Sin City: crime & corruption in 20th-century Sydney

Overview

The good, the bad and the alluringly ugly are all currently on show at the Justice & Police Museum, rather good timing for an exhibition about Sydney's underworld, given the current Underbelly fever in the air. Despite the fact that Kings Cross seems more like a golden mile of bile these days when I'm walking to and from home, its history within the criminal side of Sydney remains illicitly interesting.

Between the 1940s and 80s, Sydney teemed with teamsters, backdoor dealings and more bad cops than good (no comment on their ugliness, though for fear of midnight retribution). Gamblers, bookies and prostitutes went to work, cloaked by blind eyes being turned the city over. Sin City, the latest exhibition from the Historic Houses Trust delves into this time period, picking through fragments of good times and ugly truths through interviews, objects and an incredibly comprehensive archive of footage and news reports. By examining the corruption so deeply embedded in our city's heritage, it's hard not to ask whether this exhibition will be updated in a few decade's time.