The big news of the day (which I first saw on CNN) is that Professor Derek Abbott and Colleen Fitzpatrick have used DNA from the hair embedded in the plaster cast of the Somerton Man’s head to identify the Somerton Man. And it’s… Carl Webb, a 43-year-old electrical engineer / instrument maker from Melbourne.
Oh, and no, nobody else had heard of him either.
Derek Abbott got the final confirmation via a DNA test from some close relatives that arrived on 23rd July, which capped several years of fairly painstaking genealogical research by him and Fitzpatrick.
The downside is that nobody has any photo of Webb, or indeed any record relating to him (apart from his birth). Which means that for the moment, even though the Somerton Man has been identified, the Somerton Man mystery remains pretty much wide open.
I thought I’d start the research ball rolling by posting some of Carl Webb’s family tree and a few thoughts.
Carl Webb’s Family Tree
Carl Webb’s paternal grandparents were Johannes Frederick Webb/Weber (b. 1840), and Elis Buck (b.1840 in Berkhampstead, Herts). Their son was Richard August Webb (born 1866 in Hamburg, died 2 April 1939), who married Eliza Amelia Grace in Victoria in 1892.
Richard August Webb was a baker, whose one notable appearance in Trove is a cluster of reports relating to a 1912 case where he was brought before the court for selling underweight loaves of bread:
Following his death, there’s a probate notice from April 1939:
NOTICE is hereby given that after the expiration of 14 days from the publication hereof, application will be made to the Supreme Court of the State of Victoria in its Probate Jurisdiction that LETTERS of ADMINISTRATION with the will (dated the 8th day of May 1937), annexed, of the estate of RICHARD AUGUST WEBB, formerly or Spring Vale road, Spring Vale but late of 15 Coats street, Moonee Ponds, in the said state, baker, deceased may be granted to Eliza Amelia Webb of the latter address, the sole beneficiary named in the said will.
Dated this 6th day of April 1939.
J. J. CARROLL, 440 Little Collins street, Melbourne, solicitor for the applicant.
Richard and Eliza had six children:
- Russell Richard (registered 1893) born St. Arnaud, Victoria
- Freda Grace Webb (born 1896, died 1964) in Dandenong. She married Gerald Thomas Keane in 1915. They had a son John Russell Keane, who was an RAF flying officer who died in a training exercise in WW2; and a daughter Gwen M. Keane.
- Gladys May (registered 1897) born in Prahran, died 1955. Married Leslie William Scott (in 1933 or earlier). Her 1955 death notice:
- SCOTT. — On July 3, at her residence, 9 Peterleigh grove, Essendon, Gladys May, dearly beloved wife of Leslie William, loved sister of Dot (Mrs. Martin) and Freda (Mrs. Keane).
- Doris Maude (‘Dot’) Webb was born on 22 May 1901 in Footscray. She married Daniel William Martin: they had at least one daughter. She died in May 1956, at the age of 55.
- Roy (registered 1904)
- Carl born 16 Nov 1905 in Footscray
- Married Dorothy Jean Robertson in 1941 in Victoria (16701)
This is all I’ve managed to come up with so far: but it is hard not to notice that Carl Webb seems to have been basically invisible, Trove-wise (or even NAA-wise). Abbott and Fitzpatrick reconstructed the maternal side of the Webb family (the Somerton Man’s mitochondrial DNA matched a “first cousin three times removed on his mother’s side“), but I’m sure more details will emerge from them over the next few days.
Carl Webb’s Separation
Interestingly, we also have a Trove record not of Webb’s presence but of his absence from 1951, from the Melbourne Age, Fri 5 Oct 1951, p.15 (column 10):
To CARL WEBB, formerly of Bromby-street, South Yarra, but now of parts unknown. —Take notice that your wife, DOROTHY JEAN WEBB has instituted DIVORCE proceedings against you on the ground of desertion, and that unless you enter an appearance in the Prothonotary Office of the Supreme Court at Melbourne on or before the 29th day of October, 1951, the case may proceed in your absence, and you may be ordered to pay costs.
According to Abbott and Fitzpatrick, Carl Webb had deserted his wife in April 1947: by 1951, she had moved to Bute in South Australia, some 89 miles northeast of Adelaide. They therefore speculate that Webb might possibly have travelled to Adelaide to try to see her, but… it should be clear that they really have no idea. And… I’m sorry to say it, but Derek Abbott’s track record of previous speculations seems to suggest we should perhaps have more than a pinch of salt ready to hand.
The Keane Connection!
If you were paying attention in the list of siblings above, you’d have noticed that Freda Grace Webb (1896-1964) married Gerald Thomas Keane; and also that she was still Mrs Keane in July 1955. Which actually offers us a fabulously rich connection to the (now long-lost) suitcase linked to the Somerton Man, which famously had various items of clothing (tie, jockey shorts, etc) marked with “T Kean[e]“. Or perhaps “J Keane“.
Up until now, we’ve been unable to make any genuine progress here: Tom Keane in particular is such a common name pair that there were too many avenues to explore. But now that we have (what seems to be) the specific Keane we should have been interested in, what can we find out about him?
Gerald Thomas Keane was born in 1889 in Ballarat East, Victoria, to William Thomas Alpius Keane and Emma Ann (Hawkins) Keane: he died in 1960 in Fitzroy, Victoria. From his son’s wartime records (in the NAA), we know that their address in 1940 was 226 Glenlyon Road, East Brunswick, Vic, before moving to 194 Stewart Street, East Brunswick, Vic.
The NAA has other records relating to the same wartime flying accident that killed Gerald Keane’s pilot son John Russell Keane: one record relating to Francis Aloysius Connell lists the contents of Connell’s personal effects, sent back to Australia in a tin suitcase in 1944.
So… could it possibly be that the suitcase in Adelaide Railway Station was actually John Russell Keane’s personal effects? Sadly, only a few of the documents relating to John Russell Keane have been digitised, so this is simply an open question at this point. For now, my point is more that we now have a number of specific new historical avenues to search. Regardless, the game is afoot!
But but but… what about the micro writing. What about Fedosimov?
Gentlemen, please. Don’t leave me here. Gentlemen!
What about…
PS: congratulations to Professor Abbott! Great job!
Tamara Bunke: of course he’s still Fedosimov, didn’t you read the small print? :-p
Articles on J.R. Keanes death on Nov. 29, 1943, in an air accident in County Antrim: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/189485908?searchTerm=%22john%20russell%20keane%22, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/28325539?searchTerm=%22john%20russell%20keane%22.
His siblings names: Leo and Gwen: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/11372440?searchTerm=%22john%20russell%20keane%22
It’s certainly an interesting development (especially the Keane link). And Bute is sort of in an area where people had talked about before (I think I remember a Copper Triangle link and this is just North of that.
It does bother me a little, though that his wife is posting in the paper in 1951. Where was she in ’48 and ’49 when his mugshot was plastered all through the papers? Perhaps she didn’t care – but then why bother with a formalised divorce in 1951 rather than simply coming forward and saying “He be dead, so I’m free now”.
And even if she didn’t see the picture, what about his siblings who were still alive at the time?
(there might be a plausible idea that the pic in the paper looked sufficiently different – but I still find it odd)
I guess the questions (for me) raised by all of this:
– How did his wife not know his pic was in the paper?
– Why did his siblings not recognise him?
– Why Henley Beach and Glenelg? (Does Hamley Bridge come back into play?)
– How would you get Adelaide to Bute? (presumably train, but was it direct or did it involve some changing around)
– How do the Thomsons fit in?
– How does the Rubaiyat fit in?
Let’s make a story….
Suppose there is some Hamley Bridge/Henley Beach confusion. Perhaps SM has looked up some train maps and knows he needs to head out to Hamley Bridge. Having arrived in Adelaide he either sees the Henely Beach tickets (and doesn’t have Hamley Bridge written down, so it’s sort of near enough) OR he asks for a ticket to Hamley Bridge (but the ticket clerk who is not used to people referring to Hamley Bridge) assumes he heard Henley Beach.
I think the latter fits better. So unknowingly he has a Henley ticket, but thinks he is catching a train elsewhere later that day. He’s got the best part of a day to waste – so why not head out to the beach? He checks his suitcase (which in itself is a bit of a peculiarity) and heads out toward St Leonards (or Glenelg).
And then something happens…
Another thought….if he’s become itinerant is it possible he was going under different pseudonyms (e.g. Karl Thompsen)….
I note news (.com.au) reports that despite DA’s identification:
South Australia Police said there were no updates to the case.
Thomas: Sergeant Leo Keane in the AIF and Rene, very well found!
The funeral service of Carl Webb was carried out by Salvation Army Captain Webb: https://ciphermysteries.com/2014/09/13/somerton-mans-grave. Might be interesting to look for a connection.
Leo Vivian Keane, born 5 Dec 1915 in Camperdown, next of kin Irene Keane. Died in 2005.
Published in Herald Sun on Sep. 13, 2005: https://legcy.co/3JanGx1
Detail on JR Keane and his death in Northern Ireland, Nov 1943. Incl. photo.
https://wartimeni.com/person/john-russell-keane/
Thomas: I’d say pure coincidence, even moreso that em Webb the SAO lived near the cemetery and in 1948 shared a house with Frank Keane. Well spotted mind!
No kids. Nieces & nephews on either side? I wont be shocked if in a couple days there are quotes like, “(sigh) Yeah, Aunt Dorothy always knew it was him, but given all the brouhaha and ‘mystery’ she just didn’t want to deal with the publicity…”
Given how out-of-left-field this is (or what a dark horse, or whatever other culture-appropriate sports metaphor applies), an interesting future study will be to create a taxonomy of the reactions from researchers who sank years of effort into their theories of choice, only to have SM turn out to be…this guy.
That taxonomy will no doubt come in handy even further down the road when someone finally deciphers/translates (with sufficient consensus) the Voynich Mss text — “My reaction? The Voynich Mss equivalent of SM-2.1.7”
BTW, on other historical cipher mystery fronts, slate.com ran an interesting (at least to those of us who weren’t already familiar) article on Kobek’s theory about the identity of the Zodiac killer (https://slate.com/culture/2022/07/zodiac-killer-theory-zines-jarett-kobek-paul-doerr.html)
NP: it ain’t over until Feltus sez it’s over…or until the fat lady sings her rendition of ‘up, up and away’ (jimmy Webb).
According to her obituary, Carl Webb’s mother Eliza had passed away on 24 Nov. 1946. His brother Roy had died as a P.O.W. on 6 Oct. 1943 in Malaya: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/22398122?searchTerm=%22richard%20a%20webb%22, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/1097901?searchTerm=%22roy%20webb%22%20malaya%201943
The aircraft accident that caused J.R. Keanes’s death: https://wartimeni.com/person/john-russell-keane/
Apparenty J.R. Keanes father mostly only went by the first name Gerald, not Thomas, what might be a hint the initial on the tie is a “J” instead of a “T”: https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/DetailsReports/ItemDetail.aspx?Barcode=5250313&isAv=N. Also according to John Russel Keanes mobilization attestation form his father’s first names were “Gerald Thomas”, not the other way round: https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=6623569
Unfortunately the index cards ranging from 1939 to 1947 weren’t put online by the NAA: https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/DetailsReports/ItemDetail.aspx?Barcode=32637983&isAv=N
I’m sorry, are we expected to now believe that Robin was not related to the Summertown Man? Even though he had the same ugly teeth ears n face? And what about this Rachel Egan bint! Will they now divorce? And what about the fucking slut Cunt jizzbag jestyn?
RAAF’s Casualty Section was located in South Yarra, not far from Carl Webb’s residence: https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=700329
I wonder if there are still records containing information to whom John Russell Keanes’s belongings were handed over after his death in the air accident.
Nick Pelling: I have a feeling that there was more than one Richard August Webb knocking around Victoria in the early 1900s and that the baker from Benalla is not likely to have fathered Footscray born Carl “Charles” Webb in 1905. I Note that Melbourne papers have stuffed up their 1940 ‘In Memorium’ notice for the above, erronously giving his date of death as 2nd April 1929 ascopposed to ’39….people may recall some years ago when Derek Abbott jumped the gun and let it be known that Dr. Doug Hendrickson was Ronald Francis the ROK finder; I certainly recall how disappointed I was when Gerry Feltus nominated his own candidate in John Christian Freeman. On that basis I’m presently giving a lot of thought to the current situation re plausability irrespective of alleged DNA matches of which we’re not privy to yet. I can see a shit fight developing now between the Sapol forensic mob and the unconsulted expert Colleen Fitzpatrick which could enable dedicated SM sites a whole new lease of life… whacko the did…
Great followup research, Nick and co. As a long-time lurker and occasional contributor to these pages, I’m glad that the families concerned have a little more clarity about Carl/Charles Webb.
Anyway, I have found a pic of his brother, Roy Webb (which I’ll link below; remove extraneous spaces to make it work) and there is a strong resemblance to the posthumous pics of Charles.
Roy’s story is a tragedy of a different kind. The pics come from 2nd AIF service record for his brother (Pte) Roy Webb VX45944 (b. Camperdown Vic., 1904, son of Gerald and Freda). As it turns out, Roy was in the 2/29th Infantry Battalion – a part of the luckless 8th Division, sent to Singapore in 1941 – the survivors of which went into captivity, initially at Changi. He apparently died while working on the notorious Burma Railway, and rests in Thanbyuzayat Cemetery (now run by the CWGC), south of Mawlamyine (Moulmein).
https://ibb.co/K9gk5bc
*2nd AIF service record for (Pte) Roy Webb
*Correction: his sister Freda (nee Webb) and Gerald Keane were witnesses to Roy’s will, included in his service record; the sole beneficiary was Roy’s wife, Ruby Stella Webb.
One thing i’m glad about, this puts paid to the likes of Ruth Collins, Andrew McIntryer, and Rachel Vaughan!!
Irene Emily (Gray) Keane, died 28 Aug 2006
https://www.heraldsun.com.au/tributes/notice/death-notices/keane-irene-emily/3491158/
Furphy: Roy Webb, brother of SM Charles does not appear to be identical to one of the same name who died on the Thailand-Burma railway while serving with the AIF in WW2
errm …
Nick did you read to the end of comment above dated July 27, 2022 at 5:16 am? said
I’m researching DOROTHY JEAN WEBB!
I’ve found a potential match in England when I was going through the records. She has remarried and there are three children. I’m not sure if the children are of these second husband or a different Dorothy Jean Webb together. Does anyone have a confirmed date of birth for her and birthplace.
John S: i guess it’s possible; have you got reasons for your doubts, beyond “Abbott farked up last time”?
Also, considering the resemblance in the photos, the real Roy (VX45944) may have looked more like the dead SM than the living version.
(Were I a conspiracy theorist, I might suggest that VX45944 somehow faked his death/swapped identities on the Death Railway, and it was him who died at Somerton Beach in 1948. But that would be seriously overthinking the matter, as well as defying Ockham…)
D.: yes I did read it. The stuff I moderated out was worse. 🙁
Two quotes from the CNN report:
“The information on public record about Webb sheds some light on the mysteries that have surrounded the case. They reveal he liked betting on horses, which may explain the “code” found in the book, said Abbott, who had long speculated that the letters could correspond to horses’ names.” Any ideas which “information on public record” this might refer to?
“Webb liked poetry and even wrote his own, Abbott said, based on his research.” Does anyone know what the source of this statement could be?
Thomas: I have no idea about Derek Abbott’s sources for these. There was a horse trainer of the 1940s called Charlie Webb (owner of “Black Bruce”) that may possibly have confused him, but that seems a little unlikely.
There was also a Charlie “Lollies” Webb of 19 Goodman Street, Brunswick, whose 1952 search for an old mate may have confused the issue: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/23179166
Our man Carl Webb was certainly known as Charlie:
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/205975493
WEBB.— On April 2, at Bethesda Private Hospital, Richard August, late of Spring Vale, dearly beloved husband of Eliza Webb, loving father of Russell, Freda (Mrs. G. T. Keane), Gladys (Mrs. L. W. Scott), Doris (Mrs. D. Martin) Roy and Charlie, aged 73 years. Resting peacefully.
A “Leading Steward Charlie Webb” is mentioned here:
* https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/76280198
* https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/106136121
Probably nothing but I thought I’d log it regardless. 🙂
If Webb liked poetry, then the code might be a quatrain.
Even though the passion for horses is intriguing… he was full of debts, the Soviets offered him money to repay his debts and ta-da: we have a poetry (and horses) loving Russian spy!
Stefano Guidoni: you seem to be tangled up in quite an old web there. 😉
WILL CHARLES WEBB, formerly of 11 Palmerston place, North Carlton, in the State of Victoria, but now of parts unknown, or anyone knowing his whereabouts, please communicate with JOAN ROSANOVE & LANDAU, solicitors, 415 Bourke street, Melbourne.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/22778088
does not refer to our Carl Webb’s will, since Charles Webb from North Charlston had a different wife:
TO CHARLES WEBB, Formerly of 11bPalmerston Place, North Carlton, in the State of Victoria, But Now of Parts Unknown. – Take notice that your wife, IRENE WINNIFRED WEBB, has instituted proceedings for divorce on the ground of desertion.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/22781899
Thomas: bigamy?
