Gordon Cramer continues posting apace, asserting – for example – that iodine vapour deposition (also known as “iodine fuming”) and/or UV illumination could have been used in South Australian police forensic photography circa 1948.
But here at Cipher Mysteries Towers, I’m constantly besieged by weak claims built on top of this same “could have” linguistic structure: so it shouldn’t be a surprise that Gordon’s repeated use of it gets my historical goat. In the case of the Somerton Man, “M R G O A B A B D” (or however you want to transcribe it) “could have” also been written by the SM, the nurse, her husband, the person who found the book, saboteurs, conspirators, many thousands of other people that we know nothing about, or indeed by aliens. As with all other cipher mysteries, how does observing that each of these scenarios is ‘possible’ move us forward, exactly?
Then again, Voynich theorist Gordon Rugg has been ploughing that same unyielding field for over a decade now, despite the fact that his possibilistic ard has turned over nothing of value in all that time. So maybe our Tamam Shud Gordon has at least six years’ catching up yet. Hmmmm. 😐
Anyway, by way of sharp contrast, I’ve put a bit of time into trying to understand the specific history of the South Australia Police (SAPOL) and its relationship with forensic photography. What techniques did SAPOL actually use, what evidence is there for this, and what can all that tell us about how the image of the page of the Rubaiyat was taken? As most long-suffering faithful Cipher Mysteries readers doubtless already know, these have the attributes of my favourite kinds of questions: evidence-based, potentially informative, archive-focused, yet in practice tricky to pursue.
So here’s what I found…
The History of SAPOL
South Australia’s policing started relatively early in 1838. Formal police photography didn’t take off in South Australia for many years, even though its Inspector Paul Foelsche took numerous photographs between 1869 and 1914 (these were kept in the family for year, before finally being shown in 1969 to local photographic historian Robert J. Noye).
According to the official SA Police history website…
The first report of [photography] being used in the Police Department was in the late 1870’s, when Detective Von Der Borch was appointed official Photographer. Later a report was submitted requesting a ventilator be installed in the work place to reduce the fumes caused when developing and printing photographs. There is no evidence to show that this science proceeded beyond experimentation until approximately 1898…
..when a certain Detective Lingwood-Smith took on the role: he developed (pun intended) the practical arts of both photography and fingerprinting, turning them into essential parts of police practice, even though the particular fingerprinting scheme he championed was discontinued in 1904. There’s a picture of Lingwood-Smith (inevitably) in the Adelaide ‘Tiser, 29th June 1922, when he claimed that there were “more than 70,000 fingerprints and photographs […] filed in the Adelaide detective office”:-
When asked if he had ever used fingerprint evidence in court, Lingwood-Smith replied that he had not: but that was simply because he had not needed to. “When confronted by their photograph and description, which we have ascertained by means of the finger prints, the offender generally owns up. There is really nothing else for him to do.”
In 1920, Lingwood-Smith passed the baton of the Photography and Fingerprint Section over to Mr. Leslie Hilland Bruce Hudd. In 1923, Bruce Hudd obtained a conviction by ingeniously taking a plaster cast of a footprint left at the scene of a crime: and moreover in 1939…
…he introduced a method for detecting thieves who stole from working companions. A powder was sprinkled onto coins and left at the scene of previous thefts. The powder was not readily visible, and when the money was noticed missing, all staff were requested to place their hands under an ultra violet light. The powder would fluoresce on the hands of the culprit.
Hudd’s photographic and fingerprint evidence was used in a fair number of court cases reported at the time, including the 1942 Hindley Street murders, the Port River murder case of 1944, and a triumphant forensic case from 1947 where a NSW sailor’s badly decomposed (roughly six-month-dead) body was identified purely from his fingerprints. This same article included a picture of Hudd:-
And those who think that the modern forensic study of ears is a new discipline will surely be surprised to read this from the Adelaide News in 1944:-
POLICE fingerprint expert Bruce Hudd is not surprised at a London ear specialist being able to say from a captured German newsreel that the Hitler shown there wasn’t the real Adolf. Today he showed me a book explaining that the shape of the ear doesn’t change from birth to death. Before fingerprint identification came in, the police relied chiefly on ears for identifying men. Fourteen points were set out in describing each ear, including the shape of the lobe, size, and angle to the head. I was shown 140 pictures of ears and saw for myself that not one was alike when an expert pointed out the differences. Even today both Mr. Hudd and Mr. Jimmy Durham, his fellow fingerprint expert, prefer to work on profile pictures showing an ear rather than full face pictures when seeking to identify men.
