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.
The trial briefs have been closed for 75 years, but the Public Records Office of Victoria has now opened them to the public under Section 9 of the Public Records Act.
The briefs detail a tangled web of allegiances, attacks and reprisals, and often fruitless attempts by police to bring underworld figures to justice.
They also go some way to proving that in the criminal underworld what goes around inevitably — and often violently — comes around.
Sydney crime figure shot dead
Trying to find the starting point of any underworld dispute is an almost impossible task, but in George Barrett's case you can at least go back to Sydney, 1945.
Barrett ran a business selling beer with a man called Keith Kitchener Hull and was also mates with well-known underworld figure Donald "The Duck" Day.
Day — a former jockey turned crime boss — took a dislike to Hull for reasons which are not quite clear, but almost certainly involved women.
He and some heavies dished out a beating to Hull, who was in the company of Day's wife at a house in Surry Hills.
Not satisfied with dishing out a beating, "The Duck" returned the next day seemingly intent on doing some more permanent damage to Hull, who'd been seen at a nightclub with Day's wife.
"He said 'it's on' and aimed a revolver at me," Hull would later say in court.
"It made a clicking sound but did not go off. I did not give him another chance."
Hull shot Day in the cheek, heart and stomach, leaving the underworld figure dead in a pool of blood.
Keith Kitchener Hull was charged with murder, but was cleared on the grounds of self-defence.
If he thought that was going to be the end of the matter, he was mistaken.
Underworld feud moves from Sydney to Melbourne
Donald Day had been providing protection for sex worker and underworld figure Dulcie Markham, and was also said to be romantically involved with her.
Dulcie Markham was a significant figure in criminal circles and had earned a few nicknames herself over the years, none of them flattering.
She was dubbed the "Black Widow", "Bad Luck Doll" and "The One-Way Ticket" due to eight of her lovers being either shot or stabbed to death.
Two years after Donald Day was shot dead, Dulcie Markham was living in Melbourne with an associate of George Barrett's, Charles Martin.
Barrett had also moved back to Melbourne, and so had Keith Kitchener Hull, probably assuming he'd have an easier time of it if he moved away from the city where he'd put three bullets into a crime boss.
Unfortunately for Hull, he kept crossing paths with Barrett and Markham in Melbourne, and neither of them were ready to forgive and forget.
Hull would tell police he'd spoken to Barrett in Melbourne to make sure there were "no hard feelings" over the death of Day, but said Barrett brushed him off.
"I don't want to talk to you. When I see you, I'll see you," Hull reported Barrett as saying.
In late July 1947, Barrett and Charles Martin went to see Hull on what Barrett's lawyer described as "a friendly social visit", but what Hull read as something a little more sinister.
After a few drinks, all three men hopped into Hull's truck and went for a drive in St Kilda, pulling over in Neptune Street.
At this point, Hull claimed Barrett pulled out a revolver and said "cop this" in true 1940s gangster style, before shooting him in the chest and hip.
Hull survived, but initially refused to tell police who shot him.
Court hears shooting victim was threatened
Four days after Keith Kitchener Hull was shot, Dulcie Markham and an accomplice made a visit to Hull's wife and allegedly threatened her.
They were both charged with conspiring to kill but the charges were later dropped.
A few weeks later, Markham again paid a visit to Hull's house in the company of two men, and allegedly beat up the recovering Hull, striking him in the face with the butt of a pistol.
Hull would tell a court it was this attack, and the threats to his wife, that made him come forward and identify Barrett as the man who shot him.
"My wife is in the family way and I consider the tactics of these people standing over a woman is despicable, and not the same as standing over a man, and this is the reason I am giving evidence," he said.
Barrett was charged with wounding with intent to murder, but argued in court that it was Hull who pulled the pistol and said "cop this", he'd only wrestled with him, causing the weapon to go off.
"I never tried to shoot him, it was accidentally," Barrett told the court.
The jury agreed and Barrett was cleared of the charges.
Hull had shot someone and been cleared under self defence, and now he'd been shot by someone who beat the charge the same way.
Just three months later, Barrett lay dead on a footpath in Gertrude Street in Fitzroy.
The man accused of killing him, Joseph Turner, testified that Barrett had shot two people before dropping his gun in a scuffle.
Turner picked up the weapon and shot Barrett and his accomplice.
"I was thinking that if they got me they would kick me to death or shoot me if they got the gun back," he told a court.
He was cleared on the grounds of self defence.
The papers said Barrett "was given his own medicine", which tends to be what happens in criminal underworld circles.
