#squizzy taylor

[adventuressclubamericas]

Leslie "Squizzy" Taylor was one of the leading gangsters in Melbourne during the 1920s. He died 27 October 1927 from wounds he suffered during a gunfight with Snowy Cutmore, a rival Melbourne gangster. Squizzy was the subject of the Australian Nine Network's final installment of the Underbelly series. Underbelly: Squizzy also starred Nathan Page and Henry Stokes.

[intriguingpeoplebyangelafloyd]

SQUIZZY TAYLOR

SQUIZZY TAYLOR

29 June 1888 – 27 October 1927

AUSTRALIAN GANGSTER

            Squizzy Taylor (Joseph Taylor) was born in Brighton, Melbourne, Australia and made money through criminal activity. He joined the gang the Bourke Street Rats, a group of thieves.

            In 1913, Taylor was involved in the murder of Arthur Trotter, a chocolate salesman who the gang robbed inside the victim’s home. Due to lack of evidence, Taylor escaped conviction. A taxi driver was also murdered by the gang and Taylor was sentenced to a year imprisonment.

            After World War I, the government made it compulsory for pubs to close at 6pm, this created ‘Sly grog’ shops who sold alcohol after hours. Taylor supplied alcohol with the deal that he and his gang would be protected. Taylor’s rival gang was The Fitzroy Vendetta who they were constantly in conflict with. Some of his gang members ended up in the gallows, but Taylor was too sly to get caught. Taylor disappeared for fourteen months and dressed in disguise as a woman as well as a schoolboy.

            In 1922, Taylor stepped out of his vehicle into gunfire and was hit in the leg and used crutches and had to surrender to police. In 1923, they held up bank manager Thomas Berriman at a railway station, they stole his briefcase which contained $2,000 and during the struggle Berriman was shot dead. Taylor remained free and ruled Melbourne’s underworld.

            Daniel Cutmore ‘Snowy’ had been a member of Taylor’s gang before he moved to Sydney and then returned to Melbourne in 1927. Snowy was on Taylor’s blacklist after he destroyed a business Taylor was protecting. Taylor went to Snowy’s mother’s home in Fitzroy; Snowy was in bed with the flu with a gun hidden in his bed. Taylor and two of his gang members entered the bedroom and Taylor shot Snowy. Snowy managed to reach for his weapon and shoot Taylor before he died. Taylor left the house and climbed into a taxi which was waiting for him. He died as he arrived at St Vincent’s Hospital and was buried in Brighton Cemetery.

#squizzytaylor

[doctor-nu]

What I've been told is that the phrase actually originates from Melbourne Australia, and it was because of this guy:

He was a crook

Take a look

"Take a Squiz" was then derived from that piece of rhyming slang.

That's what I've heard growing up here, but I don't know how concrete the history for that is.

JUST LEARNED THAT SQUIZ. IS KIWI SLANG AND NOT A WORD IN THE AVERAGE PERSONS LEXICON

[hexusproductions]

you're related to Squizzy Taylor??? Have you seen Underbelly: Squizzy?

I am allegedly related to Squizzy Taylor, yes! (According to my grandmother, who does share the same last name)

I actually forgot that they made a show about him lol. I had heard of it and thought it would be interesting to watch, considering the circumstances, but like a lot of things I haven't gotten around to actually doing so

[str4wberrybongw4ter]

oh speaking of the OMCU i went back home to my parents the other day and my dad dropped the craziest lore on me and basically that’s how i learned my great grandfather had ties to one of australia’s most notorious criminals of that time <3 pretty swag

[ryttu3k]

Can I have the context for the bushfire, the Rolls-Royce/launching a Tree via crossbow thing, and the Phoenix Thing, please?

"the vampire who used the darkness caused by thick black bushfire smoke to run across a city and stab his enemy in broad daylight. Australian vampires are metal AF."

VtM has a sometimes awkward habit of turning actual real-live people into characters, which they did with Melbourne gangster Squizzy Taylor. The real guy died in 1927; in VtM, he was Embraced as a Brujah instead, promptly diablerised his sire, and spent the next sixty years building up his power. In 1983, during the very real, very deadly Ash Wednesday fires, the vampire version made his move by crossing Melbourne under the cover of the smoke and killing the Toreador Prince, Montague Lytton.

"Solution to stop an ancient vampire going on a mass murder spree: fire a six-foot long stake made of a whole tree out of a crossbow mounted to a 95-year-old Rolls-Royce being used as an all-terrain vehicle, or use Stonehenge to transport him to Mesopotamia."

