Various Somerton Man bloggers and commenters seem to have got a bit feverish about “Clinic Distributors”, some even suggesting that it might be a euphemism for a clinic dealing with sexually transmitted diseases.

Let’s take a closer look at the constellation of ads placed in the Adelaide Advertiser by the Thomsons between 1947 and 1949 to see if we can reduce the temperature and get a bit more clarity…

Trove Adverts

Trove holds plenty of small ads placed by Prosper Thomson. The one from 1st March 1947 mentions “Clinic Distributors”, and dates to a specific period when he was looking to buy a sedan to start an out-of-town taxi business:-

MORRIS 10 h.p. saloon. Series M. 1940. same cars now selling as 1947 models for £635. This car has just been rebored, crankshaft ground, all bearings renewed, brakes relined. king pins replaced, and is definitely equal to new car and represents rare opportunity to acquire most popular sedan. Doing approx. 40 m.p. gal of petrol. We require large sedan or coupe, like Chev., Dodge or similar, suitable country traveller, on exchange basis. NSPR of Morris £298. genuine NSPR deal. See Mr. Thomson. Clinic Distributors. 200 Hindley st, business hours.

Though it has to be said that Thomson also placed a separate ad for this kind of car under his middle name, linked to GPO Box 1009J, e.g. 26th March 1947:-

WANTED urgently, tourer or roadster, by ex-serviceman, commencing business, utility will do, cash £75 to £150. Will inspect. McTaggart, Box 1009J. G.P.O.

Anyway, if we trace 200 Hindley Street forward to early 1949, we find other items for sales, e.g. 5th April 1949 and 6th April 1949:-

PAIR of binoculars. 200 Hindley st, City between 9 a.m.-5-3O p.m.

However, what seems to be the most likely explanation for all this is that 200 Hindley Street also appeared in a 3rd January 1948 job ad for Oilene Suprema Pty Ltd (a Melbourne hairdressing supply company that sold machines and supplies for steam perms etc).

LADIES’ Hairdressing Supply House requires Junior shorthand-typiste; also boy for store; 5-day week. Apply 9-10 Monday, 5th. Oilene Supreema, 200 Hindley st.

Hence my guess is that this was the city address of a hairdressing distribution company called Clinic Distributors (i.e. selling to ‘hairdressing clinics’), and that Thomson had some connection with the people working there.

Might it be that George Thomson and/or Jessica (soon-to-be) Thomson worked for Clinic Distributors at 200 Hindley Street around this time, and so used the company’s address for their small ads? It might be possible to check this: something to think about, anyway.

Other Adverts

Here’s another small-ad sale from 13th May 1948, this time with an evening telephone number L8409:-

ENGLISH cloth dress suit, as new. fit 36 in. chest. Inspect 200 Hindley St. 10-5. evening ring L8409.

Another small ad from 17th June 1950 uses the same phone number:-

AUSTIN Panel van, 1940, good order, £275. or near offer. Inspect week end, 4 Marlborough street, Henley Beach. L8409.

…and with the same address…

A.J.S. 1935 2 1/4 h.p, good condition. £35. Specialty Motor Cycle Repairs. 4 Marlborough St.. St. Peters, F5640

…and with the same address and number on 24th January 1948, but in the name of ‘Spicer’…

SPORTS racer, 2-seat Bugatti-Nash for sale; NSPR £270; accept £200. Ring. F5640. Spicer. 4 Marlborough st, St. Peters. Inspect this morn.

I’m don’t know whether or not this strand is connected to the Thomsons (I suspect it isn’t), but I thought I’d mention it anyway, having followed the trail so far. Perhaps a Cipher Mysteries reader will know the answer, they usually do. 🙂

The Broken Hill Connection

Interestingly, thanks to the diligent work of researcher Barry Traish going through Trove small ads, we can place George Thomson and his sedan taxi in Broken Hill in the second half of September 1948, vis-à-vis this ad in The Advertiser Wednesday 15th September 1948:-

NEW sedan leaving for Broken Hill Sunday, 3 seats, n/c. Phone X3239

Thomson then seems to have sold (or at least tried to sell) his sedan when he got back from Broken Hill (25th September 1948):-

VAUXHALL 12-h.p. sedan, new, 1948 model, mileage, 1,200. equipped radio and seat covers, exch. for sedan suitable for taxi, 1940 or later, G.M. or Chrysler product preferred. This is a genuine deal, based on new price both ways. No dealers, all genuine replies considered. Write, call or phone Thomson. 90a Moseley st., Glenelg. Phone X3239.

