THE GUNMAN AND THE GAMBLER

The stillness of the early morning was shattered by the bark of revolvers, the tattoo of retreating footsteps, and the groaning of a man in pain. Blinds were raised as residents near the corner of Gertrude and Napier Streets were awakened. Ted Moran, a carrier, was the first to venture outside and found Constable Archie Cooper clinging to a picket fence in a patch of bright moonlight and crying weakly for assistance.

Going his rounds on all-night duty, Cooper reached the corner at a quarter past three when he heard a noise from the shadow of the doorway of Thomas Mitchell’s grocery shop. He could just discern the shape of a man and crossed the road for a closer look. The suspect hurried out and fled down Gertrude Street with Cooper in pursuit; dodging and turning through the maze of lanes they went until Cooper gave up the chase and quietly returned to the store.

After hiding some time behind a wagon in the right-of-way, Cooper sneaked to the side door leading into Napier Street. Two startled men stepped out. Cooper said, ‘Stand and put your hands up,’ and one half-raised his hands, but the taller man pulled his gun and fired point blank at the constable’s chest. Cooper fell back against the fence, but managed to lift his revolver and fire at the fleeing robbers, who stopped momentarily and returned the fire. The policeman, who lived in Delbridge Street, Fitzroy, was operated on at St Vincent’s Hospital early in the day and a bullet was found to have passed through his chest and become buried in his back.

Inspector Bannon and several detectives were soon on the scene. They found the safe opened and the cashbox lying on the floor, but the crooks had been unfortunate as the owner banked his takings each day. Fingerprints on the cashbox were photographed by Sub-Inspector Potter and identified as those of Thomas Wilson, who was quickly picked up in Brunswick. Harry Slater, a mountain of a man six feet in height and weighing over seventeen stone, fitted the description of the taller man, and Frederick Thorpe was the nitkeeper, but they were not arrested until a posse of detectives raided Thorpe’s house in Webb Street nearly two months later. Slater eluded the police for a while by running in next door to Whiting’s, where he was found crouching behind a chest of drawers.

Brought to trial in the Criminal Court in June, Slater gave as an alibi the story that he was in bed with a woman at Ferrar’s Place, Albert Park, on the night Cooper was shot, and although she had volunteered to give evidence he refused to allow it. After a hearing lasting five days, the jury deliberated for three hours before finding them not guilty.

While he lacked Taylor’s imagination and subtlety, ‘Long Harry’ Slater was a formidable opponent behind a gun or wielding an iron bar, and he emerged as a likely challenger to both Stokes and Squizzy. Taylor’s main ally was the shrewd and influential Henry Stokes, who also controlled Melbourne’s most elaborate and best protected two-up school in Goodwood Street, Richmond; Slater felt for Stokes the same hatred he had for Taylor, and one of the last major clashes of the vendetta was between the gambler and the gunman in the heart of the city.

Tom Gallagher, a Port Melbourne bookmaker, was standing at the corner of Royal Lane and Little Collins Street discussing business with the ‘Two-up King’, Henry Stokes. Behind them, a few feet away, was the swing door to the Hunt Club Hotel where Taylor and his henchmen were taking their pre-lunch drinks. It was twelve-thirty on a wintry May afternoon. Typists and clerks and shop assistants, hurrying away from their desks and counters for lunch, pushed past the footpath idlers. A soldier tramping down Little Collins Street squeezed behind the gamblers and went on his way towards Swanston Street. Picking up his stride again, he passed a large man in a dark brown suit and black velour hat staring intently ahead. A few paces on and a voice shouted, ‘You bastard, Stokes!’ Private Smith turned to see two men struggling. Shots were fired, Slater sagged to the ground and Stokes ran.

Gallagher later explained he had seen Slater coming up from Swanston Street, and knowing of the feud between the two men, had scampered down the lane to the Bookmakers’ Club, ignoring the repeated explosion of guns.

