Neither Carl Webb’s family nor his wife’s family seems to have much of a clue about him; Trove and the NAA have yielded relatively little; and a (probable) two-year spell at Swinburne Junior Technical College gave us a photo id that remains more than a bit unclear. Barring any sudden new revelations (I’m not holding my breath), the current Somerton Man news cycle now seems to be drifting downwards.
Worse still, well-placed people who really ought to know better are still punting tepid speculations out to the media, which I then seem to spend most of my time disproving (or at least strongly undermining). I really wish they wouldn’t waste everyone’s time, in some quest to look ‘clever’ or ‘knowledgeable’. Inane speculation makes researching history harder, not easier: and so these people are just making it harder for actual historians to make progress. Oh, and the actual data they find seems never to actually get released.
It’s painfully hard not to conclude that all the easy wins have probably now been had, and there is no Royal Road forward – just Hard Graft Street as far as the eye can see. Get used to this view, because it’s not going away any time soon.
It’s true that we still have plenty of sensible (and unanswered) questions, e.g.:
- Did Carl Webb take up the scholarship he got from Swinburne, e.g. to learn electrical engineering?
- Where did he work before the war?
- Where did he work during the war?
- Where did he work after the war?
- Did he have a police record?
- Where did he live after his marriage broke down?
- Did he buy or sell any more items (e.g. in the Melbourne Age)?
- Did he have another relationship after his marriage broke down?
- Why did he have such high levels of lead in his hair at the time of his death?
- What had happened to him to cause his spleen to be so enlarged?
- Was Dorothy Jean Robertson trained as a chemist? If so, where did she train?
However, few of these seem likely to cast any significant light on the end of Carl Webb’s life.
Where should we be looking next? What are we missing?
Hey now, hey now, don’t dream it’s over…
I suppose Swinburne didn’t have a G. Webb doing Engineering Drawing… so I’m assuming it’s our C. Webb…
TECHNICAL SCHOOL RESULTS
31 Jan 1923
SWHsBURNl 1FCUVIC U COLLEGE (Someone needs to edit this….)
Engineering Drawan-, -Grade 1 – 1 Irum
He (C) I West (C) II Hie (C )
<l Wilson (C) r Lambie (C ) H HcKcon (C )
1 norman (C ' G I sans (C ) 1 Jensen (C )
H White (G) W Cottee (G ) B Gray (C ) O
Phillips (C ) W Ellis (C ) } Lawrence (C )
Fix this text( 0 Connor (C ) I Wej mouth (C ) K Qui
bell (O ) J Cooper (C ) II Corr (C ) A 1 age
(C), W Hurst (C) C WEBB (C ) K Huntle
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/1872729?browse=ndp%3Abrowse%2Ftitle%2FA%2Ftitle%2F13%2F1923%2F01%2F31%2Fpage%2F422942%2Farticle%2F1872729
Don't you… forget about me…
12 Jan 1923 – Technical Schools
Swinburne Technical College
Electricity and Magnetism -Grade 1 – Pass
Credit) Charles Radden, 84 ; Robert Sutherland,
75: Jack Hicks, 83. Pass – Harold Popple 51:
Lars Jensen 54; John Cooper 57; Archibald
Paton 56; Alec Macauley 52; Alex Thompson
50; Rupert Wainwright 50; Joseph Dancey 72;
Kenneth Wiese 51; Charles Webb, 62;
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/1868398?browse=ndp%3Abrowse%2Ftitle%2FA%2Ftitle%2F13%2F1923%2F01%2F12%2Fpage%2F422336%2Farticle%2F1868398
Woman in chains… so free her…
Richard Pruzinski was a miner at a Zinc business at Broken Hill? If so, is it possible that Carl Webb also worked at the same facility, hence the amount of Lead in his hair? Just a thought!
Clive: I already asked Jenny Camilleri at the Broken Hill Family History Group about this, but she wasn’t able to find any trace (see what I did there?) of Carl Webb in the Broken Hill personnel archives, alas. 🙁
The big alternative was ElectroZinc at Risdon, but the archives there are somewhat trickier. Working out the right questions for the archivists is one of the tasks I have planned.
What about a munitions factory, they put out an urgent call for instrument makers in 1941 and onwards. Did they put out a magazine? The railways did, it’s completely brilliant, if only Carl worked for the railways, hey, their mag is full of photos and info on staff. Will keep looking …. this case is still so darn fascinating, it’s irresistible. Good on ya.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/192626960?searchTerm=instrument%20makers%20sought%20for%20munitions
mary: it is, of course, a plausible guess that Carl Webb met his wife-to-be through a munitions factory social event (given that her father was the Munitions Inspector). But… it’s just a guess that sounds good, it’s not based on anything of actual substance.
In practice, people’s lives are 100x more complex than that, so we have to be careful about being too reductive and too hopeful. :-/
Another sensible question would be: did he have another relationship during his marriage?
Maybe his high level of lead has something to do with lead welding: lead soldering is quite common for electronic devices, though I am not sure about Carl’s times.
(The mystery deepens. A ballet and poetry and nurse loving, lead welder, Russian spy from Germany through Australia? You are right, people’s lives are really complex.)
@ Pat – it’s good to see you back here again and I love the Australian (or NZ) song references!
I think that the January 1923 references are for the Australian 1922 academic year, which would have ended in November or December.
@ Nick
1. I think the scholarship would have been for the 1922 academic year, as an evening student. @ Jamie had some good info here.
2. Where did Charlie work before the War? I will check the Kelly and Lewis boxes at the University of Melbourne Archives – they would be a good fit for Springvale in the 1920s and the archives description includes pay sheets.
3. Where did Charlie work during the War?
It could be a cash in hand job or civilian employment, in which case we may not find anything.
It could be FRUMEL, at the nearby Monterrey Appartments or signals work – there was an abundance of opportunities in the local area. https://www.naa.gov.au/explore-collection/intelligence-and-security/history-australian-intelligence-and-security#signals-intelligence
Interestingly, this work would have dried up or taken another course around the same time that Charlie left Doff or Doff left Charlie – the new Australian Signals Directorate was established on 1 April 1947 https://www.asd.gov.au/about/history
@ David Morgan has suggested that the newspaper puzzles set by Lt Noall and ably solved by Charlie were a form of talent spotting.
There was also a National Service advertisement in 1942 calling for electrical fitters and instrument makers: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/245124424?searchTerm=lanes%20motors%20instrument%20maker&fbclid=IwAR2kZz-kbDIFwx-54gQJbT2lVvvwV6R9pNd8MtCMURlAHQV9oI1VSHQ8Iqw
If this was the case it could explain why the Melbourne investigation of Somerton Man’s identity was somewhat short and sharp, why Charlie’s family didn’t step forward and why Dorothy also disappeared off the radar.
4. Where did Charlie work after the War?
No one seems to have missed him at work on the week of 30 November 1948! Or if they did they weren’t going to step forward…
5. Police record?
If there is one this could explain a lot! Especially distance and estrangement from the family…. I wonder if there is anything in the divorce statement? Or an old police record? Court records? I’m sure something would have turned up by now on Trove it was a serious offence.
6. Where did he live after the marriage broke down?
There was possibly a stay at the Keanes at some stage – ie Jack Keane’s laundry bag and singlets.
7. Did he buy or sell any more items?
D George first starts selling from 2/63 Bromby Street in July 1947.
The items that Charlie sold really got me thinking – what about friends?
– the “splendid” car – was Charlie a member of the nearby Light Car Club on Queens Road (home of the “fabulous” Razor Club in the 1990s). Apparently Bertram Whiting, Mountbatten’s ADC who also stayed at Gowan Brae was a member.
– the tennis racquet – it was a square headed lawn tennis racquet (Tristram Buesst apparently played “royal” tennis). Did Charlie ever play at the nearby Fawkner Park tennis courts? Who with?
– the golf clubs – Did Charlie ever play golf at the nearby Albert Park golf course? If so, who with?
– the billiard cue – this could be from the Springvale years – apparently Springvale Football Club used to host pie and billiard nights in the 1920s. (I’m still hoping another photo turns up – I haven’t heard anything yet from the very interesting and affable bloke I contacted, Charlie may not have played for SFC – they were a top district team in the late 20s and early 30s).
Basically, Charlie seems to have divested himself of sociable activities and their associated equipment – did he need the money or did he need to lie low?
Here’s the flat – flats one and two are on the first floor, three and four down stairs: https://www.homely.com.au/homes/1-63-bromby-street-south-yarra-vic-3141/4757969. They have two rooms, a kitchen and bathroom. Interestingly, the 1941 ad mentions 6 rooms – I’m wondering if the whole floor was rented out?
There is a small back yard and two garages, which are separately accessed, via a laneway – good for car trading! The flats are quite dark inside and don’t look to have changed much!
8. If there was another relationship they don’t seem to have missed him!
9 and 10. Over to you Doc!
11. If Dorothy trained as a chemist in Victoria it would have been at the Victorian College of Pharmacy, now part of Monash Univerisity: https://www.monash.edu/pharm/about/who/proud-history
I think one of the biggest unanswered questions is why Charlie was not identified and claimed. There were relatively few Keanes in Melbourne at the time. The Melbourne investigation seems to have wrapped very quickly. And why did Dorothy disappear? She filed for divorce from Bute whilst living in Elsternwick/Brighton… Why did she stay in a sour marriage for so long? Why didn’t JC Robertson intervene and tell her to just come back home? Munitions inspector doesn’t bring shy retiring types to mind. There were no children to stay for, which may also explain some of the lack of intergenerational memory.
Re media – there hasn’t been anything SM related in the Australian media for a while apart from the Swinburne photo (ABC Adelaide) and the short, reflective piece in the Monthly. I think the next move will be from SAPOL – the South Australian Police, once their forensic inquiry is complete. Who knows, they might reveal more!
Long comments, I know! There are no short and easy answers or comments on this one!! @ Anne O – I know what you mean! I Shud get on to other stuff!
We are collectively bored of C Webb. Best hope is the proper exhumation DNA test shows he was someone else entirely.
B. Lackdown: in my experience of long-running cipher mysteries, running out of productive leads is absolutely the norm. But it’s almost never the end of the story. 😉
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/11288251 – list of prizes awarded by Melbourne College of Pharmacy (the old-fashioned name for the Victorian College of Pharmacy, it changed its name in 1921).
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/204925676 – 1939 annual ball
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/205288322 – more prizes (but no Doff)
https://find.slv.vic.gov.au/permalink/61SLV_INST/s6pvau/alma999787213607636 – yearbook of the Pharmaceutical Society of Victoria, you’d have thought any chemist qualifying in Victoria would be in there, right?
Good post, Nick, and I agree with you. I think the questions you posed are great, and they are what I sure would love to know the answers to. I am not a ‘speculator’ and I do find way too much of that here and most of it wild, unlikely, and unproductive. I can’t jump to any conclusions or assume anything. Sure, there are things that as I mentioned before are LIKELY and most believable. All of us (including the police now and then) make judgements based on these same principals. We keep an open mind, but you have to look at what is before you and act on your best guess based on the likelihood or evidence you do have. I do think that in time more concrete information about Carl will come to light—Real FACTS, not guesses. It’s frustrating to wait and hope because one thing all of us here have in common is our fascination with “Somerton Man” and the whole mysterious case. I do think that we will most likely discover that Carl was somewhat of a ‘regular’ guy with talents an good qualities, as well as a few demons. I don’t believe in the murder, spy, ‘nit’, crook, etc. theories floating around. It would be nice also to have much more factual information about Dorothy, as well as her relationship with Carl. I have many other questions I hope will be answered someday. Some wonder why Dorothy stayed married to Carl for so long if things were as harrowing as she portrayed in her divorce petition. Well, what if they weren’t? What if they were happy for a number of years? What if Carl’s moodiness/abuse developed later, and why did it? What if much of his behavior was rooted in depression and grief over family losses? What if in the early years he was a different person and they were happy? What if Dorothy exaggerated her accusations against Carl? I made the point awhile ago that Carl may have been a charming, active, social, kind, and attentive guy when they met. She did marry him. A lot of things could have happened later. We just DO NOT know the answers to any of this, and I can’t make guesses which would only ultimately be unsatisfying.
I do disagree with those who assume the investigation into Carl’s death was ‘short and sharp’ or that there is something sinister or odd that he was not identified all those years ago. Again, I think it’s a load of ‘conspiracy theory’. Cops made some mistakes. Reporters made some mistakes. Also, it was 1948. No internet. The photos in the papers of him dead were pretty awful, and may not have looked like him when he was alive at all. The ‘Keane’ name was NOT mentioned in the newspaper articles asking for anyone to help identify him—A HUGE gaffe if you ask me. I believe that those who knew him simply didn’t see the articles and didn’t recognize him. It’s not like today, and even today, many people still don’t get identified when their faces are plastered on websites and in the media.
Like you, I hope someday we all know the whole story of ‘Somerton Man’, with photos and documents to back it all up.
They indeed used to lead solder back then:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvl_KYif9zA
The high level of lead in his hair is not a mystery to me if he was an electrical fitter.
Another blind alley: John (Rubaiyat in Hillman Minx) Freeman was also a chemist, with a shop on Jetty Road.
B. Lackdown: that may well turn out to be the least blind alley in the whole sorry saga, who can tell?
Mary Spencer: in my mind, the right way to proceed is by trying to answer each of the questions, and seeing where what emerges leads. We typically only need a tiny amount of initial information to ‘seed’ a research lead, so who knows what we will ultimately find?
My big question at the moment is where can you buy malleable zinc in Australia (today and in 1948) to make a pouch for your scissors?
I have been unable to find (on Trove) a retail advert for zinc for sale in the 1940s in a hardware store.
In 1916 and 1918 I saw court cases for stolen zinc.
It leads to choices: he worked with zinc production or mining, he bought and sold zinc, he stole zinc or he recovered thin strips of zinc from devices he disassembled like some military equipment. Perhaps he stripped down zinc-based batteries.
But why didn’t he simply buy a leather pouch for his scissors – like you might buy for dark glasses?
It strikes me as the result of a POW (like his brother Roy) working in production and stealing a very thin strip of zinc every day to construct his pouch.
@ Mary Spencer – The name Keane was mentioned in the Melbourne Age and Argus – ie. two of the major papers on 25 January 1949. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/22699115
I don’t think 26 January (now Australia Day) was a Victorian public holiday in 1949.
Re spy theories- there doesn’t seem to be an ASIO file on Jessica Thompson/Harkness, unless it has been suppressed or is held by SAPOL, so Kate Thompson may have simply been playing for the 60 Minutes camera. A copy of Jessica’s brother’s naval service file – Edmund Harkness, can be accessed via the National Archives War Service search.
https://www.naa.gov.au/explore-collection/intelligence-and-security/asio-records
This is the process for accessing ASIO files, for post 1949. If the file is not already in the archives (many are), then someone needs to make a request & ASIO decides if the file can be sent to the archives, which in most cases it can – eg The Communist Party of Australia Wonthaggi Branch, Greens MP Lee Rhiannon etc. The Open Access Period is now post 1992 for most records.
Re Dorothy – has anyone checked obituaries for her parents who died in 1980 (mother) and 1989 (father)? They might provide the name she went by post the divorce… John Comber Robertson d. 1989 and Alice nee Stratford d. 1980
This image someone is sharing secretly on Facebook is also possibly Carl Webb as an older teen. If they scanned it professionally it would show enough detail to be checked. But I am 99% confident it is Carl Webb.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HxiYBHT2iYtFHJyQZA7IHzn8yyyWn0vv/view?usp=sharing
I cannot believe this. Has anyone seen the cast of his teeth? The anodontia thing is bullshit! I happen to know someone with anodontia – the other teeth all migrate closer together to compensate – there are gaps between all the top teeth, not just the chompers and the canines. This whole time we have been fed a bloody lie.
For once that rampaging runt is right.
I mean just look at Robin’s teeth.
You know David M that’s not a bad likeness. Low res ,Looks like its been cut out of a wider image, possibly college or team photo.
Why are we sharing secret face book? Pleade think of this familis. In ukraine now many is missing. Thank you. Carl was a murdere.
Jo
Haven’t found obits for Doff’s parents but according to WikiTree:
For Alice: “During WWII both Jack and Alice were in munitions. Alice died in 1980 aged 84 [in Melbourne].”
For Jack “During WWII both he and Alice were in munitions and then Jack went to Darwin with the Allied Works, making airstrips, etc, from 1941 until 1947. He retired and took a job at Ballarat Air Port for a few years and then moved to Melbourne as caretaker at St.Michaels School in 1960.” Also he: “Died 6 Jan 1989 at age 94 in Heidelberg West, Victoria.”
A ref to Jack living in Darwin from Trove:
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/22432034?searchTerm=john%20coomber%20robertson
Jack had connections with the O Gilpin Limited mentioned in the piece. Another quote from WikiTree: “In 1935 he became the factory manager for O Gilpin Stores, a drapery chain, and then manager of Oliver Gilpin’s property in Balwyn. Here Gilpin had a large house and 40 acres of wildlife sanctuary. Jack lived in The Lodge and amongst his jobs was that of trapping birds and animals in the bush to stock the sanctuary.”
Interestingly both Jack and Alice’s profiles on WikiTree are managed by Bruce Bennett, son of John Barkly Bennett, the doctor who examined SM’s body on first arrival at hospital in Adelaide (Doff’s second cousin).
@Jo, Thank you. Another site had copies of several different articles asking the public to help identify Somerton Man at the time and not one of them mentioned the Keane name on the clothing. Glad to hear that a couple of papers there did mention it, but too bad more did not.
Still, not suprising to me that he was not identified back then. It happens.
@DavidMorgan, Regarding the ‘secret facebook photo’ link. IF that is Carl then in my opinion so is the guy in this photo of the football team.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-15/somerton-man-face-search-focuses-on-football-photo/101333228?fbclid=IwAR0DqIDYl1_oalyHV6-px8GwmrIEDl-MF09opo9Sn9dUfMp3Vuw3g_QfCfk
(First row, first kid on the left as you look at the photo). The guy looks exactly like the one in the link you gave. Got to be the same person. I hope it is Carl.
Like many (I suspect) I an getting bored with the whole Carl Webb/SM scenario so prompted by Jo’s mention of Pat’s Australian song references I thought I would take a musical interlude. Non Oz rock fans should jog on!
In the mid ’80s there was an explosion of Australian “alternative” acts, following the success of punk and post punk bands such as The Saints and The Birthday Party, many of them gaining attention here in the UK and thrilling poms like myself in the process. The Bad Seeds, The Triffids, The Go-Betweens, Hoodoo Gurus, The Moodists, The Scientists, Hunters and Collectors, Laughing Clowns and more come to mind. Just don’t mention Men at Work and INXS!
One song that has some resonance for me is Hunters and Collectors’ ’42 Wheels’: https://youtu.be/lAbI_bG9AJ4 – this song is about the murder of five people at Ayers Rock/Uluru by a drunken truck driver, Douglas Crabbe, in August 1983. This man drove his truck through the bar at the Inland Motel after being chucked out for his drunken behaviour. I had stayed at the motel the previous night, propping up that very bar until the early hours of the morning, and had only left the place a few hours before the incident. Unfortunately back in Alice Springs the same night, just outside the campsite I was staying in a woman was killed after being knocked off her bike on the bridge over the Todd (usually dry) river in a hit and run accident, and I heard the bang.
Although I never saw my favourite Oz band The Birthday Party, I did get to see Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds in Manchester in 1985 with Sonic Youth as support. As their guitarist was otherwise engaged old Birthday Party bandmate Rowland S Howard stepped in at the last moment and joined Nick for a few gigs in the UK. He didn’t know the material (except for the BP songs they did as an encore) and so the gig was suitably chaotic with the crowd in a very boisterous mood – indeed Nick had a fight with one punter. I shouted to Howard “Rowlo give us a solo” and the crowd took up the refrain bellowing it like a football chant. The gig was captured on video (minus the encore) and it can be seen on YouTube – see for example: https://youtu.be/5WF1_2uS2Pc – not the best video quality I’m afraid. RIP Rowland S Howard.