However, Thomson was not licensed to work as a taxi within the town, because he was also fined around this time for having done so (back in August 1948):-

Civil Sittings
BEFORE MR. L. E. CLARKE, SM:—
Drivers Charged.—Carrying passengers for hire in the city on August 26. while not being licensed by the City Council, cost Prosper McTaggart Thomson, of Moseley street. Glenelg. £2, with £1 19/ costs.
Mr. S. J. Jacobs for defendant.

…all of which surely explains why his ads specify “country trips, day tours, weddings &c”.

Prosper’s Rifle Advert

I’ll just paste this here for completeness: The Advertiser Saturday 18th June 1949

WANTED TO BUY
RIFLE, automatic Winchester, model 63 or similar, for cash. Thomson 90A Moseley st., Glenelg. X3239

Enough said for now! 🙂

36 thoughts on “Adelaide Small Ad Analysis…

  1. He knew they were coming for him, it’s an open and shut case.

  2. Andrew Plumer on May 26, 2015 at 8:01 am said:

    Noting the Henley Beach address which ay be an error as the others reference College Park. It may be nothing but SM was found to have an unused train ticket for Henley Beach on his person when he was found.

    For an unknown reason on the day before his death he travelled to Glenelg on a bus and did not use his train ticket to henley. Did George Thomson have a residence in Henley Beach?

  3. milongal on January 16, 2018 at 11:07 pm said:

    Marlborough St Henley Beach is about a car and has a number linked to another Prosper proeprty….I’d say that ones connected.
    Marlborough St St Peters is the other side of town (which is consistent with a different phone number) – and the car seems a bit more upmarket than what Prosper would have dealt with (again, consistent with that side of town).

    the Sands and McDougall directories show a P. Bethge at 4 Marlborough St from (1946 through 1950 (possibly earlier) and in 1951 still show the same name, but with Nelson C. E. mngr. added there as well.

    NB: It looks like the street numbering in HEnley has changed significantly since then with Marlborough St being numbered in the opposite direction (I’m guessing number 4 is today’s number 150), and starts from todays 341 Esplanade rather than 503 in S&M).
    NB2: That’s sort of my old stomping ground – I went to primary school at Star of the Sea (which these days reaches Marlborough Tce, but from memory in my time some, but not all, of those blocks still had houses on them…).

  4. Milongal: thanks very much for that, the street numbering had me confused before now. 🙂

  5. milongal on May 16, 2018 at 10:48 pm said:

    Regarding L8409…..and ads for lost Jewelery:
    11/12/1950 EARRING, plain silver band. Outer Harbor wharf or train. Sat. Ring L8409. after 6.30 p.m.
    13/12/1950 LOST, gold cross and chain. Dec. 9. Ph. L8409, after 6.30 p.m
    (the number is very blurred on this second one, so 8409 might be wrong)

    On it does seem odd that 2 items of jewelry are lost on the same day and advertised for people with apparently identical numbers who can only be contacted after 6:30…
    At the same time I suppose there’s some obvious differences….the first ad doesn’t start ‘LOST’, uses Ring vs Ph and specifies a location…

    I wonder if there’s some sort of racket to go fishing for lost property (some that you may have seen someone find (hence a more specific location) and sometimes just in the hope that a relatively vague description comes up with something (gold watch, anyone?).

  6. I once lost my Seiko Sportmatic in a rather interesting location; didn’t dare go back for it or advertise and I’m absolutely certain it’s still lying in the general vicinity of where the band broke. That was near forty years ago and one of these days I’ll go back under cover of darkness with a metal detector to retrieve it.

