Probably the definitive starting point for any discussion about the sad affair of Keith Mangnoson is the inquest report into the death of his young son Clive. It’s on the Internet courtesy of the consistently intriguing blog The Marshall Files, though reading comments there tutting at the moderator of a certain other blog (*cough* Cipher Mysteries *cough*) for letting trolls get so badly out of hand did feel a tad surreal. 😐
But I digress. Let’s try to build up a picture of Keith Mangnoson’s early life…
Born on 9th May 1914 in Adelaide, Keith Waldemar Mangnoson at the age of 14 then…
“…left home and worked on farms in the country until early in 1940, when he got lost in heavy scrub country at near Nadda where he was engaged in wood cutting. After the lapse of several days he was found lying unconscious and suffering from severe sunburn in an empty horse trough. After spending several weeks in the Loxton Public Hospital under the care of the late Doctor Tanko, he was removed to the Royal Adelaide Hospital and later to the Convalescent Hospital at Magill. The doctor who was attending him at the latter informed Mangnoson’s mother that her son was not responding to treatment and advised her to have him placed in the Enfield Receiving Home. He was taken to the Home where he remained for three months, and then his mother took him to a farm at Alma Plains where he stayed for a few weeks.
On May 11, 1941, Mangnoson enlisted in the Australian Imperial Forces and served as a Private with the 2/48th Australian Infantry Battalion in the Middle East and later on in the Pacific Area, where he contracted malaria and suffered with war neurosis. On his return to Australia he was admitted to the Military Hospital at Northfield and remained there until he was discharged from the Services on February 7, 1945. He then returned to his mother’s home at 12, Magarey Terrace, Largs Bay and remained there until he was married in the following May.“
Remembering Mangnoson’s claim that he worked with a “Carl Thompsen” in Renmark (250km ENE of Adelaide, not too far from the SA/Victoria state border) in “1939”, we can see that this could only have been in the period before his near-death experience in Nadda (60km South of Renmark, and similarly close to the state border), and while this may conceivably have been in very early 1940, it certainly could not have been any later than that.
Renmark is surrounded by mallee scrubland (fairly arid, with lots of eucalypts): circa 1940, I presume much of this was being cleared (by woodcutters such as Mangnoson) for large-scale farming, as it has now developed a very significant grape, citrus-fruit and nut farming industry. The local papers at the time have columns talking about removing the green tinge from sultanas and whether there would be a market for flax… you get the basic idea.
Trove can also give us (thanks to the Murray Pioneer and Australian River Record, as well as the Adelaide Advertiser and the Adelaide Chronicle) several other brief glimpses into Keith Mangnoson’s early life. In March 1940, he was living in Alma and got engaged to a certain Winifred L. Williams from Renmark:-
WILLIAMS—MANGNOSON — The engagement is announced of WINIFRED L., eldest daughter of Mr. and Mrs. W. S. Williams of Renmark, to KEITH, W., second son of Mr. and Mrs. J. Mangnoson of Alma.
On August 1 1940, Mangnoson’s name appears as one of those volunteers for National Service from Renmark whose applications had been rejected.
We also know (according to the front page of the 28th March 1940 Murray Pioneer) that this had been the “Hottest March on Record – Thirteen Centuries at Renmark… all previous records for March heat have been smashed.” (p.16: “Wanted – Wood cutters and stump splitters, Moorook district”.)
However – as normal with just about everything to do with the Mangnoson family and the Somerton Man – throughout all this I find myself playing archival catch-up with the very splendid Barry Traish, who has been raking over (and indeed generously correcting) these Trove scans for some time now. But all the same, I have my own take on what these pieces of evidence could well mean if you put them all together…
If these fragments are all separately correct, then “early in 1940” must surely have been after Mangnoson’s engagement to Winifred Williams (announced in the 7th March 1940 editions of the various newspapers) and probably more than four months before 1st August 1940 (when his application was rejected), for surely he can’t have volunteered to join the AIF while still recovering in the Enfield Receiving Home? All of which seems to me to point to the incident happening some time in mid-to-late March 1940, just after his engagement… yet there is no mention of it in any of the newspapers in Trove.
Of course, the logical question for those Australian genealogist researcher readers who have managed to hold on this far into such a TL;DR post is surely this: whatever happened to Winifred L. Williams of Renmark? Did anyone ever think to ask her about Keith Mangnoson and his 1939 Renmark workmate “Carl Thompsen”? I’m guessing that she would be in her 90s now: I know I’m jinxing it by even asking, but might she even possibly still be alive?
Winifred Lilian Williams, eldest daughter of Wilford Samuel Williams and Alice M Williams nee Chigwidden. Wilford and Alice were married at Broken Hill (ie in New South Wales) in 1912 (Ref: 1170/1912). Wilford died in Adelaide, Colonel Light Gardens in 1948 (Ref: 729/3924).
Wilford and Alice lived in Renmark, South Australia 1933 to 1943 and then moved to Enfield.
