The real Joseph "Squizzy" Taylor as seen by police in the 1920s. Picture: Peter Smith Source: Herald Sun
SPECIAL REPORT: MELBOURNE'S underworld king Leslie "Squizzy" Taylor was brought down in the same brutal way he conducted business.
As the latest Underbelly series - to be shown in 2013 - is set to shine a light on the seedy 1920s world of standover, illegal casinos, stickups, the corrupt waterfront and brothels we've pulled this yarn out of the True Crime Scene vaults for you to enjoy.
"I’m shot. Drive like hell to St Vincent’s."
Such were the last words of the biggest gangster in 1920s Melbourne, Lelile "Squizzy" Taylor, whose violent death was true to the brutal way he always conducted business.
It is 86 years since he was shot dead in a duel in Carlton on October 27, 1927, ending a notorious reign on par with today's Carl Williams or Tony Mokbel.
Ruling Melbourne’s underworld in the 1920s, Squizzy has been described as a mix of psychopath and Australia’s Robin Hood.
Squizzy was a ladies’ man, a fancy dresser, a car collector and suspected murderer. He was a pickpocket, bootlegger, witness basher, blackmailer, sneak killer, stool pigeon, perjurer, fire-bomber, jury "squarer" or rigger, burglar and a two-up racketeer.
He was the darling of the 1920s sensationalist press, and papers offered competing stories about the gangland hero.
Even his name was disputed. Hugh Buggy, a Herald reporter who knew Taylor, used the name Theodore Joseph Lestor Taylor. Others used Joseph Leslie Theodore Taylor. Photographs of his official criminal record show only the name “Leslie Taylor.”
His left eye had a squint, so schoolyard bullies nicknamed him “Squizzy”.
Squizzy Taylor's lengthy rap sheet shows his changing appearance. Picture: Public Record Office Victoria
An early career in crime
A small, sullen child, Squizzy was born in Brighton, the second-youngest of five siblings.
When his father’s wheelwright business went bankrupt, the family moved to the slums of Richmond.
Squizzy’s two brothers became upright citizens: one a tram conductor, the other a motor car driver. As a teenager, the 157cm, 61kg Squizzy was apprenticed as a jockey.
But Squizzy preferred a different job at the track – picking the pockets of racegoers.
He joined a gang known as the “Bourke Street Rats” and became a petty criminal. His first arrest was in 1906.
Making money with blackmail
Squizzy moved beyond petty crime in 1912.
Leslie 'Squizzy' Taylor, as featured in 'The Sun' newspaper, October 5th, 1922, arrived in court despite being shot in the leg outside a shopfront (right). Picture: HWT library
He tried to blackmail the proprietor of an illegal abortion business in South Yarra.
She refused to pay and he turned her into the police. She died in jail.
Blackmail was easy money for Squizzy. He contracted pretty underworld girls to flirt with married men at the Flemington and Caulfield racecourses.
A girl would join a man for a private meal, only to be interrupted by an irate “husband”.
The “husband” would demand money, and the unsuspecting men complied. The actors got a commission for their roles.
Squizzy springs his crooked mate
A fashionable crook
Squizzy was a dandy. He wore patent leather shoes, fawn gloves, silk socks, diamond rings and a diamond pin in his knitted silk tie. He smoked expensive cigars and had gold teeth.
Squizzy filled his St Kilda villa with pink and white statues, thick carpets and Mae West lounge chairs.
Caulfield racegoers watch in amazement as their grandstand burns down. The fire was believed to have been deliberately lit by Leslie (Squizzy) Taylor. Picture: HWT library
Once, when a Detective Piggott raided his home, he was surprised to find Squizzy in bed wearing pink silk pyjamas.
Squizzy loved motor cars. He had a whole range of fast American models, including a single-seater light six and a large double-seater Minerva. If there was a crime, Squizzy would conveniently leave one of his cars parked in front of a suburban police station - the perfect alibi.
And his official record listed only petty offences. Although he was involved in many murders, he was tried only once - and even that time he was acquitted.
Squizzy often protested that he was an innocent man, just a newspaper favourite.
Herald crime reporter Hugh Buggy wrote that Squizzy’s influence "almost amounted to hypnotism”. Underworld petty criminals saw him as a demi-god.
But many claimed Squizzy was ready to bash a witness, alter evidence or “square” a jury in order to be cleared.