  7. I think we are all agreed that Prosper’s Tudor watch ad from 12/12/48 was a scam to account for his illegal possession, or some sort of coded message to a confidant. The fact that he gave his address in addition to his phone number could indeed be significant and so it’s possible that Tudor was the intended recipient. That name comes to mind as being a fairly common first or surname in Rumania and quite a number of displaced folk of that nationality were being resettled in Adelaide at the relevent time. It is also noted with interest that the next ad down, but one refers to a black & white pup found at Somerton which could be a small coincidence. Then again it might at a stretch, be advising Mr. Tudor that his papers (B &W) are ready for collection at the Moseley St. address; after all is it likely that some good Samaritan is going to fork out half a crown for the sake of a stray mongrel dog.

  8. While on the subject; what about Prosper’s ad for the model 63 Winchester 22 rifle. That little gem which came to life in the thirties and made in small quantities only through the mid fifties, is most unlikely to have been common in Australia at any time. I’ve been a gun buff since about that time and I am yet to see one, so where did old Prosper come up with the desire to acquire a 63. I’d say that he got the idea from ‘Shooter’s ‘Bible’ a very popular annual American publication and took the 63 rifle designation for the desired code number which he was then able to transmit discretely to his contact through the Adelaide ads. I’d think that more capable researchers than I, should be able to finds scores more similar messages in old Prospers reperoire.

  9. Rosario Barbaro, Tailor of 200 Hindley Street Adelaide bn. 3/1/10 and who arrived from Italy on 10/4/39 , settled initially in Hanwood (Griffith) before moving to Adelaide and getting interned as an enemy alien in 1940. After the war he appears to have headed up the family extortion business, headed up by his legendary relative Antonio Barbaro, the enforcer of Melbourne. It seems that Rosario obtained obtained citizenship in ’47 and after making at least one return trip to the Continent, it seems he may have left Australia permanentl in 1959 to resettle in his birth town Plati, Reggio Calabria. Mr. Barbaro may connect with Teresa Cordera of Oxford St. Paddington NSW whose relatives were sugar cane farmers in North Queensland. Not merely due to them appearing on the same citizenship list, but because she is known to have links with at least one of a pair of Continental stage performers that I’m pursuing, whom I know to have then settled in Adelaide, after travelling with Wirth’s Circus and Tivoli Circuit throughout the war years.

  10. milongal on July 12, 2018 at 9:24 pm said:

    Call me slow, are you suggesting Prosper might’ve been bringing in illegals – fudging docs and the like? Sort of might raise some interesting questions in the Tibor direction….

  11. john sanders on July 13, 2018 at 7:21 am said:

    It’s more likely that Prosper Rosie Barbaro the tailor had other business as well, but yes this migration racket and paperwork switcharoo would have been a hot line for extortion aimed at ligitimate new naturalised former displaced people who were not applying for Aussie passports any time soon. My research suggests otherwise however, as many former refugees appeared to be going back to their war ravaged places of origin in droves; or at least we have folks with their accepted identities making return trips with valid Australian travel documents in their names. Of course SM had no identifying paperwork and from what we are led to believe, neither did Tibor Kaldor who we know had recently obtained some papers that would have been worth a pretty penny to a prospective migrant from Austria say. Also looks like Jessie seems Keane to be making her come back along with tired old Danny from ‘on the busses’ if I’m not mistaken, so believe it or not, things seem to be turning full circle. NB. Rosario Barbaro had twenty pairs of new mens trousers in his kit, when arrested on 1940; I wonder if perhaps he might just have been doing a contract for Stamina or Elasta-strap.

  12. Only ten pairs of unfinished ‘customers’ trousers and four unfinished ‘made to measure suits along with a Singer sewing machine and a pushbike, plus a single mattress etc collected from Rosario’s Hanwood billet. Many of the Barbaro ‘made men’ clan were known to have visited with their Sicillian cousins ‘Stateside’ to learn their trade craft so to speak, though whether our man did so, or whether he ever learnt the art of feather stitching, we’re not to know. Surpisingly he only spent three months in actual custody during ’40/’41 and whence from there, to the time of his stated residency at 200 Hindley St. Adelaide in ’47 nothing is known. I note that the above address was not the only one in that near vicinity (175 & 196) used for Italian alien citizenship applications during the late forties, so we might therefore speculate as them, perhaps being used as fronts for all sorts of ‘mixed business’ including ‘grand theft auto and fencing’ for instance.