But even this story pales in relevance to this news piece from 1946, that answers many of my questions directly:-
From there we went to see Mr. Bruce Hudd, chief photographer and fingerprint expert — carefully pulling on our gloves before entering his den. Mr. Hudd said that he now had filed away about 50,000 sets of fingerprints of people who had been brought in on serious charges since 1906. Nowadays he sends a duplicate of all fingerprints to Central Bureau in Sydney, where a master set for the whole of Australia is kept. In Adelaide only one man has tried to beat the fingerprint experts by removing the skin from his fingers. That was the notorious ‘Shiner’ Ryan, who once rubbed the pattern off his fingers on the rough brick wall of his cell, in an effort to outwit expert Hudd. Mr. Hudd waited for the skin to grow again — then took ‘Shiner’s’ prints. Photography is playing a bigger and bigger part in the work of crime detection, and these developments are keeping Mr. Hudd and his staff busy, photographing the scenes of serious crimes, accidents, and copying documents. Ultra-violet light and infra-red rays, which reveal many clues invisible to the naked eye, are now used by the experts of the police photography section.
Incidentally, Hudd was also a dahlia enthusiast (according to Trove), who both grew them and photographed them, hand-tinting the finished product. Now not a lot of people know that. 🙂
Bringing this chapter to close, Hudd finally retired in 1952. He had been assisted in his career “by the following fingerprint experts: Frank Brice, James Durham, Alan Cliff, Dudley Aebi and Bill Low[e]”, which presumably included the three fingerprinting and photographic experts “who did nothing else and their skill was said to be second to none in Australia” back in 1932. On Hudd’s retirement, it was Aebi became the head of the department which he had first joined in 1934, with Bill Lowe also promoted beneath him.
[And yes, it was indeed Constable Patrick James “Jimmy” Durham, stationed in Adelaide, who on 3rd December 1948 took the Somerton Man’s fingerprints in the morgue, and who – with Mounted Constable Knight – then partially re-dressed the Somerton Man and photographed him too. (Feltus, “The Unknown Man”, p.42).]
The South Australian Police History Museum
Even though we have some great – and very specific – description above, I’d still really like to look directly at the South Australian Police photography archives. These are (I believe) held at the volunteer-run South Australian Police History Museum at Thebarton Police Barracks, Gaol Road, Adelaide.
They have placed lots of nice old photographs on its website, most notably transport themed ones here, a few outback ones here, firearms closeups, and uniforms.
However, none of these is the kind of evidential photography apparently used in the Somerton Man case. But there must – surely – be something in there that is similar in technique, that will help us read and reconstruct the precise science of the Rubaiyat ‘code’ photograph?
PS: Victoria Police museum has a vampire-killing kit in its collection, though they don’t put it on display because it doesn’t fit any of their thematic displays. Who’d be a curator, eh?
PPS: here’s something for Pete Bowes I found in “Hue & Cry”, January 2001 edition. “The Murray Pioneer October 20, 1949 DEVICE IN TREE: A parachute with a box attached was found in a gum tree on Calperum Station property, about nine miles from Renmark on Monday morning by Mr W Letton. He reported the matter to the police and Detective DO Flint and MC Brebner went out and recovered the apparatus and handed it to the local Post Office.”
PPPS: has anyone read “The Life and Times of an Unlikely Detective”, by Arthur Robert (Bob) Calvesbert?
The Australian Academy of Forensic Sciences was founded in 1967.
I wish you guys would go off air for a while, I’m trying to write a book here … plot I have enough of.
Sorry that this is not related that much to the above post (except that it’s about the Voynich manuscript), but I saw this work at Arxiv yesterday: “How the Voynich Manuscript was created” (http://arxiv.org/abs/1407.6639) and thought you might be interested in it.
Regards and keep up the good work, I really enjoy following this blog 🙂
Martin: yes, Torsten Timm’s paper. I’ve seen several drafts of it, and he’s worked hard to give something like rigorous shape to his intuitions about Voynichese. Inevitably, my opinion is that his evidence isn’t strong enough or clear enough to support the very specific reasoning placed upon it, but all the same I do like a lot of his evidence. 🙂 I’ll try to post on it before long (but I have a bit of a backlog right now).
Thanks very much for following the blog, I try to cover all the properly good stuff in ways that nobody else does. 🙂
Grigory Mairanovsky worked out how to kill people quickly and without trace that is still used. See Georgi Markov and Alexander Litvinenko.
Xplor,
I note that Grigori Mairanovsky experimented with digitoxin (closely related to digoxin) as an, in the 1940s, “untraceable” poison.