During Squizzy’s reign, the Victorian Government passed a law to keep names, occupations and addresses of jurymen a secret.
More crime tales in True Crime Scene Case Files
'I would not do anything like that'
A police mug shot of infamous but diminutive Melbourne gangster Leslie 'Squizzy' Taylor. Picture: HWT library
Squizzy’s only murder charge was in February 1916, when chauffeur William Haines, 22, was hired to drive to Eltham.
Police believe Squizzy and an associate planned to rob a bank, but the chauffeur would not cooperate. His body was found under a carpet in the car.
A passing milkman saw the two men walking back to Kew, carrying a suitcase. Later that week, in a nearby pond, Police found the suitcase filled with robbery disguises, including fake moustaches. Squizzy was charged.
Squizzy reportedly burst into tears, clutching the arms of Detective Bannon and crying, “You know Sergeant, I would not do anything like that.”
The murder charge didn’t stick and he escaped the rope.
Squizzy was also suspected of involvement in at least two other murders – including that of chocolatier Arthur Trotter three years earlier and of bank manager Thomas Berriman some years later, but there was never enough proof.
When crime was involved, canny Squizzy was reluctant to be the one pulling the trigger.
The Fitzroy Vendetta
Squizzy was one of three men who robbed Kilpatrick’s jewellery store on Collins St in broad daylight in 1918. Squizzy told his accomplice, a member of the rival Fitzroy gang, to sell his rings at a particular broker. The thief walked right into a police trap. The Fitzroy crew never forgave Squizzy, a lifelong member of the Richmond gang.
Squizzy accomplice Angus Murray was the last man to be hanged in the Old Melbourne Gaol on April 14, 1924.
The incident sparked what became known as the Fitzroy Vendetta.
For years, gangsters fired shots at each other almost every night.
It was during this time that Squizzy sent his wife to a sly-grog shop to spy on the Fitzroy gang. But she drank too much and after a few hours, fell asleep on the couch.
She woke to find her rings and coat missing. The Fitzroy mob had recognised the rings and wanted revenge.
The vendetta did not stop until 1921, when most of the key players were behind bars.
Squizzy on the run
On June 15, 1921, Squizzy was found hiding in a warehouse on Bond St and King St. He was arrested, but broke his bond conditions and spent the next 15 months hiding from the law.
Police sent out carloads of detectives every night to hunt for Squizzy.
Purported hideouts included an East Melbourne flat, the old Bijou theatre, a St Kilda home and the boarding rooms at Wesley College.
John "Snowy" Cutmore died in a gun duel with Leslie "Squizzy" Taylor and was, in turn, shot and killed by Taylor. Picture: HWT library
Friends were reported to have taken him food, liquor, Charles Dickens novels and sporting papers. He even kept a scrapbook of the articles about him.
An understaffed, underpaid and discontented police force did not have the ability or the will to track down the public enemy.
A cheeky fugitive, Squizzy was seen out dancing and at theatres. He wrote a letters to the Herald, correcting theories: “I wasn’t at the opening night at Majesty’s, I was dancing at the Palace.”
On September 21, 1922, Squizzy walked into Inspector Potter’s office at the Russell St headquarters and said cheerily “Good morning! Here I am!”
Squizzy confessed to dressing like a schoolboy, wearing a cap, knickerbockers and a school coat. In this disguise, he had walked right past the detectives.
Two nights before his trial for breaking into the warehouse, Squizzy was shot in the leg. He went to the criminal court on crutches, winning sympathy. The first jury was undecided. The second acquitted him.
With his signature silver-knobbed walking stick, Squizzy was a free man.
But a year later Squizzy added to his police record.
He was picked up on October 11, 1923 for harbouring escaped prisoner Angus Murray three days after the murder of bank manager Thomas Berriman during a Hawthorn heist.
"Squizzy'' Taylor's bloody end began in this dingy bedroom at a Carlton boarding Rival Sydney underworld identity John "Snowy'' Cutmore opened fire as Squizzy came to confront him. Several bullets can be seen embedded in the wall. Picture: HWT library
Examine a newspaper report on the bank hold-up
Squizzy had been the driver, and had helped Murray escape jail in the first place.
1920s trials: Squizzy springs his crooked mate
Murray was hanged for the crime in the Old Melbourne Gaol.
Squizzy's charge for being an accessory was withdrawn, and instead faced the minor charge of occupying a house frequented by thieves and was handed a six-month jail term.