  13. Prosper was said to have been under the wing of an older man in his unsuccessful WA auto paper shuffle stunt in WA ’38, a few years before the WW2 Prices Commission got wind of the intrastate trafficing of cars. George Marshall’s fatally flawed efforts to curtail the booming business with similar results it might seem to suggest organized crime syndicate involvement. Prosper may well have been recruited in Melbourne by Tony Barbaro‘s Italian enforcers who were certainly king pins (still are) of the auto re-birthing business, along with kidnapping, extortion and the odd hit as required. The two related families from Adelaide headed by Rosario and Frank with wives Maria (2) were well settled by war’s end living closeby and probably in controll of local linked business, with the tailor shop in Hindley St. as a handy cover. The only family member who appears to have made a blunder (in those days) was Frank‘s boy Sam who apparently did six months for some stunt he got up to with the army around ’45. We might also consider that one of Prosper’s brothers Gaston? was mentioned as being in with major crime figures in Sydney after the war, so the connections are certainly in some abundance if we’re looking for them.

  14. A little tenuous something that might be condidered. Paul Bethge of 4 Marlborough Street Henley Beach, was a Tailor, like Mr. Barbaro of 200 Hindley St. A German immigrant of some long standing, his manager C.E. Nelson may have been identical to a man of those initials from Annandale/Fivedock, an inner Sydney suburb. The well known criminal boss Abe Saffron (Mr. Sin to his friends), was born in Fivedock and worked in his Jewish father’s Annandale haberdashery business before the war. Abe was supposed to have had criminal associations with Prosper‘s brother Gaston?, though that information has not been tested as far as I am aware.

  15. Come to think of it, George Marshall’s lass Gwen Graham seems to have been to Perth, which is where she met him years before their deaths in Sydney. I don’t recall seeing much ado concerning her work background and we should have considered the possibility of her being an old pal of Prosper who was over that way himself in ’38. Perhaps she and Queenie Thomson had worked as bait layers for the Calabrian mobsters who were well entrenced in W.A society from the twenties. Both having been connected with hair salons, later tieing up with George the G’Man, then two shysters like Hellmut Hendon and Prosper himself, might leave some obvious unanswered questions.

  16. milongal on July 15, 2018 at 10:14 pm said:

    200 Hindley looks a small shop (S&M lists it as 198a-200) – but seems to have had a lot going on (based on the ads above and Barbaro (although Barbaro’s presence there explains one of the ads NP linked above for a suit))…but I’m wondering whether we’ve assumed a bit much originally.
    Not sure how much the University has changed the geography there, but assuming roughly today’s numbering (which is a reasonable supposition since the Pub is there, which S&M lists as 204,206,208) that was a very crowded block, fitting in 192-202 from Register Place to the pub (although there was an ‘Auto Wrecking Co on the other side of Register Pl, which is of mild interest), but that block has a certain Italian flavour, in 1946:
    192 Bailetti, G., cycle repairer
    194 Castellini, T., btmkr
    198 Basso, Crestiano
    198a-200 Serradura, B., store
    202 Conti, —
    204 206. 208 Royal Oak Hotel McCoy, M., prop

    and in 1948:
    192-194 Bailetti, G., cycle repr
    198 Basso. Crestiano
    198a-200 Caon, Mrs. L.
    202 Conti, A.. bt rpr
    204 206, 208 Royal Oak Hotel McCoy, M., prop

    (I suspect Bailetti – who was already expanding then, by the look of it is (or is related to) the Adelaide brand ‘Bailetti Sports Store’ – which has its roots in Hindley St)

    a few years later, 202 disappears, and a ‘Conti R – Kntd wear’ lists at 200 (along with ‘Caon D plstr’) – but at the very least it suggests some numbering confusion).

    All of this links 200 Hindley and 4 Marlborough (and Bethge being a tailor all the more so), but the only ad that definitely links Prosper to it is at 200 Hindley – I think we may have leapt a bit far because Marlborough St was a car ad, but it’s possible that it’s not Prosper at all….