Charles Webb married Irene Winnifred White in 1935
Australia, Electoral Rolls – Victoria, 1943, Fawkner, South Yarra, p.286 [via Ancestry]
* 17086 Webb, Charles, 63 Bromley st., instrument maker, M
* 17088 Webb, Dorothy Jean, 63 Bromby st., chiropodist, F
Australia, Electoral Rolls – Victoria, 1949, Balaclava, Elsternwick
* 16599 Webb, Dorothy Jean, 69 Murphy st., chiropodist, F
I don’t really like the idea of the “code” being horses names. Firstly it’s layout, but secondly why would you write down horse names? To bet on them. Surely in that case you’d have something like
SaF4NaC (Sat, Flemington, Race 4, “Not a Chance”)
SaM6FLH (Sat, Morphetville, Race 6 “Fed’s Last Hope”)
The exact way you’d note it would vary, but my point is I’d expect numbers in amongst it if that’s what it was.
(With the disclaimer I understand very little of DNA sequencing and genetics – and perhaps that will become obvious in the rest of this paragrapg) I’m typically skeptical of the actual results. To my way of reading the article (and TBH I originally read a different one in the Advertiser (or more accurately news dot com.au)) they extracted DNA (from a hair most likely to have come from SM (although insert some healthy skepticism about contamination etc)), found a related family and then started searching for someone in their tree who disappeared at roughly that time. In any case, I’d be more interested in exactly the testing they did (are the results based on proper DNA tests, or just “do at home” kits or similar….) – because I assume they don’t have any Charles Webb DNA so there must be at least a little bit of speculation/guesswork to end up with him….but as I say, maybe that goes to my lack of knowledge in that area,
That said, the visual similarity to Roy that Furphy posted above is certainly striking.
NB: I think I agree with JS re you might have the wrong Webb Sr. Benalla is some 200km+ from Melbourne (Footscray is Western suburbs of Melbourne). I don’t know the history of the Hume, but I know it wasn’t always an easy drive (it didn’t start getting duplicated until 1962 and it wasn’t too much before that that some parts of it were just a dirt track. And I think Shepparton would have been a big enough centre that you’d head there to have a kid rather than the big smoke of Melbourne
@JS: What makes you think the VX45944 Roy Webb isn’t Charlie’s bro?
In the Victoria -> 1931 -> Flinders -> Dandenong electoral roll, Charles Webb is living at the Webb family home in Springvale rd, occupation “electrical fitter”. Which, I have to say, is rather less grand than the “electrical engineer” description being bandied around in the press. *sigh*
He’s still there in 1934, 1936, and 1937 (electorally, at least), but not from 1942 onwards.
@milongal: Dick & Liz were parents of Carl and his brother Roy of Footscray not Gerald & Freda of Yarraville who who begat Furphy’s AiF/POW Roy….There will undoubtedly be a lot more confusion dealing with such a common name which is to be expected, not having a lot of detail on Abbott’s nominee. So we must take care not to flood the market with potentially false leads.For example I was looking excitedly into a Charles Webb from up Clare (SA) way who went off the radar in 1947 and never showed up again. Bit of histerical research revealed that the Webb family had been original settlers in 1850s and that my Charlie had simply fallen off the perch. As an aside I still think we should not exclude the posibility that “Karl” and Dot the CHIROPODIST nee Robertson? may have been living in Country SA and not Melbourne in the lead period up to his disappearance…
D. errm…Ballfondler might have used a more dignified choice of words in his lambasting of two ‘former’ female nominees for connections to SM…I’d have thought ‘punt kickers’ or ‘mickey munchers’ might have sufficed.
Nick,
re your comment (July 27, 2022 at 4:14 pm)
Good gd! My intense sympathy.
My career is in tatters.
I note that Carl Webb probably has cousins living in Australia and that these cousins from Carl’s sisters would carry mtDNA identical to Carl (= Sms hair sample). It is a relatively easy matter to use Newspaper records (of marriages, births, deaths etc) to trace the living descendants who will carry matching autosomal DNA (all the cousins and their descendants) or mtDNA (all cousins and their descendants on the maternal side (= Carl’s sisters).
I suggest to SAPOL they employ a genealogist to trace the descendants of the following couples to confirm if Carl Webb is indeed SM.
Doris Maud Webb 1901-1956 m. Daniel W. Martin 1894-1956
daughter Norma Mary Martin 1925-2019 m. Eric Rowles Hornsby 1908- Married 20th December 1947 at Melbourne.
Gladys May Webb 1897-1949 married Leslie W. Scott 1895-1971. Married 1918 in Victoria.
Freda Grace Webb 1896-1964 married Thomas Gerald. Keane. Married 1915 in Victoria. Two sons and a daughter. Leo Vivian Keane 1915-2005. John Russel Kean. 1917-1941. Gwendoline Mary Keane 1919-1994.
Leo Vivian m Irene Emily Gray and they have a son Gerald Thomas Keane who is said to be still living.
Gwendoline 1919-1994 married 7th December 1941 to William John Arthur Dickinson at Brunswick, Victoria. Daughter Patricia Ann Dickinson born 30th November 1949 Spotswood, Victoria. Died 2nd December 1987 at Melton, Victoria. Son Michael William Dri 1970-2000.
Bottom line: There is at least one living relative of Carl Webb who could provide a DNA sample that would confirm the identification of SM as being Carl Webb.
Gerald Thomas. Keane. Unfortunately for the Prof. And his team Gerald can’t carry Sms mtDNA but he will carry some of Carl’s autosomal DNA. I have previously noted that Prof’s team have extracted some autosomal DNA from SM’s hair and as I previously noted this would probably be sufficient DNA to all for match checking So, Mr Gerald Thomas Keane, step up please for your free DNA test.
Just thinking that Abbott might have partly based his SM model on a well known Adelaide (Rose Park) poet Francis Webb (1925 – 73) who although not within the required date range, which is irellevant, did have an interest in the nags like his socialite mother. My belief rests around the possibility that Derek created his Webb model based on a so named character with certain desireable traits and proceeded to mould him to fit a feasable DNA profile, ala the fake HMAS Sydney carley float body identified as Tom Clark through a ‘near enough is good enough’ DNA match. Anyone don’t believe this shit don’t happen is easily duped.
Furphy: Apropos your Carl’s brother Roy, I note now, having seen the death notice that his parents be listed as Mr. & Mrs. R.A. for Richard August & Eliza, and not your posted Freda & Gerald (his sister & B-in-L. So your origihal ID must be correct. Sorry but….
@JS: Sorry even more confused – I thought Freda was their sister and Gerard their Brother in Law? (or is it a different Gerard and Freda?) (In any case he lists his birthday as 1904 which seems on the money)
Milongal, my apologies. I confused matters in my original post, which was affected by fatigue.
The parents of Carl, Roy and Freda (l. Keane) were indeed Richard and Eliza Webb.
I was trying to say, in the first place, that Freda & her husband Gerald witnessed a last will and testament completed by Roy while in the army, the original of which became part of his service record (VX45944). (The will can be viewed as part of the digitised service record, via the NAA website.)
I’m not happy with the quick opinion being bandied around that the code is a racehorse memory slip. Many aussie males of the era followed the neddies to some level and I’ve not seen any notations done this way, and I’ve seen a few. And Carl’s occupation and background don’t exclude him from previous suppositions of underground activities, and in my mind I would love his expertise to be in altimeters.
@milongal: if you go to the original Roy Web post you’ll note that it contained incorrect detail pertaining to his place of birth and names of parents, upon which I based my query on relativuty re subject Carl. I might have connected to the Keanes but didn’t and at that time the detailed follow-up death notice hadn’t been posted. I wonder why younger brother Carl did not also inlist, the siblings both being about the same age and although married had no children. Guess you picked up on the three inch height difference, if of course we go with SM being one and the same with Carl Webb.
Interesting that as of 31 July 1972, a Dorothy Jean Dixon, Chiropodist, was living at 98 Charman Road, Mentone 3194-the same Dorothy I wonder?
Im glad they followed through on this, and we have something to talk about
finally. Good show. Maybe it will lead to some answers about how he ended up there.
John S., As I said before I like how you think. Do you have any vaguely occultist I guess “fortune cookie like” notes sewn into your trousers, like the SM? I don’t. Is this really explicable as him being a amateur poet, or a FitzGerald fan?
Nick, the net was cast kinda wide with that HC Reynolds stuff. How unusual is it in your mind to have seemingly mundane outcome?
@Matt I’m glad you brought up Reynolds. Let’s not forget DA had a (well qualified) expert endorsing Reynolds as SM a little while back
@NP: Re Engineer vs Fitter – maybe the good Prof just had a dream that SM weas one of his students…
Milongal, yes if not for that I doubt I would have anywhere near the same interest in this. I am a Reynolds on one side of my family from Virginia and there was a news story that he was specifically looking for possibilities in Virginia. This is very interesting in that there has been some genealogical consternation over the Reynolds line in VA for the last 20 years or so. I have this (substantial) book by a fellow named Tilman which has been I’m not sure…disavowed might be to strong, but in that neighborhood. RJR Reynolds for instance. was a notable Reynolds from VA, and probably a relative. My other side is all Mayflower pilgrims which has been strongly established, so you can see I have my own mini interest here. I know somewhat well who my own kin are, though very much doubt I have any close link to the SM. My great grandmother told my mom her distant relatives came from the “woods”(I think) whatever that means. Christopher Reynolds is a notable FFOV, who is on Wikipedia. My late father (not a Reynolds) worked at the DAR genealogical library. So a perfect storm of Reynoldish interest on my end.
Matt
Older brother Russell Richard Webb died in 1949, wife Ivy having predeceased him by twenty years. I think they’re both at Springvale cemetery, not to be confused with the Papist bus proprieter (Fawkner) of the same name who also died that year. Seems likely that with departure of the male Webb line and married sisters tied up with their own family affairs it’s quite feesable that Carl’s prolonged absence wasn’t of any concern, especially if he had informed them he was leaving Dot and didn’t want to be traced. That might also explain why no missing persons report was ever lodged or even application for a death declaration based on his sequestration after a decent interval (7 yrs.). Beats me why the missus took off interstate, more particulary to a desolate one horse town where her chiropody skills were not in likely to be in demand. Bute S.A. cemetery records do show a Robertson family interred there and a Charles Webb comes up at nearby Moonta but, both names being common, pursance in that direction is not likely to shed any light on Carl Webb’s post 1947 whereabouts. I’ll do it anyway just to be certain.
In 1956 a Dorothy Jean (900 death notices in S.A.) Robertson (2000) widow born 1917, upon return from New Zlnd gave her occupation as office machinist in the diamond drill industry. Had her (deceased) husband been similarly engaged, as a precision (diamond tipped) instrument/toolmaker (chiropody)…then she’s our girl and there waiting to be grilled at 1 Kimber St. Prestons. Anyone up for it?
JS: Perhaps Dorothy went to Bute and put her foot in it. Ouch!
Clive: you need to toe the line more!
Laddies: Step we gaily on we go, heel for heel and toe for toe..Old Robertson clan light foot shuffle routine.
A simple case of newsworthy distortion of fact and it’s been running rampant since day one of the well timed
release. Of course I’m referring to one Gerald Thomas Keane who we may assume preferred to be called by his first name Gerald during his time on earth. Well old son we got news for you in that, henceforth you’ll be known by your middle monicker Tom, like it or lump it. We already got one SM Gerald on our books and it would create confusion if we had to deal with two…. by the way anyone heard from our Gerald Feltus; I note that his girl Friday CC is full on over at the Abbott Facesaver page.
Page 919, could it be ‘our’ Dorothy? https://www.legislation.wa.gov.au/legislation/prod/gazettestore.nsf/FileURL/gg2001_033.pdf/$FILE/Gg2001_033.pdf?OpenElement
Webb, Dorothy Jean, Late of Tandara Nursing Home, 73 Jarrah Road, Bentley, formerly of Mertone Village, 30 Winifred Road, Bayswater, died 2/2/2001 (DEC33143400DG3)
Pat: that was probably the (different) Dorothy Jean Webb (typist) who was living with Fred Webb in Bayswater, and who appears in the electoral rolls there (1954, 1963, 1968, 1977, 1980).
There was also another Dorothy Jean Webb living in Ballarat West with Beatrice Mary Webb, Stanley Douglas Webb, and Leslie Douglas Webb (1949, 1963, 1968, 1972, 1980).
And another Dorothy Jean Webb living with Beatrice Amy Webb and Robert Edward Webb.
And another Dorothy Jean Webb (typist) living with Alan Edward Webb and Henry Cottrelll Webb at “Belvedere”, Arrow st, Burunda.
But no obvious trace of the one we’re interested in, alas. 🙁
Pat: Byron Deveson lists Dorothy Jean Robertson’s birth as Essendon, Victoria in 1905, and her date of death as 11 Nov 1996. However, there’s also a Dorothy Jean Webb who is listed by PROV as dying in Colac on 19 Nov 1996 (it doesn’t say whether that entry is a will or a probate). I’m not sure if the two are the same.
Nickpelling, thank you. I live in Brazil and don’t have access to all those sources. You’re doing a great job here.
Is the information on FamilySearch correct? Dorothy Jean Robertson’s father was Matthew Henry Robertson, mother Emily Margaret Hood, sister Hazel Winifred Robertson.
Hey Pat, you live anywhere near Bahia Brazil? There was a Charles Aubone Webb came from there to Australia as an 18 year old unaccompanied student in 1922 and settled in Dromana Victoria. Yep that’s where Prosper Thomo met first missus Queenie Wilder in ’35. Charlie hitched up with Lillian and bought a farm in the district just before the war though unsure what fate befell them afterwards; fair chance he expired around ’68 which is where I lost interest more or less. You ever wonder why Abbotts’s nominee Carl Webb never got his teeth fixed, seems he wouldn’t have been short of a Real or duas making diamond tipped precision cutting tools up until he scarbered in ’47 to ‘parts unknown’. Oh well there’s better heads than ours will take care of that little puzzle no doubt. Adeus boa tarde tchau.
Nickpelling: I’d suggest it hardly likely that Dorothy would still be clinging to Carl’s Webb monicker following her ‘decree absolute’ in the fifties, there having been no kids involved during their six years together. Did you happen to check out all the Charles Webbs while you were at PROV ?…I’m not that dedicated although I must say the first Coroner ’65? based body tag entry tickled my fancy.
@JohnSanders, Hi John, no, I’m not near Bahia, but I can check on our newspapers archives for Charles Aubone Webb.
Anyone has a subscription of the Daily Telegraph? ‘He would … abuse me’: Inside the Somerton Man’s toxic marriage
Glenelg district as we’re well aware remains the same old Glenelg spelt arse about. It also supports a pair of College Streets one at each end of Holdfast Bay. So had a stranger been looking for his College St. destination in 1948, not being aware that there were two, the venture was likely to terminate tragically on Somerton Beach. What I might also mention is that ex army cook and Kapara patient Charles Webb resided at 4 College St. (stables) off Moseley St. in those days; such a common old name and just another coincidence no doubt….GC if you aren’t quite done with book two, both Glenelg & College Streets fit the amazing Danetta code essentials.
Update: the Dorothy Jean Webb who died in Colac on 19 Nov 1996 was a different Dorothy Jean Webb.
https://billiongraves.com/grave/Dorothy-Jean-Webb/8958272
Update: the Charles Webb who married Irene Winnifred White was a labourer, and almost certainly not the same Carl/Charles Webb we’re looking for (so not a bigamist)
Here’s what I know.
Carl Webb did not die.
George died. How do you like those apples, you retards??
From a family member.
Pat: it’s the Adelaide Advertiser (also behind a paywall) that ran the toxic marriage story – basically, they dug up Dorothy Jean Webb’s divorce petition, which described (summarised in the Daily Mail):
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11063903/Toxic-marriage-explain-death-Somerton-Man-new-details-emerge-1948-mystery.html?ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490&ito=1490#comments
I do wonder how Jessica Thomson nee Jessie Harkness falls into all of this. She wasn’t even a qualified Nurse and was a Fraud. I did read that people thought she was a prostitute once and Prosper Thomson was her pimp. Perhaps Carl was a punter and she and Prosper bumped him off for a suitcase of cash. Also in her position at the mental hospital (which she obtained through fraud) it would be easier for her to submit fraudulent benefit forms for the social security department.
Well that’s rubbish Lady Armanda Fortescue-Humperwell!
George’s army photo has been published and there are pictures of him that were shown during the 60 minutes programme. Nice try though! Lol
Glen; how do you know the photographs are not all doctored?
Think about it. Prospers hairs in the bust.
Now it makes sense.
I’m current going through the Queensland Birth, Death & Marriage records and I’ve found the following Marriage:
Carl August Thomas Webb
Event date: 25/07/1942
Event type: Marriage registration
Registration details: 1942/B/50242Spouse: Ellen Florence Runnegar
I’m currently going through all of the records in Australia, New Zealand and England. Given past history with research and strange twists and turns I thought I would do as many countries and states as I can. Out of memory there was a German link to one side of the Thomson family. It was Von Steiglitz or something like that? Can anyone refresh my memory.
NSW
Search Term: Charles Webb
Registration number
9214/1932
Groom’s Family Name
WEBB
Groom’s Given Name(s)
CHARLES
Bride’s Family Name(s)
WILLINGHAM
Bride’s Given Name(s)
ETHEL C
District
GRANVILLE
Registration number
7741/1924
Groom’s Family Name
WEBB
Groom’s Given Name(s)
CHARLES
Bride’s Family Name(s)
OWEN
Bride’s Given Name(s)
IVY G
District
CARCOAR
Registration number
7548/1930
Groom’s Family Name
WEBB
Groom’s Given Name(s)
CHARLES
Bride’s Family Name(s)
IRVINE
Bride’s Given Name(s)
BARBARA E M
District
BURWOOD
@nickpelling, thanks, I knew it was the Adelaide Advertiser but other newspapers have published excerpts and the Daily Telegraph code page mentioned ‘manic-depressive’. Has it been mentioned in the AA? Regarding Dorothy, I thought that one who died in 1996 wasn’t her, so now she looks like the next mystery to be investigated. I have checked electoral rolls for Charles Webb and the only one that seems to fit was from Yarra and stopped in 1931. Can you check this?