From Night Road! It's one of the options you can take to kill an old, dangerous Nosferatu named Reremouse. It's absolutely badass. It's a 1925 Rolls-Royce Phantom with a circular door you can accidentally smash a pickaxe into and which ends up totaled either way, not to be mistaken for the Syrena that shows up later:

The FSO Syrena 105 looks like a fairly typical Iron Curtain people's car, except it's been modified with a modern electronics system and a variety of what Julian called "spy gadgets," including a nitrous boost, wheel spikes, and—apparently—front machine guns. It's probably worth a hundred thousand dollars on the black market, which is the only place you can sell a car with ejection seats.

It's also the reason why Lettow is quite possibly a secret Toreador, because who else would be that extra?

(The replica of Stonehenge was built by the Sabbat as an exact replica of one in Iraq, and you can do a blood ritual to transport Reremouse to the other side of the world instead of. You know. Six-foot long stake made out of a tree fired from a crossbow on an antique all-terrain Rolls-Royce.)

"Jesus Christ has risen in Phoenix (and has stolen a car)."

Also Night Road, just a fun little throwaway mention if you're working with Raúl:

You head to Raúl's place, but he's not there. You find a note hidden above the door that reads, "Problems in Phoenix. (Jesus Christ has returned? Stole a car?) Contact me right away for major jobs and I'll come back." And there's a ProtonMail address with some of the security contact codes you agreed upon earlier.

But it looks like Raúl will be occupied dealing with the Lord and His automotive crimes, and he won't be able to wander around Tucson with you.

(Some minor context - there's a Malk at the hospital in Phoenix who's pretty sure he was resurrected personally by Jesus, so probably a friend of his. )

Night Road is so good <3

[sigridkaffen]

This is something Australians maintain but we also add the fun tendency to -o heaps of things, rather that always doing the verb-y thing (which reads as naff in Australia, just like everything Poms do)

See:

servo (service station aka gas station)

smoko (morning break, traditionally with smoking but less so these days)

bottle-o (bottle shop aka liquor store)

We also into adding the -ee sound, where it sounds better than an -o:

wheelie bin

main-y (driving your shit car up and down the main street of the shit little town you live in)

esky (cooler)

doughie (doing donuts in your shit car, aka driving around in circles to leave circular rubber marks on the road)

All of the above also naturally applies to people's nicknames, with the ending depending on what sounds right, and a few universal constants thrown in:

Robbo

Millsy

Jacko

Dave-o

Squizzy (anyone surnamed Taylor)

Dusty (anyone surnamed Miller)

Blue (anyone with red hair)

Two-Dads (anyone with a double barreled surname)

[sallygcronin]

Smorgasbord Book Promotions - New Books on the Shelves - #Poetry #FreeVerse - Ida: Searching for The Jazz Baby - From Volyn to Kherson: Interpretations of the war in Ukraine by Frank Prem

Pleased to share the news of two new free verse collections by Frank Prem –  Ida: Searching for The Jazz Baby and From Volyn to Kherson: Interpretations of the war in Ukraine. About the collection Who is Ida Pender? Is she the elderly woman – Ida-Spider – rumoured to be resident in a 1970’s Mental Asylum? Is she Squizzy Taylor’s teenaged gangster moll of the roaring 1920’s in Melbourne? The…

[foxspirit1928]

Miss Fisher Snippets (51)

Was Melbourne really a dangerous town in 1928? I found an article on Australian Dictionary of Biography (adb.anu.edu.au) called “Melbourne Crime: From War to Depression, 1919-1929” by Chris McConville claimed otherwise. McConville stated, “The tragedies and heroics of self-styled gangsters, including Squizzy Taylor, Long Harry Slater, and Henry Stokes, colour our imaginings of inter-war Melbourne. Yet in the real city…over the course of the 1920s, they grew more scarce”.

The article didn’t mention the murder rate, so I researched further and found another article titled “How accurate is the murder rate in Miss Fisher’s Melbourne?” on bbc.com by Lizzy McNeill (2018). Her conclusion was that S1 gave a relatively accurate picture of Melbourne's murders (about 3 murders per month or 36 per million), but in S2 and S3, Miss Fisher's world becomes more deadly (4 murders per month or 47 per million), whereas in real life Melbourne, it was 2.3 murders per month or 26 per million.

All these fictional crimes and murders sure had kept the City South police station and the Lady Detective Agency busy, which provided ample opportunity for Phryne and Jack to cross paths professionally and grow their relationship personally.

(Posted 11-Jun-2022)

[imperfectapollo]

15. favorite book you read as a school assignment? :))

Hmmm...Maybe Runner by Robert Newton? I read it back in about 7th grade I think? And I actually still have the book! It’s set in 1919 Australia (probably the reason we read it because we’re Australian lol) and it’s about four boys gunning for the ‘best’ job in town. Charlie (our protag) wins the job of running messages for Squizzy Taylor, the most dangerous gangster in Melbourne. However, things get a little too hot so he takes the money and runs. 

If you’re into that sort of thing, I suggest you find a copy!