    2c

  17. milongal on July 15, 2018 at 10:16 pm said:

    (oh, and by 1950 Barbaro is listed in Melbourne St, North Adelaide – this seems to be where he was in 52/53 as bankruptcy issues took hold)

  18. milongal on July 16, 2018 at 12:08 am said:

    Looking through some Trove adverts, there’s a Thomson who advertises cars from 7 Main St Henely Beach (the wording sounds very Prosper). 7 Main St appears to be occupied by a Miss L Ward.
    There’s also ads (for a Fridges, rather than cars) to 32 Wright St Croydon. These don’t particularly sounds Prosepr-y, however this address is occupied by an A.G Thomson. Next door to this address (at no 30) there’s an R.J.S Ward. how’s that for a coinkiy dink?

  19. john sanders on July 16, 2018 at 8:22 am said:

    Only thing that stands out in the Hindley Street set-up is that Demetrio Caon was employed as a stone mason for the Gambino family’s terrazzo ornamental stone business, then he left Adelaide in May, 48 to work in Mt. Gambier plant. Wonder whether this Gambino family had an employee retirement plan like their relatives in The Apple. NB: A lieutenant Demetrio Caon of the Italian army was captured in Libya and was interned as a full blown POW. The property 192-194 was purchased outright by Mario Bailetti for his parents and it seems that the family were quite up front about their bicycle venture. They bought the place which comprised two shops and eight rooms for sixteen hundred quid from a government surveyor of Italian background, with intent to lease the rooms to migrant families; so that might explain some things. The old street front extended buildings to 200 at the corner with Register Place still stands staunch, appearing dark & sinister like the old Rue Morgue, sans Orangutang.

  20. Misca: Hicup, sorry about that. I recall sometime back, you asked me specifically about Boga Lake, of which I was familar but knew nothing of your interest at the time. Although you gave no information, I did my best to come up with something and I’ve only recently hit on the name Ivan Rusak who left Barmera to settle there in the mid forties I guess. Anyhow welcome back and If you chance to wander over this way, it would be a welcome relief from the tedium, I sincerely hope.

  21. Milongal: It seems that neither Tibor or his possible slab mate Wolff Cohen ever collected their gold cards (Citizenship Certs) going by the Aust. Archival records, whereas my two other players of simiar origin who were nationalised the previous year did so and there’s record of their return to Australia years later whatsmore. My suspicion is that both were possibly deceased by that time. There is proof on file of their own Citizenship Certificates, having been collected by a person, not of their ethnic background and furthermore, quite possibly having been connected with the Italian mob. In saying all that, I’ll concede that both Tibor and Wolff were both dead (1/12 & 14/12/48) within weeks of their approval dates and the Immigration Department may have withdrawn the grant along proceedural lines accordingly. This is still a working case scenario and I expect to have some confirmation quite soon.

  22. Prosper had an older brother Adrian Ernest; perhaps S & M got it wrong with the A. G. Come to think of it, he was the only one in the family that never surfaced after his army stint in WW2.

  23. milongal on July 16, 2018 at 11:03 pm said:

    @JS (if you care) I think bailettisports dot com dot au is somehow descended from the Bike shop (although the only Bailetti I could pull up in that regard was Mario – who sounded like he would have been a generation or two later).

    On another irrelevant fact, Hindley St is most often associated with our mate Con – and at one stage almost every building at the city (King William St) end bore his blue and white signs. Of course, that’s more likely to have been post ’70s so it means little for us here.

  24. My infrequent ventures into Hindley St. in the mid sixties were, I’m ashamed to say, not primarily for the picture postcard scenery. It had a bit of a cosmopolitan, though somewhat sinister feeling about it, with it’s fish’n chip cafe’s, stale oil smells and the old fashioned ‘chow’ restaurants with their ancient lop sided ‘Chinese & Australian cuisine’ signs hang down here and there along the way. I can’t recall seeing too many foot patrolls down there and can just imagine what lurks and perks the local denizens might have been up to down further, say around Fenn Place of an evening, in 1948.

  25. If Len Brown had been given his marching orders following the inquest as is claimed, it may have been due to his becoming a little too familiar with a certain piece of primary evidence, namely the book and it’s connection to a certain witness, as yet uninterviewed. For reasons undisclosed, the rubayyat may have been in police hands since January and been kept from the press hounds as part of an overall strategy. The newly carded detective, had perhaps well meaningly recorded the contact details of the informant Sister J. Thomson on the back cover, albeit in a very small penciled hand which had stubbornly resisted attempts to erase it with the Keane suitcase rubber. So of course Len Brown would then cheerfully have opted for a spell on matters of a less discreet nature as opposed to a uniformed reassignment. As a follow up to this scenario, a reliable team in the form of Dets.Canney and Sleane might thus be tasked to visit with Jess Thompson (sic) right off the cuff, there being no longer need to confirm X3236 subscriber details with the PMG exchange people, thanks to Browny.

