Towards the end of last year, I went through a period where I tried to finesse different ways of raking through the Australian archives to pursue the Melbourne nitkeeper research thread in the Somerton Man cold case. (Which arose because two Melbourne baccarat players came forward in early 1949 to say that they thought the man had worked as a nitkeeper at a Lonsdale Street baccarat school for about ten weeks around 1945 or so.)
Despite meticulously stepping through story after story in Trove to reconstruct what I could of the Melbourne baccarat school timeline, all I could come up with was the Romanian name “Balutz” that appeared in a single article. And when I received a nice reply from the Public Records Office Victoria helpfully suggesting I look up the (admittedly not entirely dissimilar) Greek surname Balutis, I then followed that lead as far as I could, all the way to Triantafillos Balutis and Stelios Balutis.
The pair (presumably brothers or cousins?) had arrived in Melbourne on 16 Feb 1923, both travelling in 3rd class on the RMS Ormonde: but I could find no details of what ultimately became of Triantafillos Balutis. He had lived for eight years in America (always a good box to tick for Somerton Man candidates, and the juicier the Juicy Fruit the better); had lived largely invisibly since 1930; had worked within a horse’s sneeze of the main Lonsdale Street baccarat school (which, let’s not forget, was run by the Greek Christos Paizes); and yet by around 1948 had completely disappeared from sight. No wife, no family, no funeral, no nothing.
In short, Triantafillos Balutis seemed pretty much a perfect candidate for having been the Somerton Man, if (and I know it’s very much an ‘if’) the Somerton Man had been the Melbourne nitkeeper the two gamblers claimed he was. But I was short of the last pieces of evidence that would confirm or deny it. What I needed was a cunning Aussie insider, a well-disposed researcher who would go to the Melbourne archives and ferret out the last pieces of the puzzle.
And that is indeed what happened next…
A Surreal Day Out At Shiel Street
The modern building at 99 Shiel Street, North Melbourne is shared by both the National Archives of Australia and the Victorian State Archives. According to my generous (but doggedly anonymous) Melbourne mole (I’ve lightly edited their notes):
The modern bureaucracy makes visiting here quite surreal. I’ll explain why in case you have reason to go to Shiel Street in future.
The first thing to note is that there is a single reading room, and along one side of it there runs a single long L-shaped desk.
On the shorter side of the ‘L’ is a very nice librarian who hands over the National Archives Files. As far as possible from her, at the very top of the long side of that ‘L’ is the very nice librarian who hands over files from the Victorian State Archives.
Now, if it happens that you speak first to the NAA librarian, he or she will tell you that there is no public digital scanning facility: in fact, only the librarians are allowed to do that, and they will charge you per scan. Otherwise you can make ordinary photocopies at about three times you’d pay elsewhere… or you can bring a camera, or use your camera-phone.
However, if you happen to speak, instead, to the very nice Victorian Archives librarian at the other end of that long desk, you will be told that there’s no charge for anything. Not only that, but they have a dedicated side room (complete with professional-looking camera) where you are free to make hi-res digital scans if you prefer. All for no charge whatsoever. “All you need to bring is a USB stick” they will tell you over the phone.
And, oddly, neither of the nice librarians is wrong.
It seems that the commonwealth (=Federal) government won’t agree to let its records be snapped using Victorian government equipment, so if you turn up with just a USB stick for NAA docs, you’ll be out of luck.
Luckily I had both a usb and a phone… which is why I’m sending through a neat pdf of the (Victorian Archive) probate material and a whole lot of poorly-lit camera snaps of the really interesting NAA material.
Needless to say, I’m extremely grateful for the kindness this anonymous researcher hero showed.
Stelios Balutis
We can now say a little more about what happened to Stelios Balutis. In his July 1963 will, the (obviously misspelled) “Stelois Balutes” of 581 King Street West Melbourne did:
“[…] Give devise and bequeath all my Estate both real and personal unto my Trustees Upon Trust […] for my granddaughter ELEONORA ASSIKIS of Sinikismos Evangelistries Ano Skalakia Thessaloniki Greece if she attains the age of Twentyone years and if living at my death but she shall predecease me then Upon Trust for my grandson NIKOLAS ASSIKIS of the same address if he attains the age of Twentyone years and if living at my death.”
