THE latest series in the TV show Underbelly focuses on the 1920s life and crimes of Melbourne criminal Leslie ‘Squizzy’ Taylor – a feared thug with a reputation for violence who amassed a fortune in ill-gotten gains from sly-grog selling, two-up schools, illegal bookmaking, extortion and prostitution. These aspects of Squizzy’s criminal career are well documented, but a less publicised aspect involves the suburb of Chelsea. Chelsea and District Society founder Frank McGuire, in his 1985 book Chelsea: A Beachside Community, noted that the late Bill Brothwell, an early Chelsea citizen, claimed Squizzy Taylor often visited a relative who owned…
Author: MP News Group
ONE of Frankston’s most colourful personalities at the turn of last century was an unlikely celebrity who sought obscurity in a hermit’s existence. According to stories circulating at the time, his exile was a self-imposed penance for sins committed during his wayward youth. But this did not stop people from all over Melbourne seeking him out and dining out on stories of having met the “Frankston Hermit”, as he became known. One has to wonder if the hermit was entirely genuine in his desire for solitude; his camp on the foreshore between Frankston and Carrum was not especially hard to…