A grey sedan parked across the street was used to take the inert Slater to hospital. Driven by Edgar Bellis from Fitzroy, who commented, ‘I had heard some shots fired, but took no notice of them,’ Slater was accompanied by a policeman. He stepped out of the car unaided, but allowed himself to be carried into Casualty on a stretcher. Asked his name, Slater said, ‘Bugger it, get me some brandy.’ Asked where he lived, he replied, ‘Anywhere,’ then, ‘I’ll say nothing.’

Constable Hardwicke also heard the gunfire, and was waiting at the entrance to Swanston Street. He threw Stokes to the ground, handcuffed him, and took a Colt automatic from his pocket. On the way to the detective office in the commandeered car, Stokes was asked who he was firing at and when he told the police he had shot Slater in self-defence, they asked, ‘Did you hit him?’

‘I think I hit him on the wrist and he dropped his revolver. It was either of us for it. He shot a man of ours the other night for nothing and he’s been waiting about my place for three nights. I don’t care whether I’ve killed him.’

Slater’s ‘reticence’ at first prevented the charge against Stokes of wounding with intent to murder from being dealt with, but at the beginning of July 1919 a second hearing took place in the City Court. The thug gave his address as George Street, Fitzroy, clearly enough, but beyond that he had only hazy recollections of times, persons and places. He remembered drinking ‘all over the city’, going to Little Collins Street to keep an appointment, and fighting with Stokes, but wasn’t aware of any bad feeling between them.

Henry Stokes, however, made a long statement to the court. ‘I knew Slater had told people he would shoot me on sight and when I saw him put his hand into his hip pocket, I thought he was getting his revolver. I pulled mine out and fired because I thought he was going to shoot me. I then fired five or six more shots, not meaning to do him any mortal injury, but to prevent him shooting me.’

On that evidence Stokes was committed for trial in the Supreme Court later in July, but since the principal witness against him did not wish to remember, he was found guilty only of having discharged firearms in a public place. His six months’ sentence was suspended providing he left the state. Slater departed for Sydney at the same time in the company of Snowy Cutmore.

Before long, Slater was being hunted for his part in the murder of young Peter Monaghan at his father’s beerhouse in Campbell Street, Surry Hills. A brawl developed when ‘Jack the Barman’ demanded money from old Peter. Women shrieked as the sons leapt to the defence of their father and threw his attacker into the street. The next night a group of surly stand-over men that included Slater wrecked the joint, and during the hard-fought battle, young Peter was shot down at the back door.

‘Long Harry’ was arrested in Adelaide a month later in the company of Cutmore, but although tried three times for the murder of Peter Monaghan, was acquitted.

Throughout the first decades of the twentieth century, unemployment was rarely less than 10 per cent of the work force, and at one period in 1919 it was estimated that 30,000 were without work in Victoria. It only took a week or so, and an unemployed workman was brought to the end of his resources. Truth drew the bitter contrast between the life of the well-to-do and the jobless: ‘While all this feasting and frolicking, this dancing and dining, guzzling and gormandising is going on, many thousands of honest respectable people in Melbourne are feeling the pinch of poverty—nay, more, many are actually facing starvation.’

Ladies of the benevolent societies were distributing charity food to the workless, and many unemployed were removed out of sight and mind to far away East Gippsland to make roads. ‘Now, don’t rush the joint, boys,’ cautioned an organiser when 300 men were fed a bowl of soup and a slice of bread set out on deal tables at the Trades Hall.

Acting Prime Minister W. A. Watt was concerned at builders’ labourers demanding £1 a day for forty hours’ work a week; it was yet another indication of the swamping of the skilled men in craft unions by the unskilled who ‘were being placed in the same rank as a bloated capitalist’. In an address on the dismal industrial situation in May 1919, he told his audience that in the three years prior to the outbreak of hostilities there had been 1,647 strikes in Australia involving half a million people in one way or another. Australians must choose, he said, between law or bolshevism, arbitration or strikes.

