Ida: Searching for the Jazz Baby

Who is Ida Pender? Is she the elderly woman-Ida-Spider-rumored to be resident in a 1970's Mental Asylum? Is she Squizzy Taylor's teenaged gangster moll of the roaring 1920's in Melbourne? The woman the police declared had shapely legs? She is Ida. The Jazz Baby. Frank Prem explores the story of Ida Pender, largely forgotten now, but once the notorious associate of a 1920s Melbourne gangster. From the young girl sneaking out of her bedroom window to go dancing at the Palais de Danse, companion, accomplice, then wife and mother to Squizzy Taylor's child by her early twenties, Ida is an extraordinary woman and a marvelous story.