Joe Taylor was born in Sydney in 1908 to Edmund Barton Taylor, who earned his livelihood as a hotel winemaker, and Norah Catherine Killalea.
Taylor started boxing as a young man, played in rugby league, and completed it as a poster before advancing to rugby league boxer and team management.
In 1932, he married Edith Anne May Johnson at St. Pius Catholic Church in Enmore. That union persisted for 8 years, producing a son before divorcing in 1944. If asked at this stage, he would claim the occupations of bookmaker and ship carpenter.
Less than a month later, he remarried Elizabeth Watson. That lady had two daughters before she died and left Taylor a widower.
Taylor’s passion in life was play and those early years often saw him leave his weekly paycheck on the track.
The WWII period had Taylor involved with Thommo’s two-person school, essentially a series of illegal card games that was started by George Guest in 1910 and operated for many years in Sydney. Taylor supplemented this with some baccarat schools.
Taylor brought Rose’s Restaurant back to life in 1949, naming it the Celebrity Restaurant Club. It was wildly popular with the racing ensemble, especially during the 1950s and 1960s, and featured top-notch entertainment imported from, among other places, the United States.
In 1954, he expanded by opening the Carlisle Club in Kings Cross, which also turned out to be a success. History claims that there were illicit gaming facilities on their club premises, but an optimistic outlook would offer that this was only the case for a company trying to please its clientele. That same year, he assumed control of Thommo following the death of George Guest.
As a gambler, Taylor gambled with everyone’s favorite commodity: cash. He used his employees as agents to place his bets and enjoyed substantial success on his own horses as other bookmakers opened their horses lower. However, this did not stop Taylor from making a profit, and Taylor was his own man when the subject of buying horses came up.
Notable trainers who groomed Taylor’s horses for him were Reg Farris, senior and junior, as well as Albert Woods and Kevin Hayes.
Taylor bet on cards and also on plate lickers. He was considered a “magnificent, if not very ostentatious” player, and had the unique attitude that “money is just gambling ammunition” and was more a source of pleasure than an end in itself. Big Bill Waterhouse is quoted as saying that Taylor was “one of the few men in the world who doesn’t give a damn about money.”
Nowhere was this attitude more evident than on the day Taylor experienced his greatest racing triumph, a 1962 STC Golden Slipper Stakes victory for his horse birthday card. It is said that he gave most of his winnings, thousands in fact, to his teammates, and lost the rest when another of his horses finished last in the last race of the day.
A modern Robin Hood like Taylor is often known for the company he maintains, and Taylor enjoyed some notoriety through his association with such personalities as Jack Davey and State Prime Minister Sir Robert Askin. He was also associated with Ezra Norton, editor of the Sydney Daily Mirror and owner of the 1957 Melbourne Cup winner, Straight Draw.
Less palatable acquaintances, perhaps, included accomplices of the illegal gambling community, namely Len McPherson, Fred Anderson and Perce Galea.
Taylor also appeared to have connections to the police establishment because police raids designed to bring down illegal gambling operations never seemed to be effective in shutting down the store.
In 1971, at the age of 63, Taylor married for the third time, marrying a 46-year-old secretary, Patricia Moffit, listing her occupation as a restaurateur. Five years later, he died of a heart attack. He is survived by the son from his first marriage and daughters from the second.
Taylor’s legacy in the punting sport will forever be that he knew his horses, honored his debts, negotiated cash, and most importantly, he did so with great style and few enemies.