To seek better conditions for members was for the unions to face accusations of preaching bolshevism and class warfare. At a time when a teacher’s salary was between £150 and £300 a year, and a doctor earned about £1,000, less than 5 per cent of Victorian wage-earners had aggregate net incomes over £200. One example given to a cost of living enquiry in 1919 was of a breadwinner earning a better than average wage of £5 a week. He and his family of five children lived in a small rented house. There was no money for amusements and it was impossible to save anything. The oldest boy received wages of threepence a week for carting three hundredweight of wood from the nearest railway siding.

While the cost of living had increased considerably during the war, there had been no general rise in wages, and statistical records give an inadequate idea of how people were economically pinched, but according to the leader of the Victorian Labor Party, G. M. Prendergast, MLA, the cost of living in the state showed a rise of 41 per cent. He called for price fixing to prevent profiteering, but replied Premier Lawson: ‘Price fixing is no panacea.’ Officially, between 1914 and 1919 the cost of living rose by 26.3 per cent of retail prices, but almost double that amount on wholesale prices.

Such figures do not mean a great deal in the abstract, but navvies’ boots selling for 5s 11d a pair in 1913 had risen to 10s 9d by 1919. In the five years before 1919, the cost of basic materials for the boot and shoe trade jumped 90 per cent, while labour costs increased up to 40 percent. It was pointed out that a boot repairer on £2 10s a week, out of which he paid shop rent, had fallen far behind the labourer who earned £3 5s for forty-four hours and no Friday night work, although still doing as well as the better educated and better dressed store clerk on £2 18s for a week of fifty hours.

It was economic hardship for most and social turmoil for all in the years immediately before and after the end of the war. Newspapers printed columns of ‘In Memoriam’ notices with the names marked ‘on active service’. There were restrained reports of the Austrian collapse and the surrender of Turkey, and emotional stories of the latest ‘Hun outrage’ in torpedoing a hospital ship in the Bristol Channel. U-boats were sighted off Brazil, Jellicoe was dismissed as First Sea Lord of Admiralty, Romania accepted peace terms, and the Sinn Fein, as usual, were being bitterly lawless. General Sir William Robertson paid tribute to the example set by the public schools in duty, self-sacrifice and fortitude during the war, and the Herald printed a cosy article on the training of maimed soldiers in using artificial arms.

Locally, Nellie Anderson was fined and bound over for waving a red flag at a May Day Sunday afternoon celebration on the Yarra Bank, while the audience sang ‘Keep the Red Flag Flying’. Norman Lindsay was divorced at the end of June 1919, and popular actress Maud Fane was divorced also a few months later. There was a state political crisis in Victoria with Premier Bowser asking for the dissolution of Parliament, and Billy Hughes announced a new federal nationalist ministry in the face of a no-confidence motion launched by Opposition Leader Tudor for repudiation of ‘pledges’, ‘political persecution’ of citizens, and disenfranchisement of electors.

Escape to the motion pictures was, not surprisingly, rapidly becoming the most popular form of entertainment. On any Saturday or holiday in 1918 an estimated 100,000 persons were at picture theatres in Melbourne. Approximately two-thirds of the theatres were situated in the suburbs and the inhabitants of the metropolitan area averaged twenty-three visits a year.

The ‘Peace Day’ rejoicing was described by Scott Bennett as ‘jingoism on the spree,’ and he regretted the people had been cheated and tricked into thinking it was the moment of peace all over the world and no more war. The whole thing was a gruesome mockery, with thousands walking about Melbourne flapping bits of flags while allied soldiers poured into Russia. Martial law was proclaimed over Ireland, Japan interfered in China and the blockade of Germany had not been lifted. The recently concluded war, he claimed, had been at bottom a thievish one and had brought no benefits to the victors. Germany enjoyed universal suffrage, but only the propertied classes voted in England; conscription was abolished in Germany, yet was to remain in England; and while Germany had demobilised both, England had increased the size of her navy and standing army.