Can someone check on Ancestry? I don’t have a subscription but I have searched and there’s a date for Dorothy Robertson’s death on the Webb family tree, right parents and former spouse Carl ‘Charles’ Webb. Apparently she had dropped her former’s husband last name after the divorce.
There was a Dorothy Jean Robertson, born around 1920, buried in SA in 2001: https://de.findagrave.com/memorial/169024106/dorothy-jean-robertson. I wonder whether she took her maiden name again, maybe after divorce.
Thomas: I’m trying to write up a post on all the different Dorothy Jeans, but it’s hard to find time between moderating all the comments. :-/
Pat: I’m trying to write up a post on all the different Dorothy Jeans, e.g. the family tree you mention seems to be optimism-heavy and sources-light. 🙁
Glen: yes Von Stieglitz connects with Thomson patriarch Ernest’s sister Eleanor Beatrice who married Edgar Boyne Von Steiglitz, whose mum Anne was of the Ransom lineage going back to James of Elizabeth citie [sic] Virginia circa.1645 from memory, The Germanic sounding name then reverted to her maiden name in order for son Aubry? to inlist in the AIF and thus avoid the taint of having German sympathies. Von Stieglitz came to the colonies Tasmania & New Zlnd around 1835.
Nick, if you write an email to a state library – I guess the Adelaide state library – and ask them to email you a copy of the newspaper article, they probably will.
Could be some small cost, but Australian libraries are used to providing information to people who live at quite some distance and aren’t parochial in their thinking.
Hi Nick, I have found the register of death of Dorothy Robertson Register number 29873/1989 in Frankston. Father and mother names are ‘unknown’. Can you check this?
Pat: I’ll throw it on the pile, thanks…
Nick, thanks. Sorry to be a pain. Another Dorothy Robertson, register number of death 21011/1986 in Fitzroy, all other data ‘unknown’, apart from place of birth Warwick, Queensland, but it could be wrong…. I mean how they know her place of birth if they don’t know anything else? One can only hope.
Sorry, Dorothy Webb, not Robertson.
milongal: re your querie on where Dorothy might have been in ’47 & ’48. My best bet be Bute…the Isle of Bute in Firth of Clyde that is, where she more than likely hailed. Certainly not the Abbott Bute in Bumfuck S.A. where her only customers for toe trimming would be affluent emus. Stands to reason and note that of 104 family names most encountered on the Scottish isle, Donaldson be in the top ten. What would our absent minded professor think about those odds?
Can someone check if this “Dorothy Jean Robertson” is a different person?
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/205668749?searchTerm=%22dorothy%20jean%20robertson%22
21 November 1951
Alexander Robertson. late
of 3 Wellington-street. Kew
Lithographer, deceased,— After 14
clear days Dorothy Jean Robertson,
of 3 Wellington -street, Kew. widow,
the sole executrix appointed by de-
Fix this textceased’s WILL, dated 13th Novem-
ber, 1926. will APPLY to the
Supreme Court for a -GRANT of
probate of the sold will.
I have also found a “Dorothy Webb” being a nun at Convent of Mercy, Mansfield. Yeah, I know it’s ludicrous, but that could have been a good way to avoid publicity and probably legal actions, in case her husband’s identity had been uncovered.
Pat: different person, I’m afraid. But thanks to the marriage certificate details I just posted, we now have lots of solid details to compare against.
Nick, thanks! Do you know if she lived in Domain Rd, South Yarra?
Pat: yes, 274 Domain Rd (though not for very long, I believe).
See today’s post: https://ciphermysteries.com/2022/07/31/carl-webb-dorothy-jean-robertsons-marriage-certificate
Update: Dorothy Jean Robertson seems to have had at least one sister:
– Phyllis Robertson, b. 28 Aug 1925, d. 25 May 2012
…who will (of course) be in my next post. 🙂
I thought she had lots of sisters and a brother… ? Rosa (Rose) Vivian Hood Robertson, Olive Maggie Roxburgh Robertson, Magdalen Clarisse Baxter Robertson, Henry Douglas Roberstson, Hilda Emily Florence Robertson, Hazel Winifred Robertson (Scott).
Sorry, I don’t have the Trove link (I found this late last night and I have a nasty flu or covid going on)
3.3.1947
‘THREE HURT WHEN CAR HITS TREE’ The three occupants of a car which crashed into a tree in Albert rd, South Melbourne, on Saturday were injured. They were John Koch, 61, of Queensberry st, West Footscray, who suffered lacerations; his wife, Edie, 61, who suffered a fractured leg and facial injuries; and Dorothy Webber (sic), 40, of Domain rd, South Yarra, abrasions and shock.
If we want to clutch at straws….Based on close to (but unfortunately not exactly) 1920 birth year
Dorothy Jean (Doff) FARAVONI/BOCK d May2006 age 88 (Bendigo).
Dorothy Jean (Doff) REEVE d Aug 2015 age 89 (Geelong)
Dorothy (Doff) DOULL d Nov 2006 age 84 (Resthaven (I think that’s a brand of retirement village) Adelaide).
Or closer to 1920 (but name not so matchie):
Dorothy Muriel (Doffy) TAYLOR d Mar 1959 age 39 (Balmain)
Dorothy Merna (Doff) LLOYD d Mar 2005 age 84 (Mortlake)
Dorothy May (Doff) HIBBINS d Jul 2011 age 90 (Vic – no location)
Dorothy Eileen (Doff) FRANCIS d Jan 2012 age 91 (Adelaide)
milongal: I looked at the same things and didn’t like them much either. 🙁
Also
Dorothy Jean BROWN d 10/2004 age 83 (Baffle Creek)
Dorothy Jean BROWN d 08/1986 (no age recorded, vic – possibly was previously Dorothy Jean WEBB)
Also ones where date doesn’t really match with surnames Montgomery, Thorne, Prior that link to Webb.
milongal: one might wonder where Dot picked up on the ‘Doff’ monicker. On line dictionary refers to sexual coupling, getting ones gear off as in old time strip tease, salutation as in doffing one hat, and someone of comical persona. As to whether any of these definitions apply to our girl remains to be seen, although a joker she was almost certainly not and ladies of yore were not inclined to remove their hats in public. So guess what that leaves us with..I also wonder did they have a certain type of men only entertainment for tipplers in the gambling dens along Lonsdale Street in days of yore? and if so might sensual foot massage and manicure have been popular.
Dorothy Hibernia (Doff) WEBB nee Robertson d Oct 1959 age 52 (Liverpool, NSW)
Try this slut on for size.
‘According to Abbott and Fitzpatrick, Carl Webb had deserted his wife in April 1947’
Where does this date come from?
From what I understand of Ms. Fitzpatrick’s latest comments to ABC TV, the process of her DNA typing is not only most likely to be flawed biologicaly but also contrived by her own admissions, by putting her cart before the horse which has now bolted. By connecting a questionable T. Keane tie from a left suitcase to a person she identifies as Thomas Keane who, through a descedant has thereby shown conclusively that Carl Webb his brother in law, is the SM trigger in the wood pile. Toro Toro Toro (bullshit) is what ex Detective Feltus must now be thinking; chances of coming up with that claimed match with no precursor would be negligible, even had Keane gone by his middle name and not Gerald which he was always known by. No way known could the Abbott team have picked on Thomas from the ‘T’ initial alone which could have stood for a hundred other names, even had it been a ‘T’ which is debatable. Link all that to every Keane or Kean plus a host of other variables world wide, born between 1895 and 1905 (Webb was born late 1905) and you can guess the odds of Dr. Fitzpatrick’s amazing coincidental conclusion. If I’ve overlooked something, I’ll stand humbly corrected.
….cut to the quick, the only way Derek’s people could have earmarked Gerald Thomas Keane for special attention to my way of thinking is, if they had been looking for a suitable branch member of a particular family and he fit the bill. So it would then mean by logical backtracking that they had already tagged @ Thomas’ brother-in-law Carl Webb for the role of Somerton Man, whether he be or not; Most certainly not in my view, at least not with the identification at hand prior to DNA vetting process, based solely on a contrived false premise to deceive and a desire to exploit social gullibility for gain. A case of an end justifying the means would seem to fit the bill what?
,
…did I say Reg, sorry meant Richard as in ‘Open the door Richard’
Peteb: couple of glaring errors regarding your latest otherwise readable article, for which you might be excused. Seems you fell into the trap of following the Daily Mail re release which in turn borrowed from a self serving exclusive summary provided to the Adelaide Advertiser by grandstanders Abbott & Fitzgerald..The body was was found to be wearing a tie worn on dress uniforms by the RAAF and not one found much later in a suitcase at Adelaide station, with the name T. Keane (or similar) printed on the reverse. A double breasted jacket worn by SM was said by a tailor Ugo Pozza, to have been of American manufacture due to it’s unique feather stitching. No additional items, as claimed were suggested as having been of American origin as stated in The Mail. So there you have it in a nutshell; lesson for to-day being don’t go to press on anything you pick up second hand, it’s likely to be a trifle over done and as such, reflect adversely on one’s reporting credibility.
“Doff” became Mrs D’arcy and died in NSW. see link https://www.geni.com/people/Dorothy-Webb-D-Arcy/6000000186162892859?fbclid=IwAR2SN_gBuJO2EqAyWQEjckWk85F3MM2SFMmL7A6dWXEaVQO0pm1SS0cc3D4
@Curio
Everyone can put up a family tree on Geni. Where is the evidence?
@Curio:
There is no evidence that she got married to Kevin D’Arcy: According to the electoral rolls from the 1950s and 1960s, he lived along with his wife Daphne Upward whom he had married in 1941.
Thomas: I was told that it was Kevin D’Arcy, but not which Kevin D’Arcy.
Not to be a broken record (if someone has responded to any earlier mentionI missed it)…..
Crick obituary had niblings Kevin and Sandy. D’Arcy is Kevin Alexander…..
Sandy could be Alexander/Alexandra…..people in the habit of using their name on their kids…..etc, etc….
milongal: fella I knew well growing up had a funny surname but hence being Alexander he was known as Sandy. When he signed up for the King’s shilling, his service record was changed to Alexander Sanders and that remained so. I only learnt his birth name in when his brothers flew out for dad’s funeral and so some delays were had at the airport, overcome when two big islander chaps spitting image of their bro were spotted at arrivals. Our mum had forgotten to tell my sister and I the real family name. It took some of the sadness from the meeting and dad would have seen the humour.
I know that we have a nefarious reading of Doff and her links, via Dr Bennett, to Charlie’s demise. I’m trying to think through an alternative, sympathetic reading and have turned to Michael Ondaatjes’ “Warlight” for assistance…
Maybe Doff did know that the body on the beach was Charlie’s. If he had been involved in “secret men’s business” during the War, had gone walkabout soon afterwards and then turned up dead, she was scared. The move to the quiet town of Bute, South Australia, may have been a good defensive move. What better than to move to an isolated town where the presence of strangers would attract attention?
Charlie’s body turned up in a very public way. It could be interpreted as a warning to those who needed to be told something in a coded way… Doff’s newspaper advertisement of 1951 has a considered temporal distance and perhaps contrives a sense of not knowing a thing about where he had gone.
John/Glen,
As amusing as it may sound … when Frederick, Francis and Robert von Stieglitz arrived in Hobart (1829), the Stieglitzes were regarded as “Anglo-Irish”. Not really so strange, since their mother’s maiden name was Atkinson; the family was thus also two generations removed from its origins in Pilsen, Bavaria (now Plzen, Czech R.) and resident in County Tyrone for 60 years.
(fwiw, Until now, I had assumed, wrongly, that the Stieglitzes were part of the main wave of German migration into Ireland, namely the Palatines/Pfalzern, religious refugees who left the Rhineland in 1709; that wave gave us famous Irish, or at least Irishised, surnames like Heck, Ruttle, Sholdice and Teskey.)
Furphy: any hidden agenda re Von Sieglitz and connections to Prosper’s paternal line? I’ve posted frequently on their links to Tasmania post 1835, back to Virginia from Ireland and forebears James & Peter Ransom of Elisabeth city Virginia on Wikitree.
@Pat Prof Abbott has reported back from his conversation with the family, see his latest response to a similar question on his FaceBook page about The Somerton Man on 18th August 2022. The photos on their public tree are interesting, too.
@Jo
Very plausible explanation, thanks!
@Curio, thanks, I’ll have a look!
Um. So, has D Abbott confirmed that his wife shares DNA with Robin Thomson? Does he confirm that Robin was Prosper’s son? That whole side of things seems to have gone “blurry”. Could someone kindly update?
An interesting tidbit from the podcast is that Carl took off around April and Dorothy left around September, h’mm, so maybe it was Dorothy who was friends with Derry’s wife, Rita, or Derry himself, rather than them being friends of Carl’s, that is, if 2/63 Bromby Street wasn’t advertised as vacant. Doff was the last one standing in the flat, it would seem.
@Mary,
Where were these properties advertised if not in newspapers?
I believe Derry’s official leaving date was after he started advertising in Bromby St.
Could these properties have been under the control of the RAAF and he was allocated this empty property but technically still on duty (paid) until his discharge papers were received?
For some soldiers, they built a camp on Kangaroo Island from old internment huts. It shows that the government were trying to house returning military personnel after 1944.
Could Carl have been allocated Flat 2 Bromby street by the RAAF?
@ David – The apartment was advertised several times in 1942, before the Webbs moved in but Mary is correct, there doesn’t appear to be an ad prior to Derry George’s move in 1948.
Misca
Re Robin’s DNA – It ‘s been confirmed through DNA that Robin was Prosper’s son. Have a listen to Mind Over Murder podcast (Part 1) Colleen Fitzpatrick on Solving Somerton Man Mystery dated 5 September 2022. This episode fills us in on the the whole DNA kit and caboodle, it’s fabulously interesting.
Former rocket scientist – ah, wouldn’t ya love to have that on your curriculum Vitae!!
Was there any outcome from Clive’s lead back on July 28…
‘Interesting that as of 31 July 1972, a Dorothy Jean Dixon, Chiropodist, was living at 98 Charman Road, Mentone 3194-the same Dorothy I wonder?’
Not that it necessarily matters, none of her possible issue will have photos of Charles, she would’ve burnt them all after a hot tinder dry Friday night on the Southwarks at the Bute Hotel.
1959 November, E. B. Collins an inmate of Wanganui Prison, New Zealand, claimed he knew the identity of the Somerton Man.
who was EB COLLINS and has it been looked into?
Somebody, very early on in the piece, told us that the name Carl Webb rang a bell but, nothing more came of it. There was infact another Webb mentioned besides Em Webb the Salvo that presided over SM’s funeral service. His name was Beecher Noel Webb, an Adelaide born lawyer and gold fossiker who’s family were linked to the American Beecher Stowes. Some may recall them being related to the von Steigleits family and in turn the Thomsons by marriage. ‘Noel’ Webb had, during the early thirties gone into a mining venture partnership with a couple of Nazi fifth columnists at Tennant Creek, Carl von Czarneckie & Albert Johns both of whom Webb later prosecuted. First named Carl had been employed by the Lutheran missions in central S.A. and later linked by association to the mysterious death of one Harry Bell Lassetter. Albert ran an interstate auto theft racket for which he was imprisoned in Qld. then subsequently deported in 1936. Meanwhile Carl took off to Perth where he saught santuary in the German Consulate but then allowed to leave due to a medical condition on a ship back to Hamburg in early 1939, his citizenship being revoked accordingly. Quite an interesting yarn which I’ll set aside for now but, the conclusion might bare some relevance. That is should our Carl have himself been living in seclusion within the large German community of South Australia from 1947 until his death at Somerton? The Lutheran Society of Adelaide are known for their historical record keeping and are always extremely helpful.
Trying to figure whether Richard Webb travelled on his pat as a young immigrant to Melbourne from Germany. He claims to have landed at Melbourne 18 Jan.1888 aboard S/S Nurnberg which doesn’t reconcile with Lloyds shipping records at all. Only one Melbourne (no name) Webb inbound ship passenger is recorded for said arrival date on the S/S Claucus ex Newcastle NSW which doesn’t help. I think it is worth pursuing nonetheless, it being possible that others of the same Webb family settled in Australia pre NAA record keeping and that they may have kept in touch from interstate.
I’m thinking, anyone who had discussed the possibility of it being Carl Webb on the forums back in the days when only intrigue and espionage was in vogue would have probably had their post ignored and very shortly after sent to the bin labelled “Irrelevant”. As a sometimes Zodiac researcher I come across the strange phenomenon all the time with the Zodiac case. There is just something about human nature that, when confronted by a mystery that is many decades old, people will often seek the most extravagant explanations. And so he becomes an international spy, a member of some secret society, and you can find micro-writing etc. I am perhaps reminded of a bizarre Zodiac theory which posited the idea of hidden, microscopic messages in the “eye tattoos” of a deceased girl who was put forward as a potential Zodiac victim. I doubt the presenter was being serious, but it was amazing to see a number of people who actually believed the possibility. And yes, there was a forum of “believers” who once seriously considered micro-writing as the answer to the 340 cipher and they would not hear otherwise from non-believers. I guess if you stare at anything long enough you begin to see shapes and patterns that are not really there. The reality is that if Zodiac is ever identified he will probably be someone from out of left field who was rather too ordinary and unimportant for most crime buffs. It is doubtful that he was some “Moriarty” stereotype. Of course when confronted with this possibility the most common reply I receive is: “But he was SO clever to avoid being captured and three of his ciphers have never been solved!” The reality may be that in the absence of a known method, and due to simple factors of variability, a smaller cryptogram will always be more difficult to crack. As such, smaller is not necessarily a measure of a cryptographer’s intelligence or ability, but may serve merely to boost the serial killer’s ego in the absence of a solution. As for not getting caught, he might have simply been lucky. Once again, there are often variability factors to consider which have little to do with a person’s alleged intelligence or cunning.