  26. X3632 and Rubaiyat incorrectly spelt, are the sort of deliberate errors that arise from old habits; usually about two to three per foolscap page of typing was the norm and always helpfully initialled by the perp.

  27. John sanders on August 12, 2018 at 7:13 am said:

    Stan Sleane had been a motorcycle patrolman prior to his induction into the plainclothes division and the big time. Years later he worked the Beaumont case and headed up the Adelaide Oval abductions before apparently going rogue. Canney was with Motor Dealers Squad as a junior working ‘D’ and if he had known Jessie when he confronted her as is suggested, well certain dealings with her man Prosper may have helped get her acquainted. Of course Errol made his name with the Homicide Squad and such celebrated cases as the Del Poza murder, offsiding the immortal Ray Kelly, one of Sydney’s finest (according to Byron). He ended up his interesting career as the first appointed OIC U.N. Multi Nation Peace Keeping Force in Cyprus; his distinction being that he had served at varying times in four separate Police agencies.

  28. In answer to a point of order, re Union St. Tempe and the assertion made that a now apparently defunct Tom Keane signatory was born within its parent council division of Marrickville, my contrary contention stands in need of any retraction. I’m sure that I must have explained the boundary line east which was made at the onset of county divisions, by taking the original Tempe area east of the Illawarra main railway including the childishly ( I’ll own) disputed Union Street and making it possibly part of Sydenham or Petersham Council’s responsibility. In any case Marrickville as a district in its own right didn’t come about as early as has been claimed. It wasn’t gazetted until around 1863, so the alleged research team tasked to investigate said disputed claims by our friends on the Tamam Shud B.S. team, might be invited to look more closely at their local survey charts. Just one last little piece of information perhaps overlooked, which indeed could be a face saver of sorts; there certainly is an another Union Street that once would almost certainly have come under Marrickville Shire’s jurisdiction, that being of course the one in Dulwhich Hill just off Old Canterbury Road; albeit that the Keane in question did use Tempe as his birth town and not mucking Whatsitville. Anyhow I’ll not press the point, because it is becoming rather tedious and likely a mute point. The thread, if I recall correctly, had to do with your Keane and the Pioneer Flxible bus connection to Adelaide which only had it’s maiden test run in March of 1949, four long months after SM’s sad demise.. PS. Any new leads on the SM’s promised unravelling new developments re Liz Stainforth’s spy link through her Tibor to the two metre tall Russian with the titanium chompers Pavel Fedupsimov (sic). NB: The ‘downright misleading’ accusation escapes me for the moment, though it possibly refers not to a person but the BS site generally; my insincere apologies nevertheless, to any such unidentified individual.

  29. Pete: As might readily be deduced, I’m merely marking time; and whatsmore old news is decidedly in advance of no news at all.

  30. And why should a fellow go all the way to Leichhardt Library to source info on a distant locality. Perhaps they have another Gary over Marrickville way, better still Tempe, where Walter Thomas Keane was born; surely they’d have a library of some description and a Gary too, wouldn’t you say Flash? Nah, I’m not into giving an old dog a bad name; I’ll just have to accept the win, albeit for what it’s worth, with humility and good grace as is my wont.

  31. I recall telling folks back aways, about the ads being suggestive of how the petty criminal’s mind might work to account for their possession of stolen property ie. a gold Tudor watch and a Winchester 63 auto rifle etc., should they be called upon to do so. We can also take this one much more serious step further, with regard to the maisonette for rent ad at 90A Moseley after 2nd December ?. It seems to me in this case, that the cover related to the sudden departure of a tenant just a day or two earlier, having given no notice so as to allow for earlier reletting. In this case the ad was never intended to be more than a cover for SM’s absence should it be noted in the neighbourhood. The leasee in chief, Sister J. Thomson, it seems, also vacated about that time, moving up town a bit to Partridge Street; not feeling comfortable hanging around the scene of a recent in house asphyxiation apparently. So Flash I’ll say it once then it’s done, ain’t no spies old; least ways not with regards the innocent deceptive Prosper adds..Think you may find that your real estate agent chap was Stephen Barnabas Jeffrey bn. 1909 who worked for PMG in Overseas Telecommunications during the war.