It was hypocrisy to thank God for peace on earth knowing it was not true. The victory was won for profiteers of all kinds, said Scott Bennett; not for the working people, not for broken-hearted relatives of the dead, and not for the maimed thousands who had returned.

With Henry Stokes away in Tasmania things were not going very well with the two-up school in Richmond, and Taylor, who had a share in the business, had his own difficulties to contend with. Police gaming squads twice seized the advance posts and took the school in October and November of 1919. In the first raid, fifty players were taken for unlawful gaming.

After watching the yard beside a two-storey factory in Goodwood Street for two months, the police swooped. Two taxis drew up outside the gate to the vacant allotment as Constable Gorey pushed his way in and seized the ‘cockatoo’ inside the fence. The police then found themselves in a yard littered by bricks and other building materials with their objective—a large, new, stable-like building—lying ahead, behind some trees. No lights and no sign of life could be seen.

The constables discovered an opening in the lower part of a door and forced it to yield, revealing a large well-lighted room full of men seated round the walls on raised platforms. In the centre, there was a 6-metre square of clay floor covered in linoleum and matting strewn with notes and coins. Gorey was followed in by Senior Constable McCann and a dozen constables. One sprang forward as guard over the light switch and McCann shouted, ‘We’ve arrived at last!’

There was a scramble for money as several men dashed for the hessian door at the far side of the room with the police close on their heels. At the same time a squad of plainclothed men vaulted the back fence to cut off any retreat through the rear door. A fleet of taxis took the gamblers to the police station, where they were welcomed by a crowd of nearly 3,000 interested spectators.

On their second visit a party of twenty plainclothes police arrested fourteen men in the secluded yard in Goodwood Street. Following the same carefully laid plan, a taxi-cab containing five policemen glided down Rowena Parade about nine o’clock on 17 November. Another car parked in Goodwood Street, and three more similarly laden vehicles quietly converged on the area. When all were ready, the gate in the paling fence was thrown open and two men who came from the shadows were seized.

Constable McCann ordered his men to the front door, which was sheathed in steel, but it failed to yield to pressure. An axe was brought. The heavy blows aroused excited conversation inside the large brick building and a concerted rush to the backyard. Men shoved their way out from behind a hessian screen into the night air and the arms of the waiting raiders.

Some men were caught at once, others vaulted fences and scampered panic-stricken through neighbouring backyards. Constable Kavanagh ran his man to earth after scaling five fences and battling the entanglements of wood-stacks and clothes lines. ‘I was only in there a few minutes!’ the luckless gambler breathlessly exclaimed. Another escapee was discovered in a fowlyard when the hens began cackling.

Meanwhile, the continued assault on the front door finally caused it to splinter and admit a dozen constables into the brilliantly lit room. Men rushed away leaving hats and coats unheeded on the chairs and forms, except one canny player who, snatching his hat in full flight, was showered in silver coins when he plonked it on his head.

The arrested men were taken out through the yard to several taxi-cabs waiting in Goodwood Street. A hostile crowd of men and women surrounded the cars. ‘Come on, jump out,’ called several young fellows. Although a move was made for the door handles, the venture was checked after a lively scuffle and the sympathisers were forced back. An uneventful run to the Richmond police station was made and bondsmen were still there negotiating bail at midnight while the prisoners sang ragtime selections in the cells.

Squizzy Taylor had concentrated his activities further from the city and was busy organising a series of robberies in the suburbs south of the Yarra that were less well-policed. As his was the brain that planned the job, he took half the proceeds. The gang was made up of ‘Big’ McDonald, a notorious ‘tank-buster’, Johannsen, also a safe-breaker, and Taylor.

From J. H. Archer’s tailoring business in Richmond they took nearly £300 worth of pre-war twill. Reserving the cloth for a deal on his own account, Squizzy paid his associates £90 spot cash for their share of the loot, but missed badly by a turn of poetic justice. The stuff was lodged at a bakehouse in Richmond while the ingenious Leslie arranged to sell it to another tailor who was considered to be a good mark, collect his money, and then shelf him.