This is a list compiled of tangential evidence that I feel is part of the exposure of the identity of the Somerton Man as a victim of a Russian Spy Ring’s cover-up.
Recently a man named Ralph Simpson had made a post on Klausis Cryptobrain site that showed a Cipher Wheel that was made stamped with the number 1942.
Having inspected the device he documented the numbers and the partial alphabet on the Wheel and the thread can be seen here:
https://scienceblogs.de/klausis-krypto-kolumne/2020/02/26/an-unknown-cipher-device-from-1942/
Diving into the Wheel’s intricate design, there were two phrases on the back side of each disk. One said I DO MISS HER SMILE, and the other TO THOSE WHO WAIT. The disk had a series of 3 scored lines on one side, and underneath a subtly shaded image of a woman. A series of numbers along the edge of the wheel, with an accompanying partial alphabet on the other edge.
IDOMIS SHERSM ILE – I DO MISILE SMERSH is what I get from this. A WWII SMERSH Cipher Wheel…..direct from Stalin’s Nuclear Spies, formed in 1942.
It was crudely stamped with the initials H with a O surrounding it. Herbert Osborn Yardley is the suspected cryptographer in mention here.
I broke down the ciphers in the number sequences per their corresponding alphabetical substitution and examined it with the alphabet given ABCDEGFHLMONPQRYZ and then found the hint.
One section was arranged to reveal the letters FHLM and/or LMON when out of order in the sequence. Yardley’s last card was the Roosevelt Death Threat Card found here:
https://scienceblogs.de/klausis-krypto-kolumne/2015/10/26/wer-knackt-die-verschluesselte-nachricht-an-praesident-roosevelt/
The phrase made of the ciphertext in that card was mentioned as being formed from the text into DID YOU EVER BITE A LEMON in a perfect anagram. I feel that this is a signature of comparable importance with his initials as well.
The number sequence 18 digits translated to a CDE G I AD DR in one segment,
The CDE would be abbreviated for CODE and G a form of “Government” code that Yardley has mentioned in his book about codes he made during the time spent at the American Black Chamber.
The phrase I AD DR would be the addition of a person named Dr. George Hodel….the fabled iconic Doctor in LA and Chicago that was known to have been investigated for murders in both places.
Seeing their strange similarity, Hodel and Herbert Osborne Yardley share a similar timeframe together as Hodel was moguling in LA while Yardley was operating a restaurant suspected as acting as a cover front business for a Spy Ring.
Moving into the importance of the cipher wheel it becomes apparent that the Cipher Wheel is holding some kind of alphabet that is used to deliver a key to a cipher, and that it acts as a form of decryption device for a specific cipher that is directly tied to the Somerton Man, the Rubiyat cipher, and the end line Tamum Shud found in his coat pocket, taken from the page in the book found down the street in the car.
The Book was seeming to hold the missing part of the affair that saw him killed and people immediately mentioned that he was a victim of a drop that saw him murdered to keep their ring a secret. The cipher was found when scored marks were found made on the last page of the book. The phrase Tamum Shud meaning The End or It Is Finished, brings the attention to this last page where a piece of paper was placed over the book and then written, leaving the pen strokes underneath. The officer that found the book was noted as having taken and redrawn the letters and marks as they appeared in the last page producing the cipher that we know today.
Some speculated using their background as a cryptographer that the cipher was made to deliver the first letters of words, but they weren’t sure where it was taken from.
Two interesting things to note, the during the Lipstick Murders in Chicago it was also noted that a piece of paper was used to overlay the ransom note from that crime. The other thing to note is that one of the suspects that was railroaded under an induced state of hypnosis mentioned a man named George, and that a person involved in the criminal investigations named Harry Gold was later found to have been a Russian Spy.
https://imgur.com/RMrlHwS
https://imgur.com/fAWMd1e
Now back to the ciphers of Dr. George Hodel and his connections to Yardley.
The Dahlia Killings that saw numerous cards sent in taunting police were clearly meant to conceal messages of their ring of spies. In one card it mentions everyone from Ethel Rosenberg, to Jestyn in Australia, and it also shows that they were planning to pass along messages about the Hydrogen Bomb and the tests made to detonate one.
https://imgur.com/fPWnC8O
It mentions a DR SENDING NOTES and SEND ETHE THOSE RSON RING NOTES along with the specific tones of mention that seem to also be noticed in the acrostics of the Rubiyat, as you will see even more clearly as compared to these cards.
https://imgur.com/hZgIhAX
In fact the Rubiyat and the Dahlia Card share the same first letter of words in their compositions, almost exactly as seen in both pics. One can see that they are intentionally made to carry similar text strands to reinforce their importance in comparison with the others.
https://imgur.com/hi8OYEI
The phrases blocked in both are shown to mention the Atomic Program of the US, and there is a sign that a Russian born Jewish Doctor is now patterning his killings and his letters to investigators in both cases, as well as tying in Russian spies in Chicago that were named in investigations.
The block ciphers were a simple way to deliver stennos and short phrases, but the ciphertext was arranged specifically to use the cipher wheel from the beginning of the post to crack the ciphers.
I suspect that Yardley, being a communications specialist and cryptographer was acting as a go between in the states, so that messages in cipher would be routed through his network in NY and he was ultimately the person that would create the ciphers, masking his work as educational, he published the technique in a book about his work in the Military’s MI-8.
I suspect that Yardley would communicate to these agents in the field and they would reply using a variety of techniques. In the case of Hodel, his killings were dressed with the mysterious ciphers that made him stand out as the agent in operations in Chicago with Harry Gold, and in LA with his Hollywood cabal. Later traveling to Australia to meet with Jestyn and her friends, of which Somerton Man was acting as a mule, he was tasked with picking up information and coordinating it through the use of a specific ciphertext that Yardley was familiar with.
https://imgur.com/fhuLiOh
The phrase TAMAM SHUD is not only translated one way as shown in the narrative, but in Hebrew as well, but meaning Innocuous Robbery or Complete Robbery. The fact Somerton Man was stripped of identification and other items show that the message was from his assassin and he was hiding his intentions behind a dual use phrase that would reveal his ethnicity.
https://imgur.com/kYAUNnD
The block cipher stennos in the Dahlia card mentions that the ciphertext in the Rubiyat poem should be ROT’d first in order to test the strands.
https://imgur.com/oyso3nM
Take notice of the bottom left hand corner of ROT 8 values. It shows clearly the plaintext JYST SAGA SHE LATE ADELLADE LAST FAKE LYST.
Working the text into an Old English Box Cipher format in its original state, the addition of a series of pairings result in the drawn shape of a Y for an alert to Yardley’s attention, as well as the inclusion of pairings throughout the steps of the rotations of the blocks that show the phrases about the Atomic Bomb.
https://imgur.com/pRjIzd4
Now the ciphertext has a set of letters O and A, standing for the Omega and Alpha…with the space between them, showing that the layout of the text begins with the AIA…..and continues through the cipher until it returns to that point at the end. There is even an X there to draw your attention.
Not to mention that the drawn lines are specifically made to symbolize the beach where he was found dead, and the lettering and its accentuation mentions that there was a buried bag of some kind along the beach, using the cipher as a map to its location. The X was the position of the body, and the movement along the waterline towards the location where the book was found reveals a buried cache. The cipher was dropped to allude to that location and deliver hints about the composition of the ciphers.
In all there were a half dozen key signatures that were added to find the ciphers in play working together.
I am working more on the Vigenere Cipher using the text and there are clear messages derived but are still not complete so I am working on the alphabets and trying different variables, with the ciphers creating all types of descriptive and compelling statements. I just don’t want to speculate about that yet.
Hope this helps, I am working with a lady in Australia and through her producers are planning to make this a press release with a link to its own page. Should be interesting to see something of a break in the ciphers making headlines if they want to take on the new information.
Then noticing that the ciphertext was exactly 50 letters long, I compressed it into 5 lines of 10 letters to give a perfect square for a Vigenere crack to be made.
I asked ChatGPT (that crazy guy!)
The resulting plaintext is “WRGOABBABDMLIAOIWTBIMPANETPMLIABOAIAQCITTMTSAMSTGAB”, which is the original message.
Therefore, the Vigenere Cipher using the keyword “Tamam Shud” encrypts the plaintext message “WRGOABBABDMLIAOIWTBIMPANETPMLIABOAIAQCITTMTSAMSTGAB” into the ciphertext “FRSASHYZAZEPO TSPAQELAII SAS SIARJAPWHCAC HYZAZEPO TSPAQELAII SAS SI”. When the same keyword is used to decrypt the ciphertext, the original message is obtained.
Not quite sure how to interpret this but I wanted chatgpt to give me the letters in the code. I don’t know if it has those right???
@David Morgan
I’m not into chatting with that crazy guy (yet) but I guess I would ask him something like ‘What sort of job would involve working with lead in Australia around 1947-1948?’
Pat: might be worth pointing out that as far back as 2009 Derek Abbott and his students determined that Somerton Man had a surplus of Lead in his strontium though very little in his pencil….if that makes sense.
Don’t bother posting your sad sexistjokes JS. Don’t you have anything else to do with your time ?
@pat
the crazy guy says:
During the late 1940s, there were various jobs that could have involved working with lead in Australia. Here are a few possibilities:
Smelting and refining: The lead industry was significant in Australia during this time, and there were several smelters and refineries in operation. These facilities processed lead ore and other materials to extract the lead, which could involve working with molten lead, lead dust, and other lead-containing materials.
Construction: Lead was commonly used in building materials, such as roofing, pipes, and paint, during the 1940s. Construction workers could have been exposed to lead while installing or demolishing these materials.
Manufacturing: Lead was also used in the manufacturing of various products, including batteries, ammunition, and car parts. Workers in these industries could have been exposed to lead while handling raw materials or finished products.
On the subject of AI…
A paid futurist (TRUE) said my demo AI app was “genius”:
https://prisms.ai/live/45c193
A somewhat famous writer said my other demo AI app to review his book was “WOW!”
https://prisms.ai/live/g49a00
I am disappointed with the AI lies but if you think about humans they are entirely flawed. They will send innocent people to gas chambers, forge evidence like the Norwegian criminal police Kripos to give someone a life sentence and then someone or some people put Carl Webb on a beach – whether by design or a series of life “accidents” like death, taxes and divorce.
I suppose we should expect AI to lie if it is modeled too well on the human brain.
….well, apart from being a humorist of note and keen on repartee Pat, I’m kept busy doing my best to nut out facicado Brasils from the genuino macho seleniums!
Pat, JS,
The question of the origin of the lead (and strontium and other elements) that were detected in a sample of hair from the SM plaster bust was extensively reviewed on this site, and others, several years ago.
Briefly, the possible sources of significant exposure to lead in the 1940s were:
drinking traditional scrumpy (but very few people outside of rural Somerset did)
working with lead tetraethyl petrol additive (a few people did)
working in a precious metals assay laboratory (fire assays) (a few people)
working in primary metallurgy of lead ores and concentrates. Perhaps a couple of thousand people.
working in secondary metallurgy of lead and lead alloys such as re-cycling car batteries. Perhaps a thousand or so people.
Sanding down lead based paint. Many people did.
IMHO working with lead solder and lead paints is unlikely to produce a significant increase in circulating lead levels. With the exception of skin absorption of organic lead compounds (such as tetraethyl lead) lead is not significantly absorbed through the skin. Lead can be absorbed by ingestion which also involves dust breathed in (your nose filters out the dust containing the lead and then you effectively swallow the dust). So, the most common cause of ingesting lead in the 1940 was via sanding down steel that had been painted with lead based paint.
The recently formed CIA was investigating using lead tetraethyl and various drugs that could give the same symptoms as the digitalis drugs (suspected of causing SMs death) for assassinations in 1948. This was documented in this and other sites a few years ago.
Remember that at the core of the SM “mystery” is a suspected poisoning. And IMHO the number of instances of drugs (ether, barbiturates, digitalis etc), pharmacists and pharmacologists (Jessie and her uncle, Dorothy), pharmacies (the ROK was apparently thrown into car parked outside a pharmacy) involved in this case is improbably high. Also, I am reminded that gangsters were heavily involved in the illegal drug trade in Australia even in the 1940s.
IMHO lead poisoning was probably still being used with murderous intent in the 1940s and I suspect that most of the lead poisonings of (unwanted) children were deliberate. The method would have been know to significant numbers of people and the forensic methods of the 1940s would not have detected a careful poisoner. All this was described several years ago along with the possibility of accidental or purposeful barium poisoning. Bottom line? IMHO it is possible that somebody tried to poison Carl with lead (I won’t give any more details of the method for obvious reasons) about a month or so before his death. Maybe the intent was just to make him ill, to temporarily hurt him, but sub-acute lead poisoning can exacerbate the toxic effects of digitalis type drugs in some people, so perhaps Carl’s death was a case of mixed causes, including hereditary. Hereditary? Yes, if I am correct and Carl suffered from a connective tissue disorder this would probably affect his metabolism and clearance of some drugs. In other words Carl could have fallen over the edge from an unintended accumulation of digitalis type drug exacerbated by sub-acute lead/barium poisoning. This is still potentially a testable hypothesis. Carl’s connective and other tissue can probably be tested for abnormalities that are associated with connective tissue disorders.
And finally (thank heavens! you sigh) a connective tissue disorder causes personality disorder in 70% of the afflicted. This could explain why Carl reads as being a bit odd. Unfortunately the mutant genes that cause the most common connective tissue disorder (Ehlers Danlos) are currently unknown so Carl’s DNA can not answer this question, at the present moment. People afflicted with connective tissue disorders often suffer from constant musculoskeletal pain and so can become addicted to pain killers. I know of such cases close to me and I note that according to Dorothy Carl was addicted to pain killers. His potentially abnormal metabolism and excretion of drugs would not have helped his situation.
PS Connective tissue disorders seem to be associated with an athletic build.
@byron d
If Carl had all these health issues he would likely have visited his doctor in Melbourne pre-1948. He had all those leg injuries from football. Did Aussie football teams have team doctors or would he have to use his own GP?
His own doctors and dentists didn’t recognize him.
David Morgan: one of the early attempts to confirm identity was a Victorian woman who thought a mortuary press photo of the beach body resembled her brother but nothing came of the ID.
how about his teeth. did they not id people through dental identification?
Why was he missing so many teeth?
I have opinions about AI but even one of my normal rants isn’t long enough to describe them. Short version: Not sure Artificial Intelligence is a solution for Natural Stupidity.
That said, Dave M’s AI piqued my interest, and while I wouldn’t go quite so far as to call it genius (I guess I wasn’t paid to) it came up with this clever response to “42+9”:
+++++
The three tarot cards selected are the Hermit, the Sun, and the Wheel of Fortune. The Hermit card represents introspection, contemplation, and seeking guidance. The Sun card symbolizes joy, optimism, and success. The Wheel of Fortune card represents luck, destiny, and the cycle of life.
When looking at the problem 42 + 9, the tarot reading suggests that the answer is 51. This is because the Hermit card suggests that the answer is found through contemplation and introspection, the Sun card suggests that the answer will bring joy and success, and the Wheel of Fortune card suggests that the answer is found through luck and destiny.
++++
I know very little of tarot – but 51 is the answer I came up with too….
the answer is always 42
David Morgan: yes most Australian pro football teams had physiotherapists on staff; Faridey Habib of the West Adelaide club comes to mind. Fred’s (no number) “Address In Adelaide Queens Court”, as per the last five letters in the pu line of the code along with several others that come to mind.
Alan Hamill: between ’56 & ’58 I have Ella living at Goolwa S.A and she’s still there until ’65. As for Doff and Mike D’Arcy, I could never pin them down but Pat Valle is still poking around rainbow enclaves in regional NSW; so we’ll likely get another of her ‘Dorothy Jean’ up-dates from Rio in due course.
PB: to be even fairer, can you name any punter what believed anything I ever said?
Join the club, mate, my stuff goes down like a lead balloon as well ..
PB: At least your stuff occasionally has a ring of truth to it; Whereas mine is 100% fantasy, created to suit the latest FB generated Jerry Keane diversion, which you’ve wisely stayed well clear of.
Is this the right Thomas Harkness – Jo’s father?
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/202259971?searchTerm=%22Thomas%20Lawson%20Harkness%22
Also, did the bother marry into the same Adelaide Beaumonts?
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/202259971?searchTerm=%22Thomas%20Lawson%20Harkness%22
Off topic (but relevant, if that makes sense). Heard this morning the Government has extended trove funding – $33mill over 4 years.
Great news Milongal!
Em: in a word yes, and that’s not all. The SMH gives good a good account of his bankruptcy in Newcastle NSW circa.1926 where he had been in partnership with a local electrical linesman from 1920 and so it seems the three Harkness girls were all conceived during that difficult period. Tom’s wife took over finances to comply with the OR’s order when the business went south but, strangely she never gets a mention in later life til her passing in 1982 as she appears to have been a pretty capable woman.
That’s great news Milongal!
Yep, really great news milongal. Capital or not!
Peteb: see you getting in on the Derry George conundrum at long last and why not. Coupla great pics of him with his RAAF uniform that sadly none of our early CM punters though to post. It was Nick Pelling first twigged to the Bromby Street car rackets that our present ‘under the counter’ team then took off his hands. So from these small beginings and urgings of ‘thedud47’ a plot emerged that linked up to the Prosper Thomson/Webb ‘Grand Theft Auto’ syndicate that included a host of Melbourne gangland notables and fake Masons…I guess you were busy with your similar Estyn Jones hoax at around the same time and missed all the fun but, never too late mate.
