Looking east along Goulburn Street from Sussex Street, Haymarket in 1911, where the “near riot” occurred. Photo: Fairfax archive of glass plate negatives.
Looking east up Goulburn Street from Sussex Street Haymarket today (2017). Photo: Google Streetview.
ALMOST A RIOT.
About 10 o’clock on Saturday night Constable McDaniel saw a woman ejected from a Goulburn-street hotel (Haymarket) by two barmaids. He arrested her, and, at first she was going easily enough, but a man called out to her not to accompany the police, and said, ‘lie down, throw yourself down.’
On hearing his cries, a crowd gathered, and he shouted out to the mob to rescue her. She became violent and pitched herself down on the street. Someone called out. ‘She can walk herself. Let her so. You’ll get a stripe without that.’ Another man called out epithets of contempt and derision, and they surrounded the policeman and his prisoner. A cab was handy, and into this McDaniel lifted the woman. One of the crowd said: ‘Cut the harness and take the horse out,’ and some of them, suiting the action to the word, released the horse from the harness. The shafts tipped up, and the horse phrased violently, but, backing the cab against a verandah post, prevented in that way an accident taking place.
Constable Rochford appeared on the scene just at this time, and save gave McDaniel a hand. The crowd followed them to the lock-up, continuously calling out to the woman to throw herself down, and making insulting remarks at the police.
McDaniel arrested a young man and brought him before the Central Police Court, on a charge of having incited a prisoner to resist the police. He was remanded until tomorrow. The woman who had been the cause of all the trouble, Mary McCann, 43, married, was fined 5s, or, in default, 24 hours, on a charge of riotous behaviour.
– Evening News (Sydney, NSW) Monday 10 May 1909.
Categories: NSW hotels, Sydney hotels
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