Wilford was a boot maker at Renmark, also a Scout leader.
Winifred Lilian Williams married Harold Beresford Bridger (NX169868 born 17th December 1910 at Bingara, NSW) at Sydney in 1944. Ref: 14344/1944
Harold was a sapper/welder and served in New Guinea and Burma.
Harold and Winifred are recorded as living at: Petersham North 1949, Belmore East 1954, Clemton Park 1958 and 1963. Marrickville 1968. North Cronulla 1980. In 1980 Harold was described as a salesman, and Winifred was a stenographer.
The article about Mr Mangnoson being lost appeared in the Bunyip (Gawler, SA : 1863 – 1954) on Friday 18 October 1940, page 5, and the Murray Pioneer and Australian River Record (Renmark, SA : 1913 – 1942) on Thursday 10 October 1940, page 1. He went missing on Tuesday 1 October, so the incident did not occur in ‘early 1940’. His name is spelt ‘Magnussen’.
B Deveson: excellent digging, thanks, that takes us all the way through to 1980… but what happened next? 🙂
Debra: fantastic, that sorts out all the timing, then. I guess what they probably meant in the inquest report, then, was probably ‘early in the summer season’ (i.e. the working year) rather than ‘early in the year’.
PS: I tried a whole load of mis-spellings for his name in Trove but “Magnussen” had me beaten, well done! 😉
December is summer there. The “virtual” new year begins with Christmas, as I’ve only just realised. Formal new year of course Jan 1st.
I actually searched for “horse trough”, but the very creative “lost in the bush” would have been just as successful.
Winifred died in 2007 and Harold in 2010.
See Macquarie Park Cemetery
maccemdotcomdotau
Debra: ah, now I know your searching secrets… 😉
Sad to hear that we missed Winifred by only a few years. Did they leave any family?
Did they live in a neighborhood long enough that someone might remember something?
Escaped Mental Portent Still Sought
The Advertiser (Adelaide, SA : 1931 – 1954) Saturday 25 March 1950 p 9 Article
Police are still searching for Keith Waldemar Mangnoson, who escaped from the Parkside Mental Home on Tuesday. … 71 words
Escaped Man Believed Seen In Hotel
The Advertiser (Adelaide, SA : 1931 – 1954) Monday 27 March 1950 p 4 Article
A man believed to be Keith Waldemar Mangnoson who escaped from Parkside Mental Home last week, had dinner at a … 53 words
Mental Home Escapee Found In Hills
The Advertiser (Adelaide, SA : 1931 – 1954) Thursday 27 April 1950 p 1 Article
Keith Waldemar Mangnoson, 36, who has been missing since his escape from the Parkside Mental … 196 words
Man thats the same hospital that Jess worked at and at the time she was working there . Like you said Nick , truth and fiction aye. Amazing!!
The Dude: sorry to have to ask the question, but how do you know what hospitals she worked at? I’m just saying because there’s a whole load of trolled fake information about her life out there, making it quite hard to separate truth from outright fiction. 🙁
Hey Nick
I believe I have a good source on that but will double check and get back to you. I can tell you that the house that the Thomsons eventually settled in at Hazelwood pk was minutes from the Glenside hospital.
So…my question is where does the name of Jessica Harkness come from?
medrasa: her family confirmed in a recent TV interview what had been rumoured on the Internet for many years – that Jessica Ellen Thomson (nee Harkness) was indeed the nurse “Jestyn” whose Glenelg phone number had been written on the back cover of the Rubaiyat the police connected with the Somerton Man.
I have a theory, Alf Boxall has more to do with this than we lead on, he has confirmed ties to the Australian government that would definitely make contact with the level of covert operations that his is touching if we are going to consider this possibility. Plus if it is true that he went from Lance Corporal to Lieutenant then we must ask for what? Generally speaking in the military, you will not see an enlisted man get bumped up to a commission without considerable valor or some type of significant educational milestone. Also, though this does look very sloppy for a covert operation in a lot of ways the sloppiness is very pivotal, and every key coincidence seems to lead to some very awkward dead end which to me indicates at least a certain level of purposeful false-information, for example the Marshall case of the man lying on the beach reading the same book who poisoned himself this would have been well documented, it looks like an effort to make it seem like a copy cat suicide. Also, has anyone ever checked to see if the verse Marshall scribbled on his book as has anything to do with the code found on the Somerton Master of mystery man ” ah, make the most of what we yet may spend before we too into the dust descend, dust under dust under dust to lie Sans wine sans song sans singer and sans end”? But Alf Boxall also said that if Jessica had known about his work with the government it would be because someone had told her, What if the person who told her was Somerton Man? Since supposedly JEStyn was also a spy and could speak Russian if our SM was a Russian spy and informing her about Alf Boxall then this may be a reason to off him, plus if the book was in fact in the car weeks before he arrived then this would be a very real possibility. Also it seems that if Manganoson is part of of the puzzle piece then we would have to figure out what the hell he was doing in Renmark because this would not have really been a combat post in the war. In fact, I am not really able to find a whole lot of information on Renmark during WW2 so why would he be doing any military work with this alleged Thompsen character?