His estate amounted to $1381.15: and the notice of probate appeared in the 02 Sep 1977 edition of the Melbourne Age. The only thing I rather liked was the colour of the probate’s duty stamps (in the NAA scan):
The Victorian Archives had more about Stelios Balutis. I’ll spare you his fingerprints, but there was a perfectly nice photo of him from his 1948 passport (which I contrast-enhanced slightly for clarity):
All in all, nothing remarkable, then; but even so, more than enough to close our (admittedly small) chapter on Stelios Balutis.
Triantafillos Balutis
Because I had previously been able to access Triantafillos Balutis’ application for Australian naturalization via the NAA’s website (my attempts to do this were mainly hindered by the 20+ different spelling combinations of his first and last names), our Melbourne mole was able to find only a single page of additional information in the archives.
Luckily (or possibly unluckily, depending on your Somerton Man point of view), this was the most important page of all, because it revealed what ultimately became of him. This was from the Criminal Investigation Board, whose (small) file relating to Triantafillos Balutis’s naturalization was included separately in the NAA records.
At the end, the file noted: “Triantafillos BALUTIS appears on Passport List No. 2857 of 15/9/1949 Proceeding to Greece. CIB.”
Ships leaving Melbourne for Europe on the 15th September 1949 were (according to Trove) the Devon for London and the Port Vindex for Liverpool, or (on the 16th) the Dundalk Bay for Adelaide and Naples.
By far the most interesting one of these was the Dundalk Bay, which had just arrived from Naples accompanied by the Nelly, the two ships carrying more than a thousand migrants each from all over Europe.
The Australian archives contain nominal rolls (all nicely digitized and cross-referenced) listing all the incoming migrants for the Dundalk Bay and Nelly (in fact, these lists appear several times over). But as far as I can see, there is no sign of nominal rolls for passengers travelling in the opposite direction: presumably because nobody in their right mind would want to be going back to Europe in September 1949.
As a result, I wasn’t able to dig up anything as useful as a nominal roll for any of the three ships listed as leaving on the 15th/16th September 1949, to fully confirm the (already extremely likely) story that Triantafillos Balutis left Melbourne for Europe then.
Perhaps someone with better m4d archival sk1llz than me will be able to dig this up. But to be fair, there’s probably little point: this research strand seems to have also reached the end of its life. We’re done here, basically.
So… Back To Lonsdale Street, Then?
I’ve been thinking about this whole thing for a couple of months now, in a kind of methodological post mortem. And I think the way it all rolled out revealed weaknesses in the way I was approaching archival research. In essence, I jumped at the chance to pursue what (superficially) seemed like a substantial lead, because it seemed likely that I would be able to follow a research lead on a single person of interest right to the end line (which is indeed what happened).
Sure, this was a plausible (if slightly opportunistic / optimistic) plan, but at the same time it didn’t really amount to anything like a systematic, goal-directed attack on the archives. And in fact this was what was missing.
So, in retrospect what I should have done was try to devise ways to open up the Australian archives in respect of the Lonsdale Street baccarat schools, and particularly the Victorian police records. We know (thanks to the PROV) that there was nothing Balutz-related in the Victorian Police Gazette for 1944/1945/1946: but Balutz should only ever have been a helpful secondary angle to prise open the archival lid.
Because Christos Paizes was the big fish in the story, I now think it was Paizes’ Melbourne history that needed bringing into the light in a far more systematic way, rather than guessing and hoping.
Christos Paizes and his Henchmen…
The NAA records say that Christos Paizes was born on 5th February 1897 in Ithaca, Kionion, Greece: and that he arrived in Australia on 4th January 1914. His naturalization was in 13th August 1937, at which time his address was (the familiar-sounding address) 269-271 Lonsdale-street, Melbourne.
