Compared to Ted McDermott’s excitement at the fights that used to break out around 6 o’Clock in many South Sydney pubs, as a child Grace Schwebel was horrified at the sight of men brawling as she walked home from the Hub Picture Theatre in Newtown on a Saturday afternoon in the 1920s.
Grace worked at the IXL jam factory in North Newtown/Darlington around the age of 16. She remembers women coming to work after having a ‘backyard’ abortion performed by a Mrs Hunter who worked from a house at the junction of King Street and City Road in Newtown. Even though she describes this process as “brutal butchery”, in the interview she goes on to admit that women were grateful that Mrs Hunter existed because there were not many people around willing to perform abortions.