Medrasa – Boxall was a heavy duty mechanic, he was posted to the NAOU (north Australian Observation Unit) specifically to help maintain heavy machinery. Most of his days would have spent in a shed, under a truck or a bulldozer. Some of the old airstrips they cleared are still in use from time to time. Some have been rebuilt and are being used today.
His ‘bumping up’ may well have been more for managerial purposes.
He was good with machinery and effective in his profession, reason enough, to my mind, to put him in charge of the entire maintenance operation while everybody else went on with the war.
Boxall spent the war as an enlisted mechanic / engineer and went back to his old job at the Randwick tramshed when the war was over.
If you feel he did a little undercover work then the best place to look is in his war records, line by line.
You might find something there.
I did.
Which hotel was Keith seen in? How do I access the reports and stories?
Chloe: I’ll check my files later for a copy of the Mangnoson inquest document, but “The Marshall Files” website went private a long time ago, amid a whole lot of loud claims and counterclaims of trolled activity. If you contact the Marshall Files website owner, he/she may give you access to this file, or he/she may not.
Chloe: searching by ascending date for “mangnoson” on Trove http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/result?q=mangnoson&sortby=dateAsc should return newspaper articles from the time that answer many of your questions.
However, seeing as you’re so quick to rubbish Cipher Mysteries elsewhere, all I can really say is… good luck with getting anything reliable from xlamb and Pete Bowes.
Re: B Deveson’s latest post, up-thread. My recent post on Websleuths has Carl Bernard Thompson’s next of kin as Winifred Thompson. It’s on the his military service record at ww2roll online. I’d assumed his Winifred was the same Winifred L. (nee) Williams on the rebound after Mangnoson’s first near death experience. Your earlier research seems to prove me wrong. Winifred was a more popular name for baby girls, back then.
The following is my personal opinion.
Mangnoson had ample opportunity to attempt suicide before being found at Largs and after being committed to the hospital. Mangnoson (having seen active service, overseas) if he really wanted to suicide whilst in hospital, Mangnoson would have found a way to do so, there. Yet, he escapes hospital (twice?) has dinner in public and hides out.
B Deveson, I think it was, posted relating this case on SmithsonianMag website there are similarities between this case, the unknown man at Somerton and George Marshall’s death. Wikipedia agrees. I also have agreed, elsewhere.
Extrapolating: there’s two overlapping M.O.s. by two persons. One, a confidence trickster, plans and stages poisonings presented as suicide. The other, lends physical support and engages in violent back-up, as necessary. The back-up is also made to look like either suicide or tragic accident, likely involving machinery.
A partnership of two serial killers.
Compounding the tragedy to FW at Largs is the death of infant Clive, poisoned and found in a sack, nearby. The sack in this case represents a womb. The infant was symbolically returned to the womb by the person who poisoned him.
The person who poisoned the infant into the sack was not related. It was one of the serial killers. The serial killer with the gender identity issue.
Possibly related: the so-called Unknown Man found deceased at Somerton Beach was deliberately placed in front of the nearby Crippled Children’s Home, of all places, near that same stretch of coastline.
You could be onto something there mugger. The old Bickford mansion, Alvington, occupied a slightly more elevated position than the later dwellings along the Seawall, later to be named South Esplinade. It would have given the occupants a great view of the Great Southern Ocean panorama and also a possible means of visual communication by helio or flag signals with the weekend yacht racing fleet competitors in the days before radio. Conversely ships/boats far out to sea could use the elevated property as a landmark for entry into Glenelg Pier or other safe beach landings like Somerton. The steps would also have been a very handy point of reference not withstanding their state of repair at the specific period of time we are interested in.
A gentle murmer of sharply handled oars moving within greased leather rollock cradles would be the only giveaway sounds that emmitted from the ship’s launch as it moved gently shorewards, taking advantage of a carefully plotted king tide cyclic event which was assuredly approaching it’s peak. By utilising every advantage for this mission, the oarsman had come right to the assigned target landing, that being a delapidated set of stairs just below the coast road and right opposite the old Bickford mansion Alvington, which was niw being utilised as a hostel for crippled kiddies. On this important,meticulously planned, late evening venture, it was quite dark in that the new moon was tracking it’s waning path to nothingness and the only illumination emited from the second floor infirmery window, which had akso been carefully orchesteaded then used to guide the boat unerringly shoreward. Likewise an annoying nearby street lamp had been de- activated much earlier and so the beach landing went almost un-noticed. As the small craft neared the seawall alongside the stairs, two dark ghostly figures came up to the vessel and without any word being passed, took it upon themselves, almost instinctively to remove the fully clad body of a man from other hands across the gunwale. Without further ado the small craft was quickly turned about and had there been an unintended viewer in a concealed position, they would have followed it back whence it came, that being a darkened mothership wating in the roads a dozen cables off Somerton. Before it had gone but a short part of the return journey the shorebased ghouls had taken their leave in much the same way they had appeared moments beforehand. All that coukd be seen on the beach was the form of a well presented dead man who appeared in the distance to be holding a lighted cigarette. Less than five minutes had passed and it was just gone three and soon a new dawn would announce at long last, the first day of yet another golden Adelaide summer. The unseen, unknown and unintended hidden spectator quitely went to the body, knelt then placed an unlit last smoke on its collar as a mark of respect for the profession. He then dissappeared into the rising dawn mist.