Hi, Nick1 The anti-vampire kit is just too cool! Admittedly it wouldn’t too much for a police system’s reputation, but I’m sure someone else could sell it and it’d be a big commercial hit! 🙂
Yours, Dennis
On Jimmy’s return from a cruise to Blighty in 1950, his address was 22 Colley Tce. Glenelg and later on he moved to a block of units not far off Jetty & Diagonal Rds. where he likely remained in retirement til passing in ’82 aged 92. Meanwhile son James became a noted shrink and worked both in the UK and Aust., hitching up with Nita and raising two daughters Kate & Penny along the way. He died in Sydney just two years ago also aged 92 and for more details $41 Aud. will get you his obit. As for his dad’s likely extensive diaries dating back to WW1, covering the Gallipoli landing and Possierres France where he was wounded then interned as a POW, I’d say they may well be now in AWM Canberra archives. As for his subsequent Sapol diaries, particularly ones for1948/49, who knows where they might be, unless their mixed in with the aforesaid war records. Worth looking I’d think but leave me out, those bastards cringe when they hear my name.
NP: I’ve been able to locate Jimmy Durham’s daughter in law who appears not to be so ancient and is still a doctor specialising in nuclear medicine imaging. I have also obtained her contact details ie. phone, fax and email. What do you suggest in light of what might be gained if anything, by making contact; Baring in mind that Jim jr. lost his mum aged two in ’29 and was almost certainly not raised by his dad, I have doubts that the family ever had much to do with old pop Durham of Sapol before his passing in ’82.
John Sanders: well found! What would seem to be in order is a polite email asking if anyone in the family still has Jimmy Durham’s old albums of Police photographs, because they are of great historical interest. Happy to do this, but I’m sure you can write a perfectly good email if you want to. 🙂
Nick Pelling: Elementary and done along with a birthday wish. Let’s see what gives.
John Sanders: excellent! Fingers crossed for a positive response! 🙂
Nick Pelling: What the Durham family have is an unsorted bunch of papers, which they are going to scan and forward to me in the coming week. I’m rather excited about the possibilities but realistic enough as not to expect too much in the way of SM stuff.
NP: ‘the coming week’ is drawing out towards three with no further word from my source which is troubling somewhat. I’ll give it a little longer to allow for a decent interval, then see what gives. Hope I haven’t been white anted by the scheming push.
NP: Dropped a sweetener and all’s fine. Source will tend to matters when work allows.
NP: contacted by delivery source and everthing cool. No rush time is on my side.
I’ve received the promised scanned letters, press cuttings, photos and some personal writings (includes pics) on fingerprinting secrets and case jottings by James Durham’s from a relative. A great deal of interesting evaluations though none that might assist get to the bottom of Mr. Somerton, not even in celebrated cases he was involved with eg., Monash Murder of 1938. There is a copy of his letter to Gen. Leane in 1925 asking for work as a police photographer (accepted) and a couple of well written humerous ancedotes about criminals he met with on and off the field. Also some interesting genealogy stuff including his wife Nessie lightfoot (famous ballet sister louise) and four children, two to her and two others (not mentioned) Daughter Patricia now 92 sent off much of her dad’s papers to S.A Police Historical Society many years ago so that’s that….Goode [sic] news is that I have piqued an interest in my informant who is going back into the attic to see if any stuff was overlooked and now well versed on exactly what to look for.
john sanders: excellent news! Can you please ask if I can transcribe and post some of these very interesting documents? It would seem a shame not to, if that’s OK with famille Durham.
Shouldn’t think they’d object, will certainly ask and if OK I’ll standby for the next batch and send it all through to you in one fell scoop.
john sanders: that’s brilliant, thanks! 🙂
Bruce Hudd, a trained lithographer and gazetted Police officer from 1920, was held in high regard as a forensic crime specialist until 1950.. As a mounted trooper in WW1 he wasn’t held in the same level of esteem by any stretch. Trooper Hudd was punished for lack of rifle cleanliness showed grose disrespect to a superior and disregard for punctuality, all of which cost him dearly. On the other Corporal Durham, his later long time associate in police forensics, who had been a model soldier in the war, didn’t attain such a high public profile due to Hudd’s seniority and better agility. Durham had impaired mobility as a consequence of serious war wounds for which he was designated TPI. From around 1930 onwards, following death of wife ‘Nessie’, Jim moved to Glenelg beach where he spent fifty years til his passing at age 93 in 1982. I’m of the opinion that during WW2 he may have been permanently attached to then busy Glenelg detectives mainly undertaking local assignments not involving extended travel and where he could better care for his two teens Jim and Trish. My own thinking, being mindful of the above reasonable scenario, suggests that following ‘Jimmy’ Durham’s SM related duties at the West Terrace Mortuary his services may not have been required again, later work being left to Bruce Hudd and detectives of Angas St. CIB. To support my case it is noted that the P.J. Durham inquest testimony, relates mainly to routine fingerprinting and photographing of an unidentified Glenelg AO beach body, there being no reference to involvement with the much later suitcace discovery.
