It just struck me that I haven’t seen anyone suggest that the most useful part of the Somerton Man’s Juicy Fruit chewing gum packaging might simply have been the aluminium (AKA “aluminum”, before any American readers choke on their Coke) foil wrapper around each thin stick of isoamyl-acetate-flavoured gum.
As thedude747 posted in a comment here back in Feb 2015:
I was chatting with an older relative who was in the Adelaide car trade in the 60s and 70s … […]
I shared my theory with him about SM being a car thief and without knowledge of the full tool kit SM had in the suitcase he volunteered that cars of that era could be easily started with a small sheet of alfoil. You would simply slide it behind the ignition button which was how many cars of the time were operated. It was a simple but effective and handy trick known by people in the trade. He described using the alfoil wrapper from a lifesaver packet to start his FJ when he lost the keys once.
I then told him about the sheet of soft Zinc SM had in his suitcase and he said that it would have been idea to start a car without keys provided you were able to gain entry and that a short screwdriver would have done that job no problem.
I cant think of a better reason why he would be carrying a worn out small piece of pliable alfoil or zinc than this.
Maybe this is all that anyone properly savvy needed to know his profession?
Nick: Your cunning utilisation of stick gum inner wrap on the dude 747’s (now just 47) comment re his relative’s car starting tecnique with foil as the catalyst hot wire connnection, is of course a good one. Only problem being, that from what we are led to believe, SM’s gum was a Wriggley’s candy coated tablet version as opposed to your pictured foil wrap stick gum. It came with a light wax paper wrap that had no like conductive properties so that seems to put an end to an otherwise well thought out idea.
…furthermore apros dude’s older relative having used a lifesaver wrapper to start his Holden FJ (54-55); all I can say is that in the sixties, our Vietnam airdrop SP care packs included rolls of five flavor (US) lifeslavers with wax paper inner wrap just like the four tab Wriggley’s gum. A little added research suggests that big candy and chocolate manufacturers like Hershey stopped using foil in the forties due to war shortage and did not reintroduce it until long after hostilities ceased.
Nick – my word! When you think about it, this snippet of history would make a marvellous spark for a study of ‘butterfly effect’ in history. Court-records would relate evidence of how car-thieves broke into cars and the local economic impacts as well as impact on crime-levels and prison numbers. Car-manufacturers’ records would show consternation reaching the board-room, and decisions about making the ‘alfoil’ method impossible. Then the engineers’ revised designs..
all for the sake of one foil wrapper.
The problem we have here, Diane, is that despite the preponderance of car thefts in the forties, the South Australian Police did not recognise the thirteen items in Keane’s suitcase as being suitable tools for breaking into and stealing cars.
Dude47 is the gent responsible for twigging onto that ..
Thirteen items ! Including the black powder shaken from a particle brush and his six pencils.
I can list them if you’re interested.
Update: the history of Juicy Fruit turns out to be a little more complicated than I thought, but not for the reason that John Sanders put forward.
During WW2, Wrigleys found it increasingly difficult to get the ingredients it needed to make Juicy Fruit chewing gum, so stopped production in favour of Orbit chewing gum (which had no such problem). Similarly, because of difficulty getting aluminium early in the war, WW2-era Juicy Fruit sticks had a red paper inner wrapper rather than an aluminium foil wrapper (as I understand it).
I’m now trying to find out what happened to Juicy Fruit in the years immediately after WW2, i.e. when production of Juicy Fruit restarted, was it with the same aluminium foil inner wrappers that Wrigleys had used before WW2?
Really, the things I end up researching, *sigh*.
Pb – thanks. While others of Nick’s readers may well be glad to have that list, I’m afraid it would be wasted on me. I read the posts mainly for their sepia-coloured glimpses of 1950s Adelaide.
Nick: You’ll find included in the introduction speel on SM ultimatate guide the attending inquest Adelaide News or Avertiser’s court artist’s impressions of the the exhibits as they were tendered in nice detail. The Wrigley’s half pack of Juicy Fruit is as I’ve described it and my recent post on the subject explains the most likely proceedure for it’s undertaking prior to editorial approval of publication, which may or not have made copy. Apart from that your research results do not seem to conflict with mine apart from the gum being candy coated tablets as opposed to stick form.
pb: Ducking for cover is usually the mark of the man, and in your case probably excusable to a degree. I once met Graeme Green the wordsmith at our famous Liberty Restaurant in downtown Saigon only months before his tour of duty was up. The little chap was attired in a pink bib and brace get up and was drinking alone unrecognised but for me. I will never forget his advice to me, thinking that perhaps I was a budding writer. ” Don’t go long on words laddie, just make each one count “. Of course I never took any notice of the great man, which is a caution worth contemplation for those desirous of emulating him. Green’s Quiet American is the finest piece of literature ever put down on paper in the opinion of many.
john sanders: ah, yes. I always thought that that particular drawing had been done for the documentary, not at the time of the inquest – the packaging seems somewhat wrong to me.