I don’t like it, but it’s workable. The lights in the windows would be a reasonable guide for a boat – especially if there were few large buildings on the foreshore.
Where would the nearest streetlight have been? I would always have imagined there should be one near the stairs, but the photo of ‘X’ marks the spot doesn’t seem to have one….
Although Adelaide’s beaches aren’t surfing beaches there is (as with any beach?) a constant roll of tiny waves, even on the calmest of nights. This would likely drown out any creaking oars at the shore – and TBH I think it’s a fairly un-noticeable sound at a beach at that hour of the morning – even if someone did happen to be about.
It’s a bit of a shame that as the first attenders didn’t particularly expect anything suspicious there was no examination made of footprints around the place (yes, I know in soft sand there’d be nothing clear, and beaches are horrible places to look for prints even on firmer sands closer the water, but if it was a suspicious death from the get-go they might have at least tried).
Slightly aside, I was rereading a Pruzinski post last night – and even if his story is totally unrelated, the suitcase of the 28th certainly makes me question the ‘known’ timeline of SM’s demise (it had socks)….
It has just come to my notice that on the 1st october 1940, the day of Keith Mangnoson’s alleged disappearance in malee country near the S.À/Vic. border district, there just happened to be a total solar eclypse which was of six minutes duration around mid afternoon. Had a person been alone in the bush and not being in expectation of such a rare event, it could well have caused some confusion leading to total disorientation and subsequent loss of bearings. In my opinion however, an experienced bushman like Keith would have been cognizant of conditional vagaries and make allowances accordingly. Had another person without such local instincts been involved, that person would possibly have been quite terrified to see darkness encroaching and then hastilly taken flight in the wrong direction, thereby becoming completely lost in no time. Most of the known recorded history certainly points to Keith having been the victim, especially taking into consideration that only a couple of months beforehand, a doctor had rejected his application for military service on grounds of nervous instability. However there is room for some ligitimate doubts and so these must always be put forward as an alternate proposition, especially when attempting to figure whether SM may have been the lost man.
Just a small snippet picked up from Keith’s archival docs which may tend to substantiate the assumption that he was indeed the missing Maggea man. In ’43 he was said to be sufferiing from a form of retna damage derived from direct exposure to strong sunlight, or pterysium. Of course he could well have got his burnt eye balls from the Libyan desert or out on the shadeless Alma plains, but so to from the effects of looking in awe at a solar eclypse, which as we’re all aware is a definate caution. So is keeping your lucky sixpence in your spare pair of strides, the Marco elasto-fits back in the Keane suitcase at the railway left baggage depot.
Loxton S.A., as in South Africa was the main vantage for the total solar eclypse of 1/10/1940 and not Loxton S.A. as in South Australia, the area where Keith Magnussen got lost on that date. An inadvertent error on my part and even though the missing man may have experienced the effects from a partial sighting, it is doubtful, in my admittedly vague knowledge of such rare astrophysical events.
Are we sure Mangnoson and Magnussen are the same? And did he marry his next door neighbour? Or have we crossed a lot of wires somewhere?
Firstly, I’m not entirely comfortable with Magnussen (consistently reported with that spelling in the papers) aged 33 in 1940 – when we know KW Mangnoson was born in 1914….
Also…..
Mangnoson’s parents were apparently Ida Caroline WILSON and John MANGNOSON. He also had a sister (older) called Joyce May Louise (NB: I assume this is why his engagement lists him as ‘second son’).
Throughout different versions they lived at either 10 or 12 Magarey Tce. As far as I can tell, 10 Magarey Tce was inhabited (at least 48-50) by an S McIntyre (this I think is Roma’s maiden name – so we’re happy with that). After Mangnoson’s house burns down, he advertises for help from this house.
Number 12 Magarey Tce is listed as being occupied by an S.C. Magnusson (sic) (with a J Thompson at #17 if you like a good coincidence).
So maybe I’ve missed something, but:
1) who is S.C Magnusson?
2) Where did the story about Mangnoson getting lost at Maggea come from (before it was resolved to the story about Magnussen)?
