The dark prince of melbo.., p.1
The Dark Prince of Melbourne, page 1
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Page numbers taken from the following print edition: ISBN 9780733344299
DEDICATION
To Sophie Hamley and Sarah McKenzie, for literary excellence.
CONTENTS
Note to Readers
Dedication
1.The Apprentice
2.Cometh the Hour
3.Harrieville
4.The War to End All Wars
5.Buckley’s Chance
6.The Chauffeur
7.A Jury of His Peers
8.Dog Days
9.The Gunman and the Crook
10.Kilpatrick and Co.
11.The Vendetta
12.Apogee
13.Gone, but Not Forgotten
14.Glenferrie
15.Kith and Kin
16.Snow(y) in Sydney
17.Evensong
18.Barkly Terrace
19.The Passing of the Days
Acknowledgements
Endnotes
References
About the Author
Also by Ian W. Shaw
Copyright
CHAPTER 1The Apprentice
By the mid-1870s, newspapers in Melbourne and elsewhere were regularly reporting on two phenomena that had emerged in recent years. The first was larrikins and larrikinism – young men whose dress was distinctive and whose behaviour tested the limits of both propriety and legality.1 The second was the increasing trend of those young men to form groups, which to outsiders were gangs, but to their members were ‘pushes’. By the mid-1890s, Melbourne had dozens of these pushes, ranging in size from a dozen or so members to a hundred or more. Some were based on suburbs, like the Richmond and Fitzroy Pushes, while others were based on streets, like Collingwood’s Hoddle Street Lairies. Still others were based on hotels, personal preferences or even individual characteristics; North Melbourne’s Crutchy Push was made up of young men with just one leg.2
The largest and best known was the Bourke Street Rats, started by newsboys who sold their papers in and around the Bijou Theatre in Melbourne’s entertainment district in Bourke Street. By the beginning of the 20th century, the Bourke Street Rats controlled much of the street-level crime in Melbourne’s CBD, organising groups of pickpockets and petty thieves to go out on raids, and even extorting money from those caught in the sexual compromise traps they called the Ginger Game. The Rats, too, had a hierarchy based on physical toughness and the ability to rob, steal and pickpocket. Those at the top of this hierarchy – there were never more than a handful – were known as King Rats, and around 1905 a new King Rat was crowned. He was small, a jockey as well as a thief, and his given names were Joseph Leslie, but he would rarely use these. Instead, he used the nickname his family has given him. There is no definitive explanation as to its origins. Some suggest it was due to a childhood eye imperfection, while others suggest young Taylor was an inquisitive child, always wanting to have a ‘squiz’ at things. Regardless of its origins, he would be known to the Rats, eventually all of Melbourne, as ‘Squizzy’, Squizzy Taylor.
***
Squizzy Taylor was born on 29 June 1888, the second youngest son of coachbuilder Benjamin Taylor and his wife, Rosina. The Taylors would have five children – three sons, two daughters – all born while the family was living in the Melbourne bayside suburb of Brighton. It was a comfortable life for a successful coachbuilder, a comfortable life that would be snatched from the family by the economic depression that gripped the Australian colonies in the early 1890s. Unable to work, Benjamin took his family from middle-class Brighton to working-class Richmond, a blow exacerbated by Benjamin being forced to work as a labourer. He began to drink heavily, and beat his wife and children; the tears shed when he dropped dead in 1901 were tears of regret mingled with tears of relief.
Squizzy’s childhood was far from pleasant. His father’s death left his mother reliant on what her children could earn to keep the family together. Thus, it was around the time of his father’s death that Squizzy’s schooldays ended. Nearly 30 years later, with some pride, he would recall attending a private school and suggested that, educationally, he could have gone a lot further than he did. That progression, he would say, had been stymied by a short-tempered father.3
The truth, though, was markedly different. Squizzy attended the local state school where vague reminiscences of a very small, somewhat timid boy were all he seemed to have left behind. From the age of 10 or 11, he began to have brushes with the police, primarily over absenteeism from school, and associating with gangs like the Bourke Street Rats. Those brushes and absenteeism saw young Squizzy being sent to reform schools – the Salvation Army Boys Home at Bayswater and a Presbyterian boys’ home in Bendigo where his father had been born and he had relatives. On the occasions that he absconded from these homes, and there would be several, Squizzy would be returned by the local police.
Squizzy would also later claim that he had wanted to be a jockey from an early age.4 Entering his teenage years at just 155 centimetres in height and less than 50 kilograms in weight, there were few jobs for which he was physically suited, but riding racehorses was one of them. Squizzy would recall becoming an apprentice jockey at a racing stable in Bacchus Marsh, and he was certainly an apprentice jockey at the Richmond stables of a well-known jockey and racehorse owner named Bobby Lewis. Squizzy also recalled riding for the Miller Racing Stables, located in Mill Park.
Another claim that Squizzy would proudly make later was that, in his days as a jockey, he rode 37 winners and made a lot of money for punters.5 Again, this was a mixture of fact and fiction. His claim to have ridden his first victory on a horse named Slaten in a six-furlong race at Moonee Valley in 1904 appears to be a complete fiction. However, he did ride a horse named Toora to victory in the Maiden Plate at Maribyrnong in January 1904; starting at 8/1, and winning by half a length, Squizzy’s victory certainly would have pleased some punters.
