Chant and Co

There was an old Chinese man the locals called "No Chin". He had exposed dentures and he slept on cornbags in a shed in Elgin Street, behind the iceworks. There was Billy Kilmartin, who rode around on a pushbike at night with a covered basket on his handlebars, selling hot pies. And there was Jackie Minch, whose mother had a grocery shop and who ran to the bank with every pound note they earned, wearing a felt hat turned up like Tiger Kelly. These and other colourful characters from Maitland in the 1920s and 1930s clung…