I think it is worth checking the electoral rolls to see if the Georges and Webbs lived at 63 Bromby Street at the same time. There is only one reference to Webb and Flat 2 (a 1943 small ad for the shavemaster). There are lots of ads for George and flat 2, especially after Derry George’s November 1948 discharge from the airforce.
There are ads from flat 1 at the time of Eliza Webb’s death advertising furniture and effects. The young law clerk working on Dorothy’s divorce case interviewed a woman living at flat 2 in 1951 who said that she was living at Bromby Street at the same time as the Webbs but that they were not a sociable couple and she didn’t know where they had gone. Was this Rita George? The landlord/caretaker was also interviewed. He reported that Charlie had sold all of his furniture and left with no forwarding address, This concurs with the November 1946 flat 1 ads.
I wonder whether the only reference to Webb and flat 2 was a typing or transcription error? Is anyone able to access the Victorian electoral roll to check the Georges?
Could Derry George be the link between Charlie and the Thomsons? He certainly would have known the Thomsons from a shared interest in hill climbs between the 1950s and early 1990s. George was involved in hill climbs from at least 1937 until the 1990s. Robin Thomson was involved from the early 1980s. Can anyone provide dates for Prosper T?
Well, not quite old veteran, I’m looking for the angle that might give us an answer as to how and when Jessica may have met Carl .. and given their common interest in hooning around in powerful cars – who knows?
Jo: most unlikely any link between Derry George and Carl Webb in my brief look through the available sources. For starters his stay at the 2/63 Bromby St. unit was apparently very brief in October1948 pre discharge from service, so long after the Webbs had vacated. You’ll have seen by his records that most of Derry’s service during WW2 from 1939 was spent in far flung postings and one might assume that his wife from 1942 Rita Mabel Dixon (????) would have been a loyal camp follower from then on….Clive: name Dixon rings a bell, she one of yours?
.
A 1914 Stellite may well have been powerful in its day mate though hardly the type you could hoon around Jetty Rd. Glenelg in. Closest Jessica Thomson ever got to Carl in my opinion was when they moved to Somerton which was slightly less than 900 metres from each other in ’47 and ’48 respectively.
Jo: tell that to Thelma Thomson nee Amphlett @ Little Pattie. She’ll have your guts for garters if you maintain that the Maroubra stomp wasn’t a dance. She invented it mate.
Re Derry George and Bromby Street; here’s what Dorothy had to say in the Affidavit and Divorce documents:
“We remained at the same address until about 13 September 1946 when I left the flat.”
“I believe he left the flat about the month of April 1947. I have not heard from or seen respondent since September 1946.”
H’mm, I wonder how she knew he left in April ’47 when she’d neither seen nor heard from him.
As I was telling PBjust recently, there’s two excellent photos for ID comparison purposes of SM case non entity Derry George as attachments to his primary service history records. Pays to keep your eye on the ball in this game of clones Dudley my man.
@JS – I love Little Pattie’s work! It’s Time she got more recognition! I was simply quoting a self confessed old smoke hound!
@ Poppins – interesting! I don’t think anyone has kept up their Ancestry subscriptions or anything that provides quick access to the electoral rolls! Time for a quick visit to the library when I can squeeze it in!
Jo: take a gander at the Gordon Cramer’s A1 generated mock up of SM. Compare it to the RAAF WW2 archival full frontal photograph of Leading Aircraftsman Dermott ‘Derry’ George; then with TS/BS file shots of Soviet NPT delegate Pavel Fedosimov. Put em together and what have you got? dead spitters of each other and both born in 1915 but, sadly looking nothing like Robin Thomson or the original morgue shot of Somerton Man.
Jo, seriously, anyone who is guilty of singing ‘He’s my blonde-haired stompy whompie real gone surfer boy’ needs an expensive dose of serious reconditioning therapy, and it sounds like John S was hanging off every lyric when she sang it in Vietnam.
War does that to a bloke I’m told so he gets a pass, you though should know better.
It was Winston Churchill dud not JFK. Go back to quote school and lay of the booze!
…I missed Little Pattie on stage in ’66 (before my time)) but met her twice in the nineties when she came back over to Vn, once for Long Tan day and another on Anzac Day then for a gig at SME Moorbank. I missed her in 2016 in Vung Tau for the fiftieth anniversary of the battle where they didn’t allow her to perform. What a great scout she was and I bet she’s still happy to strutt her stuff down Maroubra beach at 75. Good on yer Pattie, yer blood’s worth bottling Digger.
Pavel and Derry are not the same person. You don’t need facial ID you can look at the ears.
I’m not old enough to know or remember Stompie Wompie, Pete! I’m sure all the girls used to sing it to you! Ah, those who are blessed by blonde flowing locks! It’s a song that our Gen X British moderator probably isn’t familiar with either. Thank you for expanding our cultural horizons and repertoire!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=blghTWXqwys
….Correct David, the ears have it. I was fooled by the saddle noses and farcial ID.
As for the missing ‘c’ in farcical David; Reminds me of the C in the code placed after the letter ‘Q’ for Queer, and which, if combined could only stand for one or two things.
…and if our SM was a ‘Queer Chappie’ so what?, at least he had the good sense and decency to stick his slightly soiled (Cleland) jockey briefs in his coat pocket along with the TS slip (Leane).
She probably had people keeping tabs on what was happening. I wonder who
Colonel there you go again going of half cocked and balding up AGAIN ! Its becoming a habit !
The *JFK credit was I eluded to was actually a nod to a pivotal scene in the MOVIE JFK where Joe Pesci blurts out the “enigma ” quote whilst being cross examined by Kevin Costners character.
Colonel I recomend that you read the 7 habits of succesfull people colonel specifically the chapter “first seek to understand”
It can save you making these types of cockups in future
I can’t find a 1943 electoral roll entry for either Derry or Rita George (there is one for his father in Glen Iris). They first appear in 1949 at Bromby Street. In 1937 electoral roll Derry is living at 136 Beach Road Sandringham, he would be around 22. It’s not too far away from Mentone… In 1939, when he enlists in the airforce, he is living in Hampton, another beachside suburb.
I don’t think there is anything definitive in the airforce file – there is a note 5/5/45 beside the address 2/63 Bromby Street on one page but also 10/48 which could be October 1948. There is also a note beside a later entry of Rita George’s name – 8/4/48. Derry George left the airforce on 18/11/48 – discharged at own request.
.
Hi John, Dixon? Doesn’t ring any bells, although I vaguely remember “Dixon of Dock Green”.
PB: if you’re still interested in what became of Anton Dolan’s 1939 bum chum Otis Pierce who shows up in the NZ Ballet Russes CG tour photo which may include a nice shot of Jerry Keane?….It appears that Otis and Dolan had been flown in from England then hooking up with shipboard members which sounds suspicious and he would not be alone in using a show business cover for intel gathering pre war. Anyhow, I’ve come across an Otis Pierce aboard SS Awatea in Auckland on 7/4/41 bound for Sydney; not as part of the Covent Gardens ballet tour group as per his departure the year before but, as a ‘Stowaway’ and make of it what you will, there are no further entries to the Antipodes for him on record.
Clive: think I picked up on your Dorothy Jean Dixon optometrist no sweat mate.
thedue747: you can better than that surely dud..second thoughts, no you can’t.
Clive: whoops chiropodist, that’s moi having a Dud fit..Dixon of Dock Green eh? I seem to recall you mentioning that your dad was himself a bobby back in the day.
John: No, my dad was never a bobby. He was in the Marines.
Clive: Send in the Marines and trooper Turner. Semper Fi or Per Mare Per Terram; No matter both best of the best for mine. Sorry for the mix up mate, musta been Clive Walker I was thinking of.
Going back over old stuff….
Reverend RE Davis was identified as being the Somerton Man. He was a reverend and a typewriter repair mechanic. He was living at 122 Flinders st Townsville most of the time but in 1948 he was itinerant fixing typewriters and probably preaching,
But the police in Sydney initially were keen he was the SM.
He was a good likeness – ears etc. But he was working after 1948.
It is interesting he had all those engineering skills – like clockmaker.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/139414517?searchTerm=%22rev%20r.e.%20davis%22
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/18258137?searchTerm=%22rev%20r.e.%20davis%22
Betaface gives him a score similar to the match of Carl deceased and Carl younger. So the Sydney police were correct.
There’s only one Charlie in town here in Blighty today and it ain’t Mr Webb. I only met the now King once, and that was fifty years ago, but he seemed like “a nice boy”, friendly and lively. But then I’m not a monarchist, so…
I expect The Moderator is either in the Abbey, camped out on The Mall, or sitting with friends and downing a few bottles of Bolly in front of the TV in his Mayfair penthouse.
Weirdest thing on a weird day was hearing the presenter on Radio 4’s flagship ‘Today’ programme saying that singer Nick Cave was entering the Abbey with the ex-Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams.
https://metro.co.uk/2023/05/06/nick-cave-arrives-at-westminster-abbey-after-defending-coronation-18734381/
Seems he is part of the Australian delegation! He said on his Red Hand Files site “I hold an inexplicable emotional attachment to the Royals – the strangeness of them, the deeply eccentric nature of the whole affair that so perfectly reflects the unique weirdness of Britain itself.”
Now I don’t know how Nick is regarded in Wangaratta or Melbourne these days, but in Britain he has become a revered figure. A far cry from his Birthday Party days, or even the occasion when I saw him with The Bad Seeds at Manchester’s Hacienda (have I mentioned it before?) in 1985. I myself had to engage in some fisticuffs to keep from being knocked over at the edge of the moshpit, and Nick dived into the audience at one stage to thump someone.
This was the occasion of my best heckle ever, “Rowlo give us a solo”. The crowd took it up as a chant. Ex-BP guitarist Rowland S Howard had joined the group for a few gigs and clearly didn’t know the material, which somehow made it even better. That line even got in a book about Nick Cave as Rowland said it was the only thing he remembered about that tour. Sonic Youth were the support.
I just hope Nick (Cave, not Pelling) doesn’t get up in the middle of the service and scream “I am the King” as he did in the song ‘Junkyard’:
https://youtu.be/UhecfKyKxfU
Steve Hurwood: just so you know, I am neither a Royalist nor a Republican, in broadly the same way that I am neither a theist nor an atheist. But if you fancy cracking open some Krug in my Mayfair penthouse, my door is always open. Or at least the catflap.
If C3 ever gets to Wagga Wagga I’ll be waving my Union Jack, just as I was when his mum QE2 couldn’t make it in 1954, having been caught in a right proper downpour at Wollongong and none of Her Majesty’s doing mind. God knows how much I still adore the Windsors (cept them with PTSD) and always will, just so long as good ol’ Britannia waves the rules OK!
Steve Hurwood,
My best guess is you were around 31 in ’85 and still street fighting it seems. I was 31 in ’79 and fighting for breath. Not so bad now that I’ve got over me congestion sorta.
More old stuff,
”
Police found only the clothes and a rifle with the barrel missing, but the youth
Headquarters police are enquiring into the ownership of a suitcase containing clothes and other belongings which were left at a suburban hotel about a fortnight ago by a man who had arranged to return for them but did not do so.
It is thought that the goods belonged to the man who was found dead on Somerton beach on Wednesday last. Two photographs and certain personal papers indicate that the owner’s name was Leonard Berry, about 35, a member of the British Army since 1937 and a former prisoner of war in Germany.
He is believed to have been employed in the Engineering and Water Supply Department Adelaide. The police will make further enquiries today.”
Did anyone ever track down Leonard Berry as a POW?
I always thought the suitcase contents were of a POW – broken knife etc.
David Morgan
Reverend R. E. Davis doesn’t sit right somehow. For starters, when the name first came up as being a possible candidate for SM in early ’49, the Reverend title was not part of the equasion, in fact two named fellow employees of Davis in Darwin referred to him as being a clerk and typwriter repairer. Whereas in your narative you’ve accredited him with having not only been trained for the clergy which does not fit the missing Darwin man criteria, you seem to have taken the liberty of giving your doubtful nominee additional ‘engineering & clockmaking’ credentials to cover any doubts. Also goes without saying that Rev. R. E. Davis was raised in England, though lived in Newcastle-on-Hunter with his family in 1948 and was only 34 years old. The only concession I’ll give you David Morgan, is that Preacher Davis does seem to have been on the tall side and clean shaven so a well spotted badge may be in the mail.
@ Steve – I think I heard & spotted Nick raging out to Zadok the Priest! Cave that is, though I imagine the same could be said for Pelling! Nick, please be careful with that cat flap, we don’t want you going all Gunther Burpus on us!! https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/in-and-out-burgher/
Nick Pelling,
Seems you’re at last admitting to having no opinions nor ideas on most anything; That is, apart from an unquenchable thirst for upmarket overated Krug labelled fruity Gordo; better still when it’s delivered direct to your humble Mayfair hovel.
Nick Pelling, Steve Hurwood … any views as to the similarity in height of Roy and Charlie in the foursome photo .. ?
David Morgan?
Em?
This may be the Leonard Berry who left his lugagge in a hotel in Adelaide confused with the Somerton Man.
https://www.prisonersofwarmuseum.com/prisoners/berry-leonard-john-holman/?pdf=107160
Jo: Zadok the Priest rocks da house, that’s all I’m saying.
David Morgan,
What’s with all the dead wood mugger? Davis and Berry were dismissed almost from the outset and for good reasons . If you insist on cluttering the works with a constant flow of spent force SM suspects, some concerned punters might suspect ulterior motives.
@Jo
I’m always being caught with a bare ass, metaphorically speaking anyway. The Moderator better watch out as you never know what the cat might drag in. If all the regulars here clubbed together to buy him some nice bubbly to thank him for all his efforts I could pop down to Lidl and get some Prosecco Spumante (£6.25), but he’ll have to head west in his Silver Cloud to pick it up as I don’t deliver to Mayfair.
@Pb
I’m completely bamboozled by the photos now as NOTHING seems to add up!
@John Sanders
26, actually!
Don’t know where you get your idea about my “FB colleagues”. I have posted once on DA’s site this year, in response to Stuart Webb concerning his Norma/Normie slip-up, but thought better of it and took it down before Australia woke up.
As for my street fighting skills, my year or so in outback WA and the NT in the early ’80s sure toughened me up.
I know you love my rambling, off-topic, self-aggrandising tales so I can tell you that there was only one time in Oz that I was truly – horribly – scared.
When I was hanging out with Aboriginal artists, buffalo hunters, welfare workers and assorted ne’er-do-wells at Maningrida in Arnhem Land in 1983 I made a last-minute arrangement to hop over to Elcho Island (Galiwin’ku) to meet up with some nut who had decided to computerise all the records at the local art centre. The only way to get there was by plane, with a one night stopover on another island, Milingimbi.
There was a guest house in the community, a large wooden stilt house with a big square central area and a few bedrooms, a bathroom and a kitchen round the sides. I was the only one in the place as might be expected in a settlement that discouraged visitors. I did know someone who was living on the island so got back to the house quite late and went quietly to sleep.
Unfortunately my sleep was interrupted in the early hours by something directly outside my window moaning, sobbing, screaming, and I’ll swear, trying to form some rudimentary, garbled words. This went on for at least an hour, and that THING knew I was there. The floor of the house was at least six feet above the ground but this noise was either directly outside the window or inches below it. I just had to lie there, frozen in horror, cos I wasn’t going to lift the blind or go outside to explore. If it was a demented dingo, as I told myself was most likely the case, it must have been standing on its hind legs leaning against the side of the building, and have been five to seven feet tall. But it DID sound at least part human, ravingly insane and definitely female, or maybe a banshee.
It did eventually stop and I had to catch the plane very early in the morning so I couldn’t make any enquiries. But a few years ago when I finally splurged out on a laptop I came across a Wikipedia article which might explain what happened.
Whilst in Maningrida, an art buyer (and later well known buffalo hunter), Simon Kyle-Little, whose dad founded the original trading post there, took me upriver to meet some artists at a landing spot in the bush. We never did meet up with the artists but he decided to spook me out by drifting in as close to the man-eating crocs on the bank as possible. That was a few feet, unfortunately, before they shot off but I don’t scare easily. The mozzies were far worse.
However I found out from my recent research that the very same river (Liverpool) is the home of Garkain, “a legendary creature in Australian Aboriginal mythology said to haunt the dense jungle…Should an unwary traveler enter his domain, Garkain swoops down from the trees on his leathery wings and envelops them…After suffocating his victim with his foul stench, Garkain eats their flesh, leaving the intruder’s spirit to forever wander the vast jungle in search of their final resting place.”
Had the awful creature somehow missed its chance to nobble me on the Liverpool and come the short distance over the sea to get me in that Milingimbi guest house? Perhaps it did get me. I’ve certainly been a poor wandering spirit in search of rest in recent years, albeit in a drab suburb of Bristol rather than a dense Australian rainforest!
@ JS,
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/74642090?searchTerm=%22r.e.%20davis%22%2C%20typewriter
Ah yes, a Trove system error it says “Davis a cleric and typewriter
mechanic, who left Darwin in November, a Darwin resident” In the image to text. But the text does say clerk.
But then who was right?
Perhaps over the phone from Darwin to a journalist cleric might sound like clerk.
He was moving around in 1948 staying in hotels and fixing typewriters not exactly the routine of an office clerk more like an itinerant preacher/cleric and fixing typewriters to pay the hotel bill. The preacher Davis also said he took a portable typewriter on his military service. So there is a theme.