According to the sensational (but probably not entirely historically reliable) book “Gangland Melbourne“, Paizes (also known as ‘Harry Carillo’) allegedly had Freddie ‘The Frog’ Harrison and Norman Bradshaw ‘working’ for him. All the same, Harrison was mentioned quite openly here as having worked for Solomon’s baccarat school, so I’m not yet convinced that Gangland Melbourne completely nailed that one:
Police witnesses alleged Harrison was the constant companion of thieves, that as doorkeeper of a baccarat school in Elizabeth-street, city, he had many times given warning of the approach of police, and, that he had kept a supply of bullets in his home. Harrison said he was employed by the proprietor, Mr. Solomon, as doorman of the Rendezvous Bridge Club, until May 20. From a weekly wage of £5 he paid £3 board to his aunt, with whom he and his wife and child had been living for twelve months. He had nothing to do with the conduct of the bridge club.
He was also mentioned quite openly in this news story on Trove:
Described by detectives as former doorkeeper for a baccarat school mentioned in connection with an Elizabeth Street shooting on May 22, Frederick William Harrison, 26, of Peel Street, Windsor, laborer, successfully appealed to Judge Mitchell in General Sessions today against a three months’ gaol sentence for vagrancy.
This was the baccarat school in Fink’s Building, according to this report.
Even though Harrison was not convicted of the Elizabeth Street shooting, George Henry Newman (45) was, and in October 1947 went to jail for two years. There’s a picture of Newman in an article in the Sydney Truth, which to my eyes isn’t terrifically different from the Somerton Man:
There’s no details of when Newman was let out of jail: and Trove has no obvious further trace of him. Just sayin’, just sayin’… 😉
We know that Christos Paizes subsequently surfaced in Sydney, running (no surprises) a baccarat school there. According to the Sydney Crime Museum, (quoting the 1980 book Drug Traffic by Alfred McCoy, which – with the inevitable shipping from Australia – is currently sitting just outside my comfortable price range, though the British Library does have a copy) when casinos in the 1970s became the next ‘hot’ place for gamblers to go to:
The established Goulburn Club at 51-7 Goulburn Street, owned by George Zizinos Walker and Christos Paizes of South Coogee, simply added roulette to baccarat, recruited a bevy of hostesses, and polished up its image.
Putting all this together: it seems to me that if the Somerton Man was in some way connected with the Lonsdale Street baccarat schools, a far better first research step would be to map out the different Melbourne schools and all the crims and thugs associated with them, and only then with that groundwork in place start to look at individuals.
Back to the Archives?
And so the actual research question finally arrives: what is the best way of using Australian archive resources to try to reconstruct the Lonsdale Street baccarat school crim network circa 1945? After all, historians now spend so much of their time mapping out social networks, why not map antisocial networks too? :-p
Hence I think it’s the NAA’s B745 series that perhaps offers us the possibility of some kind of way in. However, when our marvellous Melbourne mole specifically asked the NAA about getting access to B745, the response was:
With regards to series B745, ‘Index of offenders investigated by the Commonwealth Police’, this is a collection of index cards which the National Archives does not have in custody. Although the series is registered with us it does not appear to have ever been transferred from the Australian Federal Police. Theoretically it may still be held by them, but previous attempts to identify their whereabouts have not been successful.
And so, for a change, one research door shuts only for another to also shut. There must surely be a way of locating B745 but… it will probably take a while.
Nick,
Is there any record from the Ormonde? It seems odd to me that both are said to have arrived on the same ship – one coming from America – and that the second fellow (the one who died with nothing) is said to have arrived in the same year as the other who was later (allegedly) deported, but only after which is there any record of the second.
If the former-American was the Somerton man and the police (for some reason or other) wanted to cover up, what better than to say he had been deported and then – as bribe for silence, perhaps – have the other come over and claim to have been the one who arrived on the Ormonde? Is there any record of the ex-American’s arrival in Greece? It’s not so much that I’m attracted to the idea of conspiracy… more that there’s a fishy smell about it all. Call it historian’s “nose”.
And the photo…I’d prefer it looked less like the Somerton man than it does.
If it were my project (as of course it isn’t), I’d double-check that ‘deported’ thing from the Greek end before believing the record.