I also saw The Triffids and Hoodoo Gurus in Manchester around the same time and enjoyed a bit of banter with lead singers David McComb and Dave Faulkner. McComb and I traded Ray Charles song titles whereas at the Gurus gig I shouted out for ‘My [expletive deleted] Girl’ and Faulkner responded indignantly “We ain’t gonna play ‘My [expletive deleted] Girl’. The Triffids are my favourite Oz band after The Birthday Party so I have chosen their classic ‘Field of Glass’: https://youtu.be/hFDisUZOvdI – RIP David McComb.
Also in the early ’80s some Aboriginal rock/reggae bands were coming to the fore such as No Fixed Address and Us Mob. I can remember sitting on my own in a small cinema in North Fremantle in 1982 watching Wrong Side of the Road in which both bands featured and which is partly set in Adelaide. Lesser known (but popular at least in Katherine, NT) were Kuckles from Broome. See: https://youtu.be/UICsb6f1CDY – I think I saw them play at the Roebuck in Broome in 1982, but they were always very heavy nights in that particular joint! When I was in Katherine in 1983 I hung out with one Chips Mackinolty, (not Rafferty who of course starred in the Broken Hill set film Wake in Fright) who took me on a couple of trips out bush and was a Kuckles fan. Chips knew the “real” Crocodile Dundee, Rod Ansell. In fact it is Chips who should be the legend, not Ansell. Chips was/is an artist, intellectual, activist and Aboriginal rights advocate, unlike Ansell who was a ne’er do well and who died in a shootout with cops near Darwin in 1999.
I was also fortunate enough to visit Galiwin’ku (Elcho Island) off the coast of Arnhem Land on my trip. This place was the inspiration for the Warumpi Band song ‘My Island Home’: https://youtu.be/yZEodxUx2ME – which was later covered by Christine Anu who sang it at the closing ceremony of the Sydney Olympics in 2000.
I may post a comment or two with ref to the Somerton Man in future if anything interesting turns up.
Lead was used for many things back then. Houses and some factories were painted with lead paint (only some factories because it was so much more expensive than white wash). Roofs had lead flushing. Lead pipes might still have been used for water piped into houses. If someone was working in an oldish building, where the lead paints had begun to flake away, there’s be lead dust in their lungs and bones, not only their hair. There was nothing so good for deterring rust and so far as I know lead paint might still be legal for ironwork on docks, bridges, piers and ships. In Newcastle (Australia), children in one suburb were tested in the 1970s and hundreds were found to have lead poisoning despite a ban against lead-paints in the home which had been in place for decades. It was a major port – very important in WWII – and economically-minded port-workers .. you can guess the rest.
I expect Port Adelaide workers were much the same.
A man who made instruments and could fine-tune machines could pick up lead in any of a hundred places.
“@ David Morgan’s suggestion that the newspaper puzzles set by Lt Noall and ably solved by Charlie were a form of talent spotting”
A very interesting observation and it opens up the possibility that perhaps the code was him simply trying to solve a puzzle?
Perhaps the puzzle-pages of newspapers of the day (or two) before might shed some light?
misca: as a former bridge player myself, I’ve had a look through all the C Webb bridge column references, which I’ll post about separately. It’s a nice little story, but doesn’t actually tell us a great deal.
Misca,
Lt Noall was a trainer at Seymour for recruits. I think it may tell us something. That he was setting puzzles to find a hit list for recruits. They would have had their postal address in the newspaper. They operated a new 2-way radio system training in the 1940s from Seymour. Perhaps that was what Carl was doing.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/244978902?searchTerm=noall%2C%20seymour
The image of Carl aged around 18 is likely from the wedding of his sister Doris in 1923.
It is strange that Carl’s family members are sharing this image of Carl without telling the media. It would help clarify Carl was really Carl and end the mystery because it would show Carl at his sister’s wedding. By keeping these images out of the public eye it keeps the mystery running.
Perhaps they don’t want to paint Carl Webb as a normal family guy who attends weddings. This could backfire on the family and make them seem like they had something to hide about his death.
Remember: People with subscriptions to these searching sites that find these images will already know who they are! It is only secret if you don’t waste £30 to find out. A newspaper can afford this.
D.N.O’Donovan: With the usual non-medic disclaimer…
I’ve always favoured the idea of lead poising as a cause of Charles’ health issues. It can manifest as cerebral edema and, I think, can lead to hypersplenism (via non-immune hemolytic anemia). The reduction in number of circulating blood cells can also affect platelets causing haemorrhage / internal bleeding and lividity (which, apparently, can also happen before death and many hours post mortem – e.g. if the cadaver is placed on its back within 8-12 hours of death). It also accelerates tooth decay and can create gastro problems.
I think the recent revelations about behavioural issues make it even more likely.
Because someone will be thinking it: if the SM was cyanotic (he was) with only a few decayed teeth then I’m thinking the blue Burton line would probably be difficult to identify even if it were looked for.
After reading David Morgan and misca’s mention of “newspaper puzzles set by Lt Noall and ably solved by Charlie were a form of talent spotting”
I almost immediately came across:
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/sep/01/amateur-code-breakers-challenged-to-decipher-secret-messages-on-australian-coin
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-09-02/is-carl-webb-really-the-somerton-man-and-was-he-a-spy/101375542
Damn, a skull swap! Why didn’t we see this one coming?
I have to agree with Mary, if that new photo is Carl I can’t see that it looks like anyone else in the football photo except the person front row left.
Whilst we all check our closets for missing skulls:
Re where Charlie went post 1947:
It appears that Charlie’s family didn’t miss him and weren’t looking for him in Melbourne. Had he told them he was going somewhere else?
On Monday 30 November a train also arrived from Port Augusta. (The Friday train from Broken Hill may not have been running, due to a coal strike – I’ve commented on and provided links for this previously).
Dorothy filed for her divorce from Bute, SA, which is on the way to or from Port Augusta – she may have been looking for Charlie (on the basis of information provided by him?)
Employment linked to Port Augusta (where there was an RAF observation and training post) could be:
– Port Pirie – lead smelters for Broken Hill Associated Smelters
– Whyalla (further along the Spencer Gulf) – ship yards and blast furnace (from 1941)
I have family in Whyalla, if anyone has any good ideas or leads re local history associations, archives or newspapers… I think Port Pirie is the better lead and there was lots of lead!
Sorry, forgot to mention in previous comment:
The coroner’s report mentions sun tanned upper and lower legs but not torso (eg swimming trunks worn with shirt). IMO – he was not in Melbourne! This suggests someone fishing or wading – more like the Spencer Gulf…
@ Pat
This is where RA Webb ran the bakery from, on Glenferrie Road, Malvern, in the early 1920s. Not far from Swinburne.
https://www.realcommercial.com.au/leased/property-64-glenferrie-road-malvern-vic-3144-503094406
Hi guys, I have posted a bunch of posts on Abbott’s FB group, not new posts as they take ages to be moderated (a bit more than here), but basically they’re about Richard August Webb’s whereabouts… I have found references on Trove that he was in (possibly) New Gisborne (1889), Dandenong (1897), Yarraville (1904-1908), Shepparton (1909-1914), Camperdown (1915-1919), Hawthorn/Malvern (1919-1922), Oakleigh (just a reference), Springvale (1928-1939), Moonee Ponds (Gladys and Leslie’s house where he died). I think it fits perfectly with the Charles Webb studying at Swinburne Technical College. All references are about bakery businesses or the Spiritualistic Church/Odd Fellows Halls. There’s a gap between 1922 and 1928, which can be the key to know what happened to Carl, why he hasn’t finished the 3 years of the electrical engineering course.
By the way, my post above was just to demonstrate that we haven’t exhausted all references on Trove, there are still many interesting information out there that can be useful to tell Carl’s story and hopefully understand why Adelaide… a R.A. Webb was in a passenger’s list from Melbourne to Adelaide… more later!
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/36352469
Maybe the scull was swapped to enable some stellar screenings of Hamlet back in 1948? Just prior to dragging a few pairs of Red Shoes out from under the bed?
Alas poor Somerton, none knew him well…!
No wonder the family want to lie low!
David Morgan, yes, that photo is the absolute image of the suspected Carl Webb in the Swinburne photo – aged a few years. Brilliant. I had still been thinking, h’mm, he could be that guy third in on the second row, but nah, no way, this photo closes the deal in my humble opinion, it’s definitely him. That’s a great image of an older Carl to see if we can find in some other pics, perhaps work related, sports ones, per chance. Thanks for sharing.
@ D.N. O’Donovan, @ Jamie, @ Stephano Guidoni – I think you are on to something!
Chronic and/or acute lead poisoning seems to fit with everything currently on the table, including what has been shared from the divorce statement.
Would lead traces remain in the bones and teeth over a long period of time and is this something that the SAPOL forensic pathology investigation might still pick up?
Mary,
The image comes from his distant family, likely in another country – not Australia. They will have pictures of all the weddings and family events he attended. Perhaps they don’t know who is who. But they will recognise their own grandmother and know she was Webb (Carl’s sister) prior to her marriage.
I saw someone say they have a lockup full of family stuff (photos) from Australia implying they were part of the Webb family. If they simply approached the media or Prof Webb they could get students to sift their treasure trove of Carl Webb history.
Jo,
It occurred to me that perhaps the metal scabbards for his scissors and knife were the ends of 4 football boots he dismanted. I believe they had metal inserts in the toes – like workmen’s shoes. Was zinc used to make the boots lighter? He would have arched metal pieces he could fit together then stick together with sticking plasters. He might have to step on them to make a tighter fit.
@ Nick
There is a register of Port Pirie BHAS employees that can be accessed via:
https://www.pirie.sa.gov.au/what-do-councils-do/libraries/family-history-group
(The group is run by volunteers who will research for a modest fee).
Perhaps Charlie worked here in 1947-8 but wasn’t missed on the week of 30 November because he was supposed to be on his way back to Melbourne?
I have an appointment to check the Kelly and Lewis of Springvale archive boxes in two weeks time. My Springvale contact agrees that it would be a good fit and is also checking SFC for old photos and lists in the coming week or two.
Geelong Advertiser
6 August 1923 South Barwon Council
The channel near Mr. Webb’s new bakery, Colac road, has been attended to temporarily.
The Argus
8 Dec 1924 Motocycle ‘Somersaults’ Dandenong
Roy Webb, employed by the State Electricity Commission, was riding at high speed through Dandenong on a motorcycle when the front tyre blew out and the machine turned a somersault. Webb was thrown yards away on the metal roadway, and was considerably cut about the face and hands. He also sustained a fractured wrist. He was taken to a private hospital for treatment.
Hi Pat: Regarding Richard Webb’s movements – we can add 12 months in Maryborough Gaol in 1894/95 to the list (another commenter may already have mentioned this). He was caught breaking into a business in St Arnaud. This helps to explain the gap between the births of Russell and Freda, and also the move from St Arnaud to Dandenong. I was hoping to find a photograph attached to his record, but no luck.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/192192732
https://prov.vic.gov.au/archive/1C9D15A5-F3A9-11E9-AE98-1DAE2E178D55?image=187
Richard’s probate records have been uploaded to FamilySearch (LR91-PLH) if anyone is interested.
@Angela, thanks! Do you think the Webbs could have known the Stratfords (Charles and Louise) at St. Arnaud?
Pat: Your Electricity Commission Roy Webb may actually be a different Roy Webb – Gordon Roy Webb was charged with reckless driving through Dandenong the next month. [The Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 – 1957) Thu 15 Jan 1925 Page 12 DANDENONG.]
Having failed to kill himself doing 50mph somersaults onto a metal road, this Roy Webb, a State Electricity Commission employee, later electrocuted himself on a 22,000V power supply next to a railway junction while 50 feet up without a harness. He was, apparently, “dead before he fell”. Clearly a personal tragedy, but you can’t help thinking some people just don’t help themselves. [The Herald (Melbourne, Vic. : 1861 – 1954) Thu 30 Jun 1927 Page 1 MAN ELECTROCUTED]
RE Carl’s leg tan…He did play tennis at one time. I know some said they saw ads he placed and one to sell a tennis racquet? Maybe a silly idea, but wondering if he ever belonged to a tennis club/group/team? Maybe looking for any info on him in such an area, if there even was such a thing where he was living.
Pat: I try to moderate comments within a few hours, but time zone differences make the delay somewhat variable. :-/
Jo – if the man’s grave wasnt subject to leaching by acidic waters, the lead should still be there. But the type of damage it does to bone is now so well known that unless is was inhaled or ingested in a considerable amount shortly before death (say a week or two), the bone itself might tell. Lead was also used to protect from heat, if I recall, so if an instrument maker was casting metal instruments or bits to repair machines, it could be another source of exposure. Not well up on the technicalities of metal casting in the 1920s-50, or what the union regulations were about safety, so could be wrong about that.
@Jamie, thanks and sorry guys!
@Nick, I wasn’t complaining, you’re doing a great job. I’ll have that in mind and I won’t post until there’s solid evidence. I bet someone won’t hate me for that.
That said, there’s a great photo of RA Webb and his bakery cart on Abbott’s FB, or MyHeritage’s (the original source) Cass website (Helen Cass). If you want me to send it to you just tell me how.
Guys, don’t be angry with me if this is a stupid question, bear in mind I have never been in Australia… so here I go.
This is the data regarding John Comber Robertson that I have grabbed on FamilySearch (correct it if it’s wrong, please)
‘John Comber (‘Jack’) Robertson was born in 1894 Omeo, Victoria to Robert Robertson and Mary Kate Comber (Australia Birth Index), and died on 6 Jan 1989 (“retired caretaker”). He appears on the Victoria Electoral rolls for 1919 (Beeac, Corangamite), 1922, 1925, 1927, 1928, 1931 (Brunswick West, Bourke), then a gap to 1954 (Essendon North, Lalor), 1963 (1963 St Kilda North, Isaacs), 1968, 1972, 1977 (Fawkner, Burke), and 1980.’
Considering that Ballarat (the place where Dorothy has been born/registered) is quite far away from Beeac (where Phyllis has been born/registered) and according to the above data is where JC had been living… could that ‘Ballarat’ actually be the long and winding (not really) Colac-Ballarat road that crosses the entire Beeac region?
Just started looking through Bute News articles from the 50’s, only seen a few, but just saw the Sharples name – I recall there was a notice from a girl named Sharples re the death of John Russell Keane – will look some more later, but just popping it up here if anyone’s got time to go through ’em. Gotta go out now, it’s a lovely sunny day and the outdoors beckon 🙂
https://trove.nla.gov.au/search/advanced/category/newspapers?keyword.phrase=Bute%20News&l-decade=195
***Thank you @David Morgan, @Curio and @MarySpencer, phew, I found the pic tucked away there on the Facebook page. It’s a fabulous find, have saved a copy too, so wonderful. I can’t get into those heritage and ancestry sites as I’m not a member, so it’s really great to be able to see them. Totally indebted. Cheers
14yo Tasmanian boy cracks national intelligence agency code in ‘just over an hour’
@ Warwick Dunbar
Someone is a clever lad & is in line for great job offer before he’s even done his year 10 work experience placement!
@ Pat – Beeac is a very small rural town – only 370 people living there at the last census. I remember reading that JCR had a soldier settlement block there – a grant of land given on application to men who had served in WWI. Very few of these were economically successful and able to support a family. Many families had left or abandoned them by the 1930s. It is very possible that Alice went up to Ballarat to a general or “lying in hospital” to give birth. Ballarat has a few big teaching hospitals & even today is a big hospital and medical town for the region – eg people will travel 200km to visit a specialist, such as a psychiatrist.
I’ve wondered too about the St Arnaud connection….
@ Mary – the report said tan up to crotch area and mentioned swimming trunks, I was being discreet :😂 I think you’re correct about tennis, a lawn tennis racquet was offered for sale.
I can’t seem to post a link from ABC news (Australia in this case, there are two of them people should be aware) regarding the SM possibly being a spy.
It is a good article, however Abbott says about the code… “…it isn’t really a code, its just the first letters of the English language.” Umm…, explanations? Misquote?
There’s a code for the uninitiated. Which is why we are here. No clue what he’s talking about though. The article is dated September 1st.
@Jo, thanks!
‘John Comber Robertson applied for 153 acres of the area known as Mack’s land at Wilgul South.’ 20 June 1919.
So, are you saying he lived there after that? And by 1925/6 when Phyllis was born he would be nearer Beeac than Ballarat? It seems there’s nothing at Wilgul South even today!
@Jo
You can say that again! All I could manage using AZDecrypt from the Side A inner ring of the coin: BGOAMVOEIATSIRLNGTTNEOGRERGXNTEAIFCECAIEOALEKFNR5LWEFCHDEEAEEE7NMDRXX5
was: “WE ARE AUDACIOUS IN CONCERT AND GET ICULOUSINESECUTION OF IND CLARITY IN G WIDTHS IDERTH”
Alas, no Bletchley Park for me
https://amp.smh.com.au/opinion/tony-wright-column-the-modest-spy-and-monterey-australias-bletchley-park-20170706-gx5mxu.html
@ Warwick Dunbar
Well you’ve done better than me and my kids!
The Australian Bletchley was very close to Carl Webb’s Bromby Street Apartment, at the Monterey Apartments on Queens Road, under the command of Eric Nave. Some of the women who worked there finally got their Bletchley thank you badges a few years ago, in their 90s! Ironically I have a Russian friend who now lives in one of the apartments!
Jo,
Captain Eric Nave’s memoirs
on his wartime years as a code
breaker based in Singapore for the
Royal Navy have been dropped
from publication in Britain by UK
publishers Bodley Head.
The company’s decision not to
publish Captain Nave’s book Cod-
ebreaker Extraordinary reportedly
followed intervention by the Min-
istry of Defence, which told Bod-
ley Head that despite the age of the
allegations, the book could still
harm Britain’s national security.
”
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/120915809?searchTerm=%22eric%20nave%22
Why didn’t they ask Nave about Carl’s code – or did they?
Jo: If CW worked at Port Pirie smelting works or, any other similar place. A silly notion I know, but could this be the reason CW had ‘sun tanned legs’ as he and others wore shorts at work?
@Clive Turner im curious about if any, the relationship with the civil alien corps in wwii. A name like Carl Webb would have raised eyebrows . Even though Carl wasn’t technically an alien he was 1 gen German Australian. Given his military service absence could he have been put to work there ?
So, I’m not sure that this leads us anywhere other than understanding that family dynamics are always more complex than what might appear, but here goes…
Russell Richard Webb (Charle’s brother) married Amy Sarah Harriet Tomkinson in 1917. They had four children. (Charles, Doris, Norman and Ethel). Amy died on 2 June, 1929. He was 36, Amy was 34. The children were all 12 and under with the possible exception of Ethel for whom no birth date is available. So, who helped him raise the children? His mother or a sibling?
It’s odd that despite being the only child to have worked with his father in the bakery, he did not take over the business. Richard sold it to Mr. Patterson of East Malvern (someone outside of the family) about two weeks before he died on 2 April, 1939.
Well…In 1944, Russell re-married. He switched up trades too; from pastry chef to “bus proprietor”. His children were all in their 20’s by then. He married Josephine Margaret Rigg. She had been previously married to Thomas Henry Rigg (who died very young in 1941). Josephine was tricky to track down but she was born Josephine Margaret McKeown.
Long story short. Russell’s children did an odd thing when he died in July 1949. Each of his children posted separate notices with references to their own families and none of them mentioned Josephine. They can be seen here:
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/189466100?searchTerm=%22Russell%20Richard%20Webb%22
Josephine can also be found on trove. In August 1949 she posted:
“WEBB – Mrs. J Webb wishes to THANK all kind friends and relatives for cards, telegrams, floral tributes, and all expressions of sympathy in her recent sad bereavement. Special thanks to Dr. A I Chapman, Mr. and Mrs. T Johnson and N Tomkinson.”
She does not mention Russell’s children or the Webb family at all.
On 2 September 1949 she is mentioned in a notification posted stating that she is the sole executrix of his will as can be seen here:
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/22775815?searchTerm=%22Josephine%20Margaret%20Webb%22
Josephine Margaret Webb died in 1955
Also –
There is a Victoria Police Gazette listing dated August. 17, 1911. It is under the heading “Deserters of Wives and Children” and it reads:
“RUSSELL WEBB is charged, on warrant, with deserting his illegitimate child at Shepparton, on the 8th inst. Description: – Baker’s driver, about 18 years of age, 5 feet 3 or 4 inches high, medium build, medium complexion, brown hair, round features, inclined to be small, no hair on face; wore a dark striped suit, light coloured soft-felt hat, and tan boots.”