The clockmaker article on the preacher is there somewhere. They may have misspelled his name Davies. I’ll check…
Anyway, Davis must have been on the move in 1948 – perhaps he was an itinerant clerk.
I was just saying he was a good likeness (with facial ID – betaface) to Carl but obviously was not Carl. I was praising the Sydney police for finding a visual match.
Apart from just a couple of glory hunters who be most persistent in their claims for ownership of any past mention of relevant SM/CM disclosures, none of our post Carl Webb team seem to have taken the time or trouble to research past efforts by following through on the multitude of possible leads for discovery they present. This in my own overall assessment of case history defies all logic and needs to be fully evaluated for a decision on why such a seemingly total lack of initiative should be condoned by the CM site moderator. This unrestrained Webb family sideshow points to certain possible ulterior motives but, of course there be Buckly’s chance of this becoming reality so long as those involved are allowed to continue with the deception.
When I asked Dall-e to draw Carl’s 1948 clothing it always put a handkerchief in the top pocket. Was Carl’s 7th handkerchief in his jacket top pocket or trouser pocket?
So Carl was being 1948 anti-social ‘if’ he was without a handkerchief in his top pocket and without a hat. I can always remember my grandfather from that era (a coal miner) always put on a suit to go out with a hat and handkerchief in his top pocket. He always polished his shoes for about 10 minutes. Though I think he may have not worn the hat if he was attending local football where he was an organiser. The hat was a mechanism of greeting women I believe – lift or tip.
@JS,
My interest in the old discarded plots was just that. Why they were suspects and why they were discarded. Davis had to have been on the move staying in hotels – fixing typewriters to pay the bill and Berry left his suitcase in an Adelaide hotel, like he was skipping off without paying. They assumed Carl was moving hotel to hotel like them. But no hotel worker ID’d him – like people iD’d Berry and Davis.
I thought Berry might be an interesting character. We know Carl had deceased Keane’s stuff. Berry left his ID in his suitcase?
Potentially
https://www.prisonersofwarmuseum.com/prisoners/berry-leonard-john-holman/
More likely a scribbled “Cleric” could be misinterpreted as “clerk” – or vice versa I think. They don’t really sound very similar (at least not how I’d pronounce them), but in a scrawled handwriting….
@pb
Everybody is sat down. The people at the back may either be sat down or kneeling or sat on steps. The women are sat on the grass. The person incorrectly labelled Normie M is clearly sat on something – a grassy knoll?
To calculate the estimated height based on the person’s femur, first measure the femur in centimeters. If the subject is female, multiply the length by 2.47 and add 54.1 to arrive at the approximate height. If the subject is male, multiply by 2.32 and add 65.53. These calculations are accurate to within five centimeters.
Only Leo has his legs visible. There are ways to calculate his height from a photograph if we have a known height object in the picture – like the hat. Typical crown height 11cm? So you could measure the hat in pixels then use that to estimate the height of other objects.
But then it looks like a big hat.
if you type in Hotel adelaide in trove there seems to be an ongoing issues with room theft where hotel workers stealing alll sorts from the guests rooms. If the workers where indeed involded in dodgy dealings it would have been in their best insterest to keep schtum if you know what I am saying
@em
Yes I noticed that about the hotel thefts. But then would the police beat you up badly to the point of death if they found you stealing? There was a story of a suggested killing of a gay man by the police I came across. I can’t remember how he was described – obviously not gay in 1948.
I hadn’t seen this before, forgiveness if already somewhere, but just putting it up. Here Richard August Webb is called Dick Webb, 27 Feb 1909:
“Mr Dick Webb, foreman in charge of Mr Chas Fells bakery, Yarraville, has resigned his position and purposes setting up a business for himself in Shepparton. On Monday evening Mr Webb was farewelled over a glass of wine by his former workmates and friends at Berlowitz’s Yarraville Hotel. He left on Thursday to commence operations in his new sphere and carried the best wishes of many friends with him.”
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/73260256?searchTerm=bakery%20yarraville%20webb
@ Poppins – on one of the old genealogy sites he’s also referred to as Richard Arthur… Dick may have simply been the name given to him by co- workers. Chan Kong-sang became Jackie Chan because his Canberra building site work mates called him “Little Jack” – the guy who had taken him under his wing was called Jack, little Jack became Jackie…
Kamahl is and always will be simply Kamahl! https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVTRGWv4pxM
@poppins,
A lot of Chas in the life of the Webbs. Chas Fells his boss, Chas Hancock buys his bakery 5 years later in 1914.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/91360986?searchTerm=shepperton%2C%20webb
Was the Somerton man called Chas Webb?
https://quickshare.samsungcloud.com/l25XsP7l6uBQ
18 year old Freda, 11 year old Gladys. In Shepperton newspaper story.
https://quickshare.samsungcloud.com/6fjLcqdkL8au
David Morgan,
Another Chas, disappeared same time as Carl was hard to find, very weak link but the Goddard name got me reading cause someone back in the day thought the code read Mr Goddard or something similar. Trickster telling people he had placed a bet for them by accident which won, all they had to do was post him the original cash and they could then collect their winnings! Dorothy’s second husband liked a gamble too, wonder if she had a type of man.
@sharon C
The better scam was the writing partner of JC Williamson who in the UK ran competitions and they sent in their postal order to enter and then he ensured he was the winner and took the % from the winnings for admin. I think he had 3 months in jail.
While I working at British Gas there was a famous story (or urban myth) of a guy in the payments section who processed the cheques. When he went on holiday they found they didn’t know what to do with the cheques made out to B.Gas. Then it dawned on them his name was Brian Gas.
Thanks Jo, that makes sense. Good find Sharon.
DavidMorgan, Chas is sure worth looking into. His boss Charles Fels died the next year after Richard left the bakery, a 48 year old bachelor … lots of interesting stories about him in Trove and there’s a park named after him in Yarraville, Fels Park, with a monument. I also looked into the bloke who was running the Yarraville Hotel where Richard had his farewell drinks, and it seems things didn’t end too well for him either …… one does get fascinated with all the side stories.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/243492217?searchTerm=yarraville%20lunacy%20berlowitz
The Webb Story would make a great series to outdo The Sullivans ……
C. Webb on a list of subscribers on The Advertiser, Adelaide, July 30 1947.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/35990369?browse=ndp%3Abrowse%2Ftitle%2FA%2Ftitle%2F44%2F1947%2F07%2F30%2Fpage%2F2662919%2Farticle%2F35990369
My name is STEVE and I write this message to you my Friends on the Planet of the sun you call Earth.
A year ago today I read about the identification of the SM as Charles Webb on the BBC website. Wish I hadn’t. Seems like the mod got the news the day before. To “celebrate” the anniversary I thought I’d pop back to the case to see if anything new had been discovered or was being discussed. Obviously Mr P now fancies himself as Professor Quatermass (if that flying saucer did come from Birmingham it would indeed prove that there is intelligent life in a corner of the universe previously thought totally devoid of rational beings) so he has been digging around in a different pit (ahem), but no-one else seems to have come up with very much either.
So Gordon Cramer and “Jilted” John Sanders have now teamed up to disparage Paul Lawson’s handiwork in producing the SM bust by claiming that the hairs found there were sweepings from some random hairdressers. In a reply to (Dodgy) David Morgan last month I provided a link to a YouTube video clearly showing the hair embodied in the plaster and reproduce it here:
https://youtu.be/GIUP-wVw60k?t=470
I’ll leave you to make your own judgment on this issue. Personally speaking I don’t think you need to be Jacques Derrida to deconstruct this particular piece of nonsense.
Glad to see John S is over the incident when Gordon stole Julie from him. Can’t resist posting a link to this vid:
https://youtu.be/KAu3tGbtJ_k
Whilst on the topic of Jilted John (Shuttleworth), If milongal is reading this tripe he’d love these videos (there are four parts):
https://youtu.be/fzdEd1dZJjA
Meanwhile you have to commend Peter Bowes on his enthusiasm for recycling.
Old posts that is. He keeps repeating the same information and questions over and over again. Especially about Roy’s height vis-a-vis Charlie’s but I would ask him a question. How does he explain the fact that Charlie – standing behind his parents – is clearly taller than his dad Richard, who according to his prison records was 5′ 8″?:
https://prov.vic.gov.au/archive/1C9D15A5-F3A9-11E9-AE98-1DAE2E178D55?image=187
I mean people don’t shrink THAT much!
Congrats once again to Pat for getting rid of John Sanders from CM with the ID of Charlotte Martin as the woman in the pinny, which she has just reposted. That blew everything the old git said about the photo out of the water but I see he’s still harping on about Werribee on another site whereas a quick look on Google Maps would show that his chosen location is impossible. The question of, as we say in these parts, “Where’s it to?” is still wide open.
For myself I’m “wide open” to the possibility that Charles Webb ain’t actually the SM, but really the Three Witches Cramer, Bowes and Sanders will have to up their game to convince me (or any rational person) that all this is some big cover up. Still if this egregious piffle keeps them out of trouble I suppose we must be grateful for small mercies.
Or maybe THEY really are amongst us. In which case Nick “Quatermass” Pelling will need some help in fighting those sinister forces. Your planet might be in serious danger folks.
STOP PRESS I note on Pete’s site that another “mystery” body has turned up in Glenelg. Deerstalkers on lads and lasses.
See: https://7news.com.au/news/sa/body-discovered-in-ocean-at-glenelg-c-11402028
On the other hand an article in “The Scum” states:
“According to local news, the man had been reported missing by loved ones at around 9pm on Wednesday night.
He is said to have a history of mental health issues.
No further information regarding the victim or his identity have been released.
Police will prepare a report for the coroner.”
It’s a cover up!
@ Steve & Pete B – I think we’ve overlooked the obvious – as a sharpie of the future Roy would definitely have a decent pair of platforms to go with that connie!
Steve, mate … here we have Richard at 5’8” – according to his prison records, and standing behind him, closely behind him we have blonde Charlie … that being the case are you asking us to believe Charlie is 3 inches higher than the older man? I’m looking at the pic and thinking not so .. more like an inch, maybe.
By the way old mate, I can put you in touch with a quack who specialises with people who shoot themselves in the foot.
I am honoured – sincerely honoured – to have made it into one of Pete Bowes’ post headliners on tbt, thus joining the likes of Jo and Dodgy Dave. I have dropped a reply over there but just in case the old roue deletes it or fiddles about with it I reproduce it here:
“Pete me old china. It’s my head I need a quack for, not my foot. But look at that photo again. Are you REALLY saying that Roy and Richard are both the same height? 5′ 8”? You yourself have repeatedly stated that Roy is slightly leaning inwards so would look taller if he was standing firmly upright. I rest my case.
Which one of the two “wise men” in your picture am I supposed to be? Flattery will get you everywhere Pete!
As for your other points I’m surprised that you take eyewitness testimony as gospel. Everyone knows that in any crime people remember things differently and inaccurately. Memory is not like a video replay in the brain but an active mental process that works uniquely in each individual.
SM wasn’t necessarily “drunk” as Lyons said he “assumed”. And why did he have to go into” town” to get a pasty. In fact there is NO evidence that a pasty was consumed. There was a bit of potato in the gut. Big deal.
Regarding the “change of trousers” even “Jim Jones” Sanders – drunk on his own Kool-Aid – points out that: “Think you’ll find that Kenneth Stropps [sic] was assessed as being short sighted by the navy.” Strapps said in his statement “I thought I noticed a difference in his position” but Olive Neill stated that “the position of his legs did not alter”. Strapps also said “I shd say he had brown striped trousers on”. “Shd say” is not quite the emphatic “certainty” that you claim.
As for the bloke who says he saw someone carrying a body his account is simply not credible given the fact that he waited years (until 1959 – you took down your post about Det O’ Doherty’s report) to tell anyone about it – just like the fella who said that his pooch peed on the body.
I can’t explain the lack of mosquito bites. I still have scars on me legs from my time in the Kimberley and (especially) the Top End in 1982-83, but the march flies were worse. Those damn things are vampires.
I have also been a bit baffled by the fact that if the beach WAS busy more people weren’t witnesses, but then again it isn’t downtown Glenelg and Moss was only “assuming” that the beach “would have” been busy. Olive Neill said in her statement that “There were not very many people about at this time”.
Too many ifs and buts to make a strong case that there was a “body swap” old salt. However it isn’t a controversial theory as the coroner Thomas Erskine Cleland himself stated that “there is really no proof” that “the body found on the morning of the 1st December was that of the man seen on the evening of the 30th November” and that “If the body had been taken to the place it was found, the difficulties [surrounding the supposed workings of the poison] disappear.” I myself am agnostic on the issue, but find the coincidence very unlikely.
I don’t take myself nearly as seriously as you (and your mates Sanders and Cramer) seem to think I do. “Wise man” I am certainly not, not even a wise fool if truth be known.”
Meanwhile Gordon Cramer has been a naughty boy again. Mind you he himself admits “I should also tell you that my father was a shoe maker and so I do have a little knowledge on this subject [of shoes]…” THAT explains why he talks a load of old cobblers all the time!
But it really is too much when he states in a recent comment (29 July) on tsbs “there is evidence that shows that it is very possible that human hair was used as a binding agent in the making of slip casts such as the one made of the body worked on by Paul Lawson. This has been corroborated to an extent by a recently unearthed 2009 YouTube video of the bust with Professor Abbott commenting on the mass of hair showing on its surface.”
Presumably Gordon you are referring to the video that I (twice) linked on this site recently. Shame you didn’t have the decency to credit me on “unearthing” this video, especially as you are so assiduously jealous in laying claim to your own findings. But the video (Stateline Report 2009: Tamam Shud Case (Part 1)) hasn’t been “recently unearthed” at all as it appears as a “primary source” on Derek Abbott’s University of Adelaide page:
https://www.eleceng.adelaide.edu.au/personal/dabbott/wiki/index.php/Primary_source_material_on_the_Taman_Shud_Case
Oh well, as you say Gordon “everybody has to learn sometime.” I won’t quote from the famous song with a similar title by local West Country lads The Korgis, but instead going back to the subject of shoes I can only remind you what Frank Zappa said:
“Brown shoes
Don’t make it
Brown shoes
Don’t make it
Quit school
Why fake it?
Brown shoes
Don’t make it…”
For the Carl Webb doubters…they know who they are…
The best match I have found (so far) to the other body not on the Somerton beach is…
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rVwb2MPPKZYQ_aF5ypO5c03eGJzriUvk/view?usp=sharing
His name was Twardy. A polish war-time hero.
In 1949 another polish Twardy did naturalise in Tasmania.
I had to use Remini to get Betaface to detect with facial ID. They make a reasonable average image but it would be better if they looked in the same direction.
I can mirror (flip) the one image..so I’ll see how that looks.
The Twardy average image with the non-Carl Webb body
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NZcYbR6UUZGZxjZdFkeYATqXbtp7hvXW/view?usp=sharing
@ Steve – you really are the Cat in the Hat of these Somerton blogs!
Well how pathetic!
Not only did the coward Peter Bowes block my comment on tbt but he also removed any ref to myself and Dodgy Dave Morgan in his latest post. Fortunately I took the precaution of copying my reply to his pleas to “answer” his questions here (see above).
CM readers and contributors take note. If Bowes and Cramer can’t answer any points you make or don’t like what you say they don’t allow your comment through and then modify their original post to make themselves look better.
The coward Bowes expressly asked Dave and myself to “pop in” and make a reply. I did so and the gutless worm chickened out. He has horribly abused the likes of Dude and Jo and made threats against them and others. He has now fallen out with his pupil Sanders.* Hilarious. If he doesn’t approve (or if he’s pissed or doped up) he’ll even bluster that he will set his dogs on you.
* “peterbowes #
JohnS, we’ll I guess that all means you’d rather be somewhere else, fair enough then and thanks for not so much. I hear that Cipher Mysteries is hiring. Meanwhile the few of us left here will get on with it. TTFN.
July 29, 2023”
Cramer is just as bad and even more patronising. Both men are deluded narcissists. I for one will never engage with them again. Pilchard and Derek Abbott may have lost interest, and both have their faults, but CM and Facebook are the only places any sane (or in my case insane!) person can engage in the SM debate (unless anyone knows of other forums).
What would YOU do if your mother asked you?
Steve H: I haven’t lost interest in the SM, I’ve lost direction – at least I’m honest about it.
I’m far from convinced we’ve got Dorothy Jean’s story locked down – but I tried pretty hard, and the remainder feels as though it’s going to stay untold.
And as for Carl, it seems as though he was trying not to be found after 1946, and if so, what chance do we stand?
@Steve H is that the same Rich A Webb?
Gaol document suggests arrival 1889, Naturalisation has January 1888
Gaol document appears to say “Wife lives at St Arnaud”, Naturalisation record lists “Richmond, Gippsland, Camperdown, Seymour, Dandenong, Yarraville, Shepparton” as places he’s resided since being in Australia – and I think all of them are over 200km from St Arnaud.
I think there was speculation at one point that there was another Richard A Webb, Baker in regional Vic (although I thought that was closer to NSW).
In any case, is the Gaol record definitely for papa Webb?
Steve H … Let’s keep the record straight: I posted your response, thanked you for it and left it up for about 24 hours. I made no criticism of your points of view and the decision to delete it was mine to make, not yours. You have no say in how I run my site.
Because of this your emotions seemed to have got the better of you and it’s regrettable to see such juvenile comment appear here, though not surprising.
NP your comment ” and as for Carl, its seems after 1946 he was trying not to be found” Its something I have suspected for some time now but Im Keane to know your thoughts on what this may have been the case.