Freddie “The Frog” Harrison ran crime in Melbourne in the 1940s and 50s until the day that Jack Twist blew Freddie’s head off with a 12 gauge shot gun, and with 20 to 30 witnesses standing within a few feet of Freddie at the time (standing in line to receive their pay as waterside workers). And nobody saw nuthin’. Police joked that half a dozen men claimed to have been in the nearby toilet at the time. (It was a single seater). See:
https://twistedhistory.net.au/2016/02/06/this-is-yours-freddie/
Diane: the two Balutises arrived on the Ormonde in 1923. The only passenger lists I found were in the newspapers, and did not name any of the passengers in 3rd class, just the fake Russian Princesses up above. 😉
I don’t believe that Triantafillos Balutis was deported: rather, that it seems that his name came up in the port checks as someone who had been naturalized but (perhaps unusually) was leaving the country, which meant that his CIB file could be closed.
I don’t believe either of the two Balutises made significant money during their time in Melbourne (one was a waiter, the other a chef), with Triantafillos’ early attempts at running his own cafe having been so badly wrecked by the Depression. Hence it seems almost certain to me that by 1949 Triantafillos had given up his Australian dream, and so went back to Greece (presumably to retire).
“Melbourne’s illegal gambling once spurred violent disputes, many involving stand-over man John Gilligan. The lucrative spoils from Melbourne’s illegal gambling operations caused many gun battles between rival criminal groups in the 1940s.
Prominent gambling figures were ambushed in attacks, many of them in broad daylight and on busy streets and intersections. The violent feud between stand-over men John Gilligan and George Newman would lead to a celebrated shoot-out in Elizabeth St.
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
Baccarat clubs thrived in Melbourne at that time. So too did the heavy protection rackets which kept them operating.”
See: https://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/law-order/john-gilligan-and-freddie-the-frog-harrison-battle-over-control-of-melbourne-gambling-dens-in-1940s-trials/news-story/74800bc126d50a4b2fed2d172c24ee4d?sv=55b817421a6251fda607dcd48a3eae72
Balutz is a fairly modern Hebru word roughly translated from Yiddish which describes a volunteer migrant kibbutz worker from memory. I once posted a more detailed synopsis on how the name may have applied to an immigrant Turkish Jew on another, now defunct site…It’s scandalous how NAA search fees have doubled in less than a year.
Byron: thanks very much! I particularly liked the following slice-of-life St Kilda memoir too – https://frankhowsonblog.wordpress.com/2014/04/03/fawkner-street-st-kilda/
Byron: I’ve just read a further 20+ pages of similar stuff, and George Henry Newman is nowhere to be seen in any of them after he was sent to prison in 1947. findmypast and familysearch don’t seem to be of much use here either.
This seems to be the correct George Henry Newman.
Born about 1902 at Carlton, Melbourne, Victoria.
Father: Abel Ernest Newman 1876-1964
Mother: Eliza Keily 1882- 17th June 1921
Married: Corrie Aileen Northrop at Melbourne in 1942.
Death 16th June 1986 in Victoria.
Burial: Anderson’s Creek Cemetery, Warrandyte, Mannibgham City, Victoria.
1920 Granted a Collectors Licence
Residence: 1928 and 1931. 9 Palmerston Street, Carlton South. Occupation: Driver
Residence: 1937 124 Bank Street, Melbourne Ports. Occupation: Carrier
Residence: 1943 284 Moray Street, South Melbourne. Occupation: Carrier
Byron: thanks very much! I saw most of the same fragments in findmypast, but wasn’t able to convert them into a single definitive strand.
How do you know that these are all the same George Henry Newman (there were definitely several)? Do you have a specific source for this?
Anderson’s Creek Cemetery (plot A1478) has an entry for the 1986 death of George Henry Newman:
http://www.australiancemeteries.com.au/vic/manningham/andersoncrkn_data.htm
Findagrave has a hi-res photo of his gravestone online:
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/140766988/george-henry-newman#view-photo=194731756
“In loving memory of George Henry Newman – Died 9th June 1986 – Husband of Corrie – Father of Max Joyce Don & Patricia – Rest In Peace”.
This without any real doubt matches the George Henry Newman who married Corrie Aileen Northrop at Melbourne in 1942. Their marriage is listed at findmypast, but there’s a cut-down listing available online at myHeritage:
https://www.myheritage.com/names/corrie_nothrop
Ancestry.com has a listing for Corrie Eileen Nothrop (it says she was born in 1905 to Walter Francis Nothrop and Ellen Rabby Nothrop, and died in 1995), including a picture of her with her son Max uploaded by Lindsay Nothrop (search for “Corrie Eileen Nothrop”). It also has an Australian BDM birth entry for “Corrie Ailleen Nothrop” in Tasmania (which, despite the variant spelling, must surely be her again).
