Underbelly

It’s 1915 and young Leslie “Squizzy” Taylor has had enough of grafting a living picking pockets. He might be a shorty but he has big ideas and an even bigger ego – which only swells when he pulls off a daring heist from a city jewellers in broad daylight with his Bourke Street Rats inner circle of Snowy Cutmore, Angus Murray, Tankbuster McDonald and his best girl, prostitute Dolly Grey. Even if big crim about town and fence Henry Stokes doesn’t give Squizzy quite the price he thinks his loot is worth, Squizzy’s taken his first step into a bigger, brighter, riskier world. But what’s the use of being a criminal genius if no-one, including the police, rates you? While a more circumspect crook might rejoice in anonymity, Squizzy’s ego compels him to prove himself and he throws his gang into a much more challenging crime. They’re going to rob the bank manager of one of the new branches springing up on the city’s semi-rural outskirts. Only trouble is, it’s a fair hike and none of them can drive. Squizzy books a taxi under an assumed name, blithely assuming he will be able to “convince” the driver to play along with his plan. But it all goes wrong and the resolute young driver ends up with Snowy’s bullet in his head. Squizzy’s not too worried – the cops are jokes. But one cop isn’t laughing – Detective Piggott is conscientious and committed and finds an eyewitness among the orchardists and dairy farmers who describe a very short man and another with a Panama hat.... Squizzy and Snowy are at the races, drinking a toast to Tankbuster who’s joined up to fight the Hun, when in swoop coppers – Leslie Taylor, you are under arrest for murder. It seems Squizzy’s circuit of Fortune’s Wheel is destined to be very rapid indeed…

Facing a murder charge, Squizzy’s out on bail, thanks to a few quid slipped to the Bail Justice. He tracks down the Crown witness “convincing” him that his eyesight is unreliable. Detective Piggott can only watch in dismay as Squizzy is acquitted. But he resolves that one day he’ll bring down the cocky little so-and-so. Angus approaches Squizzy about a quick job to produce some urgent cash but Squizzy is under constant police surveillance now and needs to lie low to wait out the heat. With pressing expenses Angus pulls a solo bank robbery and gets away with 400 pounds! Sadly he is caught shortly afterwards and sentenced to fifteen years in the roughest prison in Melbourne.

As Armistice is declared in Europe, in Melbourne, the battle lines have just been drawn. Squizzy sets about revenging the outrage against Dolly Grey and the Fitzroy vendetta is ignited. Shootings, bashings and an attempted canicide are the order of the day. Tankbuster returns a decorated war hero and a changed man. Squizzy embraces him, alienating Snowy Cutmore who is proving a dangerous man to have around. To complicate matters, the returning diggers have brought the Spanish flu home with them and the virus fells cop and crook, saint and sinner alike. Meanwhile, Squizzy’s roaming eyes land on the young and wholesome waitress Lorna Kelly. Neglecting Dolly, and motivated partly by a desire for respectability, he sets about wooing the girl. Tankbuster takes up the cudgels on Dolly’s behalf and gets himself shot in the process. Dolly confronts Lorna, telling her the truth about Squizzy’s nefarious gangster activities. Naïve Lorna doesn’t believe her and reveals that she’s pregnant with his child. Dolly knows she has lost the man she loves. It’s now that thieves fall out and the dangerous and erratic Snowy Cutmore turns on Squizzy. However, Snowy’s attempt to revenge himself on his former mate is foiled by Dolly and some cast iron cookware. Squizzy issues instructions for Tankbuster to execute Snowy but Tank doesn’t haven’t the stomach for the job and banishes Cutmore to Sydney instead.

In Stokes’ absence Squizzy runs his gambling empire, showing no mercy to those who cheat or can’t pay their debts. Squizzy is happy to spend Stoke’s dosh on the

The death of his daughter sends Squizzy into a downward spiral. What’s the point of trying to live a decent life when fate deals you such a blow? To hell with it all, he says, and starts another war with the Narrows Gang, not caring whether he survives it or not.

Squizzy’s twelve months on the run mark the pinnacle of his notoriety. Fêted by the press as a criminal with class, he is known as the dapper pimpernel running circles around a police force at a complete loss to catch him. He has finally arrived as Australia’s first celebrity criminal!

Squizzy arranges the breakout of his good mate Angus Murray from prison in an attempt to reunite the Bourke Street Rats’ inner-circle of three, Squizzy, Tankbuster and Murray. The team, however, will never be as it was. Murray has done the last five years in Pentridge tough, he’s a broken man by the time he gets out, his only ambition being to leave town to start a quiet life afresh, somewhere far, far away. But Squizzy has gone to considerable trouble and expense to free Murray and isn’t about to let him go so easily. Murray owes him, right? One last job… a straight forward bank robbery …

Convicted of harbouring the executed murderer and bank robber Angus Murray, Squizzy is sent to gaol where he is confronted by his enemies, the Narrows Gang’s