Ida: Searching for The Jazz Baby – true crime from the 1920s

Ida: Searching for The Jazz Baby is a poetry collection that dives into the 1920s underworld history of Melbourne Australia. The collection explores the extraordinary life of Ida Pender — dancer, lover, true crime accomplice, and eventual widow of Melbourne’s notorious 1920s gangster, Leslie ‘Squizzy’ Taylor. Learn more about Leslie ‘Squizzy’ Taylor, one of Melbourne’s most infamous gangsters.

This collection offers a unique take on true crime — blending historical research with poetic voice. The result is a portrait of Ida that is both intimate and evocative, illuminating the forgotten voice of a Jazz Age woman in the shadows of crime.

Look Inside

leslie was
a spiv
they said

sharp
and mean
and threatening

a very nasty
little man

handy with a gun –
the law could never
make a charge
stick –
but
he loved his girls . . .

Who Was Ida Pender? – A True Crime Life

The Real Jazz Baby

Ida Pender was a name that author Frank Prem encountered in a psychiatric hospital where he worked as a student nurse in the 1970s. She was:

a dancer, known to her family as ‘babe’; and
a ‘jazzer’ who escaped from her bedroom at night to dance at the ‘Palais de Dance’ in St Kilda; and
the girlfriend (at 16 years f age) and later wife, of notorious underworld and gangland figure of Melbourne’s 1920’s, Leslie ‘Squizzy’ Taylor.
She was the true crime accomplice, waiting in the getaway car while robbery was committed; and
the possessor, according to her police Wanted poster, of ‘shapely legs; and
a gangster’s widow, single mother and flat broke at 23 years of age.

She was The Jazz Baby.