So…there might be another “missing” or unknown Webb out there…
@ misca, wow, that is interesting, thanks!
Perhaps you or Angela can help me understand who was Eliza Amelia Webb’s (nee Grace/Morris) biological father (important for DNA purposes), Robert Grace or John Wilson Morris? For what I have found, she was born around 1871/72 when John Wilson Morris died? Soon after that Amelia Morris (nee Bailey) became Mrs. Grace and had at least 2 more children, Robert Henry Grace (1874) and Ann Elizabeth Grace (1877).
misca
I had the following tip off a couple of weeks ago, after I had posted a comment on another site about the work of the top secret ISD and SRD Special Ops organisations during WW2. They planned and prepared the Z Special Unit covert missions against the Japanese in South East Asia. Don’t know what to make of it!
“Don’t forget though that the supposed nephew of Carl & son of Russell Webb, his eldest brother & said to have been born in 1911 to Ms McCluskey and named Douglas Russell McCluskey- was a member of a Z [Special] Unit during WW2. So intelligence also…Although Douglas is deceased, he had at least 3 sons.” My correspondent wasn’t certain that this McCluskey fellow was Russell Webb’s illegitimate son but thought it might be proved/disproved by testing the DNA of living relatives.
From NAA :”MCCLUSKEY DOUGLAS RUSSELL : Service Number – V500465 : Date of birth – 20 Jul 1911 : Place of birth – FITZROY VIC : Place of enlistment – CARLTON VIC : Next of Kin – MCCLUSKEY LINDA.” You have to request a copy of the record though. Linda McCluskey is the mother, born 1888 in Victoria. Make of it what you will.
I have just found Amelia Grace’s death record. She married John Wilson in London when she was 19 years-old, became a widow and married Robert Grace in Australia (A….? I can’t read the name on the doc) when she was 34. So it seems that Eliza Amelia was Robert Grace’s daughter, because when Amelia died (1897) Eliza was 25 years old (b. 1872). She died in 1897 and had been in Australia for the last 40 years. Apparently she had 4 children with John back in England!
@ Clive – the coroner’s report to the inquest said tanned to the crotch area, more like swimming trunks worn with a shirt, I don’t think short shots were a thing until the 70s? So more like sunbathing or wading. I was thinking about fishing or wading and The Spencer gulf – eg Whyalla, Port Pirie, working outwards to work places involving lead and or zinc. I also noted that Bute is en route to the Spencer Gulf. There was a train from Port Augusta on the morning of 30 November… The Port Pirie Family History Group has access to a historical register of employees from the Broken Hill Associated Smelters at Port Pirie and will do research for $20 an hour, so an easier lead to follow…
Misca,
Russell from the police gazzette seems physiologically different to Carl. Russell is small and not hairy whereas Carl is strong, taller and stated by Prof Abbott to be hairy.
Were they brothers?
@ David Morgan
Nick had an earlier thread suggesting that Nave may have been asked about the code as he was visiting Adelaide. It was also sent to Melbourne “to the navy” – so again, possibly Nave. Its a pity about Nave’s memoir, 1989 would be not long after Spycatcher, so maybe a few sensitivities there! I still wonder whether FRUMEL or Signit might in the mix due to the Bromby Street address and “electrical fitter and instrument maker”, but wouldn’t have a clue where personnel records might be or how you would be able to get access to them. Obviously you can, as Australian woman Joan Duff of FRUMEL received a badge for her wartime work, from the UK government in 2011. There is still one signals intelligence worker alive – a 100 year old woman in a Melbourne nursing home, who was with the RAAF! In a recent interview she said that she did some of her training (about two weeks) at Kellow House, next door but one to Charlie’s Bromby Street flat! She was then based at Victoria Barracks.
@ Pat – Derek Abbott has said that Eliza Amelia’s biological father was John Morris but she was raised by Robert Grace, so this makes sense.
Pat – as to who was Eliza Amelia Webb’s (nee Grace/Morris) biological father..
The Vic Birth Record for Eliza Morris states father as John Wilson Morris.
MORRIS
Eliza
Birth
, Amelia
BAILEY
, John Wilson
PERC
1872
4582/1872
However her Vic Death Record states father as Robert Grace.
WEBB
Eliza Amelia
Death
, Unknown
UNKNOWN
, GRACE Robert
RED BANK
BRUNSWICK EAST
76
1946
12619/1946
Also Percydale and Redbank are close – just 16 km apart.
Apparently “John Wilson Morris, was a miner in Pleasant Creek, VIC. He sustained a fractured spine in an accident, and died on 23 July 1871.”
Pleasant Creek is about 65 km west of Redbank.
Amelia’s next registered birth is in 1874 – Robert Henry Grace 17831/1874
Although Amelia appears not to have married Robert Grace, Robert would be a father figure to Eliza. As to who is Eliza’s biological father… I tend to trust Eliza’s birth record details.
The Someton man’s shoulders look different to the Carl Webb we’re seeing in photos, why and how can that be …. h’mm, aren’t you born with that shape, bone structure. Ah well, back to dear Dorothy, I’ve looked all through the Bute News and not a cracker on Dorothy Robertson/Webb, which is pretty strange because I think if you even got a new dog or changed your hairstyle it would make the newspaper there somehow, let alone a new arrival to the town or visitor. Of course it’s tricky if she remarried or ‘assumed’ a married name, hey, Mrs Wilbur Wilson, Mrs Benjamin Smith, Mrs B.N. Smith …. oh boy, makes it tricky!! And I can’t find anything on Kevin D’Arcy. It’s all so mysterious.
There are several trees online showing Eliza’s assumed mother with her two marriages (Morris and Grace) but they also use two sets of records simultaneously from Australia and from England so, it’s really not clear at all that the conclusions are confirmed. Many of them are also culling from a single tree and cite the same tree as a source document for their own.
There is a marriage record for Eliza Amelia Grace and Richard August Webb. I’m still trying to catch up. Has it been ordered? It might shed some light.
Hi Pat and Misca,
I have posted a number of certificates relating to the Morris/Grace/Webb families on the FamilySearch Family Tree. I have not been able to locate any marriage records for Amelia Bailey, although she claimed to have married John Wilson Morris at Handley, Staffordshire, on 24 July 1857, and Robert Grace at Avoca Vic. Based on my research, she was born Emma Bailey in Shelton, Staffordshire, in 1835.
I suspect that Eliza Amelia was Robert Grace’s daughter, as she was listed as the eldest child of the “marriage” on the death records for both Robert and Amelia.
Pat: It is possible that the Webb and Stratford families knew each other. The Stratford’s were living at St Arnaud in the 1870s before moving to Avon Plains, where they remained until about 1892. Alice Stratford was (allegedly) born in St Arnaud circa 1896 (there is no birth record for her). The family ended up in Mildura, where Alice married John Comber Robertson.
Looking at the Webb family, one thing really strikes me as unusual. All six Webb children married, however, of the four youngest siblings, three were childless and one (Doris) only had one surviving child. This suggests that there was some sort of issue affecting the family (genetic/envionmental). Perhaps the lead poisoning theory is correct?
EM: I’m wondering if CW was allowed to work under some kind of supervision order, being of German extraction. This could be a possible reason why there are no WW2 service records, he was not in any of the services?
JO: I suppose it’s possible he may have working in Nthern Australia to have such a tan?
Am I the only one to think that Jack Keane was absolutely drop dead gorgeous? As opposed to aficionados of ‘microwriting’ whom I wish would simply, well, drop off the Somerton radar. Is there a link between microwriting and micro…brain capacity? Is Gordon Cramer serious in his crapola about microwriting hidden in an indentation? How does one hide microwriting in an indentation without ink? Are the micro letters micro indentations within the macro indentation?!? Even the muppet formerly known as Mr Mistry can’t be serious. Gordon Cramer is a very rude man, highly opinionated and utterly out of his depth yet he bickers with Mr Mistry about the DNA results on the ‘original body’. Don’t forget someone replaced the original skull with the head of Tibor Kaldor and the dick of Coroner Cleland.
Clive,
Do you have a complete list of those who arrived on the Dunera in 1940?
An apparent German in London would have been deported like Tibor Kaldor was and it may have taken time to prove who he was.
Major Buesst’s brother was interned in the UK because he added umlauts to his name.
@Angela
Thanks a lot! So Amelia’s ‘English name’ was Emma?! I want to change my name too! This family lived through 2 World Wars, I suppose anything is possible. Regarding Eliza’s biological father, I would bet it’s Grace. Her death record seems very thorough, and I suppose whoever gave the information knew what they were doing. And thanks for the ‘Avoca’ name. Haha, I will have no troubles visiting Australia (fingers crossed I won’t die before that).
As for the decreasing number of children in the Webb family… lead poisoning (as well as many other heavy metals) can affect the number and viability of sperm, so this makes sense. It would be interesting to know if Dorothy’s second marriage produced offspring, that would be evidence that the ‘problem’ was Carl’s and it could also explain why there is so much mystery surrounding her… a possible living offspring?
@Clive it is starting to look like that was even though not a spy l am guessing classified hence his absence but definitely to do with his ability to work out puzzles ie codes but he also could be he was a trainer…
@RUTH
Lol, I agree with you!
Correction re: secret Facebook image for Carl aged 18 – I assumed the software searched Facebook to find images but it also searches Pinterest etc. So ‘public’ Pinterest – if only we knew where the ?wedding? took place in 1923 and who now has the photos after the death of their Australian relatives and uploaded them to Pinterest. They could be ignorant of the contents since the software will pull out a face in a group photo. But I believe it would be in the Public [P]interest for them to come forward to finally resolve a mystery as to confirm the identity of the body of Carl Webb.
The Webb family and Keane family were musical:
Freda Webb played piano and liked ragtime. Most likely she bought sheet music by people like Irving Berlin. Roy Webb played violin. Doris Webb was a singer (duets). Gerald Keane was a singer that was often asked for an encore suggesting he was a good singer.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/154423567?searchTerm=%22gerald%20keane%22
@ Angela,
Correct me if I’m wrong. Amelia Bailey (then Morris, then Grace) was born around 1836, according to her age stated in the 1897 death record (61) and she was the daughter of Fodem (sic) Bailey and Elizabeth. In the 1871 Census she’s in Staffordshire listed as Eliza Morris (26, wife), along with John Morris (25, head), Mary A. Morris (3, daughter) and John Morris (1, son). Apparently John Wilson Morris died that same year? 1871? I have found some references, but they’re all from family trees without evidence. So… could her name be Amelia Eliza or Eliza Amelia? In the 1871 Census it’s also stated that she was from Ellesmere, Shropshire.
Clive,
Thousands of Australian men and women of German (or partly German) descent served in WW1 or WW2.
It’s difficult to see how the Australian-born Webb bros and their Australian born mother would have been regarded as “German”. If they had been, then his father would have been even more so (and I’m not aware of Richard Webb being interned for four years during WW1). Likewise, had Carl’s older brother, Russell, been regarded as “German”, he would not have needed an exemption from service in WW1, because he would also have been interned for four years.
The most likely explanation for Carl’s lack of military service is that he was unfit and/or he was in a “reserved occupation”; i.e. instrument-makers and electrical fitters were in short supply – and people able to teach those skills would be have been even scarcer.
While there were a small number of cases of Nazi/fascist sympathisers being jailed on suspicion of collusion and/or future collaboration, these were generally Anglo rather than German-Australian, and the cases were usually high profile. Hence, we would probably know if any of the Webbs were even under suspicion in 1939–45.)
@furphy if he was unfit surely there would be record ? On another note the number of naturalization more than doubled during this period
reserved occuption of a top secret kind now wouldn’t it be fun if our Carl was code breaker
@David Morgan: this performance is another really interesting one. It dates the Webbs move to Camperdown and so seems to introduce Freda to Gerald and Russell to Amy. It also has Dorrie singing.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/152333502?searchTerm=webb
[Camperdown Herald Sat 23 Jan 1915 p2 CAMPERDOWN ENTERTAINERS]
Furphy,
WW1 – July 1914
RIchard Webb applies for naturalisation – August 1914
Richard Webb naturalised September 1914.
He had been living in Australia all those years and never needed to register until WW1. Australia kicked out 95% of Germans after WW1 – even some who were naturalised. I think one was a former government minister/candidate.
The reserved occupation was the most likely answer for Carl Webb as he was a super-fit athlete by appearance aged 43 and by his record of football playing for 10 years. But it would have been irritating during WW2 to see him riding around not in uniform in a roadster from the Domain road mansion. He would look like some wealthy playboy.
The guy Max McCormack who had his car stolen on the 28/11/1948 (2 days before Carl appears, officially) which was driven by Freddie Pruszinski had written a strong anti-German letter to a newspaper suggesting he was not happy living alongside Germans.
In 1915 Gerald Keane was banned from his local club for some reason. His new wife was Freda Webb of German origin. Their son John Russell fought in the RAAF/RAF in WW2 and died in an air accident. After 1918 the same club had a celebration at the end of the war with anti-German songs – some likely sung by Gerald even though his wife was of German origin.
Suter who bought Carl’s bakery had to put a notice in a newspaper to say he was not German.
So I think there was a lot of anti-German sentiment before and after WW1 and before and after WW2.
I think in 1933 it made Carl leave Australia. There were articles in newspapers saying ‘war is coming’. It would explain why no-one remembered what he looked like. Not even his family if he left Australia in 1933 and returned around 1940.
Then you have to think why was Carl taken to Major Buesst’s mansion in 1941. What rank in society entitled him to such good treatment when properties were being requisitioned for military use.
You’d imagine he was a General or a Major.
Young Bertram Whiting who lived there was Adc to Mountbatten.
@ David Morgan
It’s a pity it doesn’t mention Charlie playing the flute! This would provide a nice link to Ina Harvey’s mysterious guest who checked into a Somerton hotel with only a flute (or rifle) case!
@ Clive et al – Re Dunera – there is an active Dunera Association. There are no longer any Dunera detainees alive. Many of them settled in Victoria – I taught for a while at a school with a quite a few of their descendants, students and teachers. Tibor Kaldor wasn’t the only Jewish Dunera man who suicided in the 1940s – eg 25 year old Austrian Kurt Kriszhaber who died in East St Kilda in 1946. This would be the time when news was reaching Australia about the extent of the Shoah and the tragedies suffered amongst their families. In the post war period Melbourne had the highest number of Holocaust survivors in any city outside Israel. Arnold Zable’s “Scraps of Heaven” provides some good insights into the dynamics between Jewish families coming from Europe and their relatives who had settled in Australia in earlier times. I seriously doubt that there is any link between Carl Webb and the Dunera detainees.
David Morgan: I understand that Cyril Pearl wrote a book title of “The Dunera Scandal”. I think there is a listing of all the deportees in that book.
David Morgan: On second thoughts, go to the NAA website and type in Dunera, the lists of names will come up
Jo, not so. Google Sydney Morning Herald 27 August, The last Dunera Boy alive, name of Bern Brent.
@ David Morgan: according to this letter to the editor, Gerald was thrown out of the Mechanics Institute because he was Catholic rather than because of his German heritage wife. I think the Mechanics Institute was part of a sort of imperial arts school that ran the local playhouse used by the Camperdown Entertainers (in which Gerald was very active).
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/152332860?searchTerm=gerald%20keane%20mechanics
David Morgan: I suspect that Tibor Kaldor took his life because he had reached the end of his tether. He was an intelligent, educated (Graz Uni graduate) man who travelled to the UK, deported to Australia, tried different jobs and ended up as a process worker. His parents were murdered by the Nazis, he had no wife.
Holding his final letter, in my hands, I was humbled.
@ Peterb – thank you for the correction! I’d read that the last Dunera Association reunion was the first with no Dunera men present! So, five Dunera Boys still alive around the world and Bern Brent looking very alive and well!
@ David Morgan – I don’t think Tristan Buesst still owned the mansion when the Webbs stayed there – it was a B and B (Gowan Brae) and they stayed for a few weeks before moving to Bromby Street (read on this blog). I’m not sure Buesst ever lived there – though Bertram Whiting certainly did and he was a member of the Light Car Club (from you and also a friend). It was a private hospital – Osmington. Buesst bought it when he married Marie McKinnon (from Trove), I think in 1933, the house was sold again in 1936 (Trove again), it was still a hospital in 1934 (from my bashed up 1934 copy of Sands and Mac – it was in a house I once rented…). Buesst lived at Amesbury House (rather nice old apartments), 237 Domain Road (from a friend and online stuff), very close to Central Bureau at Cranleigh, 225 Domain Road and Airlie House (I just know all this weird local history stuff, it probably too many Melbourne lock downs and the need to stay within a 5km radius…also via the Oz at War site). I don’t know from what date Buesst lived there…
The Bromby Street apartment is fairly modest and looks quite dark, two rooms, kitchen, bathroom, balcony sunny back yard, in a quiet street, directly opposite Melbourne Grammar School, side entrance. I’ve walked past it so many times… which is how I got stuck on all of this Taman Shud stuff! When I heard the address my immediate thought was how conveniently located for signals intelligence work, dress circle position! Its probably a wild guess and a bit of a tangent and I Shud push on!
@David Morgan, So the photo of Carl at 18 was on Pinterest??? I wonder who put it there. Do they know it’s Somerton Man? If only we knew who these folks were and if they had photos of the family, of the wedding of his sister, etc.! Someone must know someway to find out and contact them…
@ Jamie
Gerald T doing blackface in Camperdown, the Webb sisters singing Row, Row, Row (now recast as “We’re from Tiger Land” in the Richmond AFL song) and love is in the air! If the news cycle has peaked this would be a rather good curtain closer! I somehow think it’s just the interval… Where’s poor Carl?
@mary spencer
It just needs a journalist with ‘Public interest’ on their side to expose it and determine who put it there. If they were lucky they could do it with £33 an image search and a click.
Of course, that person may have a Pinterest account called ‘Australia 1932’ not ‘Webb Family album’ which might not help much. But I assume a journalist would then message that person hoping for a discussion.
But as the image is already in the public domain there is no privacy issue. Anyone could find it.
David,
I can’t resist mentioning at this point that as a subeditor I once had to explain to a cadet journalist that enemy aliens were interned, rather than “interred” during WW1.
Anyway re. “Australia kicked out 95% of Germans after WW1”: In fact, the big wave of departures, both deportation and self-exile actually occurred around the time the war began in 1914. Some of these were “Australianised” people who had arrived as children, but the only Australian born among them would have been children, or young adults accompanying deported parents. (One of them may have been a young soldier who surrendered in late 1918 to members of I Aus Corps north-east of Paris. Upon being told “Your war is over Fritz”, he replied in broad Strine: “My oath it is mate”, explaining that he had been born and schooled at Boulder, WA.) “95%” sounds high; could be right for actual German nationals, but self-identifying Germans were obviously a broader group and as the case of R. A. Webb’s naturalisation showed, there were lots of loopholes. Officialdom never caught up with (or turned a blind eye to), our third Prime Minister, Chris Watson, who been born, with the moniker Johan Cristian Tanck, to German parents in Valparaiso, Chile, in 1867. Watson was apparently never naturalised (fwiw). A prominent doctor in Sydney, whose name escapes me right now, was only interned in mid/late-1915, after a series of (I would say) brave letters to newspapers, protesting at the anti-German hysteria.
After WW1, there was no _official_ pressure to leave, although until 1925 there was a ban on immigration, or re-immigration, by German nationals .
Personally, I think the “spy hypothesis” became dead in the water with the provisional identification of SM as Carl Webb. An Australian with one German parent, spending significant time during the 1930s in Nazi Germany (or the Soviet Union, for that matter) and returning around 1939, would have been regarded as too suspicious to have worked in “sensitive” war industries, and also too compromised to have been a useful spy. (Successful undercover/illegal agents tend to blend in seamlessly and having known “foreign” connections is a problem in that regard.)
(As an aside) If you’re looking for colourful possible military/intel connections for an electrical fitter/instrument maker in 1940–45, one would be … radar. At the behest of the RAAF, CSIRO was briefly a world-leader in developing and building mobile radar stations, assisted by the recruiting in 1943 of E.G. “Taffy” Bowen, a Welshman who had previously advised on nascent radar manufacturing in the US. (fwiw, Bowen hung around after the war and set up The Dish, a.k.a. Parkes Radio Telescope.)
