Nellie Cameron received 73 criminal convictions during her life of crime, mainly for soliciting and vagrancy, and had the distinction of becoming the first woman in Australia to be convicted of consorting with criminals.
17 Facts About Nellie Cameron
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Nellie Cameron was a Roman Catholic and was educated at an exclusive girls' school on the North Shore.
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In 1926 Nellie Cameron ran away from home, caught a train to the city, seduced a married tram driver, and began living with him in Woolloomooloo.
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When Nellie Cameron began her career in prostitution in 1926 in Sydney's Surry Hills and Woolloomooloo districts at the age of fifteen, she was a blue-eyed blonde.
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Soon Nellie Cameron became Sydney's most popular and most expensive prostitute and was known as Sydney's Underworld Beauty Queen and as the "Kiss of Death Girl" or "The Angel of Death", as most of her boyfriends or husbands were subsequently murdered.
6.
Early in 1927 when Nellie Cameron met Norman Bruhn, a Melbourne-born dockworker and gunman, thief, standover man and pimp feared for his garroting skills, who was forced to leave Melbourne by rival gunman Squizzy Taylor in November 1926, she was described as "a redhead with a ripe figure and provocative china blue eyes".
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At that time Nellie Cameron was a street prostitute on William and Palmer Streets with no connection to Tilly Devine or any other madam.
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At that point, coitus would be interrupted by angry banging on the door by another involved in the scam, Nellie Cameron, feigning panic, would exclaim it was the police or her irate husband, and urge the client to dress and depart by the back door.
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On 16 November 1931, after visiting her then de facto husband Frank Green at St Vincent's Hospital where he was in a serious condition after being shot in the stomach, Nellie Cameron was herself shot in the shoulder in Burton Street, East Sydney, while walking home from the hospital.
10.
In November 1934 Caletti was imprisoned for two years, and Nellie Cameron renewed her relationship with Frank Green.
11.
In July 1937 Nellie Cameron was charged with maliciously shooting at Harry Roper the previous month.
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In 1940 Nellie Cameron married Charles Francis "Greyhound" Bourke, another notorious Sydney criminal and gunman, at Sydney, using her then married name of Ellen Catherine Caletti.
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About 1947 Nellie Cameron adopted Janice, the infant daughter of a neighbour, and raised her conscientiously.
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On 31 March 1952, Nellie Cameron was attacked at her flat by Donohue, who shot her in the stomach.
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Nellie Cameron was admitted to St Vincent's Hospital in a critical condition with a bullet lodged in her liver.
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Nellie Cameron was buried as Ellen Katherine Bourke on 10 November 1953 in the Botany Roman Catholic Cemetery, now known as Eastern Suburbs Memorial Park.
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Nellie Cameron was survived by her estranged husband Charlie Bourke, her mother, Mrs Lillian Cameron and her adopted daughter, Janice.