His future, and hat of his family, depends on the result of that final race. Charlie’s neighbor, Mr Redmond, trains him and, using some of the experience gained in Squizzie’s employ, he makes the final. To make money in a legal way, Charlie enters the Ballarat Mile, a footrace with a cash prize. After his friend, Nostrils, is brutally beaten up on a job, and Squizzy is less than sympathetic, Charlie quits his job. Joseph Theodore Leslie Squizzy Taylor was an Australian gangster from Melbourne. In his Authors Note, Robert Newton speaks of 1919 Richmond (aka Struggletown) Australia, the setting of Charlie Feehans story.

He is drawn into a world of illegal alcohol and debt collecting.Ĭharlie comes to realize that the dangers on the streets are very real and that a gang war seems sure to break out. At first he finds the job thrilling but he soon begins to see the less savoury side of the Squizzie’s life. Charlie wins the race, with a little help along the way, and secretly leaves school to start working for Squizzy, ignoring the warnings from his mother and friends. To make money, to help make a better life for his mother and little brother, Charlie “auditions” for the job of Squizzie’s runner, along with 3 other boys. The nighttime runs are brought to the attention of the local gangster, Squizzy Taylor. Charlie starts running around the neighborhood streets at night partly to get warm and partly as an outlet to deal with his daily problems. It is there first winter without him and they are struggling. In the 1919 Melbourne, Australia, slums, fleet-footed fifteen-year-old Charlie Feehan is hired to run errands for a notorious mobster.

It is winter, 1919, and Charlie Feehan’s father has died and left Charlie, his mother and baby brother with very little to live on in working-class Richmond.

Runner by robert newton