Want to learn something oddly specific about me? 

[ryttu3k]

VtM has a vampire (7th gen, so definitely not a thinblood!) make his way through a city during daylight under the cover of smoke from a bushfire, so it’s definitely possible! (To do precisely what you wanted to do, even! The Wiki doesn’t cover it, but he was using the smoke cover from the Ash Wednesday fires to kill the then-Prince of Melbourne.) They’d be fighting off major fatigue and possibly weakness, but canon does support the idea.

So @gilf-milas-beef-addiction and I were talking about some vampire stuff, specifically about how vampires might be able to survive sunlight in certain circumstances. So fellow vtm and overall fellow vampire fans, do you think it’s possible for a vampire to survive at least for a few hours if they wear a specially tinted motorcycle helmet, full riding gear, spf shirts and pants, and leave no piece of skin uncovered or opening whatsoever? Conversely, a diving suit might work just as well if the tinting is done to the viewing window, although it’d be much more out of place? Obviously if they ever have a breach or their gear, they’re probably toast, or more accurately ash.

This *might* be a for a fic I may or may not be writing. The idea generally is if they’re a vampire looking to give another vampire their final death, could this strategy work?

[smorgasbordinvitation]

Smorgasbord Book Promotions - New Books on the Shelves - #Poetry #FreeVerse - Ida: Searching for The Jazz Baby - From Volyn to Kherson: Interpretations of the war in Ukraine by Frank Prem

Pleased to share the news of two new free verse collections by Frank Prem –  Ida: Searching for The Jazz Baby and From Volyn to Kherson: Interpretations of the war in Ukraine. About the collection Who is Ida Pender? Is she the elderly woman – Ida-Spider – rumoured to be resident in a 1970’s Mental Asylum? Is she Squizzy Taylor’s teenaged gangster moll of the roaring 1920’s in Melbourne? The…

[the-world-behind-us]

My terrible academic writing

(Literally what it is, really bad writing that needs more proofreading).

Again, I was looking at old school stuff (just doing your average spring cleaning). I had to write a book review on this book called 'Runner' by Robert Newton. At the very end I wrote the target audience for this book. I wrote, (quote for quote) 'I would recommend this book to people are rather athletic and like running as they'll be able to connect with the main character and know what it's like when running.'

You can't see it in the photo I took, but my teacher literally wrote a question mark next to the underlined sentence.

For context, 'Runner' is set in Melbourne in the early 1900s with the main character Charlie being a runner for a gangster called Squizzy Taylor (who was real apparently). So, my target audience isn't far off I suppose.

And if you think my writing is any better at twenty-years old, here's an error I made on my essay for one of my classes.

'Cite maybe'. I did not see this until my tutor pointed it out in the feedback. Both laughed and cried when I read this.

[hexusproductions]

HEY. HEY. WHAT THE FUCK.

[ijenkins99]

Digging Around My Family Tree

Return from the Dead

Arnold Mordaunt Talbot Berriman (1872-1923)

One of the more curious stories from my tree concerns a distant cousin who came to my attention when I found a newspaper story of his death in the San Francisco earthquake of 1906:

His death notice was published in the Barrier Miner on 25 June 1906:

The death of a loved one overseas would be devastating but when his brother travelled to America, presumably to repatriate the body, Harrold found Arnold was alive, although injured and recovering in hospital:

After a succession of shocks like this I would expect to see a fond family reunion in South Australia, but it seems Arnold stayed in America because the next document I found was a record of marriage to Ella Lucile Hurt in New Mexico, USA on 19 August 1908. The report of his marriage in the Albuquerque Citizen shows Arnold had changed his name to Talbot Arnold Berryman.

Talbot Berryman had an eventful World War 1 history. In 1914 he enlisted in the Canadian Overseas Expeditionary Force and served two years in France before being wounded and discharged. Interestingly, he has provided a date of birth four years younger than fact:

Surprisingly, in September 1918, Talbot was enlisting again; this time for the US Armed Forces. He is recorded as a naturalised American, with no relatives in the US (I don’t know what became of Ella). Once again he has provided an incorrect date of birth (this time one year older than it should be):

Talbot Berryman died in Galveston, Texas on 7 December 1923. In a tragic twist of fate, this was two months after his older brother, Commercial Bank manager Thomas Berriman, was fatally wounded in a violent bank robbery in Hawthorn, Melbourne by the Squizzy Taylor gang. His parents, Thomas Snr and Elizabeth were still living at the time.

[chrismbr]

At last, some movement showing signs of life at the old Drewery’s Family Hotel, 1854, later known as The Leviathan, Squizzy Taylors, The Renown, and recently The Gertrude. (at Gertrude Hotel) https://www.instagram.com/p/COaYtqyHDdo/?igshid=uisqyu4ay3lt