Findagrave also has some pictures of Nellie Raby Hepburn Nothrop (which lists Corrie Eileen Nothrop as one of her daughters, though they didn’t know her married name), on the listing for her grave in Devonport General Cemetery:
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/89152649/nellie-raby-nothrop
Incidentally, findmypast has a mention of a Miss C Northrop (another spelling) age 20 travelling from Devonport (in Tasmania) to Melbourne on the Oonah on the 14 Apr 1923. She may not have told the whole truth about her age. 🙂
Hence I’m entirely comfortable that the George Henry Newman who married Corrie Aileen Nothrop in 1942 was the George Henry Newman who died in 1986. All the same, I’m not yet sure that this GHN was the same George Henry Newman we are looking for (who was convicted of murder in 1947), but perhaps there’s some other piece of evidence out there that makes this clear.
Does anyone here have an ancestry.com subscription? If so, can you please have a look for George Henry Newman and Corrie Aileen Nothrop (in all her variant spellings) to see if there’s anything more we can tell about him for sure?
Corrie Nothrop was a Maid of Honour in the Devonport Queen Carnival of 1916:
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/64589766
When her mother died in 1948, she was listed just as “Corrie” (no married surname), which makes me wonder if Corrie might just have run away to Melbourne as a young woman:
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/69074338
For what it’s worth GHN bn. 1919, died 19/10/44, married CAN (twice 2 spellings). Something’s not right, though if you don’t mind the intrusion,Melbourne gangland history in the 40’s would mostly be dealing with gunslingers closer to thirty than fifty.
When George Henry Newman was found guilty, he said he would appeal:
* https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/69014098
He then very quickly lodged an appeal, “on the ground that he can produce further evidence to prove his innocence”:
* https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/245088930
* https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/79611827
I haven’t yet found any article relating to his appeal (and have found no listing of him going to prison in 1947), but I continue to look…
GHN @ 64 Neill St. Carlton Vic circa. 1920s from Int. Records.
John: if he died in 1944, he was obviously a different GHN from the one who shot Gilligan in 1947.
Nick: You missed a post and my point; Ancientfaeces has their ’44 (dec.) chap married to Corrie twice which is how they have it up, crazy no less because the RAAF fellow who died over Germany in ‘Market Garden’ was a single farmer from WA who had a girl in ’42 from Ballarat named Julia?, not Corrie Aileen Nothrop of Tassie.
John: it is dead easy to mix up two people’s timelines, amateur genealogists do it all the time and then post up mismatched family trees.
Archives have their own issues, mainly about unreliable entries and unreliable transcriptions. In the present case, in 1942 GHN married either Corrie Nothrop or Corrie Northrop, or perhaps both, depending on which archival source or transcription you trust. Hence the two marriages. :-/
Nick Pelling: “…it is dead easy to mix up two people’s timelines, amateur genealogists do it all the time and then post up mismatched family trees.”
Yes! I noticed that when I was helping someone with genealogical research.
I’ve noticed many people misread names (can’t read old script), then connect those names to the wrong people (with no double-checking at all). Also, that they are very quick to assume some connection to royalty or famous people if the name is even vaguely like the celebrity’s name.
They also make a lot of logical leaps and fallacies. For example, I was following a family line where I’m pretty certain a widow married her dead husband’s brother, but that scenario never occurred to other people researching the same family line. They assumed the husband changed his first name (which would be unusual) even though there was an obit available for the husband close to the date when the wife’s husband’s first name changed..
Lots of minefields in genealogical research.
There are numerous instances of aunts taking over the care of their nieces and nephews if the mother died or was unable to care for all the children, without any official documents to verify the change of parent.
There are other kinds of family lines that are impossible to trace. There were areas where you could walk to the next town and join a tribe without there being any blood relationship. People researching the tribe name often assumed it was a family name.
Frequently, designation names are assumed to be surnames (e.g., John from Anytown is a designation, not a surname, and there would have been numerous unrelated people in that town, but the town name is erroneously treated like a surname and relationships are assumed).