NB: No, I don’t see any irony questioning this when I was insistent there was only 1 Fed. The difference in that case was that each new detail on the identities seemed to match. Here we have a situation where there seems to be some mismatches – so I’m just questioning the wisdom of ignoring the discrepancies….
Oops – Mangnoson had 2 more siblings even older (but they were born in Broken Hill, so they didn’t come up in the SA search).
Cyril J born 1905 and Marjorie M born 1908.
There’s also a Magnussen family in Broken Hill, but no Keith as far as I can tell.
And still no S.C. Magnusson anywhere…..
Ok, I’ve gone back some in Sands & Mac….
in 1939 /McIntyre first appears at number 10 (and Thompson at #17 – although without the ‘P’ (Note: while I enjoy the coincidence, I’m not thinking it’s even remotely relevant)).
S.C Magnusson first appears in the 1944 Almanac.
I don’t know how the data for these almanacs was gathered and how reliable it is.
in 1950
SC Magnusson becomes SC Mangnoson…..
KW Mangnoson is at #10 (with S McIntyre)
J Thompson has left.
Milongal: Perhaps you were on hols. or something. Don’t bother about Cyril up to when he joined up again in ’42 (navy ’27 & army ’33). At that time he was married to Grace McAlpine who had previously been his mother and of course for his second stint in the inactive wartime military, he decides that he was born in Capetown S.A. His old wife florentina Marie Hunter has been chasing him for desertion since ’25 and according to Misca he died at some non existant town in Victoria called Sqalm in ’75. The only initial C. in the family apart from the cad Cyril was old Ida Caroline nee Wistrand. Advise going back to the two other Mangnoson posts about late ’16 or early ’17 for all the info which I still have in me noggin if you are stuck.
Cheers JS.
I thought (assumed) it was his Mum’s house – so I sort of thought SC was somehow her – but as you say the only C there is Caroline, and there’s definitely no S.
We know papa Mango was John, so there’s no S there either….
The surname eventually gets corrected, and while I realise these almanacs can be faulty, the initial remains S.C. ….and I wouldn’t have thought Ida is short for anything…
TBH I don’t really think Mangnosons have that much to do with it (but like everything else they keep appearing) – it just struck me as odd that their name is (apparently) often misspelt (into something that isn’t really even phonetically equivalent) and that there’s a lot of weird about them nonetheless. In trove it’s interesting (but possibly normal) that on Clive’s first anniversary there’s memories from several people but including one from “mummy and daddy” and one from “mummy” (and one from nanna McIntyre) – both are (attempts at) poems, but the postings are otherwise the same (ie the surrounding texts). In subsequent years thee newspaper posts still have a poem but are signed “mummy and nanna McIntyre” (with a hint of “the only people who still love you”)…..
Milongal: Never heard S.C. though it could be Cyril’s child born in about early ’26 and most likely a female with middle initial Carolina, probably cared for by his old mum Ida along with Andrew who she claims to be her own but who is probably S.C’s twin. Cyril is using the new surname Wilson by ’42 which is a take off of mother’s own changed surname from Wistrand. Got all that mate, good oh then go for it.
There’s a few Magnussen/Magnusson in Adelaide from fairly early days (There appears to be a Chas Magnusson around 1915, and later Chas Magnussen about 20 years later.
I did miss the first instance of them at Magarey St, though. 1938 has a G Mangnooson at 12 Magarey. and 1932 has the Mangnonson spelling (and there are all sort of variations in between).
It sort of occurs to me that people may have had to fill in a form for these Almanacs. Although by this time they would have been in Australia some time, it’s possible that ‘G’ vs ‘J’ still caused confusion (because in Scandinavian languages a ‘J’ would have had closer a ‘Y’ sound – so when Johan (Yo-hahn) became ‘John’ he may have been confused about what letter made the ‘J’ sound)) – and the fact it lists ‘Carpenter’ suggests it could be John….
Similarly, in later years if Ida scrawled her name it is plausible that a Squiggly ‘I’ might be misinterpreted as an ‘S’.
It does sort of seem that there was some confusion about how to Anglicise their name – although whether this is a result of the printers over-correcting or them confusing it themselves – but we definitely have Mangnoson/Mangnooson/Magnooson/Mangnonson/Magnusson (I can sort of imagine ‘oo’ being an attempt to mimic a European ‘u’ sound) for them, with some possibly unrelated Magnussen and Mangerson around the place too.
But what of Alma Plains? Whose farm did Magnussen (not necessarily Mangnoson) stay at? Is it possible that we’ve crossed wires with 2 different Keiths? In all the variations that appear for surnames at Magarey St they always seem to prefer an ‘o’ to an ‘e’ – and while it’s possible that the media misspelt the name, the fact that there’s an age discrepancy (of about 6 years) has me questioning if it really is the same guy…..
But I’m not sure why I bother – as I said before, I’m not convinced Mangnoson had anything to do with SM, and think the ‘stay away from the police’ could as easily refer to Keith’s misadventure as anything else….