  32. milongal on September 4, 2018 at 9:19 pm said:

    John R S Jeffrey is the best I could come up with. And it weren’t the first watch he lost….lost one in 1947 too somewhere between Goodwood and Glenelg, from memory….

  33. Flash: I’d agree with the structured approach, had we been looking for a wayward orange. The ad for a presumed lost/stolen watch on the other hand, ticks all the boxes necessary to satisfy any doubts re post date possession therof ie. A brief description, including type along with its nearly new state, a surname, residential address and phone number. Additionally it mentions the offer of a cash reward and very prudently does not specify precisely where the gold Tudor was lost or its model….I would predict confidently that the information provided was more likely to have been a means of establishing legal title to said watch as opposed to being secret instructions for an errant clockwork orange. NB: We may assume that the ad was inserted by Prosper and not Jess.

  34. Flash: Forgive me, I thought I might have covered Tibor‘s referee K.J.Widmer in an earlier post, seems not. Yes he was posted missing in ’42 in Dutch Indonesia, subsequently confirmed as being captured by the japs. There appears to have been some mix up with his relative who was serving in the same theatre and escaped capture. His Nok Annie Gallagher (interesting file) was in touch with the AIF during Ken’s ensuing four year captive period until his release in ‘46. Should you be needing further on this or other aspects of the case, I’m now free to assist and happy to do so.

  35. john sanders on July 20, 2020 at 1:18 pm said:

    Over quite a number of years, way before and since Nick’s Adelaide Small Ad Analysis header for Prosper’s well documented probable involvement with shady car deals coming to light, enraptured so-called ‘Grand Theft Auto devotees had been all over the shop endeavouring to hook him up to various high rollers in the syndicated organised crime picture without much to show for their combined efforts. It had been assumed from his first fall from grace in Perth as far back as 1938, when he was prosecuted for falsifying Victorian vehicle registration papers that he’d been under the wing of someone high up in the game.

    Some time back on another SM dedicated site, I was finally able to reveal who that identity was in no uncertain terms, he being an international criminal, working for many years with his band of rogue brothers in an Australasia wide flim flam scam venture. This mainly involved door to door sales and related intimidatory debt collection rorts for which he was eventually named and shamed by a long Federal Commission of Inquiry in the United States ending in 1947. Only a single case was ever prosecuted in Adelaide in 1938 in which, whilst the ruling was rather scathing, resulted only in a mere slap on the wrist for the cuprits, this type of institionalised crime not thought to be of any wide spread prevailance in the local domain at the time.

    When I personally notified the potential importance of key players Harley Burch with his brothers Elma and Leland, operating under the false flag of Empire Art and it’s like subsidiary Universal Debt Collections, I was keen to point out the the link to good old Prosper, that being of Harley’s presence as best man and witness at his 1936 marriage to Queenie Willder. At that particular time old hands like ‘the dud 74’ and the Tomsby blog thief himself, were really playing up all the various tricky angles connected with vehicle break-ins, utilisation of specialised tools for the purpose to be found only in the Keane suitcase and of course resultant theft of desired vehicles for on selling.

    The net outcome of my sharing of information; not rejection which might have been anticipated from such types, not even a wall of embarrased silence in that they hadn’t managed to pull off such a coupe themselves, no none if that which would also have been understandable, perhaps due to characteristic ineptness, but instead a jointly orchestrated tirade of abuse and persistent attack on my personal deficiencies etc. False claims were followed on social networks, that I whilst on active service, I was a soldier who deserted his post, presumably in the field of combat. Unfortunately this was later passed on to my military pension source and resulted in a relatively short delay in payments, pending inquiry into the validity of claims made against me. In a final twist my entitlement to a recent government incentive exgratia payment was rejected on grounds that only came to light upon closer departmental scrutiny of my ellgabilty. I more than likely deserved what I was served and I did manage a few proportionately low blows of my own, but only in retaliation of course.

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