I could go on and on, but I quickly learned to be skeptical about much of the information that was posted unless there was a way to verify it myself. It was interesting research, but one has to be aware of the signal-to-noise ratio.
Of course Ancientfaces is renowned for killing off nominees way before their use by date, though in this case they did manage to get it right. How they managed to marry an Avro Lancaster tailgunner, soon to be deceased to dear Corrie is indeed a caution. As for our like named miscreant, if it is him at Anderson’s Creek, he must have changed his ways post 1947; Old lags aren’t renowned for their longevity.
John: unlike most Somerton Man questions, it should be completely possible to work out in a fairly definitive way which GHN was which. It’s just that I only trust genealogical information I can see for myself – even close family can get basic information wrong.
OK, searching the Victoria electoral rolls for 1946, I found:
* Newman, Corrie Aileen, 284 Moray st., home duties, F
* Newman, George Henry, 284 Moray st., carrier, M
Given that the George Henry Newman associated with baccarat schools was mentioned in plenty of newspapers as living in Moray Street in 1946, I think we can now be sure that Byron Deveson’s source was correct and that this GHN was indeed the George Henry Newman who died in 1986:
* https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/168764895
* https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/245949266
Nick,
I can’t be absolutely sure about anything in this case because the name was fairly common and we don’t have much other information to cross-check against. But, I note that GHN the gangster was described in the newspapers as motor driver, hire car driver, and taxi driver. That description is consistent with the electoral roll records I quoted.
Advocate (Burnie, Tasmania) 24th May 1947 page 7.
“Attempted Murder Alleged MELBOURNE. Friday. – George Henry Newman (45), motor driver, of Westbank terrace, Richmond, ……..”
Advocate (Burnie, Tasmania) 25th July 1947 page 5,
“ACCUSED’S VERSION OF SHOOTING. MELBOURNE, Thursday. – George: Henry Newman, hire car driver, of Richmond ….”
The Argus (Melbourne, Vic) 8th April 1938 page 4,
“Not Guilty of Receiving. Without leaving the box, a jury In General Sessions yesterday acquitted
George Henry Newman, aged 34 years, of Bank street, South Melbourne, taxi-driver, ….”
Birth?: Geo. Hy. Newman. Mother: Eliza Kiely. Father: Abel Ernt. (Newman). Registered at Carlton (Melbourne) 1902. Reg. No. 24645/1902. (Victorian BD&M records).
Northrop, Corrie Aileen. Married Geo. Hy. Newman in 1942. Reg. No. 7299/1942. (Vic. BD&M records). This record is unusual because most of the required information is lacking and the record seems to have been derived from a death record at a latter date! This is very strange and suggests something unusual was going on. Very occasionally I have seen Australian official BD&M records retrospectively written or corrected in some details. To me this implies something unusual happened and this is consistent with a gangster given a new identity perhaps. Or a gangster who assumed a new identity.
Nick: You’ll have noted in J. Morton’s Gangland Melbourne 2011 that GN is in the general index at p. 82/87 and GHN at 86, presumably the same fellow. Not sure whether or not the book is available online in full?..
Nick,
if you are still interested I can probably put you in contact with a descendant of GHN.
Byron: I think we’ve got GHN’s timeline all wrapped up now. What I find interesting is that the thugs and crims associated with the Baccarat schools were typically young guys, GHN was a little unusual. So I’m wondering whether what happened here was that the two baccarat players genuinely mistook GHN for the Somerton Man.
Byron: it’s possible that the 1986 death, interment, gravestone, and archive records were all faked. After all, that is still more plausible than most of the spy-based Somerton Man theories. *ducks* 😉
But it’s still not very likely. :-/
How about a theory that isn’t spy based ?
I can think of several, and how are going by the way, old Dome? What say we resume passive hostilities?
Pete: sorry, I’ve been too busy trying to use historical evidence to test long-standing Somerton Man theories, haven’t really been thinking about spies much.
As Professor J. Brown put it: the way I like it / is the way it is / I got mine / he got his.
To me GHN’s face is to long and narrow to be SM….sure death and dress up artists do weird things but it’s a no from me.