@clive do you know how many women were internees on the Dunera?
I saw one woman Mathilde Fuerst. It seems she may have been interned by the Nazis (but not sure of that), then the British (temporary until shipped out on the Dunera) then the Australians (I’m not sure whether/where women were housed while their husbands were interned) then the Japanese (but could also be another woman with the same name).
@ Jo: Carl is working hard for his Qualifying Certificate from Camperdown State School which he got the next year in Dec 1916**. Which begs the question: why didn’t he go to the Swinburne Junior Technical College in 1917? Do we have an actual birthday for him yet? I’ve just got 1906 from findmypast which would probably mean he was very bright and too young in Feb 1917 (I think you had to be 12, and started paying at 14).
[**Camperdown Chronicle 23 Dec 1916 Page 3 Schools’ Vacation.]
Hi Mary – I was in contact with one of them until a few weeks ago. Just covering from the horrible Covid. They honestly for some reason do not care about Carl Webb whatsoever. They are not interested in Media attention either. I think they put the photos on Pin Interest so they could be more discreet. I know for a a fact that one of the family members is a GP and another one works in the UK Government. It was definitely Carl at 18!.
Jo,
My Dunera link to Carl is based purely on timing. He appears around the same time as some interns are released after May 1941. He and the invisible Dorothy are both in Buesst’s mansion, then in October getting married with no engagement announcement and no banns being notified publicly. They are both mystery people. Dorothy more than Carl. They both suddenly appear in Melbourne from nowhere.
They don’t appear in any social announcements for Domain road before the war so it is likely they lived there for less than 12 months. Were they both billeted there like soldiers? She doesn’t get mentioned in At Home events to raise money for charity. So she has no social profile.
There is also a curious book by a Dorothy Jean Robertson – the ABC of piano playing. Did she take her name from a book cover?
You can see the Webb family involved in social events – except for Carl. Music, drinking and socialising don’t appear to be Carl’s thing. But equally, Dorothy is a quiet mouse.
@jamie,
But Keane didn’t become catholic in 1915 when he married into the Webb family? Otherwise, the Webb girls would have been barred from there.
There must be another story.
Were there any previous Webb connections to Adderly Street, West Melbourne? This one rings a bell, but possibly from other journeys in Melbourne…
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/206878367?searchTerm=Mr%20Charles%20Webb
@Jo
The ‘Camperdown Entertainers’ sound like the 1915 edition of ‘Hey, Hey, it’s Saturday’
Sorry, no offence intended to the Webbs in my previous comments. Whilst blackface is of course no longer acceptable, I acknowledge that black and white minstrel shows were a very popular form of entertainment in the early 20th century, these were people of their times. I note that Gerald T and co were also poking fun at Kaiser Wilhelm, so they participated in anti German sentiment, rather than (or in addition to?) being targeted by it. I’ll stop banging off so many comments!
My observation of my own family is after wars they split. The one side would be pious church-goers and the other side all out, good-time people. They would split into drinkers and smokers and teetotal. One side would be all choirs and Sunday school outings and the other side night-life economy.
The catholic Keane/Webbs seem to combine church and night-time economy. Perhaps that reflects the difference between catholic and protestant religious groups.
Carl seems to be someone who was late to the party. A person who was locked away in his bedroom reading books in his early teens but then joins the party during and after WW2. He was a heavy smoker and perhaps a heavy drinker. Heavy drinking was common in people who participated in wars because they had MH issues. But Carl seems to have avoided two wars. His distress seems to be the loss of his family. He has lost all his touchpoints in life. There may also be guilt that he didn’t help them as he selfishly pursued his dreams of football and engineering. Perhaps Carl was a lost soul unable to cope with ordinary life with no-one to cook and clean for him.
@ Jamie
According to Nick “the Webb family home was in Camperdown (1916/1918), then Malvern (64 Glenferrie Rd in 1922)”
Charlie was born in November 1905, he would have begun school in February 1911 at five years of age, so the Qualifying Certificate would have been in grade 6, at the end of primary school.
Qualifying and Merit certificates enabled students to gain access to high schools (often church schools) and apply for bursaries. There were very few state high schools prior to WWII, most state school students would have stayed at general schools until the age of 14 or 15 or moved to state central schools for years 7-9. Fee paying Independent high schools, affiliated with the major churches were often the only high school option available until after WWII – they offered limited bursaries and scholarships to academically able low income students. Camperdown Higher Elementary School only opened in 1921, although they may have had an academic class or assisted students to prepare for Merit Certificates. (The school burnt down in 1965 and was rebuilt).
Charlie probably sat for a Merit Certificate at age 14 in 1919 to be considered by and accepted at Swinburne Technical School, he first appears at Swinburne in 1920, when he would have been 14, turning 15 in November. His last entry is for 1923 , so aged 18.
There may be another school between 1917 and 1919? It may be the Catholic school in Camperdown, although RA Webb was apparently a Lutheran, or there may be another school in Melbourne? There doesn’t seem to have ever been an independent protestant school in Camperdown. It was a fairly small town in the early twentieth century – around 3.500 people, still around that now, a centre for the dairy farming industry. It’s very beautiful country – volcanic, lakes and craters, Camperdown has stunning Botanic Gardens, established by the same bloke – William Guilfoyle, who founded Melbourne’s more famous version …
My reading is that if Charlie was studying for a Qualifying Certificate he was considered as an academically able student.
@Jo,
Do you know whether Lisle Clegg (aka Vernon Lisle) was from a wealthy family or he too was a Swinburne scholarship student? I know about his later singing scholarship.
I wondered whether his RAAF intelligence career took him back to Melbourne.
Sorry David, I don’t have any information on the number of women who were on the Dunera, I would think it would be a mere handful.
@Glen, So sorry you were sick. Hope you feel better very soon. Geez…Those extended family…Well at least someone put that picture of Carl on Pinterest. Being relatives, they don’t have to care about SM, or have any media interest. If they were nice, they could just contact someone and provide what photos and info they may have and just say they don’t want to be involved. Big deal. Some people are just so selfish. Everyone just wants to know as much about Carl and his story as possible. We don’t care to butt into these relatives’ lives who never even met him! Heck, they could even send a box or manilla envelope of what they do have to Prof. Abbott, and not even put their names or location/address on it. Heck, they are going to get more so called “unwanted” interest from posting on Pinterest than they would if they just sent what they have anonymously!
@clive,
Do you know whether only men were interned?
A strange situation to put a handful of women with 1000s of men in a camp.
Where did they put the women if not into a camp?
just curious on what your opinions are on that Carl might have been suffering from dystonia of the feet…..one of the causes is heavy metal toxicity
@ Jo: According to the Camperdown Herald piece of Jan ’15 the “sisters Webb” were”newcomers to Camperdown” so I think we might find they moved there earlier than 1916.
Gerald Keane was apparently an Irish-Australian RC, Gladys was married by a Presbyterian minister, and Russell married in St Paul’s, an anglican church – so I think the Webb’s could be pragmatic in their declared religion. Wouldn’t surprise me if Charles ended up in any denomination of school.
Growing up the youngest of 6 in a family of performers can’t have been easy. (I’m sure it would have driven me absolutely £$*@ing potty).
@Jo,
Regarding Mr. Charles Webb from Adderley St., he was 27 years-old in 1948.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/22547496?browse=ndp%3Abrowse%2Ftitle%2FA%2Ftitle%2F13%2F1948%2F03%2F30%2Fpage%2F1711793%2Farticle%2F22547496
@Angela,
I have found some interesting info on Amelia Grace aka Eliza Amelia Grace/Morris/Bailey/Bayley’/Foden’s mother Elizabeth Foden-Bailey. I would appreciate if you could give your expertise on the matter.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-09-08/somerton-man-found-in-nephews-clothe-researchers-believes/101405152
Australian ABC news today – not much to add to what has already been found here, apart from Professor Abbott not accepting the Swinburne photo and info as certain.
@ Pat – thank you for tying up the Adderley Street dead end 🙂
David: Cannot trace info. on women deportees. Might be an idea to contact the ‘Taman Shud Blogspot’ site.
Is it possible that Charles had some sort of hearing impairment?
The C. Oriander fellow…His first name was in fact….CHARLES! Hahaha. He went on to become an airline executive. He was never enlisted. (Odd that.). His brother was though. There are very few Oriander’s…His brother’s file is on the NAA.
So…Who has seen Dorothy’s divorce document? How/Why does Abbott’s team have access to it without it being available to the public? (A bit odd.)
Is there a reason that this is being kept offline?
Does anyone know who the lawyers were who represented her case?
(Sorry if I’m asking stupid questions, just trying to catch up.)
Jo: always nice to see Derek Abbott keeping up with Cipher Mysteries 😁, though it’s a shame he insists on inserting ‘factified’ speculative opinions which sound plausible but for which he has no actual evidence.
@ Jamie – Its a pity we can’t get a reporting on Charlie playing the flute with the Camperdown Players. This would fit nicely with Ina Harvey’s description of the mysterious bloke with the flute/rifle case who “didn’t butcher the Queen’s English” – it would also tie in with him not being noticed in Broken Hill, where, if he “didn’t butcher the Queen’s English” he’d have stuck out like dogs balls!
Per DA’s latest ‘news’ on the ABCNews website, CW was wearing J. Keane’s clothes. Was CW so desperate/poor that he had to wear hand-me-downs?
Clive J. Turner: given the lack of actual evidence, that sounds a lot like supposition being passed off as fact. The lack of a white tie in the inventory would seem to be a bit of a headscratcher.
@ David Morgan
Please could you provide details of the piano book? Eg was it Australian, when was it published? How did you find it? Thank you! Could it connect Dorothy to Charlie via the Keanes?
@ Clive and Nick
I agree its speculative to think of poverty and hand me downs – my alternative take on it was that Charlie may have stayed over at the Keane’s for a few days, maybe a late night, a drink… It is basically a tie, two singlets and a laundry bag that bear the Keane name – ie you put your used smalls in the laundry bag, borrow a couple of fresh singlets, your size, and a tie…
Jo,
It came from a search on NAA site for Dorothy Jean Robertson. It was Jean Dorothy.
AUTHOR Jean Dorothy Robertson : ADDRESS Melbourne : TITLE OF WORK ABC of Piano Playing : TYPE OF WORK Literary : APPLICANT Jean Dorothy Robertson : DATE OF APPLICATION 23 Nov 1945 : DATE COPYRIGHT REGISTERED Not Registered : WORK ENCLOSED? Yes
Jo: the white tie still makes no obvious sense, alas. 🙁
Whist his reason for travelling to SA is well open to speculation It could be a simple as for whatever reason was he was hoping to make a decent impression on his trip and having gone through some lean times he was short on a decent outfit so either asked or was offered the loan of some decent clobber for the trip. Perhaps Mrs Keane putting a decent outfit and some extras she had around the house for her little brother..
‘Missing Friends’ The Age 13 April 1940 / Page 34 / Advertising
Dorothy Robertson, please call at 23 Union-st., Brunswick; important news.
The Robertsons lived in Brunswick at some time.
2 April 1941 / Page 1 / Family Notices
WEBB – A tribute from his wife and family to the memory of Richard August Webb, who died on April 2, 1929 (sic) E. Webb (Lynn). Treasured memories.
Where’s ‘LYNN’? A street? Which one? Near Monbulk, in Sassafras? Coburg? Burwood? St Albans? Seaford?
thedude747: well, ok, maybe, it all passes the sounds-plausible test. But why would young motor mechanic Jack Keane have a white tie? That’s still leaving me stone cold.
@ Nick – maybe Jack wore it as a chick magnet as he didn’t have a roadster? I mean, guys used to wear white sports coats and pink carnations before a night on the town… these were the days before flat head and leather jacket cut it amongst all of the other fish in the sea… (sorry, that’s a very Australian pun!)
@ the Dude – I read the white tie as the kind of thing an older sister would give/lend to a brother, to try and spruce him up a bit…
It’s all like, just, uh, my opinion…
My grandfather and his brothers used to wear white ties during events at the Freemasonry Lodge.
Maybe that tie was from this man… Tom Kean from Adelaide. That would also explain what Carl could have been doing there. Tom was in the motor business.
Mr T. Kean
ADELAIDE, Sun: Mr Tom Kean, a
foundation member of the Legacy
Club and for 43 years a member of
the Commercial Travellers’ Associa-
tion, died on Friday night at his
home in Kensington Gardens, after a
long illness.
Aged 72, he was born at Dean,
Victoria. He joined the staff of the
Vacuum Oil Co, and worked in Vic-
toria, Riverina, Tasmania, and
New Zealand, before being trans-
ferred to South Australia. After a
year in the motor business Mr Kean
formed Kean Oils Pty Ltd, of which
he was managing director.
He was a noted worker for the
Legacy Club and charity carnivals,
and was a prominent Freemason.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/22403300?browse=ndp%3Abrowse%2Ftitle%2FA%2Ftitle%2F13%2F1947%2F01%2F20%2Fpage%2F1677695%2Farticle%2F22403300
Tom Keane had a son also called Tom Keane… maybe he was Carl’s mate.
As to the divorce petition of Dorothy Webb. Dr. Fitzpatrick was recently featured on a Youtube video interview where she talks about the document and makes some very specific and somewhat suprising claims. One of which is that Dorothy states she is a “pharmacist”. (Dr. F.’s word), and that at one time Carl took phenobarbital and tried to commit suicide. There were a number of other juicy tidbits as well, purported to be stated in D. Webb’s divorce petition. I don’t know if Dr. F. or Prof. Abbott are paraphrasing, or telling the absolute truth. I don’t know if they actually have gotten a copy of said document or not. I don’t know them and I only know about Abbott because of his involvement for years in the SM case. I have no idea if they are exaggerating, making things up, or really reporting what they categorically know. I give them both credit for solving the identity mystery of SM, but I don’t make judgements on their characters because I really have no empirical knowledge to do so. Maybe they are both bonkers. I am only reporting that I personally saw the interview with Dr. F., and these are some of the things she stated as facts. I don’t live in Australia. I am in the US. I HEARD somewhere that in Australia, after a certain time period, pretty much anyone can get complete documents such as the divorce petition, but only upon paying a fee. I don’t know if this is true or not. I know that people have gotten information from Mrs. Webb’s petition, but not the document in it’s entirety. Maybe Abbott and Dr. F. did. Maybe not. Those of you actually in Australia probably know if you can get your paws on the complete document for $$$, or not. Also, maybe it’s expensive to do so. I also don’t believe anything that Abbott, Dr. F., or anyone else says are “facts” in this case, unless they have proof—documents, photos, etc.
I guess I just don’t ‘get’ the big deal of the white tie…Maybe I just am missing something. Couldn’t John/Jack have had one just because he liked it? Maybe he thought it was ‘snazzy’, and daydreamed of wearing it to a wedding or special party sometime. Maybe he thought the ‘dolls’ would love it and think he was cool… And Carl having it? Well, he did, do he must have liked it, had a reason to think he would wear it, or it held some special meaning for him.
This was a fun interesting site~
https://www.gentlemansgazette.com/what-men-really-wore-in-the-1940s/#neckwear-ties-bow-ties
Mary Spencer: and yet Jack Keane had no white tie in his RAAF possession inventory. Maybe there’s some kind of Freemasonry white tie thing, but absent any evidence connecting the Keane family to Freemasonry and Freemasonry to white (non-bow) ties, it’s all tie in the sky. 😁
Ann Onymous
Thank you for the tip. It makes sense and several documents lend it credence.
As discussed years ago on here or on Pete Bowes ‘ site, we demonstrated ages ago, that the “white tie” is military issue. At the time, you could pick them up on eBay. Fabric and construction as well as lettering on reverse were to all intents and purposes identical.
@Mary Spencer,
I think you can judge Abbott by the claim he is the source of the image of RA Webb for the ABC article. That he believes bridge is a game played by gamblers and that the code in the poetry book was the names of horses. Also apparently Carl’s car was a babe magnet. How many girlfriends did Carl have that Mr Abbott knows about? I think one.
He is painting Carl as some sleazy draft dodging card game gambler, betting on horses, womanising and beating his wife.
The facts are – he solved difficult bridge puzzles in a newspaper as a young man. He won a scholarship to Swinburne because of his IQ. He sold an expensive roadster.
In a divorce document in 1951 his wife Dorothy claimed these things about Carl.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-09-08/somerton-man-found-in-nephews-clothe-researchers-believes/101405152?fbclid=IwAR2QT2HCxeKVW0XyWBDavSnx9seF6tILGXSzWJHYsEiNp34998uTLqNg7s0
tbh I personally think D Abbott is too close to this case and now even more because of conflict of interest….anything tht goes anywhere Prospers dodgy dealings is immediately shot down. it is easier to demonize dead man with no immediate family than to admit to massive cover up. However I look at this he was a vulnerable man that taken advantage of
RA Webb was a Freemason, Malvern Lodge 122, there were notices in the papers on 3 April 1939, advising them of his funeral arrangements.
Not sure why John K had a white tie . It is a littler out of the ordinary now but may have been fashionable at the time.
Also blokes tend to get given ties ,sometimes cringeworthy ties, as gifts from well meaning relatives.
I notice in his list of possessions were 35 handkerchiefs ! seems a bit excessive but like the tie probably a mundane reason. Maybe he got as boxful sent from home.
If as I described Carls big sister gave him a bag of clobber for his trip its likely she just grabbed a handful of ties out from draw paying no particular attention to the colours/patterns.
@david morgan, Yes, that’s pretty bad re: Abbott… I had not seen all of that. As I said, it’s pretty great that he found out who Carl was, but those assumptions about him are just plain crazy. Also, I didn’t believe every word about what Dorothy said in her divorce petition. Frankly it sounded as crazy as a few of Abbott’s conclusions—(Which, yeah sound pretty hairbrained). I only related what Dr. F. said was in the petition. I still tend to lean toward the idea that Carl was a serious, intelligent, somewhat moody person. I think he stuck out the marriage for a number of years and didn’t take it lightly when he decided they were “not suited to each other”. I saw (so far) no evidence of philandering. I think he was decidedly unhappy, probably due at least in part to his personal family losses. I believe he had a reason and a purpose for his trip to Adelaide—NOT sleazy or criminal. A quest of some kind… I wish we all knew what the reason was.
Nick, I too wondered where you were going with the white tie thing. I noticed on my previous mentioned trip to NZ, like almost a Masonic lodge in every small town at one point. I wasn’t there to take an accounting however. I was just young and it caught my eye. It might be that Carl’s family were oblivious of the newspaper account, but were all of his friends, and churches, and people like the Freemasons,
(if it is in fact a “masonic” tie), he encountered equally as unaware?
I think Broken Hill Boy (Freddie Pruszinsksi) took car theft lessons off Carl’s nephew Leo Vivian Keane. Leo stole cars in succession before 1934. He claimed an obsession with cars.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/243082658?searchTerm=%22leo%20keane%22
@David Morgan,
Nice find! He had a craze for cars back in September… but not any more in November! Good old times… How old was Freddie in 1934?
May I just say to all the Commonwealth cousins here, a very fond farewell to Her Majesty the Queen of Australia.
God Save the King.
A harebrained idea re the roadster:
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/55891778e4b034e58f5e51e7/t/57d88efc5016e124078277c0/1473810176464/AOMC_Engine_nos.pdf
“In 2006, the AOMC obtained a listing of all vehicles registered in Victoria from about 1910 to 1920. These records contain the registration number, registration date, owner name and owner address for vehicles built from 1900 to 1920. These are known as the AOMC Veteran Records.
The AOMC also has access to similar information for registrations that continue from 1920 up to the 1930s (The External Vintage Records).
This collection of vehicle registration details from 1910 to 1984 is referred to as the AOMC Engine Number Records. ”
I wonder whether the AOMC have any information on Charlie’s 1937 Morris 8 40 roadster, sold in 1942, which had one prior owner? There may be an interesting connection… eg Bertram Whiting, Mountbatten’s ADC who was staying at Gown Brae, Domain Road, at the same time as the Webbs, was a member of the Light Car Club (on nearby Queens Road, near Monterrey the headquarters for FRUMEL) – there may have been other interesting car enthusiasts at Domain Road…
I don’t know much about vintage cars or how a request could be made – just putting it out there, in the mix…
“For a fee, the AOMC is able to undertake a search of these records and provide a report summarising some of the key details of a vehicle’s registration history in Victoria. Information on what can be provided, and the information required, can be found on the AOMC website, http://www.aomc.asn.au/eng®records.htm
To organise a search, contact the AOMC on [email protected]“
Russell Richard’s son Charles Webb is difficult to track down. Has anyone found any information on him? Have I missed it? His wife is listed as “Poppy” and his two children as Cheryl and Russell on death notices for Richard August. Does anyone know what happened to him?