Various bibs and bobs
It seems Isobel Violet Mangnoson (not to be confused with her twin Violet Isobel) lived at Alma, and appears to have owned and ridden a race horse called ‘Miss Isobel Mangnoson’s Doctor’.
Joyce May Louise Herman (Mangnoson) apparently lived somewhere near Morgan (Woods Flat) – and Keith appears to have lived with her through the 1930s – and played cricket for the local side.
There’s also some mention of a house in Swansea (which I think is what is today Largs North) that had some issues with sand dunes – which by the sound of it had been just built by John and Ida (with 4 bedrooms) and forced them out.
“DRIFTING SAND FILLS BACKYARD OF HOUSE AT SWANSEA
Home of Mr. J. Mangnoson. near Large Bay. which has been menaced by driftbing sand to such an extent that he and his family have vacated it. In parts the back fence’, which is six feet high; is not visible.”
Roma must have only been 15 (or 16) when she married Keith (who was about 16 years her senior)
John (the father) got in trouble for taking liquor from a Gepps Cross hotel in 1936. He was also fined (in 1915 – before his Naturalisation, I think) for failing to enrol to vote.
Keith subscribed to ‘The Progressive Times’ in 1949.
Keith’s later escapades from Parkside saw him dump his clothes at the beach (At Henley).
Cyril seems to have been chased by divorce lawyers and at one stage appears through Balaklava (30km North of Alma). We would have been 35 in 1940.
@JS Isobel also married a McAlpine….Keith Alex….
There was also a couple of overlaps with ‘Crossing’ and (unrelated, I think) ‘Magnussen’ (ie almost like brothers married sisters).
The J. Thompson, whom I’ve mentioned previously was a seaman and carpenter, same a poppa John who served in the trences ww 1 and was taken to court for not voting upon his return. I think it was the youngest lad Andrew who married the Dearborn lass Pamela round 1950 and they moved to Perth where she died, possibly in childbirth. He came back and settled in the Adelaide Hills, I think and it may be his son Ian Andrew who is still active in local politics. Cyril’s wife Florie did eventually remary and became Mrs. Vic Peisker, the couple settling in Adelaide and living out their lives in accord with His great plan. As for the bounder himself, he seems to have gotten rid of Grace McAlpine who was the sister of Isabel (not to be confused with the younger sister Violet Isabel) Mangnoson’s husband Keith, the alleged pedophile (no conviction). Signing up again for the King’s shilling, Cyril seems to have given some more consideration to his exact date of birth, his proper surname and country of origin. He also appears to have had a healthy growth spurt from his navy days and the scar on the right side of his face seems to have disappeared. If we could get hold of his ’42/’45 service record, we might be able to finally put him to bed. I think that’s about it, but you never can tell, with the Alma Plains Mango trees quite likely to blossom again and possibly even bare fruit if we’re lucky..
Apart from being well aware of SM’s aquestrian interests, he presumably had a real job to go to when not saddle bound in the western regions. Along with all those bacon curing, brawn pressing factories up in them thar hills around metro. Adelaide, hide tanning and sheep tallow plants seemed also in some abundance. I can imagine many would have employed immigrants who had done the same sort of work using the age old methods; Rendering the tallow to extract lanoline oil and stamping down on hides in the big old 20 foot by 3 foot coopered tanning bins, with their brackish dark alum/wattle bark sulution. Just the thing to keep a fellow’s hands supple and enable him to sport a year round chemical tan on his legs to about groin level. We are probably talking about a smallish operation, perhaps of German immigrant ownership and a half dozen migrant workers of similar ethnic background. If one of the lads doesn’t come back after a weekend spree in town, who’s going to report it. The boss just grabs someone else off the train at Mount Barker and Hans Muller replaces Hans Muller in the tanning bath.
Milongal: The two Isobel (Violets) were actually mother and daughter and the various Genealgy sites routinely make a hash of the Mang…..family. Ian Andrew who was born 12/8/26 at Rose Park could not really be old Ida’s (1878) and I’d say he was either an illegitinate of one of her other daughters or else he was a result of the union of son Cyril and his poor wife Florintina nee Hunter. It comes off as gettng a little cloudy when afrer her divorce in ’41 she ups and marries Vic Peisker, a previously married man of Sth. Plympton, along with her older sister Sylvia which seems weird. To make matters more complicated we still have a big gathering of Mangnosons up Balaclava, Clare Valley and in Adelaide, all doing well in various government positions. I have a feeling that one of them could well be a senior S.A. government minister under another name, though this a conjectural work in progress thing that is in need of clarification. Don’t give up on this family is what I’m suggesting, they’re hot.