This is a Dear @PB really…
But I had forgotten about this…
Some months ago I got caught up by the Pyjama Girl case and Leo Keane’s recording of his song – which I still wait to hear the lyrics!!!.
This image is a match to Roy I found with Pimeyes which Mxface said was a match to Roy i.e. it is saying it was Roy.
But then if you look at ‘your body’ of the SM (not Carl) it looks a lot like Roy’s older doppelganger.
So when I said Roy could have been alive it may be he was the other body on the beach. Two brothers.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1oOTDiJGmD0I0sn36fcBYamLITeks9t-d/view?usp=sharing
So many possible blog entries just from this.
Searching with Roy Doppelganger using Pimeyes finds Roy. Actually, that is very unusual with Pimeyes unless it really is the same person.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LD4YpOblpBG_i6sq29HUgsNvNw5iX1WT/view?usp=sharing
We can all agree that CW was not a well man. So where was he after 1946?
a) Hiding from his brothers father in law and the Melbourne criminal underbelly
b) Abroad – getting closure for his brother
c) In a mental Institution/hospital
d) In prison
@Julian
Yes, it’s definitely him. If you click on the link I provided to the PROV record and then click on the image of the record a couple of times to enlarge it you can make out the following details: Date of Birth – 1866, Native Place – Germany, Trade – Baker and Cook. I think he wanted to forget about St Arnaud!
There was a debate about this issue between the dear departed John Sanders and myself starting with my comment of May 24, 2023 at 12:20 pm through to my comment of May 27, 2023 at 1:10 pm on the ‘Dating the Webb’s family photo…’ thread. Angela originally provided the link to this record back on September 2, 2022.
@Peteb
My final comment to you. You made a post on your site with a headline about myself and “Davo” Morgan (“wise men”). You invited us to respond and stated that if we did not then it would prove we were cowards and couldn’t answer the points you were making. I responded but when I checked back a day later you had not only not posted my comment but completely altered the original post to remove any reference to Davo, myself and wise men. Why couldn’t you respond to my answers? Why don’t you engage with people who don’t parrot your own line? Why do you keep throwing your toys out the pram and say you are giving up on Somerton Man and then come back a day or two later? Why do you keep regurgitating old material over and over and refuse to acknowledge any new findings?
Of course it is your site and I don’t care about it enough to want to tell you how to run it. But it simply cannot be taken seriously by anyone interested in the SM case given your childish (calling me juvenile indeed!) manipulations, morose repetitions and petulant putdowns of even your most loyal contributors. You did give me a laugh though with your threat to kick poor old “naked ballerina” Jo on the bare bottom – which comment you also removed in order to put yourself in a better light. Go a bit easier on the Bundy OP old china.
Gordon Cramer played the same trick on me last year by misquoting me, deleting my comment correcting an error I had been led into through watching a video on YouTube, and puffing himself up in his usual unbearably smug way (I see he is now calling Derek Abbott a “media tart”). He’s not said much about micro writing recently.
I agree with Nick that we have hit a dead end with Carl and Dorothy although I would love to know more about Colleen Fitz’s NSW LGBT/hippie “colony”. But then again the common consensus away from this site now seems to be that Carl wasn’t SM (the Three Witches for example).
@Steve H: I only ask because there was some discussion about a different RA Webb, Baker in country Vic some time ago:
2022/08/07/carl-webb-electrical-fitter-and-instrument-maker#comment-467258
The birth year being the same isn’t all that implausible either. So then given the lack of mention of St Arnaud, and the inconsistency with the arrival in Aus….
Even the thread you pointed me to seemed to conclude it was him somewhat arbitrarily.
@Julian
Silly me. I must have been led to an arbitrary conclusion about Richard August Webb because, as Nick says in his post at the top of this thread, his son “Russell Richard (registered 1893) [was] born St. Arnaud, Victoria.”
https://my.rio.bdm.vic.gov.au/efamily-history/64cc13b0a6a8982563320472/record/5c653dde4aba80ac31943fd4?q=efamily&givenName=Russell%20Richard&familyName=WEBB
Both Richard August and the jailbird came over to Australia from Germany on the same ship, the Nurnberg, but the prison record gives the date as 1889, whereas the naturalization certificate application states it as 1888.
Of course there were two Richard A Webbs in St Arnaud at roughly the same time, both born in Germany in 1866, both coming over on the same ship, and both bakers. I’ll have to try harder next time.
Does anyone know why Roy Webb was at Bonegilla in 1940/41 – and demoted to private?
What do they mean he was marched out to M.D. x 3?
Was he taken to see a doctor 3 times before being put on a ship to Singapore from Melbourne?
https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Gallery151/dist/JGalleryViewer.aspx?B=6137776&S=9&N=16&R=0#/SearchNRetrieve/NAAMedia/ShowImage.aspx?B=6137776&T=P&S=8
David,
M.D. is a military unit of some sort. Perhaps a motorized unit? “Marched out” was the lingo meaning “sent to” some military unit.
Could there have been some sort if musconduct and he was marched out as some sort of disciplining?
A discussion with PI.ai and its responses:
In 2022, genetic genealogy was used to identify the Somerton Man as a man named Carl “Charles” Webb, who was born in 1905. DNA from one of the Somerton Man’s relatives was matched to DNA taken from the body, finally giving the man a name. While this identification finally answered the question of who the man was, it has only raised more questions about his life and death. For example, why was he found with no identifying documents, and why did he die on the beach?
According to the research that’s been done, the Somerton Man’s brother’s name was Roy Webb. The resemblance between the two men is quite striking, and there are some who believe that Roy may have been the one who actually died on the beach. However, there’s no definitive proof of this, and it’s possible that the two men simply looked alike. It’s also worth noting that Roy was a prisoner of war during World War II, and he may have experienced trauma or other mental health issues as a result. This could explain some of the mystery surrounding the Somerton Man’s death.
That’s definitely a weird and interesting detail! It raises a lot of questions, like how could he have fathered a child if he died in 1943? There are a few possibilities. Perhaps he had a child with another woman before he died, or maybe the date of his death is incorrect.
…possible that his family or friends did identify him, but chose not to come forward publicly for personal reasons. There’s no way to know for sure, but it’s an intriguing question.
Ah yes, I’ve heard of Red Point Tools! It was a company based in Melbourne that made power tools like electric drills and circular saws. From what I understand, they were a relatively small company, but they made high-quality tools that were popular with tradespeople and DIY enthusiasts. They went out of business many years ago, but their tools are still sought after by collectors.
That’s a really interesting question! The answer is yes, Red Point Tools did make sirens during World War II. In fact, many companies that made power tools also made sirens during the war, as they were an important part of the civil defense system. Sirens were used to warn people of incoming air raids and to signal when it was safe to come out of shelters. They were also used to coordinate blackouts and other emergency measures. So, while Red Point Tools may be best known for their power tools, they also played an important role in the war effort by making sirens.
CipherMysteries, right? They’ve been doing some fantastic work trying to solve the mystery of the Somerton Man, and it sounds like they’ve really gone down the rabbit hole!
What a laugh!
Now I’m one of “Pelling’s favoured contributors” according to Peter Bowes on his dwindling blog (’22 – ‘Nick Pelling .. the man behind the facade’). News to me as Mr P has always hated my guts. Apparently, according to Pete, he should have “severed” me, whatever that means.
Of course Bowes, like all cowards, didn’t have the courage to mention my name. Calls me a “troll” – for standing up to his bullying – when he has gloried in being a troll for more than a decade. I suppose he thinks his acolytes, admirers, followers or whatever he thinks of them as will follow his every word. Well Pete, a reckoning is coming.
Not for the first time I am thoroughly bored with the Somerton Man so will take another break from commenting further. With any luck this time it will be permanent.
MD ‘suggests’ to me medical discharge. But they wouldn’t do it 3 times with Roy?
Unless he made requests and they turned him down.
@ Steve H,
It’s probably our Richard A. Webb, but… there are still some inconsistencies regarding his accounts and he’s nowhere to be found in the Nurnberg passengers’ list in Victoria,1888 or 1889.
Maybe his memory was a bit selective on the naturalisation document, hence no mention of St. Arnaud where he lived, married and had a son.
Would it be possible that he used his real name to embark and then changed it to Richard August Webb?
Some possible candidates, if he changed his name, age or ship name:
– Thomsen CH J, 22 y/o, arrived Jan 1888 – Nurnberg
– Stoppam G, ditto
– Wagner, Carl, 18 y/o, arrived Mar 1889 – Nurnberg
– Webb A, born 1866, age 22 arrived 27 March 1888 in Melbourne from Launceston on board of the Flinders
There is a Richard Webb, 23, arriving from Plymouth in 1887 on board of the Port Pirie but the record says his origin is English. He has 2 entries and one of them has been crossed out. Peter Davidson think it’s him, judging by his contribution of FamilySearch.
One candidate is Reinhard Berger, 23 y/o, German, who arrived in Adelaide on March 1889 on the Nurnberg. Maybe he embarked to Victoria later on.
It’s possible that the person heard and wrote ‘Berger’ instead of ‘Weber’ and then he changed it to the Anglicised version Richard Webb. I’m assuming his account of his parents’ names is correct, Johannes Friedrich Weber and Elisabeth Bück.
https://www.archives.sa.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/832276/GRG41_34_0_130-1889_Nurnberg.pdf
Was Brenda Therese Lesley Webb’ s birth certificate ever found? It is not on family search
The abreviation MD on Roy’s service record represents Military Districts 1, 2 and 3 of Southern, Eastern and Northern Commands having their Headquarters or HQs in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane….Henry de La Fargue Salomonson bn. 5/6/05 London, died Somerton Beach 1/12/48? from an eye witness account of 7/12/48.
MD could be motorised department or mobilisation department- though I’m not sure why they need to march him in and out. I get the feeling he was going to be mobilised ready for action but then they took him back. It gives the feeling he is being made to do things against his will. Perhaps he was escaping back to his wife and they had to march him back to the barracks. He may have thought if he wrote down car driver he would get a good job.
@ Steve H – Entry 22??
I have tied to get AI to write code (a Google Apps Script) to parse a document looking for a series of 4 words beginning with the letters M, L, I, A. (from the Somerton Man code). Hoping it may appear in a poem and could be found.
It is not a complete solution but others can ask their AI system (or own programming brain) to push it along to give a better answer. For example, if there’s a comma it won’t find it. So it needs to be reprogrammed to ignore certain characters.
I asked Bard Ai what the code does and it said it searches for a popular phrase My Life is Average.
To make it work, open a blank Google doc, on the extensions menu is Apps Script then paste in the code, save and run it. It will ask you questions to try to persuade you to not run it. But this is where risk takers do and non-risk takers don’t and never find out. It takes some figuring out and a mental battle over security.
For risk-takers:
Back in the Google doc type in some random sentences and obviously ones like ‘My life is average’ or ‘most Australians I avoid’. If you put ‘my life, is average’ it won’t find it.
Then run it from the Custom Menu – Find MLIA words.
But the code is here:
function onOpen() {
DocumentApp.getUi().createMenu(‘Custom Menu’)
.addItem(‘Find MLIA Words’, ‘findMLIAWords’)
.addToUi();
}
function findMLIAWords() {
var doc = DocumentApp.getActiveDocument();
// Get paragraphs
var paragraphs = doc.getBody().getParagraphs();
// Full text starts empty
var fullText = ”;
// Append text from each paragraph
for(var i = 0; i < paragraphs.length; i++) {
var paragraph = paragraphs[i];
fullText += paragraph.getText();
}
// Regex to find MLIA matches
var pattern = /\b[MmLl][\w-]+\s+[Ii][\w-]+\s+[Aa][\w-]+\s+[MmLl][\w-]+\b/g;
var matches = fullText.match(pattern);
if (matches) {
// Loop through matches
for(var i = 0; i < matches.length; i++) {
var match = matches[i];
var startIndex = fullText.indexOf(match);
var endIndex = startIndex + match.length;
// Build range and highlight element
var rangeBuilder = doc.newRange();
rangeBuilder.addElement(doc.getBody().editAsText(), startIndex, endIndex);
var range = rangeBuilder.build();
var rangeElement = range.getRangeElements()[0];
var element = rangeElement.getElement();
element.setBackgroundColor('#ffff00');
}
} else {
console.log('No matches found');
}
}
Make sure you get it all. But if you want to improve it think of a way and paste it into Claude.ai and ask it to make the improvements ..and then back around the loop. If you get errors tell Claude and it will fix the code. But keep asking for the whole code not just the changes and remind it that it's for a Google doc otherwise, it wanders into Sheet-land.
The idea is to paste in a book of poetry and find the 'MLIA' words. At the moment it stops if it finds it. It doesn't continue searching.
@david morgan
Apropos Henry Salomonson, I may have given the incorrect DOB which I’ll amend to May 5th 1905 (555). He being a Britisher (J. Cleland) of Dutch extract and older brother of John who came to Australia as an assisted? migrant giving his intended address at 33 King St. just off Esplinade Nth. Brighton and next beach along from Somerton. Whilst Henry has no known death date, as does John. The brothers can be found on the Simon Critchley family tree and Sage Journals site that connects them in criminal enterpise. Entries for both his brother and wife Audrey Gertrude nee French are on NAA though neither file is digitalised, so if interested have your Visa card handy; same goes for Wikitree and Sage ‘Courts of Sumary Jurisdiction’.
If Brenda,s birthdate was 1943 we can safely say that she was Roy’s and that she was concieved before he left but according to the birthdate on family search it is 1946 , just trying to find her exact dob. I am still convinced Brend was Carl, would he have used his name travelling around?
Also at this point who is to say the Rubaiyat was even Carl’s wasnt hevwereing hand me downs? What is the probability thst The ROC was Hickey’s and that he new JoThompson from Pakies.
I wrote this about Roy Webb’s facial ID ‘doppelganger’ just to provoke thought and encourage other researchers.
https://medium.com/@binreminded/technology-v-the-human-record-9c5049ff892a
Personally, I believe the facial ID doppelganger has to be a picture of Roy Webb just like Dr Palmer-Benbow believed Anna Philomena Morgan was the Pyjama Girl. The facial measurements don’t lie especially when 3 different methods of measurement agree. Dr Palmer-Benbow had 2 methods – measurements and angles.
This is a Hamburg general register of births covering the years 1816-1866 and marriages from 1816-1830.
So far I haven’t found Richard August Weber/Webb/Wehber/Webs etc. but I have found some good candidates for his father and mother.
Anyone interested in helping? There are hundreds, possibly thousands of pages…
https://www.hamburg.de/bkm/digitalisate/13867162/best332-2-generalregister/
The difficulty of finding Richard August in any register lies in the fact that he stated he was born 12 March 1866 at Hamburg, in the Province Holstein, and that’s exactly when Prussia and Austria were disputing the region.
According to Wikipedia:
“Following the death of King Frederick VII of Denmark (House of Oldenburg) in 1863, the inheritance of Schleswig and Holstein was disputed. The new king, Christian IX (House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, a cadet branch of the House of Oldenburg), made his claim to the Danish throne through a female line. The Duke of Augustenborg, a minor scion from another cadet line of the House of Oldenburg, claimed the Duchies, and soon the German Confederation, led by Prussia and Austria, went to the Second Schleswig War with Denmark, quickly defeating it in 1864 and forcing it to cede the duchies.
However, the duchies were not given to the Duke of Augustenborg. In 1865 an arrangement was worked out between Prussia and Austria where the Austrians occupied and administered Holstein, while the Prussians did the same in Schleswig. This arrangement came to an end with the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, which resulted in Schleswig and Holstein both being incorporated into Prussia as the Province of Schleswig-Holstein. Holstein, meanwhile including former Saxe-Lauenburg (as of 1876) and the former Free and Hanseatic City of Lübeck and Region of Lübeck (both as of 1937) regained statehood, now united with Schleswig, in 1946, when the British occupation government elevated the province to the State of Schleswig-Holstein, followed by the official dissolution of Prussia in 1947.
Map of Jutland and Northernmost Germany showing Schleswig and Holstein in today’s Schleswig-Holstein
Geography
As of 1864, Holstein bordered Denmark in the north, the Principality of Lübeck (formerly the Prince-Bishopric of Lübeck, an exclave of the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg), the Free and Hanseatic City of Lübeck, and the Duchy of Saxe-Lauenburg in the east, and the Kingdom of Hanover and the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg in the south. It also borders the North Sea in the west and the Baltic Sea in the east. Its only major island is Fehmarn, originally a part of the Duchy of Schleswig until 1867.
Cities in Holstein included Kiel, Altona, Glückstadt, Rendsburg, Segeberg, Heiligenhafen, Oldenburg in Holstein, and Plön. It had an area of 8,385 km2.”
So, the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg didn’t belong to the Province Holstein when he was born. Maybe he was born in one of those cities in Holstein. His wife, Elis(z)abeth Maria Buck could also have Danish origins, hence no mention of her in the Hamburg archives.
@ Nick,
Where did you find this information?
“Carl Webb’s paternal grandparents were Johannes Frederick Webb/Weber (b. 1840), and Elis Buck (b.1840 in Berkhampstead, Herts).”
By the way, the place is called Berkamstead. I have searched her on FreeREG, and nothing comes up there or at nearby places.
And her name was Eliz(s)abeth Maria Buck, according to Richard August’s marriage and death records.
@ Pat – Stuart Webb has lived in Germany & Switzerland and has traced Richard Webb & his German family. You could try messaging him. I met up with him a few months ago, he’s a good person, friendly & very intelligent – an engineer by training.
