Larrikins of Sydney
Image: Princes St (Larsson’s Bee Hive Hotel), 19091. The Old Rocks/N.S.W. Public Works Dept. (Source: Image 82. SLNSW: PXE 921 (v.3) – 433277
“Let us first describe the captain, bottle-shouldered, pale and thin,
Extract from The Captain of the Push, Henry Lawson, 1892
For he was the beau-ideal of a Sydney larrikin;
E’en his hat was most suggestive of the city where we live,
With a gallows-tilt that no one, save a larrikin, can give;
And the coat, a little shorter than the writer would desire,
Showed a more or less uncertain portion of his strange attire.”
Rival push gangs operated in other suburbs too, including nearby Millers Point, and some of the more creatively named gangs included the Straw Hat Push and the Forty Thieves.
While today the term ‘larrikin’ paints a picture of a rough-around-the-edges disregard for authority, these gangs were no joke, and violent assaults and brawls were terrifyingly common on the streets of The Rocks.
