SQUIZZY IN ELWOOD

 

John Theodore Leslie ‘Squizzy’ Taylor, Melbourne’s most notorious gangster of the 1920’s, often frequented Elwood.  In 1923, twelve police raided 443 Barkly Street, arresting him and an accomplice for the murder of a bank manager.  Perce Lambell, who led the raid, was an Elwood resident who owned Belmac on the corner of Mitford Street and Broadway. On 27 October 1927, Taylor argued with rival gangster Snowy Cutmore in a sly grog shop that Squizzy was managing in Tennyson Street before pursuing him to a shoot-out in Carlton, where Taylore was fatally wounded.  In 1997, renovations to a property, now 60-66 Glenhuntly Road (corner Spray Street), uncovered two underground rooms, one festooned with old bottles, behind a heavy concrete door.  A blocked up tunnel was found leading from one of the rooms.  (The house is now dub-divided).  According to a local legend, Squizzy had hidden in the house in the 1920s, constructing an escape tunnel to the Elwood canal.  Newspapers under the floor coverings dated around 1921 fit with the fact that Taylor spent most of that year in hiding, evading an arrest warrant and taunting police with letters to the media.

60-66 Glenhuntly Road