@ David Morgan
Lisle Clegg appears to be a capable day student – he studied some subjects, such as Chemistry, Theoretical (Inorganic) that Charlie, as an evening student, didn’t.
Interesting connection to Leo Keane! I wonder whether they ever made the connection to Leo’s uncle Charlie!
Has anyone found a link between Carl and or his ex-wife and the town of Bute in SA?
I don’t know who posted the following about a year ago, but if is correct regarding the connection between Prosper and Ron Richards, later 2IC of ASIO?
“Ancient history on Prosper’s GB bond in WA ’38. Facilitators were Dr. Harley Burch of Universal Collections Sydney and his Perth agent Detective Ron Richards Prosper’s arresting officer. Ron later went over to ASIO and ran the Vladimir Petrov defection in ’54 but Ron always kept in touch with his old low life informants from his shady past. Almost sure I mentioned this some time back though maybe a bit before your time.”
@Jo
I assume [but don’t know] there was a class gulf between a family that self-funded their education and those on scholarships in the 1920s.
My dad in a later era in the UK left school at 14 he had passed the equivalent matriculation to go to a Grammar School but his parents couldn’t afford the school uniform and probably wanted him to pay his way with an apprenticeship. I assume in that era, scholarships would have been for exceptional children that couldn’t even afford the football kit to play for Swinburne. If you believe the boy (front left) with the big hands is Carl (like I do) you can see he doesn’t have shiny boots. In some ways, he was being highlighted on the front row as the poor kid.
I was hoping to locate where Vernon and Leo were working in the RAAF. Again I am assuming they both had intelligence roles and were not a pilot or a mechanic.
Did Dorothy say she was a “pharmacist”, or rather a “chemist”? A chemist isn’t usually a pharmacist and, from experience, pharmacists in Australia in the 1950s didn’t use the term pharmacist. Munitions factories employ chemists. The lead and silver in Carl’s hair could possibly have come from a munitions job.
Lisle Alexander Clegg married Harriet Dorothy (Peggy) Levien. They both have NAA files.
This is Truth article about his wife is kind of strange and interesting:
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/168977144?searchTerm=%22Vernon%20Lisle%22
@Jo: Roadster tracing – doesn’t sound harebrained to me. I think it would be very interesting to find the car’s history.
We might find it was sourced from Lane’s Motors, Jack Keane’s employers before he joined up. They were certainly selling Morris 8/40s in 1937. They also employed a lot of fancy test instruments and are a nice racing link to other threads.
In fact, given the timing (Jack had just finished his last home leave on 31 Jan), are we sure this is Charles’ car? Might he have been selling it for his nephew – a Morris motor mechanic who’d just left for war?
Looking at Jack’s picture, he certainly looks like a Roadster driver to me!
An ad from 1937, R.A. Webb selling a 1927 Hupmobile 4 with bakery phone No. UM9257.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/244635002?browse=ndp%3Abrowse%2Ftitle%2FH%2Ftitle%2F1190%2F1937%2F05%2F25%2Fpage%2F26605974%2Farticle%2F244635002
Jamie –
They advertised them in 1935:
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/149554007?searchTerm=%22Lane’s%20Motors%22
Misca,
Although we don’t know whether Bradshaw was having an affair with Vernon Lisle’s wife. My guess is not – we know the flight was from Melbourne. It places Vernon Lisle in Melbourne in 1943 working for RAAF intelligence. With engineer Carl Webb also in Melbourne in Bromby street (we assume).
The illegal flight was so blatant it suggests something quite secret and that he knew he could lose his job over it. You have to wonder who or what they took and to where on their illegal flight. Assuming they may have also lied about the destination. It suggests they needed a woman to accompany a woman.
The trial was held ‘in camera’ (in private) suggesting what came out was also secret and likely not the truth.
Those trial files might be worth finding.
@ Jamie
I think you’re on to it with the “MORRIS 8 40 Roadster 1937 only two private owners mechanically splendid” possibly being Jack Keane’s car, with the listing on 16 Feb 1942 being shortly after Jack’s period of five days leave, before a posting to Essendon (a suburb of Melbourne – location of Melbourne’s main airport, prior to the opening of nearby Tullamarine).
The Keanes, living in the inner suburbs of Melbourne, might also have been Charlie’s link during the 1930s to a more exciting, urban, theatre going, car enthusiast world, compared to the outer suburban, semi rural world of his Springvale bakery owning family.
@ Misca
https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/DetailsReports/ItemDetail.aspx?Barcode=6605503&isAv=N
Here is the WWII service record for nephew Charles Webb’s (V185698 – born Camperdown 1917). He lived at 97 Punt Road, Prahran, which isn’t too far from Bromby Street (although the family links – Russell and Charles’ wife Poppy Maria are to the Eastern suburbs – Eltham and Ringwood and to orchards/fruiteries) . @ Pat has previously found newspaper records of Charles playing Army billiards. Charles had a number of medical issues – varicose veins, a back injury and a fractured foot and was discharged from the army in 1943 on the grounds of being medically unfit (his original medical exam was by A Robertson…)
His brother, Norman Fred Webb, born in 1921 in Camperdown, was a Leading Aircraft Man (157584) whose service continues on after the War. His record hasn’t been digitised but can be for a fee.
@ Byron Deveson
https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/richards-george-ronald-ron-14450
The link to Ron Richards is very interesting if true! @ David Morgan – if you’re interested in stories of social and career mobility this is one for you! Ron Richards was one of seven children of a Nottingham bricklayer, his career took him to back to the UK as the senior liaison officer at Australia House, he was the 2IC of ASIO and was also awarded an OBE. Although Melbourne and Australia do have quite a tight class structure (pivoting around private schools), there’s has often been an opportunity for maverick or talented outsiders to cut through! (eg our current prime minister grew up in public housing).
This is very interesting (from Richard’s entry in the Australian Dictionary of Biography) and seems pivotal to Richards meteoric career rise:
“By 1935 Richards was a detective constable with the Criminal Investigation Branch (WA). From September 1939 to October 1942 he was officer-in-charge of the Special Bureau and Aliens Office; in 1942 he was promoted to detective sergeant, third-class. Seconded to the Commonwealth Security Service until November 1945, he was involved in arresting four members of the right-wing group, Australia First, the first persons to be tried in an Australian court on charges of having plotted to aid the enemy. He also arranged surveillance and detained people thought to be members of the Communist Party of Australia. Back at the CIB in 1946, he was promoted in 1949 to detective sergeant, first-class.
Appointed (1949) regional director in Perth of the newly formed Australian Security Intelligence Organization, Richards resigned from the police force. In an operation codenamed Venona, ASIO was inquiring into leaking of information from the Department of External Affairs to the Embassy of the Soviet Union, picked up in Soviet diplomatic cables collected and decoded by United States of America intelligence officials between 1943 and 1949. Richards was transferred to Sydney in 1950 and made deputy-director of operations for Venona, with the task of investigating the disclosures and the eleven Australians identified in the deciphered messages. In November 1952 he was sent to London to work with Military Intelligence, Section 5, on Venona.”
He was unsuccessful in pursuing the “eleven Australian’s identified”:
“Prime Minister (Sir) Robert Menzies appointed a royal commission on espionage in May 1954. Promoted to deputy director-general (operations) and controller of ASIO’s royal commission unit, Richards arranged for the submission of the relevant ASIO documents and the appearance of Petrov and his wife Evdokia. He was called before the commission to be examined by H. V. Evatt, who appeared as counsel on behalf of several members of his staff, whose names were mentioned in Petrov’s documents. The commissioners, however, withdrew Evatt’s leave to appear, thus sparing Richards from giving evidence. No positive conclusions about the eleven Australians were drawn by the commission, which sat for nearly a year. In 1957 Richards was appointed OBE.”
Richards seems to have been politically on the right and coasted along on Menzies’ conservative commie fearing currents… there doesn’t seem to have been as much in the “11 Australians” than perhaps he was trying to air, or there was a desire to keep these names suppressed…
I’ve still got a nagging hunch that Charlie was involved at some level (probably not high) with war time signals intelligence work and that a chunk of the mystery pivots on what he did during WWII. For me the big things are his Bromby Street address and virtual lack of almost any kind of information for either him or Dorothy post 1941 (when the Webbs moved to Bromby Street and the Americans moved in to Melbourne Grammar School, unavoidably in view of their balcony!).
The idea of the “twenty minute neighbourhood” – where you can walk to most of the things you need within a twenty minute radius, is one that has lots of contemporary appeal. I did a “twenty minute neighbourhood” map of WWII signals and intelligence locations from Charlie’s Bromby Street address and have come up with fourteen very specific opportunities… I don’t know how and whether Charlie’s WWII activities might come to light… We might need a Nathaniel Williams (from Michael Ondaatje’s Warlight) out there in the archives, who “knows how to fill in a story from a grain of sand”!
David –
The files appear to be readily found on NAA. There are several that are open but not requested. In the one for Rostyn Bradshaw’s service files (it’s open and available to read) , there are letters that show that his daughter, Beverley Jan Bradshaw, was attempting to access the files regarding his Court Marshall. It’s unclear if she ever got to see them but they are listed under his name and they seem to be there unopened at present.
Misca
.. you wondered about Charles Richard Webb b 1918, son of Russell Richard Webb. He is a bit of an unknown.
Charles knew his wife Poppy by March 1939.
The Age 13 March 1939
http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article205986663
LOST, gold and white Compact, engraved
“To Poppy from Charles, 1938.” Finder
please write Miss Divola, Willlam-st., Ring-
wood. Reward.
On enlistment 1940 Charles stated his employment as Fruitery.
Poppy’s Italian father Domenico Divola was in the fruit business, and in April 1939 Domenico applied for naturalisation (The Argus 4 April 1939 pg 11)
About 5 March 1943 Charles married Poppy (Vic Reg 4620/1943)
23 Aug 1943 – Charles was discharged from Armed forces – medically unfit (backache)
His activities after this date are unclear. However he and Poppy had children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. Poppy died in 2013, and her tribute began with “WEBB. _ Paparina Maria (Poppy) 25.10.1919 – 12.09.2013 Always loved wife of Charles (dec.). ”
See https://www.mytributes.com.au/notice/death-notices/webb-paparina-maria-poppy/4641496/
The telephone number for the Springdale sorry Springvale (Doh!) – bakery – was UM9257 – which produces Mr Suter for the bakery. But obviously, codes and numbers changed,
So UM wasn’t UM – before 1937 and after 1954.
I thought perhaps if a number could be found for flat 1 Bromby then the number for flat 2 could be deduced (+/- x).
But it was a ‘time of buying/installation’ sequence not numbers relating to residences. The next number after the bakery was a property in Corrigan Street.
Jo/Belinda –
Thanks so much for the updates. It was driving me nuts. I had seen the file for Charles early on and had discounted it for some reason! (Maybe looking at too many things at once.). All the rest fits quite nicely.
Do either of you have a death record for him?
An attempt to tell a story from a grain of sand…
Do we know whether Ron Richards was still in contact with Prosper Thompson and used him to gather information?
Did Charles Webb ever work in signals intelligence workplaces?
If the answer to either or both of these wild but not completely implausible questions could be yes then there may be a story…
I don’t know much about Venona – however, from the Australian side it appears that a lot of what was provided to KGB resident Markov in Australia by Klode (Walter Clayton of the Communist Party of Australia) was often of more interest to Australian members of the CPA than to the Russians. The reported significance of Australian Venona material is that it covered the longest period (1943-48) and was decoded almost in real time as it frequently referred to British documents already in the hands of the cryptanalysts (McKnight 1998, Cain 2000).
One of the pieces of information that the Russians did want and were partly provided information on (via Clayton, from Alfred Hughes, a policeman turned counter intelligence operative and wartime Security Service member) was the history and structure of Australian security bodies (McKnight 1998). I wonder whether Richards used Thompson to get some information from Carl Webb for his own Venona related work? (His Venona work seems to have benefitted both own his career and that of aspiring Prime Minister Robert Menzies). Perhaps Thompson told Richards that he potentially had something of value for him? The Rubiayat letters could be an aide memoire, the first letters of people’s names working in signals and intelligence in Melbourne during WWII, organised into key work places – there’s a reasonable amount of correspondence with known names. (There was also a significant CPA presence in Broken Hill – eg long term Hill Councillors Bill Flynn and Bill Whilley).
I’m not an expert in any of this! It still doesn’t explain how Carl Webb ended up dead on Somerton Beach – lead poisoning seems to be a strong factor in the mix. It could explain why he was so mysterious and unclaimed and why Dorothy too became such an enigma. It could explain some of Jessica Thompson’s comments and evasiveness…
An aside story, I had a boyfriend whose parents were CPA members in the 1970s and 80s, they left because by that time there were more ASIO members, real and suspected, in the party than there were communists, real or suspected. They filled the void by joining another edgy but lost cause, the St Kilda Football Club Supporters! Go Saints!
@Byron, Dorothy saying she was a “pharmacist” came from an interview that Dr. Fitzpatrick did recently on Youtube. SHE was talking about Dorothy’s document for a petition for divorce and SHE stated that “Dorothy gave her occupation as pharmacist”. Since no one else seems to have seen those documents, it’s unclear whether the word “pharmacist” was the word DOROTHY used on her petition or if Dr. Fitzpatrick used that word as a substitution for “chemist”. You can see the interview with Dr. F. on Youtube. The link is on Abbot’s SM facebook page. You will clearly hear her say that “Dorothy gave her occupation as a pharmacist”. Did Dr. F. actually acquire the entire divorce documents? If so, why has no one else? Did they use that word, or did Dr. F. paraphrase for a ‘chemist’? Anyway, that is where the whole ‘pharmacist’ occupation ‘fact’ came from.
It has been claimed that Jes Harkness was a friend of Frances Bernie (Sestra in Venona) and attended her wedding. Bernie gave material to Klod that would have allowed the Russians to break into allied communications. The Russians leaked allied war plans etc to both the Germans and the Japanese and this probably lengthened WW2 by a year, and allowed the Russians to take over Eastern Europe. So, Frances Bernie probably had a greater effect on shaping post WW2 world than any other person.
A coincidence, but Robin was a car salesman in Canberra in the 1970s and competed in hill climbs. Robin also gave evidence (regarding the exhaust sounds of various cars) in the inquiry into the assassination of the ACT police commissioner Colin Winchester in 1989.
Jo, the CIA were working on the use of lead tetraethyl for assassinations in 1948 (there is a discussion about this somewhere). But, more interestingly a metal smelting and casting business started up in Glenelg in 1948 and high lead and silver contamination in hair could relate to exposure to metal fumes from either primary or secondary metallurgy. There is a discussion of this matter – somewhere. The Glenelg metal casting business was dug up looking for the remains of the Beaumont children many years later. The business was established by the man known as the “Satin Man” whom some suspect kidnapped the Beaumont children if you want to go down another rabbit hole.
The Communist Party of Australia, Broken Hill Branch wrote an interesting pamphlet on lead poisoning in the early 1930s, “Death and Dividends” – lots of information on the scope and output of mining activity at Broken Hill and smelting at Port Pirie and who the major shareholders and beneficiaries were (eg the Baillieu family of Melbourne, GW McKinnon of the Australian Antarctic Division)
I wonder if Prosper T was used to provide information on Broken Hill and the CPA for Ron Richards and others. This may explain why Jestyn was provided anonymity and Prosper was not seriously investigated…
I appreciate it’s all quite speculative…
https://auscp.org.au/history/death-dividends/
@ Byron Deveson
Do you know who found evidence for Prosper McTaggart Thomson being in Perth in 1938 and the link to Ron Richards? Is there a record?
jo, I think the original source was John Sanders, but I am not sure. I think1938 was when Prosper was prosecuted for a fraud types offence concerning motor vehicles. I understand that Prosper was arrested by Ron Richards. Better check with JS.
Mary,
there are restrictions on access to divorce records less than 75 years old.
“Divorce records less than 75 years old and up to 1976 can be obtained using the Supreme Court of Victoria website; these are subject to access restrictions which are detailed on the website.”
https://www.supremecourt.vic.gov.au/forms-fees-and-services/registry-services/obtaining-copies-of-documents
In late May of 38 PT tampered with the ownership papers of a car he owned previously with a clear title and matched it up to a Chevy he owed money on. He used the falsified papers to sell the Chevy for 25 quid and a Fiat worth 45 quid from a car dealer named Oliver Strang.
Strang discovered the deception , cancelled the cheque and called the cops. When busted PT threatened to “take his own life”
In yet another SM coincidence the magistrates name was “Mosley”
Jo,
Post-war there was a massive hunt for communists in countries like Australia and Norway and in public view via the media.
For example, I found this woman Doris May Castle who in 1949 was listed in this inquiry into communism then in 1951 when she attended a Berlin Youth festival had her passport rescinded. I suspect some of the attendees became stranded in Germany.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/243687569?searchTerm=%22doris%20may%20castle%22&fbclid=IwAR2uldpcUQ16_hhKXXzC45NACkKHpBnOxZdMToMF4EgncLRjSrYsWu9p9wQ
One other woman who attended in Berlin was Ida Mussing. I don’t know whether it was the elderly lady or perhaps her daughter with the same name who attended in 1951 – but the elderly lady had an accidental missile attack (mortar bomb) on her home. What was strange was it was a night exercise by Scottish soldiers and Ida Mussing was from Scotland. Truth is stranger than fiction.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/51075755?searchTerm=%22ida%20mussing%22
I suppose the possibility exists that Carl was a communist attending meetings in Glenelg or was hunting them.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/128387976?searchTerm=glenelg%2C%20communist
Bertha Laidler seems to have been an attractive woman (former May Queen) who was standing for the communist party in Melbourne. But after she got married she toned down her involvement with the CPA.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/11339997?searchTerm=%22bertha%20laidler%22
https://www.womenaustralia.info/biogs/AWE3128b.htm
But so far I haven’t seen any obvious links to Carl. This person E.M. Webb is writing about communists but perhaps ?he/she means communes.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/244454072?searchTerm=webb%2C%20communists%2C%20fine%2C%20house
I don’t think the Colonel was first to the mark on that one at all BD although he would probably accept the credit the old poser. I posted about it on tomsbytwo years ago when I found it on Trove for the first time as far as I know but wether it came up here earlier I’m not sure its possible. It one of the reasons I have always been suss on PT and his dodgy car deals despite all the other theories..
Byron Deveson
A neat tie-up between Frances Bernie and Ron Richards (with Charles Spry described as “secret police chiefs”):
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/212476366?searchTerm=frances%20bernie
For Richards and Spry at the start of their partnership see:
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/18478018?searchTerm=spry%20ron%20richards
From an article on Dr H V Evatt by Andrew Campbell (from the right-wing National Observer Sep 22 2008): ‘Part 2: The Question of Loyalty’.
“On 1 February 1943, the United States Army’s Signal Intelligence Service (USASIS) launched the code-breaking exercise codenamed “Venona”, which focused on decrypting Soviet diplomatic codes from Moscow to Soviet spy residencies and agents throughout the world and which, after World War II, succeeded in identifying many Soviet agents worldwide. Many Australians mentioned in the Venona cables who were Soviet agents remain unidentified. Only five per cent of the Canberra-Moscow Venona link has been deciphered. Between 1943 and 1948, nearly 5,000 coded messages were sent between Moscow and Canberra. Only 189 have been published.