…with reference to Jimmy Duham’s stated duties vis. “…mainly fingerprinting and photographing…”, in addition he said, “I also have some copies of the ‘writing’ found on the deceased”. In legalistic terms writing & printing have two different meanings which could be why he added as an afterword “I took a photo of the paper found on the deceased”, having done so to separate the pair. In light of evidence to confirm that the latter ‘photo’ also refers to Det. Brown’s Tamam Shud slip C9, could it be that afforesaid hand writing was found by Glenelg’s top Det. H. Strangway and somehow overlooked when the case went to Angas Street six weeks later.
Standing by …
Standing by…the platform getting on a train, jumping off at Redfern with a half a brain….
I agree “writing” seems to imply hand-written rather than typed – buty as ever would be cautious hedging too much on that (partly because language evolves, but more importantly specific ways people use language aren’t always correct). I guess if we tip it on its head and ask “How would you expect an analyst to (formally) describe what we call the TS slip?”
I suspect he was careful to avoid using the word “message” which leaves few obvious options aside from “writing”. So IMO it’s a thought worth scratching, but I don’t entirely expect it to go too far….
milongal: ……”…a thought worth scratching, but I don’t entirely expect it to go too far….” There you’ve hit it right on the nose. Unpopular topics ie., ‘writing’ v. ‘TS slip’ etc., are gone for all money soon as they go off the current comment board which can be no time at all if incoming posts on other subjects be more voluminous. PS: ‘entirely’ might have been a tad over optimistic on your part.
Despite advice to the contrary, it was always a given that central to my posting of Jimmy Durham’s scanned papers and pics, this would be conditional upon explicit permission of his family. This was kindly acquiessed to on undertaking that said scans would not be used for purposes other to share information for honest intellectual pursuits by decent people. Whilst such standards can usually be complied with, as a consequence of certain demands to gain full advantage by a particularly disturbing element, I must obey my own counsel and withold the offer.
John Sanders: can I interpret the reasons for withholding the generous offer you previously made to NickP were because you now judge your fellow commentators as being (1) less than honest (2) lacking in intellectual pursuits and (3) not quite decent?
Peteb: fellow competitors more’s to the point if one were to be generous and yes, the numbered criteria alluded to would indeed support the stated grounds for witholding said historical photos and papers. PS: I’d be inclined to shorten phrase structure for clauses (2) and (3).
No problems getting the marvelous O’Halloran’s Hill Keane family to share with us their mostly equestrian action photos and that includes the dispicable cretins of rogues gallery. The unique pics are part of a well presented on line collection for the benefit of anyone interested in the pomp and pagentry of precision military horsemanship, from of a time when such parades were popular in Adelaide. This particular family, headed up by an Irish Catholic immigrant Michael Joseph and ably assisted by his tireless wife Pauline (Mick died in 1907 missus in ’36) raised a bunch of wild colonial boys and colleens who learned to ride before they could crawl. Included were Frederick Thomas, who rode off in 1914 with the 3rd Light Horse, landed a Gallipoli and died in the saddle Syria 1917; and brother Theodore Michael who fought on the Somme and returned home late 1919 having stayed on to save Karensky’s whites from the Bolshevics …Anything more and I’m on tender ground it seems, though one last plug for a missing relative in T. Keane who gave his occupation as engineer and may have been involved in the big CBC building construction at 100 King William St. Adelaide. After 1934 he was not to be seen or heard from by the likes of S & Mc S. A. etc., ever again…For the pretty pics Peteb, Keane Collection Walteela..Range, should do it.
…better still for all the pomp & Circumstnce gallery go online to ‘Australian Army No. 9 Remount Depot 1913 – 1946 Friends of Glenthorne’..you’se wont regret it.
Sooner or later people will come to the realisation that Emeritus J. Cleland, in his notes, irrespective of when they were written or whether they be in his own hand, based them partly on pathologist Dwyer’s PM observations. They include rough handwritten jottings, one bein a three word notation variously read as ‘body for abbie’ ie. Dr. A. A. A. ABBIE (Berooz & Pat) and my ‘Bags for office’ that be taken from Dwyer’s opinion that SM bore signs of having been of a clerk or office type. The PM was conducted on the morning after discovery, then on the third day SM arose (as if) from the dead, then after being preped and posed in collar & tie, was printed then photographed by James Durham of Glenelg CIB. This at direction of Mr. D. AEBI who was chief of Sapol’s scientific forensics dept. and photographic expert in his own right. I’m wondering could it be that Dwyer was intending for the body to be released to Dudley AEBI which would make for a much better alternate nominee than AAAAbie. Aforesaid hardly likely to be any more qualified then Dwyer’s probable mentor and RAH colleague than old blood & guts emeratus professor cum multi medical specialist Dr. John Burton Cleland.
…theres your AAAA’s again Peteb, once too often to be coincidence. You reckon Cleland had anything to do with it or is FB plant Pat o rato trying to set you up?