Luck was with the tailor. Driving to the appointed meeting place in a hired car, he observed the little crook in earnest conversation with the ‘Jacks’ and so was forewarned. Returning after a short, though decent interval, the tailor took possession of the cloth, but deferred payment for a few days. As an added precaution he had the goods delivered secretly to a house in Carlton. When his shop was visited by a detective not long afterwards, the search failed to reveal the stolen material.

The robbery of £300 worth of cloth from the basement store of D. Mcintosh went smoothly. About seven o’clock in the evening the trio of thieves jemmied the front door and calmly carried out rolls of tweed and serge to a four-wheeler covered van parked in Flinders Street. Watched by two newsboys, the laden van drove off in the direction of Market Street.

At the premises of Edward Love and Company in Chapel Street, South Yarra, Taylor’s presence of mind saved the gang from detection. The robbery was planned for midnight when the police were unlikely to disturb their labours. Squizzy and McDonald walked to the shop while Johannsen drove a small covered wagon. Using a pinch-bar the locks were soon forced off. Suddenly, Taylor threw his arms around the other’s neck as he caught the sound of approaching footsteps. His ready invention suggested he play a woman overshadowed in the doorway by ‘Big’ McDonald. Thinking he saw lovers huddled together in the darkness, a young man passing did no more than glance in their direction.

Work began. Bales of Donegal tweed were passed out to the waiting wagon until it was filled. Ungratefully, Squizzy cursed the owners for keeping rubbish in their store that would bring no more than a shilling a yard on the market. The noise awakened a secondhand dealer across the road, who climbed from his bed and, glancing from his upstairs window, realized what was taking place below. Although the police were telephoned, before the constable could reach the store on foot the crooks had completed their task and driven slowly away.

Swain’s was next on their list and brought in £200 worth of silks and stockings.

The job at Nicholson’s was not successful. Nearly four hours’ labour was wasted; nothing was carried away and those taking part narrowly avoided capture.

The accomplice who was to cart the goods was told to wait until word was sent that the coast was clear before setting out for the tailoring establishment. In the meantime, the others had stacked practically the whole stock by the back gate. No sooner had the carter turned into Chapel Street than a policeman unexpectedly appeared from a doorway and demanded to know why there were no lights on his vehicle. Upset at having his name and address taken, the secondhand dealer decided to return to his home in South Yarra, stable the horse, and then double back on foot to warn Squizzy and McDonald.

Unknown to the dealer, the policeman followed at a distance and was astonished to see the fellow dash down a lane behind Nicholson’s and reappear a few minutes later with the two thieves. These suspicious movements were reported to the police station by telephone and two men despatched immediately to hold anyone leaving the dealer’s premises. Taylor requested his host to look outside and see if it was safe to leave. A policeman was waiting at the corner and a glance through the glass over the front door showed another in Toorak Road.

Squizzy was exasperated. ‘If they get us, you’ll go along too,’ he warned the dealer. For some time no one could think of a means of escape, then their host suggested they climb over the side fence into the laundry next door and wait in case his place was ‘turned over’. Perhaps by morning he would have devised a way to get them clear. The hours went slowly by. About five o’clock the dealer strolled down the lane apparently ignorant of the fact he was being trailed. As he lured the policemen further away, Taylor and McDonald sneaked out and made their way home.

Turner’s jewellery store in Carlisle Street, Balaclava, was given attention at the beginning of December 1919. The same firm removed a Smith’s Ratner safe from the premises on a stretcher made from sacking and two lengths of wood and drove off with it through East Malvern to Warrigul Road. Travelling south, they finally reached a suitably deserted area and unloaded the safe in a paddock about 300 yards past Cheltenham Road.