During his time as Minister for External Affairs (1941-49), both [HV] Evatt’s department and his personal staff–due to his gross ministerial irresponsibility or approval–were penetrated by Soviet agents. Venona-decrypted messages from Canberra to Moscow from mid-1943 to 1948 eventually led to the identification of Ian Milner (codenamed Bur/ Dvorak), Katharine Susannah Prichard’s son Ric Throssell (Academician’s Son/ Ferro), Jim Hill (Khill/ Tourist), Frances Bernie (Sestra/ Sister), Allan Dalziel (Denis), Fergan O’Sullivan (Zemliak), and others as yet unidentified…Evatt staffer and Communist Party member Frances Bernie (nee Scott) [?], codenamed “Sestra” (who had been appointed to Evatt’s staff by Allan Dalziel, had already supplied Walter Clayton [Klod], her Soviet case-officer, with classified information from 1944-46…”
Trouble is:
1) I can’t find any link between Prosper’s Perth misadventure and Ron Richards.
2) I can’t find any source for the claim that Jo Harkness attended Sestra’s wedding.
Perhaps given Ron’s obsession with the Australia First movement he was onto Xavier Herbert, and hypothetically his mate Alf Boxall, and even more hypothetically Jo Harkness. Although he was based in Perth, not Sydney, in the 1940s, so perhaps not.
PS Don’t bring up the Satin Man Beaumont Children thing. The Colonel has got himself in enough trouble with that farrago already!
Could this guy be Dorothy’s alleged second husband, Kevin Alexander D’Arcy?
29 Marh 1951
Commonweath of Australia Gazette / issue 21 / page 16 / Appointments and Retirements
Department of the Treasury
Taxation Branch (Income tax)
Assistant, Grade 1, Fourth Division – (…) Kevin Alexander D’Arcy (…)
29 Sep 1955
Commonweath of Australia Gazette / issue 47 / page 3195 / PROMOTIONS – PUBLIC SERVICE ACT 1922-1955
The Public Service Board has confirmed the undermentioned provisional promotions as in Gazette indicated – (….) Kevin Alexander D’Arcy (….)
@Byron, Yes, I was aware that complete divorce records in Australia were difficult to come by and that there was a time period involved. I think I read that here awhile ago. It makes it even more strange that Dr. F. would do the interview and state in no uncertain terms that Dorothy gave her profession as “pharmacist”. If no one else had that info, how did she get it? The petition was filed in the early 50’s so not 75 years yet. Maybe she and Prof. Abbott had some connections and were able to access it. Dr. F. was NOT speculating in the interview; She emphatically stated that that is what Dorothy Webb said.
Department of the Treasury
Taxation Branch (Income Tax), Victoria
Duties: Inquiry Officer
D’Arcy, Kevin Alexander Clerk (£813-£993), Third Division, Instalment Section
Promoted to
Clerk, Cashiers Section, Melbourne Office
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/232964866/25096475
Thanks dude, It might be worthwhile to obtain the file in the NAA concerning the Communist Party Glenelg Branch. I am reminded of the listening post less than 200m from Jess/Prosper’s house in Moseley Street. I haven’t checked but there might be similar files relating to CPA activity in the areas in Melbourne where Prosper, the Thomsons and Jess lived at one time.
I was listening to Colleen on the Mind over Murder podcast.
So they ask her about the DNA from the hair follicles and how the student extracted clumps of the hair carefully. But then out of the blue she says ‘we did it the other way around Derek [Abbott] had some hair from the police 10 years earlier’.
If that interpretation is correct doesn’t that breaks the chain of custody. If it wasn’t the hair the student extracted from the plaster cast.
https://www.spreaker.com/user/mindovermurder/mom-ep-194-final
@ Dude47
Thank you! Here’s what I found in Trove re Prosper T in Perth in 1938:
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/page/8410059
I’m sure someone has thought of this one before:
What if it was Prosper T who left the Rubiayat on the back seat of the Hillman Minx, with Jess’ phone number and the number for the bank? Because Charlie hadn’t turned up to a arranged meeting near Somerton Beach? A missed bus, or train, or because he was sick… It may have been put there for him to find in the hope that he would reconnect with Prosper via Jess and the connection, or another meeting, could be made. Prosper may have been following a car sales convention in putting the book on the seat of a car… Charlie had the Taman Shud slip to prove his identity to Prosper T (or someone else). The book was small and may have been previously sent, by Charlie, via the post? Or maybe the slip had been sent to Charlie via the post or passed on through someone else? The charte partie idea – where two people have parts of the same document is one that makes a level of sense. My understanding is that the back, blank page with the letters had been removed, so that only indents remained, or the book had been used to rest a piece of paper on whilst writing. Charlie may have been moved or been somewhere else (the lividity in the head) and then taken (back) to the beach because he was dying or dead and may have already been seen there in the early evening…
I guess there is too much that will never be known…
@ David Morgan
I don’t think there’s any evidence that Carl was a communist, I was thinking along the lines that he may have had useful (probably low level) information that Prosper T could pass on to curry favour with Ron Richards – eg on the organisation of War time signals intelligence (which could be checked against what was being picked up via Venona type activities) or the activities of the CPA in Broken Hill and/or Port Pirie. The timelines don’t quite sync with Ron Richard’s career and there doesn’t seem to be evidence that he remained in contact with Prosper T… Another dead end?
Jo, there was no bank acc number … there were two telephone numbers written on the back of the Rubaiyat, the second one was of a business and was not investigated by the police. You can confirm this by reading the contemporaneous notes Stuart Littlemore wrote when he interviewed Detective Brown.
Jo,
Thanks for clarifying. I thought it was a direction to search. On the Mind over Murder podcast Colleen provides further clues. She said the DNA came from a bag of hair provided to Abbott by the police 10 years ago. I suspect even that was not true since they destroyed their evidence. I think the taxidermist likely provided it to Abbott, perhaps as late as 2021. I wondered how you put clay on a mop of hair. He may have cut it off.
The other clues are from the divorce document – where Dorothy says she returned to the home with a match and she said he thought she was trying to burn the house down. That he said he threatened to kill a card player because he lost. So we have to believe he came home and told her about his plan to murder a card player. The more I hear from Dorothy’s divorce document the more it seems to be a work of fiction. Perhaps written by scriptwriter Leo Keane.
Colleen also said the DNA match was from the Freda Keane line. That would give either JR Keane or Leo for a male line. Since she talks about a love child I automatically assume a guy. Perhaps I shouldn’t.
But as Leo was involved in TV and radio he may have had opportunities with wannabe celebrities he could exploit to have affairs with. I am assuming the love child they matched the DNA against was Leo’s as he lived until 2005 and the child ‘looks’ to be about 40-ish.
Jo There’s every possibility that you are correct.
Pat:
The promoted taxation clerk is the same guy whose Army papers were already linked by Peter Davidson: https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/DetailsReports/ItemDetail.aspx?Barcode=5708918&isAv=N
@Thomas
There are two handwritten letters in the D’arcy file (search 1010873 in the naa records). In my non-professional opinion, they are not written by the same person. The one is slightly more active voice.. I have, I may etc.. It is not the same style as the other letter which is passive voice..please forward..please advise..
The passive voice style is very British. The active voice style I would say is more like an American. Straight to the point, I want something. Though I don’t know whether in the 1940s Australians wrote like British people or Americans.
If the active voice style was written by Dorothy Robertson I would say she was likely educated in America from a young age. Perhaps she bought American clothes for Carl.
Perhaps Dorothy came over with the US forces and worked in US intelligence in Melbourne and they pretended Mr Robertson was her dad to get married.
@ Thomas
I knew Peter Davidson had posted about KA D’Arcy military records, I think it would be interesting to keep following his doings after that, since we still don’t know if he is Dorothy’s alleged partner, and I say ‘partner’ because Angela has pointed out that he can’t be her husband because his death record states he wasn’t married, but I suppose she wouldn’t need to marry him ‘officially’ because if she was living in the middle of nowhere, according to Fitzpatrick, a ‘commune’, she wouldn’t need to be formally married to him. If this is him we would expect that he had moved to NSW at some point. I have found another Promotion notice from 1960 and nothing else.
@David Morgan
A good point!
As for the handwriting:
It appears the letter written under the address 62 Coppin st , Richmond, in Oct. 1953 ( p. 12) shows the same (female?) handwriting as the statutory declaration from May 1971 (p. 8, text: “cannot be found … other papers”) whereas the accompanying letter from May 1971 (p. 11) was written by a different (obviously male) hand.
The two letters were written nearly 20 years apart. One is dated 1953 and the other 1971 I think. Regardless, the addresses given are correct for where Kevin was living in both instances.
There seem to be gaps in his NAA file and there is also a mix up with his army numbers. There are two with one of them crossed out on the top of both page 1 and page 7.
@Thomas,
Do you know whether the divorce declaration document by Dorothy where he thinks she’s trying to kill him burning down the house with a match was typed or handwritten?
It only seems to be available to Abbott and Fitzpatrick. Why is that?
Perhaps if we could read it without the hyperbole we might have a different interpretation.
@David Morgan
Unfortunately, I don’t know how the divorce declaration was written.
D’Arcy, Kevin Alexander, 49 Keith St Alphington had $362,00 unclaimed since 4 May 1978 with life insurance company FRIENDS PROVIDENT LIFE OFFICE.
Published in Commonwealth Australia Gazette, 23 June 1986 [Issue no.P20 / Page 365 / LIFE INSURANCE ACT 1945-UNCLAIMED MONEYS
Another one that has been off the radar.
And here’s a photo of D’Arcy singing hymns… although they have identified him as RA D’ARCY…
https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C64838?image=1
Agree with you David.
So many questions…
Is it possible that someone has access to this divorce file and has shared it with Abbott and Fitz verbally? If so, could Boort and Bute have been misconstrued?
(Colleen had NO IDEA where Bute was when she did her interview. She also stated that Dorothy was a chemist which Abbott has stated she wasn’t on his Facebook page.)
If the said document exists, why isn’t it being shared?
@ Petebowes
Thanks for clarification – I can’t remember where I had picked up that it was the phone number for a bank (in the CBD?).
Just wondering..
Warrion – Kevin Alexander D’Arcy’s mother (Flora Jane McKay) was born 1899 in the small rural area of Warrion, Vic. As Flora’s dad died 1934 Colac (14km sth of Warrion), it is likely Flora grew up in the Warrion district, before marrying in 1922.
Cundare is where Dorothy’s parents John and Alice Robertson had a soldier settlement mixed farm from 1919 until late 1920s. Beeac is where Dorothy’s sister Phyllis was born 1925.
Now – rural areas Cundare and Warrion are at the most 17 km apart, and Beeac in between. It is plausible John and Alice Robertson knew/were friends of Flora (Mrs D’Arcy), and that Dorothy and Kevin knew each other through family connections.
Later in life (having lived in suburban Alphington) Kevin was on the Electoral Roll as residing at the same Bacchus Marsh address as his parents (his dad William became the Rate Collector for Bacchus Marsh in 1948). Also when Kevin died in 1991 Kevin is stated as a retired Taxation Officer, Bacchus Marsh, Vic.
Jo … Derek Abbott was responsible for that particular piece of disinformation.
I can’t find evidence for Dorothy Jean Webb or Dorothy Jean Robertson being registered as a pharmacist in Victoria… Here is the Pharmacists register and register of people licensed to sell poisons for 1950, if Dorothy had registered or qualified earlier she would still be here:
https://gazette.slv.vic.gov.au/view.cgi?year=1950&class=general&page_num=629&state=V&classNum=G49&searchCode=6525748
Pete, I think DA probably got the disinformation second hand from one of the detectives from their media interviews in 1978. I think that was the date and I once sighted the detective’s statement.
Addition to above, on Victorian Pharmacists Register – I also checked 1947.
I couldn’t find where the equivalent register for South Australia was…
I think the pharmacist claim may be a bit of a red herring, perpetuated by Colleen Fitzpatrick repeating in different forums what was written on the divorce statement. Dr Fitzpatrick or Professor Abbott must have received permission from the Supreme Court to view the deposition, or were perhaps relying on information from SAPOL, who may also have access. Basically, you need to be a party to the case or have compelling reasons for access and viewing prior to 75 years from the case.
@Jo,
Maybe she has been registered somewhere else? Wherever she was between 1948 and 1952 when the divorce files have been issued? Plenty of time to attend a pharmacy course? Maybe Adelaide?
There was something fishy about Kevin Alexander D’Arcy service file. It looks like two applications to join the forces were written by, and signed by, two different people. The details are identical though. It beggars a lot of questions. Whilst an identity theft couldn’t be ruled out, could there be one in Alphington and another in Bacchus Marsh? Could the real one of said “I’ve had enough of the war” and got a twin to substitute for him? Or could the security services of tapped him on the shoulder and told him to go home and they’ll use his identity to put in an undercover operative to spy on communists in the armed services or something?
Who knows? It’s early days and a lot of fossicking to get to the bottom of this yet.
That was good looking through that register, Jo, good find …. is there one available for SA or NSW online, for ’51/52 onwards? I haven’t been able to locate a digitised one, alas, however Doff may have been registered interstate.
Random, hey, do you think maybe Carl was working on one of these cryptogram puzzles in the back of the Rubyaiyat? Not necessarily the day he went missing, maybe it was an old one he’d worked on.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/22676220/1715316
Dorothy’s sister’s wedding ‘suggests’ by her absence from the description that she wasn’t there in September 1946. She wasn’t mentioned as a bridesmaid to Phyllis or a maid of honour.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/165030811?searchTerm=%22crick%20robertson%20wedding%22
But in late 1946 it shows her parents were in St Kilda. If Carl didn’t know where Dorothy was and wanted to find her I imagine he would search St Kilda first.
Peter – Definitely something strange. There is also never a profession listed for him in the Electoral Rolls. (Very unusual.)
Mary – Great spotting! I tend to think the same thing and have been looking for puzzles that might fit! This is a great example.
For those who are following the Douglas Russell McCluskey leads, I’m not sure if this has been posted…
“Russell Webb, on warrant, for deserting his illegitimate child by Linda McCluskey, has been arrested by the Prahan police. O-5103A. 24th April 1912.
It can be found on ancestry.
Douglas married and had at least five children. His wife Hilda Marion has a listing on the NAA that hasn’t been digitized.
@Peter Davidson,
I agree with misca on the handwriting. Almost 20 years apart, handwriting can change a lot! Mine has. Also, his K is very typical and they’re identical on both documents.
@Mary
I think you’ve nailed it!
You could post it on Abbot’s FB group to stop that horse races nonsense.
@misca, Colleen Fitzpatrick stated that Dorothy was a “pharmacist” in the Youtube interview she did. She did not use the word “chemist”. Then Prof. Abbott, her own associate, disagrees with her and says D. was not??
Where does this woman come up with her info?? It all sounded a bit hokey to me. She is the only one privy to Dorothy’s divorce document? Really? Then she states that DOROTHY gave her occupation as “pharmacist”. It all sounds very unlikely. Colleen made statements during the interview about a LOT of wild claims that Dorothy supposedly made in her divorce petition. I have to admit, it didn’t sound very credible. I would not believe anything that Dr. F. says at this point unless she produces the document and shares it’s contents with everyone. Also, IF she in fact does have access to it, and those statements D.W. supposedly said are in it, I think they could have been greatly embellished if not fabricated.
@Mary,
Excellent suggestion. I think it is highly likely that those letters in the back of Carl’s rubaiyat were nothing more than his innocent jottings, trying to solve a newspaper puzzle.
Concerning the newspaper puzzle possibilities my alter-ego Steve H commented on this site on 19 August: “A sleuther with more time than me might trawl through the November ’48 SA and Victoria newspapers for puzzles and crosswords to see if the letters can be matched to anything – you might even get your mugshot on the front page of the ‘Tiser if you solve the mystery.”
For his/my pains he/I was pounced on by our old friend Behrooz who referred to an “obvious eurocentric bias” and said “All your finding proves is that CW (if he is ‘our’ Carl Webb), was puzzle-solving (and likely puzzle-setting) oriented—and that is a good finding indeed—but you are not still willing to even consider that the code can be just an expanded Tamám-Shud-like transliteration effort, and even read (before dismissing) how others may have tried to explain such a solution.”
C’est la vie. Behrooz then followed up his initial attack with a mammoth two part thesis outlining his refutation of my off-hand remark about puzzles before dramatically announcing that he wasn’t going to post here any more and all because “you seem to be agreeing with him [Derek Abbott] about such [mundane] explanations, and actually not caring about non-Eurocentric ways of going about decoding the letters.”
@misca
Concerning Douglas Russell McCluskey. Angela on Peter Bowes’ site commented on 14 August:
“I have located a son of Russell Richard Webb, named Douglas Russell McCluskey, who was born out of wedlock in Fitzroy VIC in 1911 (name at birth: Russell McCluskey). He served in WWII from 1941 to 1943. According to the Department of Veterans’ Affairs Nominal Roll, his posting at discharge was “Z SPEC.” Possibly Z Special Unit? Unfortunately, his record hasn’t been digitised. In 1943 he was working as a munition worker. It would have been very interesting if a death record could not be found for him (he died in Victoria on 22 Jun 1991).”
@ Misca
Are you able to provide more details for Hilda Marion McClusky at the NAA? I can only find an immigration file from the 1970s for an H McClusky… I can see Douglas Russell McCluskey’s not yet digitised file details… Thank you!
@ Mary –
Good thinking re the letters! If they were Charlie’s working outs they might not be able to be matched with an actual puzzle. The mnemonic idea still works for me too, but not for horse names, as I’m sure they would have been matched to real horses or races by now…
@Pat
I’m talking about the two different Mobilisation Attestation forms. Page 1 and Page 4 upon http://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/scripts/AutoSearch.asp?O=I&Number=5708918 written and signed 18 days apart. There might be a simple explanation such as it being filled in by the Mobilisation Officer, but are the signatures the same?
@ Milongal
This may be a wild coincidence but two of the children of Douglas Russell McCluskey match the names of people who expressed sympathies at the time of Jim Crick’s death, referring to him as an uncle (Dorothy’s brother in law, as per Milongal’s post of 15 August) – Sandy, Kevin and families – the children of Douglas and Hilda are Allan, Beverley, Kevin, Sandra and Peter.
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/212240736/douglas-russell-mccluskey
@ Milongal
Re-posting your first mention of Sandy, Kevin and families:
milongal
on August 4, 2022 at 11:09 pm said:
Extrapolating the death tributes….
Although Dorothy J is never mentioned (almost like there’s been a falling out in the family) there is a notice for Jim Crick:
CRICK. _ Jim. Dearly loved and respected uncle to Sandy, Kevin and families. Deepest sympathy to Fay, Peter, Phillip, Joye and families. All our love, truly one of nature’s gentlemen.
The overlap in names between these and three of Douglas and Hilda McCluskey’s children (Kevin, Sandra, Peter – from Allan, Beverley, Kevin, Sandra and Peter) could be entirely coincidental…)
@ Peter Davidson
I think the signatures are the same but note that Mr D’Arcy has two numbers – V270474 and VX142120 – the NAA file is for VX142120 – which is D’Arcy’s period in the AIF, so from 1943. The previous period was with the CMF – Citizens Military Force, from 1942.
So:
19.1.42 – 12.6.42 as V270474 CMF – Seymour and Bonegilla – which suggests signals intelligence work
13.6.43-7.8.46 – as VX142120 – AIF – Townsville then PNG
Maybe he was initially involved in signals work? I note that he was “taken on strength” – I think Seymour and Bonegilla point to signals intelligence work. See:
https://www.ozatwar.com/sigint/no4asws.htm (Seymour)
https://www.asd.gov.au/about/history/decoded/205-purple (Bonegilla)
I’m wondering whether this is how he met Dorothy? Although there are suggestions they may have known each other from a young age… I am wondering whether Charlie and/or Dorothy were involved in signals intelligence work? Actually, that’s always been my hunch and the cause of me getting hooked into this based on their Bromby Street address… !
Re signals work, I’ve been getting ahead of myself (what’s new!):
The V prefix is for Victoria and VX is for the AIF.
According to the NAA record, Kevin D’Arcy was in the 52nd Battalion and the 10th Brigade Group
This is Wikipedia on the 52nd Battalion, it concurs with the service record -ie Seymour, Bonegilla, New Britain:
Following Japan’s entry into the war in December 1941, the battalion was mobilised for war service.[33] In early 1942, when concerns about a Japanese invasion of Australia heightened, the battalion, consisting of 44 officers and 890 other ranks, was moved to Jimboomba, in Queensland, from Bonegilla.[34] The invasion did not eventuate and the government decided to demobilise part of the military to rectify a manpower shortage that developed in the Australian economy.[35] As a result, on 27 August 1942, the 52nd Battalion was once again amalgamated with the 37th Battalion to form the 37th/52nd Battalion,[21] and some of its personnel were released back to civilian industry. The 10th Brigade was disbanded around this time, and subsequently the 37th/52nd Battalion was assigned to the 4th Brigade.[36] Together the amalgamated battalion subsequently served in the Huon Peninsula and New Britain campaigns in 1944 and 1945 before being disbanded on 12 June 1946.[37]
Jo –
Hilda’s maiden name was Sullivan. If you search for her with her maiden name, her file will come up. You can also find the file through the advanced search and use the ID number 4824816.
