 Leese was also employed by John Allen at his Water Street dance hall.He was often armed with two revolvers in his belt and a knife worn on his boot top, and "a bludgeon in his huge fist".Leese described himself as a ""rough-and-tumble-stand-up-to-be-knocked-down-son-of-a-gun"" and a ""kicking-in-the-head-knife-in-a-dark-room fellow"" although he was described in less flattering terms by a contemporary journalist as ""a beastly, obscene ruffian, with bulging, bulbous, watery blue eyes, bloated face and a coarse swaggering gait"".