charge on the grounds of self-defence.