Indecently, how many ships called ‘Ormonde’ were there that use to come to Australia (not just in 1923, over time), and what’s the significance of the name?
A lot of things I’ve ever looked into (including my own heritage) seems to have an Ormonde reference somewhere along the way (often at a later time, sometimes earlier), and I’m starting to think all of Australia must be close enough to Ormonde for us to declare an Ormonde number much like the Bacon number….
Incidentally, had meant to ask, I notice GC mentioned that anemptyglass was under new management – and to me it seemed it was now Clive and he running that page – can anyone confirm or deny?
milongal: part of the reason for pursuing this research thread was to see if there was someone associated with the Lonsdale Street baccarat schools who might have been mistaken for the Somerton Man’s image in the paper. However, I now have a follow-on post to write up about this, so I’ll try to cover this properly there (rather than in a comment on a comment)…
NP: When you tie it into Broken Hill and car thieves (as per some speculation you had some years ago) I’ll be listening (IMO it’s been one of the better theories to date – even without Pruzinski and his suitcase at the beach).
While I’ve found diving through some Melburnian information interesting (and reaising it’s likely true what they say that Melbourne has the biggest Greek population in the world – outside of Greece), and while I find the underworld stuff sort of interesting (Channel 9 made several series of a show from memory called ‘Underbelly’ – many of which dealt with crime, criminals and gangs in Victoria), and much as I like your obsession to completely exhaust every lead….
I find the “couple of baccarat players recognised a nitkeeper” almost identical to “a couple of clubbers recognised a bouncer”…and let’s just say that (to me) simply sounds a little unreliable.
So while the card scene in Melbourne in the 40s/50s was interesting (and no doubt is full of all sorts of wonderful stories), I think the direction this is headed is the same as where the Grand Duchess whateverhername was skedaddled out of here….
I think the Melbourne (I want to say Victorian, but understand that might be misunderstood in the UK) criminal scene (in any era) is incredibly interesting, but when the links to SM is “he might have come on the Overland” and “a couple of card players reckon we was their bouncer” then it’s hard to get too excited.
But as I’ve said to others in the past – I understand much of that is my opinion – and I’ll happily be shown to be wrong.
milongal: as far as I know, the only genuinely informative thing that Jo Thomson said about the Somerton Man to her daughter (as per the 60 Minutes documentary) was that it wasn’t “at a State Police level”. Which is also one of the reasons I feel comfortable looking a little beyond the confines of SA (whether to Broken Hill or Melbourne).
* https://ciphermysteries.com/2013/11/24/60-minutes-and-the-known-somerton-man
To be fair, the two baccarat players seem to have been quite certain, so it must surely have been a pretty good match: but I’ll put up more via a blog post shortly.
Nick: is the method you are using to ID the Somerton Man a top-down exercise? By that I mean are you deliberately ignoring the clues available in the hope that your endeavour, if successful, will provide all the answers?
peteb: a top-down exercise would start with a Capitalized Theory (e.g. that the Somerton Man was Romantically Entangled with the Nurse, that he was a Russian Spy, that he was an Interstate Car Thief, etc) and then go a-huntin’ through the archives to try to corroborate that. Here, I’m starting with a specific report in the newspapers from 26 Jan 1949 and trying to work out what was going on, which is a bottom-up search.
Fair enough, but it seems to me you are looking for an image to pop up out of your research .. or a name or connection to a T Keane. Then a wider search for the fellow’s connection to Harkness and or Prosper … etc.
Make sense?
Peteb: to be precise, all I’m doing is saying “let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that the two Melbourne baccarat players made their identification in good faith“, and following the line of historical enquiry as far as I can. Where it leads is where it leads, at this point I’m still trying to see what Victorian archives have to offer for anyone trying to understand the Lonsdale Street baccarat schools circa 1944-1945. I believe (along with the NAA) that tons of police documents from the period have been retained, but not yet released or indexed: so it’s all a bit frustrating.
Ultimately, if we can get from there to Jo and/or George, so much the better. But that would be a cherry on an historical cake I’m still trying to bake. Can we identify the person the two baccarat players thought the Somerton Man was in advance of Derek Abbott’s whole DNA thing? I hope so.