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Robert Drewe

Aged six, Robert Drewe moved with his family from Melbourne to Perth, the world's most isolated city – and proud of it. This sun-baked coast was innocently proud, too, of its tranquillity and friendliness.

Then a man he knew murdered a boy he also knew. The murderer randomly killed eight strangers – variously shooting, strangling, stabbing, bludgeoning and hacking his victims and running them down with cars – an innocent Perth was changed forever.

In the middle-class suburbs which were the killer's main stalking grounds, the mysterious murders created widespread anxiety and instant local myth. 'The murders and their aftermath have both intrigued me and weighed heavily on me for three decades. To try to make sense of this time and place, and of my own childhood and adolescence, I had, finally, to write about it.'

The result is The Shark Net, a vibrant and haunting memoir that reaches beyond the dark recesses of murder and chaos to encompass their ordinary suburban backdrop.

London. Penguin. 2001. 343p.

By George Bidwell.

Bidwell’s Travels: Forging his own chains. “Freed a human wreck, a wonderful survival and a more wonderful rise in the world. To-day he has a national reputation as a writer, speaker and is considered an authority on all social problems. He was tried at the Old Bailey and sentenced for life. charged with the £1,000,000 forgery on the bank of England. This story shows that the events of his life surpass the imaginations of our famous novelists, its thrilling scenes, hair-breadth escapes and marvelous adventures are not a record of crime, but are proofs of that in the world of wrongdoing success is failure.

Bidwell publishing Hartford (1897) 295 pages.

By W.S. Fortey.

A Most Notorious Highwayman. “Richard Turpin was born at Hampstead, in Essex, where his father kept the sign of the Bell; and after being the usual time at school, he was bound to apprentice to a butcher in Whitechapel, but did not serve out his time, for his master discharged him for impropriety of conduct, which was not in the least diminished by his parents' indulgence in supplying him with money, which enabled him to cut a figure round the town, among the blades of the road and the turf, whose company he usually kept.”

London: W.S. Fortey, 1860. 12p.

By A. Moore.

A brief historical account of the lives of the six notorious street-robbers, executed at Kingston viz. William Blewet, Edward Bunworth, Emanuel Dickenson, Thomas Berry, John Higges, and John Legee.

London: Printed for A. Moore, (1726). 52p.

By Capt. Charles Johnson.

Pirates and Robbers, drawn from the most authentic sources, with additions by C. Whitehead. “He alone is a truly brave man, who, being powerful, for brave in it disgraceful to insult the feeble : many who pass the estimation of the world, are yet cowardly enough to commit base and barbarous actions : what else can be said of those, who possessing strength of mind and vigour of body, employ their faculties to rob and oppress the weak and ignorant ? It is an easy matter to assume the semblance of fortitude and resolution; but few, very few, are the individuals who really possess those noble qualities : particularly such hardened villains whose lives and exploits are so faithfully recorded in the following work.”

London Booksellers (1883) 452 pages.