Kelly and Lewis – lots of resonance but no Eureka moments….
I had a rummage through the Kelly and Lewis archive boxes at the University of Melbourne. There was a pay ledger, which ended in 1899! It included a Webb, but clearly not our Charlie! By 1949 they had almost 1,000 employees…
Kelly and Lewis, an engineering company that celebrated its 50th year in 1949 established a large, garden set factory in Springvale between 1922 and 1927 – next to the South Gipplsand rail line, with easy access to powerlines bringing electricity from Yallourn. There was an interesting book detailing a visit to Chicago in 1919, to visit factories to gain tips on the optimal structure and organisation of the new factory (lots of Taylorism at work!). The page on “Information on the Apprentice Question, what methods of training &c” was blank…
Kelly and Lewis were involved in aircraft manufacture, building ships engines, steel structures, pumps and engines and modifications and engines for racing cars. They did lots of work for BHP, they had a ferrous foundry, ear marked for replacement in 1949… There was a whole heap of resonant stuff, but no hard evidence to place our Charlie there… There were a few photos of employees, but no Eureka moments!
If anything, the strongest link was to the bakery. Springvale was a far suburban outpost – the sticks, woop woop, prior to the factory setting up in the 1920s. I took a photo of a great land sales brochure for a public auction on 24 February 1923 for “Spring Vale Township Estate, Spring Vale” “34 Important Shop Sites and 65 Glorious Residential Allotments”. Kelly and Lewis are all over the brochure. One of the sites for sale is where I think was the bakery was built. (I’ll provide a description of its size and organisation in another comment, drawn from a description provided by the Suters, subsequent owners. David Morgan found them placing a 1940s newspaper advertisement, to advise the community that they were not of German heritage!). I think it may have been at “Burdens Buildings”, built in 1924, 230-232 Springvale Road, near the current Springvale Cake and Bread Shop (you can check Google Maps for a picture). A lot of the buildings on Springvale Road were demolished for road widening in the 1950s-60s but this one fits the Suter’s description in many ways.
So, another dead end lane… @ Nick, I’ve lots of photos if they are of any interest or use…
My final hunch and possible lead (no pun intended) is Port Pirie, I just want to check that no one else has contacted the Port Pirie Family History Association to ask them to check the BHPAS register of employees (which their site details them as having access to) before I harass them?
@Jo,
Has anyone checked the Footscray munitions factory?
https://trove.nla.gov.au/search/category/newspapers?keyword=%22footscray%20munitions%22
and the drivers.
@ David
I’ve no idea how you’d get access to personnel records for the munitions factory, if they still exist! It’s also a reasonably long way from anywhere Charlie lived as an adult. I know someone thinks they’ve seen him on a photo of the aircraft factory at Fisherman’s Bend… He seems to be everywhere and anywhere according to our preferred narratives.
I’m just going for the low hanging fruit. I’d read that the Kelly and Lewis archive boxes contained pay sheets… There’s nothing to tell us that he actually worked there and nothing to tell us he didn’t (unlike Doff’s absence on the Victorian Register of Pharmacists).
I had to go out to Monash University tonight and so did a quick detour to Springvale. It’s a long way from Bromby Street, even on a contemporary freeway! I found what was probably the bakery, part of a two storey row of shops, close to the railway station, on Springvale Road, near the corner of Virginia Street. It’s rather forlorn looking old place now, housing a lighting shop with Chinese signage (not Burden’s Buildings – Burden was a local grocer). It would have been fairly utilitarian looking even in its time. Apparently there are two bedrooms upstairs, so Charlie and Roy would have shared a room. There’s a large back yard, RA Webb once advertised that corrugated iron from an old shed was available for a reasonable price for any takers, its just unkempt and rather muddy land now.
Across the road, near the rail line is a tall old factory building (Rocla Concrete? It’s featured on lots of old photos of Springvale). Most of the more contemporary shops and action are now further along and away from the main road, so the area around the old bakery is all a bit sad and lonely looking. The Kelly and Lewis site is ten minutes walk away, maybe less. The perimeter of the site is taken up with a more recent factory building; it was getting dark, so hard to see what’s currently there. It’s all shuttered up now. There is a mosque across the road. Charlie’s landscape felt very much like the past. By contrast Monash Uni is a maze of huge, contemporary buildings, with beautiful landscaped walkways and spaces, lots of Australian native plants and trees and all of the newer buildings constructed on such a large, shiny scale. Its a sprawling campus populated by young people from many different backgrounds and heritages. Maybe Anterio Bonifacio went there?
We can use our imaginations and the evidence at hand to weave contingent accounts of the past, but do we ever really come to know it?
@ Jo,
I would love to see a post with all the photos you have been taking of these places!
Pat / Jo: I’m sure that could be arranged…
@ David Morgan- Fisherman’s Bend could be a good fit for wartime employment- aircraft, car and even secret armoured vehicle production https://amp.theage.com.au/national/victoria/fishermans-bends-top-secret-world-war-ii-tank-program-20150803-giqlnq.html
A reasonably athletic man could easily cycle to Fisherman’s Bend from the Bromby Street area. (I’ve done it myself quite a few times, albeit not fitting key criteria). He’d develop great calf muscles doing this on a daily basis & might want to hit the sack early. I’ve no idea though how you’d get a tangible match for a workplace.
@ David Morgan
Sorry! I hadn’t though about the 1939-1941 period, between the sale of the bakery and the marriage, in 1941, If Charlie had moved with his parent to 15 Coates Street Essendon, then work at the Defence site at Cordite Avenue Maribyrnong or the Small Arms Ammunition Factory in Gordon Street, Footscray would both be very plausible – both around half an hour by public transport from Coates Street. This would also put him in the same orbit as Dorothy. I can’t see any low hanging fruit though…
How and why Charlie and Dorothy then get married in Prahran and move to South Yarra is less easy to pin point, I can only think about work and family connections or the lure of somewhere a bit more cosmopolitan and interesting, maybe an edgy Bonnie and Clyde living away from the gaze of family vibe? Charlie had a nephew at nearby Punt Road and Doff had family in the Middle Park area… Charlie’s family had lived in Prahran previously (they seem to have been pretty mobile over time).
@Jo,
I have been reviewing the old podcasts and radio programmes just to see if there was any clue missed. One person who interests me was John Owens Lyons the jeweller. His address is given as either Whyte Street/road or Colley terrace in older articles where he was fined (twice) for not showing a light at night on his parked vehicle. I believe he was promoted to major for a short while and recruited at some military HQ. He was from Prospect and may have designed a stamp.
If he lived at Colley terrace I wondered why he would travel so far to swim in the morning. He was behaving in a way like a person on holiday. Walking the beach at night with his wife but he then swims in the morning with another man. His former military rank would explain why he took control in a situation.
One name I heard on a radio broadcast (but may not have got right) was Mr Strapps? But the name was used on the Dr Ruth Balint radio broadcast on the Somerton Man. The way the name Owens was said I would never have guessed so I may be mishearing Strapps.
https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/archived/hindsight/somerton-man/5259946
I wondered who has a copy of the inquest transcript, apart from Dr Ruth.
A few articles of interest regarding Dorothy’s claim of being a chiropodist…
“During a slack spell trainee Allison Guaran, who served in the WAAAF, undergoes a trial pedicure by Margaret Dangar (AAMWS), while Gwen Adams (WAAAF) looks on. They are training as chiropodists at Chappe Toilet Salon, Georges Ltd.”
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/22244749?searchTerm=%22Robertson%22%20chiropodist
“CHIROPODY I… by Courtesy of Chappe IWITHOUT EXTRA CHARGE Chappe Toilet Salon…”
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/245360912?searchTerm=%22Chappe%20Toilet%20Salon%22
“Girl chiropodists help at camps ABOUT two months ago Miss Phyllis Wells and
her sister Beryl, of Sydney, decided to offer their servicesas voluntary chiropodists”
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/47243734?searchTerm=a%20vice-president%20of%20the%20Chiropodists%27%20Association%20of%20Victoria%2C
Maybe during that period, the term did not require a connection to a particular area of study? Perhaps it wasn’t tied to a particular course of study? Pedicures were perhaps considered a form of treatment? Maybe Dorothy had taken a course/training at Chappe Toilet Salon or at some other similar facility?
Further to.all the above?
Wasn’t SM wearing some sort of customized shoes with markings that couldn’t be traced/recognized? Maybe he went to a chiropodist and had a pair of customized shoes made?
Another advert. For correct shoe fitting…
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/244586152?searchTerm=%22Chappe%20Toilet%20Salon%22
@ misca
I found this a while ago – podiatry and chiropody were unregulated in Australia before World War II and became popular during the War. It mentions private courses being established at this time and also mentions that many chiropodists had previously been attached to pharmacies/chemists.
https://nursekey.com/podiatry-in-australia-past-present-and-future/
@ David Morgan
For info on the inquest see
https://www.eleceng.adelaide.edu.au/personal/dabbott/wiki/index.php/Primary_source_material_on_the_Taman_Shud_Case
It links to primary source material…
This website provides details on unclaimed bank and insurance accounts.
https://moneysmart.gov.au/find-unclaimed-money
It locates Charles Webb at 226 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy. It seems to be a property within a commercial area.
I guess a relative of Charles Webb could make a claim on the money and find out further details such as when the policy was started. My own knowledge of these thing is an insurance agent called every month to collect a payment and write it in a little book the client kept. A bit like a bank book that Carl should have had for his bank account. But there is no record of an unclaimed bank account implying he withdrew his money and closed his account which does suggest suicide.
The year of return says 1965. Someone with knowledge of life insurance might be able to provide details of when the insurance policy was started.
@ Pat and Nick
I’ll send Nick copies of the Kelly and Lewis archive photos. Although I didn’t find Charlie I did find a reference to Derry George! I found the a newspaper clip in the Kelly and Lewis newspaper clip scrapbook that has already appeared here on Cipher Mysteries! I’ll explain more as it also prompted another visit to 63 Bromby Street and an interesting observation, perhaps best explained with photos!
@ Pat
I didn’t take photos at Springvale as it was getting dark, but here is the building I think was the bakery, based on the Suter’s description (two storey, double fronted shop with accomodation) and the 1950 Sands and Mac Directory which has it as being between Virginia Road and the Railway Station.
https://raywhitegw.com/properties/leased-commercial/vic/springvale-3171/retail/1350761
Kelly and Lewis was on Newcomen Road between Parsons Road and Springvale Reserve (there was a factory rail extension where Regal Ave is now). What I thought was a mosque, driving by in the dark, is a Greek Orthodox Church!! That’s where the foundry was. Part of the factory site is now a Taoist temple and there’s a pentecostal Christian church there too! There are still some engineering workshops in the mix… You can see that one of the contemporary streets is called Lewis Street… It went all the way back to at least Boulton Street, maybe to Stephenson’s Road.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/269+Springvale+Rd,+Springvale+VIC+3171/@-37.9458145,145.1484971,18z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x6ad614c6b8fcf19f:0xbe2c53249aa4c
OTN: 1352871
Money from: RESOLUTION LIFE AUSTRALASIA LIMITED (FORMERLY AMP LIFE LIMITED)
Policy number: 245311
Type of money: Life insurance
Section: 216LIA (Unclaimed matured life insurance policy)
Year of return: 1965
Date interest paid from: 01/07/2013
David Morgan: could this have been Charles Elliot Webb?
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/246281662?searchTerm=%22charles%20elliot%20webb%22
WEBB.— On August 28, Charles Elliot
Webb, of 337 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy,
dearly loved husband of Florence, loving
father of Ruby (Mrs Torney), Kenneth,
George and Lucy (Mrs Price); aged 65 years.
The journey o’er.
@nick,
Yes, but if he had a wife you wonder why she didn’t know about his life insurance. The way it worked was the guy came around to your house every month for his payment. So he couldn’t be paying life insurance on the quiet. The purpose would be for her to make a claim.
Unless he had two life policies and she claimed on the one but not the other.
David Morgan: it was for the wrong address (226 rather than 337, which looks like a typing / copying error), and it was for a relatively small amount. So it was probably just an administrative cockup that never got rectified.
Mind Over Murder Podcast Part 2 has landed, have a listen to it … it seems Dorothy was living in either a LGBTQ or hippie colony at the time of her demise, and if that isn’t a bit interesting, well, I don’t know what is. Colleen let’s us in on a bit more info too, I think she’s fabulous.
@DavidMorgan and @Jo mentioned Part 1 of Mind Over Murder Podcast.
WOW! Colleen drops a couple of bombs in that one Mary. According to her source Doff died in and LBGTQ commune in the 90s penniless having been disinherited by her dad leaving everything to her only sibling. Colleen questions Doffs credentials as pharmacist AND suggests that Doff could be a black widow and may have assisted in Carls demise. The DNA link that lead to Carl was Gerald and Freda Keane great grandson who doesn’t know his paternal father and only found his father because Colleen found him as part of the SM DNA search. WOW!!!!!
@mary,
The quarrel about Derek being Derek may be the biggest irony when we know he has another identity. We know Charles was Carl. We know Dorothy was calling herself Doff. We know Prosper was calling himself George or Prosper. We know Carl’s dad changed his name likely from Weber to Webb. It is also unlikely that Roy and Carl were the only children without a middle name. So where are their birth certificates?
We know Jessica became Jestyn , Jess and finally Jo !
@ Mary & Dude47
Mandala? For early east coast LGBTQ communities in Australia?
https://www.mandalaaustralia.com.au/
There are still some original shareholders, maybe they knew Dorothy? From their community or another?
I think the ‘hippie or LGBTQ commune’ in 1950/51/52 may be a product of Colleen’s fertile imagination. More likely the Rationalist Commune or a religious or artistic commune that would be a good place for a 30 year-old woman, who had been abandoned by her husband and probably couldn’t have children.
In 1940 there were 3 Chiropodists organisations operating in NSW:
the Pharmaceutical Chiropodists Society;
the College of Podiatry;
and the Incorporated Institute.
In 1946, another group was established, called the Australian Guild of Chiropodists. They started a new clinic in Redfern. About 2 years after that, the group merged with the College of Podiatry and the Society of Pharmaceutical Chiropodists. This was named the Society of Chiropodists.
It makes sense that Dorothy was a ‘Chiropodist/Pharmacist’.
Dude47, Judging from Colleen’s comments I now suspect that the Prof and his team at the University have confirmed the high levels of lead in Carl’s hair, and maybe Forensics SA have found high levels of lead Carl’s bones and maybe barium in what remained of his organs. And SA Forensics would have hair with a greater length (= greater time period) to see how the lead content varied with time. The lead content of the bones would also give a measure of the total dose of lead that Carl was exposed to over his lifetime. Maybe these results suggest deliberate poisoning?
There are now exquisitely sensitive immunological tests for traces of digitalis alkaloids. So, depending on the condition of Carl’s remains it might be possible to establish if he took digitalis alkaloids for some reason. As I have previously suggested maybe Carl had been feeling ill (lead poisoning) and his doctor prescribed digitalis. As I have explained digitalis tables were a lethal lucky dip in the 1940s. Pharmacist would often make their own, and if their tablet making skills were not perfect, then the tablets could vary in the uniformity of the dose. Digitalis has a very low therapeutic index of four, meaning that the dose that will kill you is only four times the dose required to control symptoms.
Byron: other than the oblique hint in the enquiry, is there evidence suggesting digitalis? I was reading through the enquiry the other day and could see where the idea comes from, but can’t see any evidence. It seemed to be saying “we can’t see anything so it’s probably this” – which is a bit weak.
I was interested in the the “gullet covered with whitening…with a patch of ulceration”. Kind of sounds like esophageal thrush which is a opportunistic infection for patients with a compromised immune system. To me, this makes it a long term problem SM was suffering – lead poisoning works and/or long-term analgesic abuse. I think both can lead to liver damage, reduced platelets and haemorrhage.
Particularly like lead because of an IOP piece I read a while back. It was an Abbott interview stating spectral analysis of the hair revealed lead, arsenic and strontium. While arsenic is used to strengthen lead for a few applications (batteries etc) the strontium suggests fireworks or, more likely in 1940s, tracer munitions or flares. Seems to fit nicely with a few other theories and narratives floating around.
I’m interested in the digitalis angle though.
Jamie, the autopsy showed that the heart had stopped in systole and there are few causes (and poisons) that will do this. That is why diphtheria toxin was mentioned at the inquest and why digitalis poisoning was suspected. “In 1994 John Harber Phillips, Chief Justice of Victoria and Chairman of the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine, reviewed the case to determine the cause of death and concluded that, “There seems little doubt it was digitalis.” Phillips supported his conclusion by pointing out that the organs were engorged, consistent with digitalis, the lack of evidence of natural disease and “the absence of anything seen macroscopically which could account for the death”. (Wikipedia). See Phillips, J.H. “So When That Angel of the Darker Drink”, Criminal Law Journal, vol. 18, no. 2, April 1994, p. 110.
I find it suggestive that diphtheria toxin was mentioned because this supports the possibility of state actors in SM’s death (ie. Assassination). It also suggests that the investigators at the time were open to this possibility.
There is a vague connection between the location where SM’s body was found (opposite the crippled children’s home) and the Bickford chemical company who’s owners were associated with the home. The Bickford chemical company at the time manufactured a batch of barium sulphate X-ray contrast medium that was contaminated with soluble barium. This killed two people and, as you would be aware, barium (and lead) poisoning is via hypokalemia, which stops the heart in systole. Maybe the white patch in the gullet is the remnants of barium sulphate contrast medium recently used to image the ulceration? Bickfords also manufactured diphtheria toxin at the time.
I believe that there is sufficient evidence to suggest that Carl Webb suffered from the hereditary connective tissue disorder (CTD) and this disorder could have contributed to his death and also contributed to his apparent moodiness. Paul Lawson was struck by Carl’s soft and smooth hands and Paul was an amateur wrestler so would have grappled with enough normal flesh to notice the difference and comment on it. CTD is a protean disorder, with a constellation of possible symptoms that include personality disorder in 70% of patients (the reason for Carl’s moodiness?). CTD can can predispose to sensitivity to digitalis (and other things such as lead) through the reduction in the efficiency of the kidneys via disordered collagen. This would probably exacerbate the problems caused by Carl’s dependence on pain killers by reducing the elimination rate of the drugs and their metabolites. It is known, but still understated (IMHO) that a feature of CTD is chronic pain and Carl is said to have been dependent on pain killers. I don’t know when codeine tablets became available in Australia but I have seen a case where a person with CTD became quite insane when taking codeine tables to control the pain (physical and mental) associated with CTD.
There is more concerning the synergistic effects of digitalis, lead poisoning and CTD in the Cipher Mysteries archives and also at https://tomsbytwo.com/2018/12/02/the-somerton-man-and-what-may-have-ailed-him/
I note that Carl’s remains could be tested for the presence of CTD by DNA analysis and his remaining connective tissue can be tested for CTD: And his hair can be tested for disordered elastin.
This work would be useful in areas outside the immediate SM investigation because it would advance the knowledge of a disorder that, IMHO, has flown under the radar to a large extent and that was previously considered a relatively harmless disorder. Personality disorder is certainly not harmless.
@Pat, Colleen didn’t say Dorothy was living in that community when she was 30 and in the 1950’s, that part of her life remains a marvelous mystery at this point – she said she was living there in the 1990s when she passed. LGBTQ back in the day would have been something for the code breakers, lol 🙂
H’mm, now need to look more into the Kevin D’Arcy Doff story, what’s that all about.