Once free, Squizzy was connected with the two-up king Harry Stokes in sly groggeries and two-up schools, where men bet on coin tosses.
Towards the end of his career he got involved in a new money spinner - cocaine trafficking.
Squizzy's way with women
Smith’s Weekly reported that Squizzy liked to regard himself as a “protector of women”. The Herald saw it differently, calling him a womaniser.
Even nunneries were not beyond his reach. In 1925, two women, aged 18, were reported missing.
Squizzy had convinced them to leave home and put them in a Carlton beer-house to entertain clients.
They were arrested and sent by the courts to a convent in a southern suburb.
Squizzy was furious. The Mother Superior telephoned Detective Piggott to report that Squizzy’s men had been cruising the convent, looking for the girls.
The police intervened and Squizzy backed down.
His first wife, Charlotte Haines, aka Dolly Gray, was also his lookout and partner-in-crime.
Ms Gray became a brothel madam to support herself while Squizzy was serving a minor jail sentence.
Later wives included Irene Lorna Kellie and Ida Muriel Pender, described in one police report as being “5’4” with shapely legs”.
While in hiding in 1923, he started to film a movie Bound to Win with Ms Pender as the heroine. The Victorian Government censored the film, but it was later screened in Queensland.
Despite being married, he was seen on most first nights in the dress circle of Her Majesty’s Theatre with a girl at his side.
The duel to the death
Many believe it was a woman that led to Squizzy’s final fight.
Squizzy promised an imprisoned friend he would look after his girlfriend, Edna, 23, and her beer-house.
John Daniel “Snowy” Cutmore, who had just arrived in Melbourne from Sydney, went to the same beer-house where he reportedly drank excessively, did not pay, smashed bottles and blackened Edna’s eyes.
Squizzy was not going to allow such behaviour at a business he was protecting.
Later that week, Squizzy and two friends hailed a cab, searching the Fitzroy bars for Cutmore.
At 6pm on October 27, 1927, they stopped in front of a bluestone cottage on Barkly St.
“Snowy” was lying sick with influenza at his mother’s house.
Bridget Cutmore was cooking dinner and Cutmore’s wife, Gladys, had stepped out to buy milk.
Squizzy and one accomplice jumped out of the car and told the driver John Hall to wait.
They marched into the house, pushed Cutmore’s mother aside, and Squizzy crept up to the bedroom, hoping to ambush Cutmore.
But according to a report in The Herald, Cutmore kept a gun under his pillow.
Shots were fired. Cutmore died with a bullet through his left breast. A minute later, Squizzy staggered out of the house, jumped into the cab, and said, “I’m shot. Drive like hell to St. Vincent’s.”
He never spoke again.
A third shooter?
Mr Hall started to turn on Nicholson St, but Squizzy’s companion told him to go straight on Johnston St. Stuck in traffic on Brunswick and Johnston streets, the accomplice leapt out of the taxi.
At the hospital, Mr Hall carried Squizzy into the casualty ward. He briefly regained consciousness, but said nothing. There was a warm .32 revolver in his coat pocket.
By the time police arrived, doctors Zacharin and Foley declared Squizzy dead.
But the controversy around his death lives on.
The coroner’s report stated that there was “not sufficient evidence to determine who fired the shots”.
Police Superintendent Piggett was confident there was no third person.
But varying reports stated that 11, 15 and 20 shots were fired, all enough to indicate the presence of a third person.
And how did Cutmore’s pistol get to an alleyway 200m away, where it was later found?
There were many theories. One newspaper reported, “Cutmore was struggling to fire the weapon when an unknown third man rushed forward and wrenched it from him.”
Some people even suspected his mother, Bridget Cutmore, after she reported having a “bad memory” of the evening.
Squizzy's legacy
Although exact events leading up to their deaths were unknown, both criminals were mourned.
The Herald wrote that “both men went to their graves followed by more people than would have followed the cortege of the Prime Minister”.
Squizzy Taylor was buried in the Brighton Church of England cemetery in a grave marked “Taylor”. He was survived by his wife Ida, their daughter Patsy and his daughter Lesley from a previous marriage to Irene Lorna Kelly.
Squizzy Taylor’s name has lived on in many ways, including cafes, a real estate development, TV shows, books, films, an opera, and a rock musical.
He will also be the central character in the upcoming TV series Underbelly: Squizzy.
This is a revised version of a subscribers-only report that appeared in October 2012.
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