The surnames Sal(o)monson and Critchley are linked on geni tree sites and are frequently hyphenated to show strong familial bonds. Getting any additional information on my SM suspect Henry has not bin fruitful either under his birth name Salomonson or his known alias de la Fargue or La Farge. What I did get was a well spotted hit on a Mr. H. and Mrs. M.L. Critchley who were aboard SS Orion ex London and arriving Melbourne on 19/4/1948 which fits in with John Salomonson’s arrival in Adelaide in September. Although heartening H. Critchley with no add ons does fall a tad short of being game enough to identifying him as one and the same with our ‘Somerton Man’. One thing we can be sure of is that he is not Carl Webb who, for all we know went missing on his way to a favourite camping spot by Silvan Res. near Monbulk in 1947 and bloody good riddance too!
Just got taken for a ride by NAA which is sort of worrying in that, whilst there be two H. Critchleys on board the Orion in ’48, one for Mebun t’other Syney, only the latter gets mentioned in the listing under Critchley. Oh well things will likely get worse later when Peteb hits us with yet another update on Byron’s four A’s code page acrostic clue of long ago, and HMV jumps in with his usual un funny retort.
@Jo
Thanks for letting me know!
I don’t have a FB account any more… I was getting some nasties over there. I don’t know how to contact him otherwise. If you’re still in contact with him you could give him my email address (David Morgan has it (.
Anyway, it’s just for genealogical purposes. I’m glad Stuart has traced back Richard’s origins.
Jo,
You’re not alone in your comments apropos Stuart Webb. By all accounts, the man of many talents himself seems not indisposed towards such qualities by others nor online self promotion of same if push comes to shove, and why not eh Stuey?
Why was the body moved?
I have been working with my friends Bing and Claude (the AI guys). They are great conversationalists but also great liars but they can be geniuses at writing code – on a good day. They also both work for free.
Today Bing came up with code that used the Trove API to generate hyperlinks for ‘Richard August Webb’. It helps date his timeline. When Bing can master Trove I will get it to give more and then possibly some analysis of the data it finds. If the extracted text is readable.
The simple start – if you copy/paste it into Excel it should format into a table.
Title Date URL
THE PEOPLE’S FOOD. WELGING BREAD. MAGISTRATES DIFFER. 1912-05-02 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/11672076?searchTerm=%22richard%20august%20webb%22
Local and General News. 1912-04-18 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/232372910?searchTerm=%22richard%20august%20webb%22
THE PEOPLE’S FOOD. LIGHT-WEIGHT BREAD CASE. AN INTERESTING POINT. 1912-04-17 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/11668215?searchTerm=%22richard%20august%20webb%22
GOULBURN VALLEY. 1912-05-03 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/155579933?searchTerm=%22richard%20august%20webb%22
District News SPRINGVALE. 1928-04-19 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/200675829?searchTerm=%22richard%20august%20webb%22
BAZAAR SPRINGVALE METHODIST CHURCH 1928-10-18 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/200677910?searchTerm=%22richard%20august%20webb%22
CURRENT TOPICS. NATIONAL PARTY 1917-02-03 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/153111927?searchTerm=%22richard%20august%20webb%22
CAMPERDOWN CHRONICLE PUBLISHED EVERY TUESDAY, THURSDAY, SATURDAY SATURDAY, AUGUST 9, 1919. LOCAL AND GENERAL NEWS Derrinallum Presbyterian Church. 1919-08-09 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/25360488?searchTerm=%22richard%20august%20webb%22
SPRINGVALE PRESBYTERIAN ITEMS. 1939-04-05 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/201305906?searchTerm=%22richard%20august%20webb%22
CAMPERDOWN CHRONICLE PUBLISHED EVERY TUESDAY, THURSDAY, SATURDAY SATURDAY, AUGUST 2, 1919. LOCAL AND GENERAL NEWS A.N.A. 1919-08-02 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/25360393?searchTerm=%22richard%20august%20webb%22
WEDDING BELLS. CRONK—ROBERTSON. 1912-01-12 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/269959001?searchTerm=%22richard%20august%20webb%22
EVENTS AND RUMORS. 1915-01-05 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/26130657?searchTerm=%22richard%20august%20webb%22
A DISTRESSING DEATH. 1911-10-17 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/269957167?searchTerm=%22richard%20august%20webb%22
BREVITIES. 1909-02-27 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/73260256?searchTerm=%22richard%20august%20webb%22
springvale News CHURCH BAZAAR. 1934-12-06 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/213865170?searchTerm=%22richard%20august%20webb%22
INSPECTING BREAD. VICTORIAN FULL COURT DECISION. 1912-08-10 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/45233175?searchTerm=%22richard%20august%20webb%22
BOY BURGLARS. CASTLEMAINE, FRIDAY. 1894-03-31 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/192188905?searchTerm=%22richard%20august%20webb%22
BUSH FIRE AT REDROCK STATION, SUNBURY. SUNBURY, MONDAY. 1894-02-27 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/192192732?searchTerm=%22richard%20august%20webb%22
Family Notices 1940-04-02 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/204416995?searchTerm=%22richard%20august%20webb%22
Family Notices 1940-04-02 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/12441342?searchTerm=%22richard%20august%20webb%22
Peteb,
Most probably because it was dead?
Pat,
I did my level best to provide you with a contact address for the person of whom you requested same; in fact it’s available on line and includes some impressive career moves and credentials that confirms two countries (1 city) mentioned by colleague Jo. Can’t imagine why my earlier reply failed but, hopefully this one will get through our censor’s scrupulously exacting guidlines re content.
JohnS .. Dead? But Lyons saw it moving.
Pb: If you care to go back to the interviews with Ruffles, Lyons talks of concern he had with the arm movement, in that it might well have been spasmodic such as a non voluntary post mortem reflex nerve settling action. There you go, dead as a door nail by 7.30pm so cop that lot.
John Saunders it was most likely post mortem reflexes and if correct that could only means death caused by brain trauma or aneurysm
Going back to the statements on his physique. Was tgere a statement saying the SM’s calves muscles were well defined as if he used to wear heels?
When looking at mens well defined calves i dont automatically assume tjis guy wears heels, i think this guy works out a lot, is involved in some sort of sport is a wreztler, etc. So why was the first thought therr womans heels…..unless they knew he was a cross dresser touring with the acting company and they knew who he was
We know Carl knew Hickey
Was the Rubaiyat. Hickey’s?
Did he know Jo Thomson?
What are Jthe chancrs Jo supplied the drugs? Or was it the pharmacists?
Food for thought
2 am more likely
Em,
You seem to have lost the plot completely following your “post mortem reflexes’ comment which was most intuitive and well thought out.
What, that the initial theory that he was working as a cross dresser was not entirely wrong and perhaps he might have been known as such to more people rhan was let on? See beyond the obvious.
PB: Your “2 am more likely” is presumably based on duty intern Bennett’s quick squiz & pat down of the cold damp and well rigored stiff on delivery to RAH in the back of a police ambulance. I recommend that you seek a second opinion from someone with some experience in death, preferably not HMV.
…better get your rubber out Peteb, Cowan was a Robert not a Jim and whatsmore he took off to California in the early 40’s not the 50’s which would have been a tad late to get him up to speed with Oppi’s Manhatten show, if that’s what he went for.
JS, ok, between 10pm and 2am .. rigor m was always a tough one to pin down
Cowan – Robert James … and check the manifest, then check the facts when Oppi was at Berkeley under Lt General Groves and stop being bloody auntie Maud, ok? I thought we were done with your BS.
So long as you keep making silly Puerile blunders PB, I’ll be on hand to catch you out and that ain’t no BS uncle Clod!
Luv ya baby, and that ain’t no lie
@EM,
The taxidermist during the TV programme on the Somerton man was coy about some details. Like he had a secret he wanted to tell but couldn’t. For example, there was never an elaboration of the woman in Melbourne who thought it was her son. He presumably met her if she came to view the body. I would have thought Carl was a bodybuilder nor a cross-dresser.
If he had been a cycling bread carter it would explain his leg muscles. Also his tanned lower legs might indicate cycling with long shorts.
https://www.bicycling.com/bikes-gear/a22724424/history-cycling-clothing/
David Morgan,
A big name in the Australian cycle racing scene in the thirties was the SA family of Schahinger and they’re still active. One runs the S.A. genealogy index. Bob is a big wind in yachting and cousin Robert be free wheeling head of a S.A veterans mob. I’ve made reference more than once to Bob’s dad Wilhelm who up died suddenly in Adelaide on 1 December, first day of Summer 1948. How’s that for co-incidence what?…..Wonder if anyone bothered to check out the misplaced Salomonson story in the Singleton (NSW) Argus story of 14 August 1944 (New SM page). John’s older brother Henry (555) was close by from memory and his name must surely get a mention in the London press of that time.
From a web site – https://rusholmearchive.org/a-house-suitable-for-the-german-vice-consul
Looking through the Manchester Census returns and the Rusholme Rate books it is almost inevitable that some of the tenants of the four properties give their occupations as Merchant, and often from Germany. In 1853 one of the family living in one of the villas mentioned in the Rate Book was that of Theodore Merck, a notable German family. Next door is a family from Holland, Henry Salomonson, a merchant who is still a tenant some 12 years later according to the 1865 rate book, with the property rental assessed at £150 per annum. Henry Salomonson then seems to have moved around the Park finally living in Oaklands, (off of Oxford Place), dying there in 1902.
David Morgan,
Well researched but, your Henry is not my Henry whose dad Johan Salomonson was an invester on the London stock exchange or some such and died in his birth country Holland 1915. Keep at it mate, it’s only you and me against the void as you may have gathered.
Peteb,
Thanks for re posting Robert Cowans travel manifest which confirms a ten month self funded jaunt to the Americas (Canada) in September 1940 sponsored by Paul Kirk, forensic chemist andcriminalist who, much later in 1943 got himself a job along with 130,000 other civilians, many from Berkely university, assisting with Oppeheimer’s Manhatten Project in some non descript line of work. Not to be concerned for by that time our Bob had been back home for nearly two years with no knowledge whatsoever of what the big secret was all about, doing service with wartime inspectorate work at the three busy Adelaide munitions filling stations.
Whilst he may not have been “a key participant in the Manhatten project” as Tbt would have us believe, Cowan’s mate from UCB Paul Leland Kirk was recognised as top of the list as the Godfather of forensic applications to ‘Crime Investigation’. His 1953 book so named is held in such high regard that it is still in print and the hard cover version is available for just US$24.24 and a must read for armchair sloths. I wonder whether our Bob ever sought advice from the great man in later years on aspects of Somerton Man investigations, and if so are they likely to be referenced anywhere in his or Kirks papers.
A body builder to the extent that he liked to keep in shape but i am more inclined that because of his involvement with Hickey Taylor- supposedly. The silence from the family . I am more inclined that Carl Webb was gay. People in the scene most likely knew him but kept schtum because of circumstances surrounding homosexuality at the time. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/13124266
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/131242663
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/127065377
CW might have been part of the bohemian scene engaging in substance abuse and partying and gambling.
There were people that knew what happened to him for sure.
@Em.,
Carl may have been getting work with his physique as 3rd Roman Soldier (unnamed) in theatre plays. Where he was a physical prop as the others – like Hickey – didn’t look the part.
What was the history with homosexual conversion therapy/ camps in the 40’s in Australia?
Found this in trove. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/234543030?searchTerm=Homosexual%20conversion
By 1923, the Adelaide Daily Herald could list a number of ‘treatments’ thus far attempted and discarded.
doses of potassium bromide
incarceration in mental asylums
hypnotism
psychoanalysis
loveless marriages
https://qnews.com.au/australias-long-history-of-lgbtiq-conversion-therapy/
Also
At “gay conversion” camps and conferences, LGBTQ people were isolated from family and friends, hypnotized, told to pray until their homosexuality subsided, instructed to beat effigies of their parents, mocked, coached on “proper” gender roles, and told their sexuality was unnatural and sinful.
https://www.history.com/news/gay-conversion-therapy-origins-19th-century
Also there was someone on here a while ago who maintained that the family were warned against “Uncle” Charlie. who is this source from?
What are the chances CW was in one of these converstion camps, to preserve anonomity he could have gone in with a different name?
@Em
While I was investigating a 1972 murder in Strasbourg I came across Hermann Johr. His dad was quite famous in Switzerland and they were an intellectual family. The problem was his parents funded his adult life as a writer. They bought him a holiday home and an apartment in Basel. But one condition on him was that he lived with a woman so that the family social circle didn’t start to ask questions about his sexuality.
In 1972 he was in a psychiatric unit with schizophrenia. I researched him because just before he fled the unit a young teenage Norwegian girl was murdered in Strasbourg. He became my chief suspect (initially) as he dumped his car in Strasbourg and caught a train to Oslo and had somehow acquired both German and Norwegian currency. My initial pet theory was Hermann needed his meds and visited the doctor and instead murdered the girl who was their au pair and took her money.
But then I contacted his best friend Robert from 1972 who told me Hermann admired women and would not have killed a woman. Later, Hermann’s family didn’t want Robert to write up Hermann’s life story as a gay intellectual. Instead, they gifted him Hermann’s holiday home as a form of a bribe.
When Hermann arrived in Olso in Oct 1972 he caught a ferry to Newcastle. He put an X next to his name in his passport. Took off his jacket and jumped overboard. His body was never found.
But Hermann’s flight from a psychiatric unit to the Norwegian coast and then onto a ship to commit suicide resonates somewhat with Carl Webb. Carl was a troubled intellectual obsessing about death. Living a life with a wife he didn’t want. Hermann was a gay intellectual – living a life with a fake female partner he didn’t want. He spent his last night on a ferry sharing his cabin with a male soldier.
I wondered whether Hermann was really in the psychiatric unit for conversion therapy.
For General information:
In the Kangaroo Island bush, just over forty years ago, teenager Andrew Bennett made a shocking discovery – Police forensics have now identified the skeletal remains as being those of William Hardie using a technique first used to positively identify the Somerton Man as Carl Webb vis. “It’s unofficial use by professor Derek Abbott and Colleen Fitzpatrick last year led to the solving of South Australia’s Somerton Man mystery”.
Today’s story can be found on ABC News Australia @ DNA Discovery 8 Oct.1923 headed “Police are using genetic genealogy to solve some of Australia’s coldest cases”. By James Wakelin and Owen Jacques
OK my bad: 2023 if anyone noticed or even gives two hoots.
Just a heads up to those hoping to use the South Australian Police Historical Society, I received this recently: –
“You may be aware of the South Australian Government’s decision to demolish the SA Police Thebarton Barracks to build a new Women’s and Children’s Hospital on the site. The Society is housed within the Thebarton Barracks and as with all SA Police Sections based there, we must soon vacate the site. For us this is a tremendous task as our administration, archives, museum galleries, 29 historic vehicles and storage areas must be moved. Work is on-going to find an appropriate temporary or permanent location. At this time, it is possible the Society will have to go into storage for a protracted period.
Consequently, our focus is on preparing for the move and as I expect you will understand, we are completely engaged in rationalising Society holdings. At the same time, we are working to resolve the backlog of existing commitments and requests.
Regretfully we do not have any capacity to take on further significant research projects at present and with the Society going into storage, our ability to do so in the foreseeable future is uncertain at best.
I regret being unable to assist you further and I wish you well with your research. ”
These two bits are cause for disappointment: – “rationalising Society holdings” and “future is uncertain at best”
Peteb: your Circumstantial v Evidentiary post of yesterday deserves a better reception than it has received to date. Perhaps it be a true reflection on how accross the board sentiment views such departure from undeniable DNA fact. On Carl Webb day plus eight August 3, 2022 at 7.06am I dared post my humble contrary views of how resolution was achieved by the the Abbott – Fitzpatrick evidence of convenience method. I guess in hindsight the opinion piece was lucky to get through moderation, in knowing what I know now about common interest facilitations and the like. Alas no response and no wonder so perhaps you might oblige by puting me on the board with your usual aplomb, albeit belatedly. Or must I crawl on hands and knees to Mr. C. G. Cramer Esq.
Alan H. Perhaps it’s cynical me, but the SAPOL Historical Society’s situation is another way of saying don’t ask about the SM?
JohnS … I don’t know about a better reception, it’s been read five times and has accumulated seven comments, this to me spells an inordinate success and impels a man to further endeavours, like what on earth would have a man snaffle up a dead man’s singlet purpose for the wearing of?
Peteb: here’s me thinking all this time, that the primary goal was to establish an identity and if possible circumstances of a suspicious death plus any incidental details arising therefrom. Over the past fourteen months, the goal posts at CM have shifted away from the dead man’s identity entirely, instead consentrating on the life and times of the wife and family of some nondescript chap who left his unhappy home in Melbourne mid 1947. He was last heard of in Cottesloe as late as the fifties so hardly likely to be the muscular brute found dead on Somerton Beach in ’48. Can you or any of your own team come up with an explantation as to how come this Dorothy ???????? nee Robertson now occupies top billing at CM. A woman who couldn’t remember her first name in 1941 when she wed Carl Webb, Dr. Xanthe Mallett’s not so confidant SM nominee. I do have some ideas of my own on the subject but, in the interests of discretion, I’ll hold my counsel on them for the present.
Clive, I have had some positive interactions with SAPOL recently. I feel the attempt to launch 2 books to steer the conversation may have been in vain and it’s finally been realised. The volume of continued interest by the public may lead us to an outcome of sorts. The recent upsourcing of “cold cases” may be to vacuum up anything left lying around after the 1984 cleanup. Anyhow, I need to know if the suitcase would float and for how long. (Kia Ora)
Alan H…if it’s anything to go by, poor Richard Pruszinki’s dumped suitcase was found awash on Somerton Beach shoreline 29th November. So foundering as opposed to floating be more likely for mine…I have fond memories of Kia Ora.