I’ve recently been undertaking some highly scientific analysis of the SM funeral photos which included taking fine imperial measurements with my old 1950s vernier calipers. Being able to get a good average height estimate on the six pall bearers/attendants of seventy inches which does not include Captain E.J. Webb who appears to be over seventy five inches was relatively easy. Even allowing for a slight degree of parallex error, it can be concluded that SM’s coffin is going to be about the same as the attendees and a good five or six inches shorter than the taller officiating SAO. Of course the problem is how to get a 71 inch body into a coffin with estimated linear interior space of say 70 inches at the very most. Laurie Elliot was certainly mindful of the possibilty that his work might at some future stage come under scrutiny, so he was not likely to have taken any undignified shortcuts with his customer. Besides that, we know Sgt. Scan Sutherland was present to also witness the lid closing proceedure and he would certainly have reported any short changing on space arrangements for our man. Does it suggest the obvious that SM was not the 5′ 11″ attributed to him from day one by Mr. nobody or that perhaps the body in the grave is of another person as others are known to contend. I don’t think so; going by a number of factors including the smallishness of the coat worn at the time of death and certainly going by the shoe size of eight which does not in my opinion indicate a man of the claimed height, but more likely to be a respectable 5′ 9″ at most.
Just a quick note from an interested lurker in Sweden; the name Magnusson in Scandinavian is pronounced with a semi-silent unwritten ‘n’, so ‘Mangnusson’, and the ‘u’ is like a shortened ‘oo’ rather than the English ‘blunt ‘uh’ u’ sound.
To me all the iterations of Magnusson/Mangnoson are from the same derivation.
That’s not to say all Magnusson/Mangnoson’s being brought into the picture are one and the same. 🙂
The OP’s further link regarding young Clive. There’s more to it than neurosis?
Not sure whether it’s a case of brother’s marrying sisters, but I previously mentioned Joyce May Louise Herman as being Magnoson’s sister I’ve now seen a wedding notice for a Marjorie Myrtle Mangnoson to a Hermann….
Not sure if I got my wires crossed or something else….
Also, JS listed above that Isobel V married Keith McAlpine,
her sister Violet I married a Lawrence J Symens in ’33
NB I think JS also mentioned above that they were mother and daughter, but I’m pretty sure they were twins – theey both have a “Aunt Dorothy” letter published in the same paper, and both say “I am 11 years and 9 months old…” (in fact, perhaps not surprisingly, the letters are very similar).
We was clearing when I knew him and to give due credit to him, he was at ease with axe and dragline the mate we called ‘The Czar’…Six feet tall or slightly more, tipped the scales ’bout twelve stone four, hasn’t changed a lot I’ll credit since we met before the war…Carl Thompsen, I assume was his working nom de plume, for the lands of ice and snow are where Thompsens rarely go…T’was this thing about his past like a trade or swell vocation, though he wasn’t one for blast, never hinting higher station ….”Just call me Carl or Czar or Ski”, our friend was most emphatic, “but never late for dinner boys, or nazi or fanatic”…One day while lost I chanced upon a note left in a tree, with just two words and then below ‘Carl Von Czarnecki. ….So here we be with none to see, but God and me and thou. You never knew if I’d stayed true, at least not until now. You’ll rest in peace and with some luck they’ll never know your shame, at least you have your ‘The Unknown Man’ , after all what’s in a name?… KM
@ milongal: You’re absolutely right about Keith’s twin sisters Violet Isobel (Symens) and Isobel Violet (McAlpine). It must have caused some consternation for others in the household when young, especially if they were identical, which unless I’m mistaken once again, doesn’t seem to have been the case fortunately.
John and Ida Mangnoson lived in Broken Hill pre WW1 and their three eldest kids, which excluded Keith and the name swap twins were all born there I think. I note that Christabel Von Czarnecki nee Davis and her family were living at Broken Hill at that same time, before moving to Upper Beaconsfield Vic. where dad gave up on religion, became a photographer and joined the army. Although he never got to fight in France or anywhere else, he managed to score a disabilty pension of which mum and the billy lids received individual entitlements. I don’t recall seeing anything in John Mangnoson’s army file about any such payouts, although he probably got some sort of benefit for being at The Somme in the final push against the Hun. I recall poor Keith getting some disability payment from Repat which was eventually reduced to a pittance, he being assessed as fit and well..like hell!
I’m having second thoughts about Keith Waldemar Mangnoson’s apparent failed identification of a fellow itinerant farm worker he said he knew casually in the late 30’s. The name Thompsen with it’s unusual nordic spelling is quite illogical, not only due to Keith’s presumed lack of familiarity with that version, but moreso in that surnames of fellow field hands would not generally be known to anyone but the paymaster, unless it happened to be connected to an abreviation like ‘Smithy’ for instance. I’m thinking that Keith may only have known the man as Carl, nothing more and that the cops, seeing this as unnsatisfactory for identification purposes, merely added the Thompsen effect to identify it with the ‘cold country’ place of assumed origin. Of course the assigned officers must have known that they were dealing with a nutter, their witness having just been released from a seven week stint at Parkside, giving them good grounds for not proceeding further.