Many more were subsequently either appalled or secretly enriched by Squizzy’s antics in the saddle. He completed his indentures in 1905, but by then had also developed a reputation for dishonesty; no one could ever be certain whether the finishing order in any race in which he rode was determined by ability, chance or financial considerations. At one pony race meeting, Squizzy was stood down for several events after stewards found that he had run dead in a race. Trackside rumours suggested that this action could be closer to the rule than the exception. Other rumours suggested that he also regularly spoke to other jockeys, especially the younger ones, about doing the same thing. It also seemed that since he had begun running with the Bourke Street Rats, Squizzy had been honing his pickpocketing skills between races at the racetrack.
Almost as soon as his career as a jockey had begun, it was over; opportunities to ride dried up as he was considered just a little too crooked. His subsequent defenders would say that his weight forced him to give up the sport, although later in his life he was never more than 57 kilograms at his heaviest. His critics would say that he never had an honest job after he gave up riding; some would add an asterisk, suggesting that ‘after he gave up riding’ was superfluous.
***
The racecourse kept calling him back. While running with the Bourke Street Rats, Squizzy still knew his way around a racetrack, knew where the money changed hands and where the big punters congregated, and had a better than average knowledge of which horses might be nobbled, which jockeys had been bought. His antics had seen him lose his status as a registered jockey and he had been told that he would not be welcomed back to any of Melbourne’s pony racecourses. Flemington, Caulfield and Moonee Valley racecourses all utilised racecourse detectives, Victoria police officers, at their race meetings. Those detectives had no hesitation in warning undesirable characters off their courses for a meeting, for a year, or for life.
Provincial and country race meetings offered better opportunities for petty criminals, with fewer dangers of disruption while also attracting big punters. In his late teenage years, Squizzy would spend most of his time in Melbourne engaging in street-level crime, but he was also spending increasing amounts of time in regional Victoria, most notably in Bendigo and Ballarat, pursuing criminal interests at first, and romantic interests afterwards. In those former activities, discretion was important to success and, in this, Squizzy almost fell at the first hurdle.
Squizzy Taylor’s first criminal conviction, in 1906, was for assault, and the conviction saw him serve a week in the cells of the Melbourne Gaol. Squizzy was, and would remain, prone to outbreaks of physical violence, primarily because violence was the lingua franca of the streets, and of the gangs who sought to control those streets. Contemporary newspapers documented just what was happening.
During the early evening of 23 May 1907, a young man named William Prentice was talking to a girl in Young Street, Fitzroy.6 Out of nowhere, a gang of six appeared and began a vicious and sustained attack on Prentice, one that only ended when bystanders intervened. A badly beaten Prentice told police that he had previously been involved in an altercation with two of his attackers, but either didn’t know or wasn’t prepared to name his other four attackers. All of the attackers we
Later that same evening, the Taylor brothers and a boy named Dunn were still cruising the streets of Fitzroy when they came across Christopher Williams, in Little Hanover Street. The three followed Williams along the street and up onto the verandah of his home where Squizzy struck him in the face with an iron bar and Dunn hit him in the shoulder with a heavy piece of wood. All the while, Claude Taylor stood outside in the street, conspicuously holding a revolver in his hand. Williams suffered two black eyes and a lacerated nose in the attack. He subsequently moved away from Fitzroy and, in later court appearances, would decline to reveal his new address.7
Court cases arose from that night’s bashings. All the young men responsible were found and charged with a variety of offences. All were found guilty, and all were handed down sentences. All appealed those sentences, and all had those sentences either reduced or overturned.
***
Sometimes Squizzy would use violence to achieve an objective other than gang disputes over women or territory. Around 3 pm on Friday, 26 July 1907, Squizzy and a friend named Bert Moody assaulted and robbed an older man named Richard Way at the rear of the Oxford Hotel in Lonsdale Street.8 A policeman was summoned and the publican and victim identified Squizzy and Moody as the attackers. Both young men were already known to the police and warrants for their arrest were subsequently issued, one for Bertram Moody and the other for Leslie Taylor, also known by the name ‘Squizzy’. It was the first time the name ‘Squizzy Taylor’ would appear in the Melbourne newspapers, and it would not be the last.9
***
When not in Melbourne, Squizzy could usually be found at or near Ballarat or Bendigo. It was soon obvious that he was not there to simply watch the thoroughbred racehorses. On 30 January 1907, Squizzy appeared before the Bendigo City Court, charged with the attempted theft of a gold breastpin from one Yen Kee, a Chinese herbalist. It was an open-and-shut case, and Taylor was found guilty, fined two pounds and offered seven days’ imprisonment in default.10 Despite the conviction and fine, Squizzy would find himself spending more and more time in Bendigo. While he was not in love with the birth city of his father, he was in love with one of its residents – her name was Dolly Gray.