A sledgehammer was used in a futile attempt to shatter the back. Saws failed to disclose its contents, and in desperation gelignite was forced into the keyhole and two shots fired. In case they were disturbed while this was being done, one operator stood on the roadway in full view with a shotgun pointed at the stars to give an impression of a hunter shooting possums. When at last opened, the safe yielded over £200 worth of jewellery. The cheaper watches were buried in the sandy soil and the remainder of the loot divided between the three. Other documents and C. W. W. Turner’s bank book were burned.

Not all Squizzy Taylor’s business ventures in the safebreaking line were profitable. The gang tried the safe at the Brighton Yacht Club twice, but hardly paid expenses. The first time, most of the money was hidden in an ice-chest and publication of this detail caused Squizzy to turn the place over again. This second visit brought to light only £15 in cash, some war bonds, and a burglary insurance policy. Taylor was disgusted beyond the limits of his vocabulary.

Squizzy, about this time, also had some trouble of a more personal nature. He kept a room for his current girlfriend at his brother Claude’s house in Albert Road, Albert Park. The girl in the love-nest at the time was Lorna Kelly, whom Taylor had met as a waitress at the Crystal Cafe. Dolly Grey, considered by some to be Squizzy’s wife, objected strongly to him having a second moll and made determined efforts to trace her rival.

Taylor decided the time had come to move elsewhere but Lorna was discovered when only she and Claude’s wife were at home. The carrier was loading at the front door when Dolly arrived and asked him the name of the occupants. Before he had a chance to reply, she glimpsed the two women at the end of the hallway, and immediately flounced into the house.

Glaring furiously at Lorna, she began on her sister-in-law: ‘So you’ve got the little tart in smoke here. A nice sister-in-law you are.’ Of Lorna she demanded, ‘Are you Leslie’s wife?’ No answer. Would Lorna care to step out to the car while she explained a few interesting matters? Subdued, Lorna followed her. As they passed the carrier Dolly told him to piss off and suggested what might happen to him if he continued loading. He wisely made a pretence of removing the goods already on the cart until the women were out of sight, and then completed the removal to a house in Bridge Road, Richmond.

Dolly drove to where Taylor was likely to be found and, asking Lorna to wait on the opposite side of the street, entered the building. She emerged with her arm hooked through his, turned to Taylor with an amused expression, and pointed out the woman over the road. ‘Who is that woman waving to you?’ she asked coyly. However, Dolly’s ruse failed miserably as Taylor eventually resumed living with Lorna Kelly.

They were married at the Congregational Church manse in Fitzroy by the Rev. Richard Bowles on 19 May 1920. The bride and bridegroom stated their ages as twenty-two and thirty-six years respectively. Until the beginning of 1921 the Taylors boarded in Epsom Street, Caulfield, and then moved into a house in Station Street which Squizzy bought for £1,400 cash.

Towards the middle of December 1919, a case of some local interest was heard at the City Court, when Leslie Taylor was charged with attempted larceny from the person, that is, picking pockets, being a suspected person, and unlawful assault. It seems that Taylor, short of ready money for his early Christmas shopping, had fumbled the job of robbing Hugh Leonard’s pocket.

At a recruiting meeting one evening outside the Flinders Street railway station, Taylor and two others were seen pushing and jostling among the crowd. Watching closely was railways detective O’Sullivan, who saw Squizzy put his hand into a man’s trouser pocket during the disturbance and rushed forward to catch him by the wrist. ‘Got you red-handed this time, Taylor,’ he cried.

‘Ain’t you going to buy in?’ the pickpocket called to his confederates, and in response they made a rush and knocked O’Sullivan to the ground. Unfortunately for Taylor, a soldier came to the detective’s rescue and held the escaping crook while the other two ran away. Taylor was dragged protesting to the cloakroom where he was given in charge.

‘What right had you to catch me?’ snarled Squizzy to the soldier. When Corporal Duscher answered ‘Every right’ he was punched heavily on the nose.

The charge of being a suspected person was withdrawn, and on the other two charges, Taylor was sentenced to four months’ imprisonment. He was led away to begin his quiet Christmas vacation.