I think I’ve flagged discomfort at something similar before. Thompsen rather than Thompson (or Thomson) suggests that someone was quite specific about the e (either Keith had pronounced it with a deliberate ‘e’, or the coppers had some reason to note it with an ‘e’ rather and an ‘o’….and the ‘p’ is probably wrong. I think the ‘correct’ Danish spelling would be Thomsen (15 seconds on google suggests Thompsen might be a Scottish corruption, but wouldn’t bet my life on it). Of course, I could equally imagine the ‘p’ being a naive addition by said copper or journo….
The media reports Mangnoson as suggesting Carl was Swedish – and I think Swedes are more likely to use -sson (-sen is more Danish and Norwegian). Of course, Mangnoson’s own name (and presumably Mangnoson derrives from the Swedish Mangnusson? Most of the references I can find to Mangnoson seem to refer to the Adelaide Mangnosons (from Keith’s parents John and Ida)….but now we are covering old ground….)
Don’t know about Scandinavians, but I know Balts (or certainly Latvians) have a habit of phoneticising rather than translating names. So John becomes Dzon and Matthew become Metju (although they still have perfectly good translations for these names – John = Janis, Matthew = Matis and would anglicise rather than phoneticise in the opposite direction).
It sort of looks like there might have been a similar effort by the Mangnoson’s to phoneticise rather than translate their surname (the varieties listed in S&M which I think I’ve mentioned previously) shows that there was some confusion on how the name should be spelt between at least 1932 and the the late 40s (and at one stage the initial in S&M is ‘G’ ). I do wonder a little whether John derived from Johan (as we’d expect) or from something like Goran (with umlauts on the ‘o’). But it probably matters not much.
I doubt that John Mangnoson’s mob were overly familiar with fancy handles like ‘umlauts’ as they’re usually called…Neither did I until just now!
milon: Re your mention of phoneticising the name Carl Thompsen: So perhaps another in the form of Carl Vonzarn….(sic) might also do for Thompsen if one were to use your rough guide, especially considering that Keith Mangnoson’s version to police may have been muddled in translation or misconstrued, then recorded incorrectly.
Lol – just making the point that Goran (Hrvat) is not quite equivalent to Göran (Sverige/Suomi/Dansk)
Recalling poor Keith Mangnoson and his first tumultuous period between 1939 & 1941 eg., working with Carl Thompsen, engagement to Winifred Lilian Williams, rejection for volunteer military service, getting lost in the bush, admission to the Enfield assylum, entry into the AIF and war service in Syria. His reported betrothal to Winnie reminds me of the same lass marrying Cfn. Colin Henry Bridger in mid 1944 which seemed most unlikely due to the fellows’s ongoing war service hence little widow of opportunity for the liason. My doubts were further kindled by emergence of the names Winifred Lilian Williams & Bridges popping up in Sth. Australia as opposed to far off Sydney’s sprawl where the Bridger’s were reported to have settled after the war. It made no sense logically in looking back to the 1940 engagement of our innocent teenaged daughter (1922) of a country cobbler who one might have expected to stay put in the country town where she reached her early womanhood. As usual Byron Deveson’s information (see above), seems to be correct in every detail despite my earlier doubts, so let’s bid farewell to the Bridges of Macquarie memorial park, Sydney shall we?
Let’s re evaluate some of the detail on Winifred Lilian for there’s still things about her identity that seem to be on shakey ground, and which ain’t likely to go away unless we make them. Here lay Ma & Pa Williams who co share a plot in old West Terrace, he from ’48 and she ’62, there being suggestion that Wilford Samuel was second go around for Alice May nee Chidwiggen (&Key). He was born in Victoria in 1880 and Alice at Broken Hill 1891 which is also where the couple met and married in 1912…Problem that stands out for me being in the engagement notice of March 1940 advising that Winifred Lilian be the ‘oldest daughter of Mr. and Mrs. W. S. Williams of Renmark…’ It being a given that our soon to be wedded & bedded new bride was born in 1922, what took so long to have their first child with more to follow for a couple who were no spring chickens…From this it can be clearly seen that nothing in the earlier offerings points to Winifred Lilian Williams being one and the same with a lass of that name going afar to marry Cfn. Harold Bridger in 1944; his army record noting only his wife’s name(s) and change of marrital status. Unless full details of the Sydney marriage record states otherwise, I’m now more inclined to my original stand that it be not safe to trust the limited ‘facts’ posted in good faith by Byron on 31/19/13.
Revisiting this guy, how close he was ……Carl webb/ prosper Thomson….maybe he was on to something
Em: and maybe he wash’t, we need answers. For starters will the real Winifred Lilian Williams step forward and the one everybody had the hots for in 2013 step aside in that we might find out what became of Keith Mangnoson’s defaulting sweetheart after he lost his way in 1940. Let’s not forget that Keith’s ID of Carl Thompsen [sic] on 7th January 1949 a day after release from Parkside assylum should not be so lightly dismissed in light of recent developements.