That was not her real name of course. The Dolly Gray that Squizzy fell for in 1907 had been born to chimneysweep John Haines and his wife, Sarah, in South Melbourne in 1882. The parents christened their daughter Elizabeth Charlotte Haines, and until her late teens she had always been called either Charlotte or Lottie. Those relatively easygoing years would end in 1899 when a heavily pregnant Charlotte Haines married a young man named Hugh O’Donoghue. O’Donoghue, who was just 20 when they married, and Charlotte quickly had two daughters and, almost as quickly, the marriage ended. The newly single woman made an almost complete break with her past after that.
At some stage following the separation, Charlotte Haines became Dolly Gray, taking her name from a popular English vaudeville song, ‘Goodbye, Dolly Grey’. Not only did she change her name, but Dolly also changed her entire persona. Before the end of 1906, Dolly began working as a prostitute. She convinced her mother to loan her some money and look after her two small daughters until she could become financially independent. Her mother agreed, and in 1906 Dolly purchased a house in Bendigo at 161 Mundy Street, using the name Dolly Haines on the purchase documents. Soon, she had two girls working as prostitutes in the house, sold sly grog on the side, and was madam of her own brothel.
Dolly would have run-ins with the law. In January 1907, she appeared before the Bendigo Court, charged with selling liquor without a licence. Dolly and her co-accused, Nellie Gwynne, both vigorously denied the charge and their barrister, a Mr James Barnett from Melbourne, conducted a searching examination of all the prosecution witnesses. One of those witnesses, a policeman, said that both women were ‘known to authorities’, and there were thinly veiled references to what really went on at 161 Mundy Street. Both women were found guilty of the offence, with Dolly being fined 25 pounds and Nellie Gwynne two pounds; Barnett immediately gave notice of appeal.
Around the same time, the 25-year-old madam met the 19-year-old ex-jockey and petty criminal, Squizzy Taylor. A spark was struck, not just physically but also intellectually, and Squizzy would begin to spend as much time as he could in Bendigo.
***
Late in the evening of Friday, 22 March 1907, an explosion occurred inside the offices of Cambridge and Young’s printing works in Bendigo’s Market Square. Police would later find that the office’s front door had been opened with a skeleton key and the office safe blown open using gelignite. Their enquiries would also reveal that the now empty safe had a small amount of gold and silver that the owner valued at just 12 pounds. At the conclusion of their initial investigations, police blamed the raid on a gang from Melbourne who were likely in town for the following week’s Bendigo Cup race meeting. Their enquiries also revealed that a few days earlier, an Eaglehawk farm supplies store had sold a small number of explosives and detonators to a young man who said he was a quarryman.11 The staff at the store didn’t think he looked like a quarryman, while his companion, who was small and well dressed, looked like a jockey. Coincidentally, the descriptions matched those of two men who had also been reported as living at 161 Mundy Street.
***
In Melbourne, investigations into the robbery and assault of Richard Way continued, but they were not a top priority for police. Squizzy and Moody were never far from Bourke Street, and it was there that they were both arrested and committed to stand trial at the Criminal Court on Thursday, 15 August 1907. The trial was one that produced several sublime moments, all courtesy of Richard Way. In evidence, Way admitted that on the day he was robbed, he had cashed a cheque for three pounds before visiting several hotels during the morning. Later, in the afternoon, he could recall going to the Oxford Club Hotel. He remembered going into the backyard, being choked and finding his money missing. Squizzy was defended by a well-known criminal barrister named Luke Murphy who, when he asked Way if he was drunk that day, received an illustrative answer: ‘I was not drunk. A man is not drunk till he falls down.’ After that, perhaps the biggest surprise for the day was that the jury deliberated for 45 minutes before returning a verdict of not guilty for both young men.12
***
Squizzy was a known, if not marked, man from around that time onwards, with his record of charges and convictions growing longer. His name and his activities were of ongoing interest to the police, several of whom asked their informants to keep an eye and an ear open on him. One of those unknown informants handed over an address he had heard on the grapevine with the knowing wink that it might be worth a look. The address was 161 Mundy Street, Bendigo.
The information was telegraphed to the Bendigo police during the morning of Saturday, 25 November 1907. Within two hours, local police raided the Mundy Street address where they found Squizzy Taylor and Dolly Gray in the front bedroom, both half-dressed. A wider search revealed a lot more than startled lovers. Elsewhere in the house, police arrested three men and two women. The men were William Edwards, John Vipont and Ernest Carter. The two women were May Carter and Lily Parker; police believed both had been working as prostitutes in Dolly Gray’s home. A search of those arrested revealed that May Carter was carrying a small, loaded Bulldog revolver in one of her stocking garters.
A wider search of the property yielded a small treasure trove containing six skeleton keys, a jemmy wrapped in newspaper, two chisels and several metal files in the backyard. A second loaded pistol was recovered, while a large amount of ammunition was also found hidden in the bedroom occupied by Squizzy and Dolly. Also hidden inside the house were a valuable carving set and a gold watch and chain, all believed to have been stolen. All those found at the house were arrested and taken to the Bendigo Watchhouse where they were charged with a variety of offences including vagrancy, possession of housebreaking implements and, in Squizzy’s case, living off the earnings of prostitution. All denied the charges, and all were held in custody.
