The Darlinghurst Murder That Shocked 1920s Sydney: Ruth Alma Brandt’s Final Waltz

Elliot Lindsay
Jul 22
5 min read

Inside the Jazz Age love affair, secrets, and scandal that led to a fatal shooting in a glamorous Darlinghurst flat

By Elliot Lindsay

Discovering Sydney's notorious 1920s murder scene

The door to Flat 11, Harrow Mansions, creaked open under the weight of Inspector Tom Lynch’s hand, and the air inside hit him like a whispered secret - warm, heavy, and tinged with tragedy.

It was just past 11 a.m. on July 12, 1926, and the golden late morning sun poured through the large window overlooking Darlinghurst’s bustling streets, bathing the room in a warm, radiant glow. The light danced across a luxurious pile carpet, its rich fibres catching the rays like a stage under a spotlight.

But the star of this scene had only a few breaths left before the curtain call. Ruth Alma Brandt lay crumpled at the foot of her bedroom door, her golden hair splayed across the carpet, blood pooling beneath her head, glistening in the sunlight like a dark, accusing stain. Two bullet wounds marred her skull, a brutal finale to a life that had fluttered through Sydney’s jazz-soaked nights.

The flat at 14 Clapton Place was a jewel box of 1920s decadence, its small size belying its opulence. Pink satin curtains framed the window, softening the sun’s glare. A polished mahogany table held a bronze nymph statuette, its curves gleaming as if mocking the stillness of death.

Persian cushions, vibrant as a bazaar, spilled across a pink satin divan, their colours clashing with the sombre scene. Reproductions of Rembrandt’s Night Watch and Franz Hals’ Laughing Cavalier hung on the walls, their stoic figures bearing witness to the crime. Egyptian tapestries draped elegantly, and a polished gramophone cabinet stood proud, its needle tracing the grooves of a record that spun relentlessly.

Chopin’s The Last Waltz wafts through the air, its mournful notes curling like smoke, eerie and relentless, as if the melody itself was a requiem for an emerald dream. The melody wove through the room, a ghostly partner in her final dance, chilling the detectives to their core.

Nothing was out of place. No chair overturned, no vase shattered. A newspaper lay carelessly tossed on a chintz-covered armchair, the only sign of disruption in this otherwise pristine stage. Two empty cartridge shells glinted on the carpet near Ruth’s body, and a single bullet hole pierced the partition between the bedroom and sitting room, marking the path of the first shot.

The precision of it all was unnerving - death had slipped in quietly, though it lingered in the shadows, patiently waiting, leaving the flat’s elegance untouched. The unconscious woman lay still, her blue eyes forever closed.

Outside, a small canary sang in a cage by the window, its trill clashing with the gramophone’s haunting waltz. Across the way, white-capped nurses read in the garden of a private hospital, oblivious to the horror unfolding. Inspectors Lynch and Gallagher, joined by Constable Stuckey, stood frozen, the weight of the scene pressing against them.

The ambulance arrived too late - death carried her away before it reached Sydney Hospital. As the detectives surveyed the room, the gramophone’s needle scratched to the end, and The Last Waltz fell silent, leaving only questions in its wake. What shadows had driven this butterfly to her end?

The Jazz Age of Sydney

14 Clapton Place 1921, City of Sydney Archives

Rewind to the Jazz Age, where Sydney’s Kings Cross pulsed with the rhythm of the 1920s. Ruth Alma Brandt was a vision in furs and silk, her blonde hair and blue eyes catching every light in her lofty Darlinghurst flat.

A butterfly, they called her - a flirt, fond of life, flitting through the high-rent courts of Harrow Mansions. But her wings were fragile, weighed down by debts and secrets. Married once to Frederick Brandt, a man who vanished after months, she had spun a web of glamour to mask her financial ruin.

Pawning jewellery, borrowing £100 against her furniture, Ruth lived a lie of wealth, her flat a stage for a performance she could not sustain.

Then came Maurice Strymans, a Belgian sea captain, his face etched with the salt and scars of a life at sea. Master of the Knockfierna, he spun romantic tales of the Pacific Islands, juxtaposed by the revolver that was ever holstered by his side. Dreamy and dangerous, he was her very own Errol Flynn.

They had met two years prior, her charm anchoring him at every port - Newcastle, Adelaide, Melbourne. They played house in the finest hotels, posing as man and wife, dreaming of Paris or New York. Ruth flashed rings, claiming they had wed, though her mother insisted she was still bound to Brandt, never divorced.

Strymans, too, was married, his wife and child in Liverpool, his eventual resignation from the Knockfierna prompted by a war wound and whispered money troubles. Their love was a tangled dance. Ruth told friends she was radiant, yet confided to her mother she feared Strymans, saying he would “put a bullet through her” without hesitation.

On the fateful morning, as tradesmen worked on the street below and a painter brushed away in a neighbouring flat, the telephone rang in Ruth’s Clapton Place flat. A man’s voice - James Henry Whipp, asked for Ruth. Ruth had known Whipp for two-and-a-half years. Strymans claimed that Ruth was deeply distressed by the call. Ruth told him that Whipp had been “persecuting” her for years to marry him and had colluded with her family to “tie up her money,” preventing her from leaving Australia with Strymans.

He recounted Ruth’s words after the call: “The old devil has got us beat, poor old Snookes,” referring to Strymans by her pet name, suggesting Whipp’s actions had finally pushed her to despair.

What exactly happened on that fateful day?

The debts, the lies, the unravelling dreams, it built up like an angry storm, too much for a gentle butterfly’s wings to bear. She spoke of a death pact, begging him to end it. “You’d do anything for me, Maurice. Let’s finish it now.” He drew his revolver, hoping to jolt her senses, but her hand grazed the gun, and it fired twice - or so he claimed.

The Crown called it murder, driven by jealousy or the sting of Ruth’s deception about her wealth. Ruth saw Strymans as passage to a new life on a distant and romantic shore; he saw Ruth as access to a life of wealth and society. Both were tragic characters in one another’s carefully crafted lies.

At the Central Criminal Court, under Chief Justice Street, Strymans faced the jury. His deep voice, laced with a foreign accent, traced his war-torn past and eternal love for Ruth. The jury, unmoved, found him guilty, though they pleaded for mercy. “Your crime was callous,” Street declared, sentencing him to hang, later commuted to life in a bleak Long Bay cell.

As The Last Waltz faded, Darlinghurst’s melodies played on, but Ruth’s dance was done. Was it love, betrayal, or a deeper shadow that pulled the trigger? The flat still holds its secrets, silent as the gramophone’s final note.