It’s possible the script of the documentary would give the source of the drawing.
Nick: I also commented on the packaging, though only to the extent that my 1950’s memories could only account for PK and maybe arrowmint, the juicy fruit being in stick packs which had the alphabital imprint inside the wrapper. Apart from all that a thruppeny bit was said to be as good a weapon as any for hot wiring, so long as the inside dash area encompassing the ignition wiring was not fitted with an anti tamper plate.
NP .. it might be wise not to assume the slip of metal foil was sourced from a pack of chewing gum when similar supplies could be found in a pack of smokes
My resident pal Vinnie, ex NY city court bailif (US Army Sigs. Dir. Vn) sugests that all sketching was likely to have been contemoraneous with the inquest sitting with the exhibits laid out for viewing upon the deposition clerk’s table before the bench to allow unimpeded view from the witness box and court gallery..
Pb: …Or better still the outer skin off a Durex package. Every nurse and car thief in1948 would have carried a couple in their purse or wallet should something cum up like things do, for instance an unattended 1940 Vauxhall 12 (Wyvern) in need of a good hot wiring.
Dude ’74: apropos your post of 11 inst. Re Cleland’s notes on repairs to SM’s clothing being indicitive of him carrying tools on his person ie. those found in the Keane suitcase. Are you and Peter Bowes still maintaining that Cleland was responsible for the initial Barbour/repair thread match disclosure. My contrary evidence suggests Det. Sgt. Leane’s investigating police had reported this on 12th January ’49, a good six months before the professor was called in to assist with aspects related to clothing and a cargo marking brush complete with black residue.
Illuminati card
Hi, there. After having read (almost) all your posts about the case of the Somerton Man, there are a few things I find hard to reconcile with the car fraud theory.
Without a particular order:
1. Why did the Somerton Man buy that train ticket and shortly after take that bus?
2. Why using some kind of cipher? It does not make much sense as a pro memoria and car thieves are not known to exchange secret messages.
3. Why using a book as a placeholder in the car? A book is a sizeable object, it can be easily found and then discarded or removed. It would make much more sense to use the paper scrap as a placeholder, hiding it in some strange place.
4. Now the paper scrap itself. To my understanding it was heavily trimmed: that, again, does not make sense if you want to use it as a proof. In that case you’d want it to match exactly the missing paper of the book, while, in this case, he ripped the last page and then trimmed the paper. I contend that, at that point, the piece of paper was unrecognizable as part of the book, unless you already knew that the book ends with two foreign words in a different font.
Bonus. Is not a little strange that the Somerton Man used a rare edition (the first one to be correct, that is the only one that ends with TAMAM SHUD instead of just TAMAM) of the Rubaiyat and that Jestyn probably gifted that same edition to Boxall?
We know that Jestyn wrote one of the quatrain on the book, the number 70, but that quatrain is at number 70 only in the first edition (moreover the other editions sport a little orthographic change), I checked on project Gutenberg. There are five editions of the Rubaiyat by Fitzgerald. What are the chances?
In the Hardy Boys Mystery Books (Book #3–The Secret of the Old Mill), Frank and Joe were trapped in an outside garage with nothing but an old truck. Frank Hardy used the gum wrapper that he had in his pocket to start the truck (since he did not have a key), so that they could bust through the doors with it. I am not sure if this part is in the original text (1927), but I read the revised text (1962), and this at least known at the time.
Jerry Somerton was found with two bug rakes in the sky rocket of his Stamina duds; one for his strontium locks and a shiny aluminum job for hot wiring any unattended Willey’s Overlander (Prosper ’36 WA). Wonder why our former GTA man didn’t come up with that lurk.
Herbert Breece: I’m not familiar with the Hardy brothers and don’t know wheher they ever got to the antipodes in their sleuthing. One thing I’m quite sure of is that a gum wrapper would not have helped much starting up an old truck pre 1927 as key ignition was not around but, as you say if it was in the revised text of ’62 then that’d work. I’m wondering if Frank and Joe were ever involved in murder mystery investigations. If so it might pay to see if any similarities with the Tamam shud case exist, as Somerton Man was thought to be an American before Face Book and Carl Webb came to town.