Jamie, see: https://tomsbytwo.com/2018/04/25/25-was-he-poisoned/
I agree regarding munitions and flares as being a plausible source of the lead, arsenic and strontium in SM’s hair. From memory arsenic is used in lead munition alloys and lead, arsenic, silver, and strontium were used in other lead alloys (residual silver in the lead that was not fully removed in the refining process). The lead could also come from eposure to lead tetraethyl that was used in some high performance aircraft engines at the time (from memory).
Alternatively silver was used to dye hair (to cover up greying) and that seems to fit with what we know about Carl (clothing, shoes, clean finger nails etc). ie. relatively vain for the period.
Lead tetraethyl was also used in racing cars and investigated as an assassination poison by the CIA about 1948. Lead tetraethyl was called “Loony Gas” because poisoning included mental symptoms. If Carl had connective tissue disorder he may have been more sensitive to lead poisoning (to both the hypokaelemia and the mental symptoms, and maybe more) through the reduced clearance (kidney damage related to faulty collagen and kidney damage due to excessive analgesic use).
A little known problem of the use of “APC” tablets (aspirin, caffeine and phenacetin) in Australia and elsewhere was kidney damage from the phenacetin. The manufacture and use of phenacetin was quietly banned by the WHO when it became known that phenacetin damages the kidneys. That is why kidney transplants (and kidney cancers) were a common item in Australia in the 1960s and 1970s. The caffeine was used to make the APC tablets (and BEX) addictive. A nice little earner for some. But all the perps (including the relevant authorities) have managed to cover it up. There are many more cases like this.
Bottom line. If Carl was a heavy user of analgesics then he probably had kidney damage.
@ Jamie
https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C32289
You’ve probably seen this…
@ Byron – can you say more about racing cars? Would this apply to cars in the 1930s-40? I have identified a potential connection for both Springvale and Bromby Street – ie. the Victorian Light Car Club – Kelly & Lewis of Springvale were involved with car parts/modifications, including a new rotary valve for Light Car Club member Hugh Stanley McLaren. (No proof that Charlie worked there but it was 10 mins walk from the bakery, if I identified the right building). Derry or DD George, who took over the Webb’s apartment was also a very active member of the Light Car Club. They were involved in racing & hill climbs. I’m hoping @ Nick will also post some photos of the area behind Bromby St & around the corner at Arnold Street… I don’t really know what to make of all this so would like to put it out there for people with better ideas & expertise!
@ Cipher Mysteries veterans – when was Prosper T looking for a workshop partner? What did he actually write and where?
Does anyone else wonder why Charles Webb reverted to Carl on his wedding certificate in 1941? He had been Charles Webb since the 1920s (but more likely since WW1 to avoid his German identity). Why would he remember to sign Carl after 20 to 27 years?
Also, Dorothy called him Carl on her divorce petition. She didn’t say Carl also known as Charles Webb as you see on similar petitions. Yet his own family called him Charlie in the 1930s in their newspaper articles. He was Charles in school. When he met Dorothy he would have introduced himself as Charles Webb. So suddenly he switches back to Carl in 1941? That is very suspicious in the middle of a war.
http://ciphermysteries.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2022/07/image-3.png
I would want to check the serial numbers of previous and next wedding certificates to check this is not a fake document. That the signatures were two different people. That his sister’s signature was hers.
Personally, I don’t believe Charles would decide to become Carl during WW2 when he became Charles during WW1. There was a lot of anti-German hostility during WW2. We can see that Mr Suter who bought his dad’s bakery had to put a notice in a newspaper to say he was not German to avoid having his windows broken.
In my opinion, either the marriage certificate has to be a modern (1950s) intelligence service fake based on its use of Carl – OR Charles had returned in 1940 as a German POW named Carl Webb!
He would have to have been a complete idiot to revert to Carl in 1941 during WW2 after 27 years as Charles.
Jo: Is this the one you were after –
“PARTNER for used car business, active or silent, good returns assured. £500
to £1,000, money under own control. I have city premises and 10 years experi-
ence in motor trade, stocks assured. Thomson. Box 1009J, G.P.O.” [The Advertiser (Adelaide, SA : 1931 – 1954) Sat 15 Mar 1947 Page 19 Advertising]
I think this was about the time he moved from Henley Beach to Alta Mira. Judging by his other ads, stocks were most definitely not “assured”.
Byron – Thanks.
I understand the heart stopping in systole might be a clue for cause, but might that not have happened anyway with all the haemorrhaging going on? I thought hypovolemia can depress preload and stroke volume which might eventually lead to the heart seeming to stop in systole?
Re: painkillers. I found an interesting contemporary article on Trove that suggested Acetanilide, Antipyrine, and Phenacetin were painkillers commonly checked for during autopsies. Today, both Acetanilide and Phenacetin have hazard warnings that they cause “hyperplasia of blood cells in spleen” (Acetanilide) and “destroy red blood cells” (Phenacetin). Both can cause liver / kidney damage and both generate dyshemoglobins (met-) causing hypoxia (and associated headaches, fatigue, dizziness…). “Repeated exposure” is apparently just as dangerous as “very high exposure”.
Just thinking out loud – not making any presumptions.
@ Nick – I think we may be on to something here! Please would you consider posting the yard & Arnold St photos. I’ll ask teacher contacts who may have taken cars there & could contact Derry George’s nephew as per @ Thomas’ post to’ see if he knows whether Light Car Club members or others took cars to the yard or to Motor Works for work or modifications & if he knows any of the history of either operation (eg same/separate; formal/informal workshops). There would still be lots of dots to join & nothing definite re placing Charlie in the picture but I feel it’s something that is worth knowing more about…
In March of 47 Prosper was advertising for a partner Jo.
@ Jo. The add reads ” WANTED Partner for used car business- 500-1000 pounds. City Premises. Box1009j
*This add appears one month before Carl reportedly Leaves Doff.
Jo – hadn’t registered seeing that picture, but I did while away a few hours on that site looking through the munitions pictures. There’s hundreds of them. Loads of Foolscray.
I was following up the links like below:
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/47160063?searchTerm=tracer%20strontium
And, more alarmingly, in “children’s corner”, here:
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/173257169?searchTerm=tracer%20strontium
Why don’t we still have foundations of tracer design in the modern school curriculum? Its political correctness gone mad.
@ Jamie – yeah, tracer design followed by Indian baya birds… I had a lot of fun teaching 20th Century American History in Charlie’s Doff years local area,, about ten years ago. When we reached WWII we made a “missing episode” of the HBO series “the Pacific” armed with a video camera & copies of “Instructions for American Servicemen in Australia 1943”. We walked around the neighbourhood,, which is how I initially became acquainted with some of the local signals intelligence locations etc. Meanwhile, the students filmed dead possums & improvised a missing water fountain, erected to commemorate the site of the 33AWAS signals camp on Fawkner Park. One of the guys filled his mouth with water & his mate pressed his nose at which point the water was ejected. We edited their anarchic footage together with the opening of The Pacific”:“Yesterday,, December 7, 1941 – a date which will live in infamy…” Damn, if only I’d known about tracer bullet design…
Who was Spider Webb (aka Billy ‘spider’ Webb) – he was a Victorian featherweight champion in 1935, bantam weight loser and winner in 1936. Then in 1942 he returns to Australia as a middleweight. There is a poor-quality picture of him but I thought local Melbourne boxing experts might have a better-quality picture of him.
Carl’s ears suggest boxing.
In 1952 the police have a boxing champion named Ken “spider’ Webb. So any boxer with the name Webb seems to attract the name “spider’.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/91718413?searchTerm=spider%20webb
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/178091586?searchTerm=spider%20webb
@Mary, thanks for the clarification, I’m still confused though. Was the ‘commune’ in SA or NSW? And how can Colleen give all this info if she said Doff’s nephew remembered it ‘vaguely’? Is Kevin Alexander D’Arcy the name given by this same nephew as Doff’s husband? Is that correct? I wouldn’t take Colleen’s word as gospel, she seems to give interviews without having documents or notes in front of her, she said Eliza Amelia’s father was a Stevens… now who is that?
@ David Morgan, I think Carl was his official name, used in documents (birth certificate, electoral rolls, marriage certificate), Charles and Charlie for all the rest…
Speaking of official documents, what was the official ID document used back then?
Just another polite reminder to those who incorrectly using the term ‘in systole’ to describe a sudden flat lining of the heart’s electrical function or commonly cardiac arrest. ‘Asystole’ is the proper associated phrase and referred to as such in Gray’s Anatomy. Don’t hesitate to use it henceforth and show others an adeptness for use of proper medical terminologies.
Pat: yet another Dorothy Jean D’Arcy for your consideration, this one nee Davis married Michael D’Arcy in 1964; As opposed to still another with the same nee Davis monicker bn. 1/12/19 who married twice, ’41 &’47 both husbands from regional South Australia….I’m finding it hard to believe, after so much water having by now passed under our bridge too far, that someone out there in Nick Pelling’s ‘peaked news cycle’ land might still be having problems with name terminologies for the Abbott nominee Carl Webb @ Jerry Somerton.
Pat – Carl shows up as Charles in all of the electoral rolls I have found for him so far. It’s unusual because normally, even if say…an “Elizabeth” calls herself Bessie or Bettie, she shows up with her formal name Elizabeth in the electoral rolls.
@misca, thanks! I don’t have access to the electoral rolls, but I genuinely thought that they should refer to him as Carl… that is very weird. Apologies, David Morgan! Maybe you’re right, there could be some German phobia thing going on…
@John Sanders, sorry mate, I don’t know what you mean…
@pat,
If Carl was being literal taking his name off his birth certificate I find it hard to believe it would just say Carl Webb. Every other member of his family (apart from Roy) and that includes his nephews – had middle names like Russell Richard, Richard August etc. So suddenly we have to believe they decided middle names were a bad idea for Carl and Roy. His sisters had middle names, their husbands and their children. But the parents decided that Carl and Roy didn’t need one in a society where having a middle name was the convention. It was almost like saying they were not his children. They didn’t inherit his name. That could make a mess of the DNA genealogy tree unless T (Gerald) Keane was his dad.
I did wonder why Russell Richard seems to be a 5 feet ?2 inch guy and Carl 5 feet 11 inches – similar in height to John Russell Keane.
https://www.familysearch.org/tree/pedigree/descendancy/LR91-PWL
@ Misca
Interesting! Do all of the entries you have found list his occupation? If so, please could you share?
I’m also wondering about Dorothy… Australia has compulsory voting but allows for “silent electors” whose addresses are not given on the roll. Being registered as a silent elector means that your name and division will appear on the electoral roll but not your address… I don’t know when this was included in the Commonwealth Electoral Act, or even if it warranted an amendment. The Australian Electoral Commission roll is shared with the States, they don’t have separate lists. In theory Dorothy’s name, but not her address should still be there…unless there are additional provisions – ie. she could still vote using a declaration vote.
https://www.aec.gov.au/Enrolling_to_vote/Special_Category/silent-electors.htm
Pat – I think Colleen actually made a mistake and gave some information away. She was talking how on the mother’s side, they had someone test that matched to Carl Web’s maternal side and that that person was from the Morris side, not the Grace side. She was explaining that it was likely that Eliza Amelia was a Morris. There is a daughter of Amelia Bailey who is a Moriis and who married a Stephens. So, one of their grandchildren likely tested a match to their DNA presumed to be Carl.
@ Pat
I’m not sure there has ever been a singular official ID document… the government tried to introduce one – the Australia Card (national identity card) in 1986 but people were very resistant and the Bill was rejected… Nowadays people need to produce a weighted combination of birth certificates, passports, bank statements etc (100 points identification scheme), but this is quite recent. I’ve got friends whose names have become quite mangled through migration and officialdom – eg Hedula who is Heather because that is what the immigration official wrote.
I don’t know how things have worked in the past. You may have needed to produce a birth certificate to gain a marriage certificate. It may have been quite haphazard – feral on one side of the coin and ordered on the other. Not long before I came to Australia from the UK there was an amnesty for illegal immigrants and there were thousands of them, quite a few well established and prominent people fessed up – including prominent business people and a number of mayors. When my cousin migrated here a few years ago he found his father who had left the family in the UK in the early ’60s and was rumoured to have died! He had simply jumped ship from a merchant navy vessel and established a new life in Australia and New Zealand!
Misca,
“It’s unusual because normally, even if say…an “Elizabeth” calls herself Bessie or Bettie, she shows up with her formal name Elizabeth in the electoral rolls.”
Not that unusual, surely? I mean Carl is (or was) commonly regarded as a variant of Charles. I’ve seen more than a few similar cases while researching my own family history, e.g. short forms/diminutives become more formal boy whose birth is registered under the name “Frank” might become the more formal more formal “Francis” on his marriage and death certificates. Or an Eliza becomes “Elizabeth”. Conversely, a Henry may become the less formal “Harry”.
In fact, another example familiar to all of us is Jessie Harkness (as she was on her birth cert) becoming the more formal “Jessica”.
A similar, far more confusing phenomenon, is the tradition in church registers, until quite recently, of recording names in Latin, so that “Carolus” can be Charles, Carl, Karl, Carlos, Carol etc. Consequently, our new monarch will be known formally as “Carl III” in some European countries, and Carlos III/Karl III etc in others, under naming conventions that go back to the Middle Ages.
JS – I’m using the term “in systole” to signify that the heart stopped in the systolic phase of the cardiac cycle (i.e. contracted). Asystole is a term used to describe a heart with no measurable electrical or mechanical activity.
It wouldn’t be surprising, or noteworthy, that a heart had no electrical activity 4 days after the subject died. It might be noteworthy that the heart stopped IN SYSTOLE and not with the left ventricle relaxed.
Just ask future. Don’t bother looking in Gray’s. It might be great for anatomy, but this is physiology.
Furphy: What Jessie Harkness’ birth certificate are you referring to? From memory none ever came to light. Far as I’m aware she was known formerly as Jessica, her likely birth monicker and by her pet names Jo and Jess of which we’re by now well familiar…most certainly never called Jessie by her kith & kin or post RNSH pals in S.A.
Furphy –
To some degree I guess your’e right and I have seen the same variations. On ancestry, it’s sometimes difficult to tell because you don’t always get to see the original documents…So, sometimes, it might even be due to the transcription. Dorothy Jean Robertson is an example of this as well I suppose. Nick got a copy of her marriage record and it clearly shows her full name but the ancestry marriage index lists her as “Dor’y Jean Robertson”. (It also has her full name corrected below and it’s difficult to know if the full name correction is corrected by ancestry or by someone reviewing the original document.)
So, yes of course, there are exceptions.
Was Jessica’s birth certificate released?
@Pat and @Misca
Carl’s aunty, Mary Jane MORRIS 1860-1932, daughter of John Wilson MORRIS and Amelia BAYLEY married Anthony George Dyer STEPHEN
It’s on his mum’s side of the tree.
His mum>
https://www.geni.com/people/Eliza-Webb/6000000186161420998
You’re more than welcome to look around. You might need to open a free account, but just ignore any suggestions to buy a pro membership. I’ve never done so. And there’s plenty of ways around viewing profiles even when the website suggests that you can’t. If you have a direct link it works fine. Hit me up if you can’t view someone and I’ll post a direct link. Same trick works in familysearch.org and his tree is recreated in that website too
@misca@Jo@Furphy, thanks guys, this is all new to me. We are very strict with ID and names in Brazil, it hasn’t done much to avoid any sort of fraudulent schemes, we’re also well known for those. 🙄
It is likely the electoral roll was completed by Carl’s parents. They wrote Charles because that was the name he used in college.
Jo – All of the listings I have found before he got married, list him as an Electrical Fitter. Afterwards, he is listed as an instrument maker.
@ peter davidson
Familysearch is like a group of volunteers who if you ask them often they have no knowledge of the people they create on the site. They have no agenda. But they find real people and create an identity for them on the site. It is up to family members to decide whether they are a fit to their family/plot. To join the dots.
It is unusual that you are the only poster of the Webb, Robertson etc families on geni. No family member. So you created the entities and joined the dots. It is unusual that no real family member (Webb/Keane/Robertson) was interested in genealogy – even if it was simply Leo Keane finding his mother and father.
Do you think there is a risk that you have created your own web of Webb?
@misca,
The electoral roll before marriage was probably his mother filling the form in. After marriage his wife. She doesn’t seem to know what he does.
His course was electricity and magnetism and the nearest element to instrument making was technical drawing. It wouldn’t give him the skills without a metalworking qualification. Perhaps there is another part to his education that is missing.
John Sanders –
In the 1943 electoral roll, she is listed as Jessie Ellen Harkness.
Gender Female
Electoral Date 1943
Electoral Place Artarmon, North Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Travelling with her family, she is listed as:
Name Jessi Thomson
Departure Place Genoa, Italy
Arrival Date 29 Oct 1962
Arrival Place Fremantle, Western Australia, Australia
Vessel Flavia
On her wills and probate record and on her find a graves listing, she is Jessica Ellen Thomson.
Is there some cross-over going on between fake Sister Jo Thomson the unqualified nurse and Sister Harkness who was a qualified nurse?
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/118641824?searchTerm=%22sister%20harkness%22
David Morgan: there were at least four Sister Harkness’ mentioned in the CM anals over the years frim memory. Two from country Sth Ausralia (one a Jock), two from NSW/Vic. and another Matron Harkness who made a big splash in islands off the coast pre war. Of these two bore the Jessica label, but only one with middle name Ellen and two were plain Jessie.
David – he referred to himself as an instrument maker on his wedding certificate as well.
Jamie, yes, hypovolemia could cause the heart to stop in systole. Clelland was noted as an autopsy expert with more than 7,000 autopsies to his name at the time so I was assuming that he would have considered hypovolemia and discounted it based on other evidence. Regarding Cowan’s toxicology there was a lot of discussion regarding Cowan’s performance a few years ago. My assessment was that Cowan initially only tested for a bare minimum of possible poisons and by the time the question of poisoning came up the autopsy samples had probably been destroyed. It was summer time and, from memory there was a suggestion that the laboratory had limited refrigeration capacity.
@ Misca
Thank you! Are there any entries for 1939-41? If so, what is the address? I’m trying to get a sense of possible occupational history…
@Peter Davidson,
Thanks! Was Colleen confused then? Because she clearly says that Amelia was not a Grace, she was a Stephens… so my point is, Colleen’s interviews are not accurate, she doesn’t have the data in front of her when she talks to podcasters. She likes to tell a story, with figments of her imagination.
John Sanders:
I thought this registration was established to be herself, but maybe I’ve missed something.
HARKNESS JESSIE E
Registration number
2727/1921
Father’s Given name(s)
THOMAS L
Mother’s Given name(s)
ELLEN
District
MARRICKVILLE
@ Furphy,
Can you provide a link to the source of NSW’s BDM data? This one has never worked for me https://www.nsw.gov.au/family-and-relationships/family-history-search
Furphy: thanks for the clarification on your ‘Jessie’ lead post. I have taken note of the above listing with seemingly correct connecting familial connections that both Abbott and Feltus have alluded to. My own negative post 100 year search for a full copy of Jessie’s NSW Birth Certificate is also supported by Peter Davidson’s detailed Geni entry for his Jessica Ellen Harkness which makes mention of Jessie only as an alternate AKA.
@David Morgan
They’re both collaborative sites. Trees created by others are merged. You didn’t notice that a great deal of the tree has been created by others, including at least one close family member, Helen Cass?
@Pat
She was born Morris. Grace is her Stepfather’s surname.
She may of used the Stepfather’s surname after the marriage of her parent. It’s not uncommon, so Colleen may of been technically right.
Pat/John:
The site is a bit tricky to use. Firstly, it can be hard to find the right search page, but this link should work:
https://familyhistory.bdm.nsw.gov.au/lifelink/familyhistory/search/births?1
Secondly, the search is unforgiving: the surname has to be spelt as it appears in the index and, while you can use a wildcard (*) with given names, short forms and alternate spellings don’t work e.g. “Jessie”, “Jess*” or even”Je*” will work (but “Jessica”, “Jessi”, “Jess” etc won’t work).
(fwiw) The parents of “Marrickville Jessie” seem to have met here in Perth, although neither family were long term residents in WA.
HARKNESS THOMAS L M[ale] LEE ELLEN F[emale] [year of marriage] 1916 FREMANTLE [reg. no.] 75 [reg. year] 1916.
(iirc) The marriage took place in what was a major Congregationalist church in Fremantle ( https://fremantlestuff.info/churches/johnston.html ).
So the Harknesses were more flexible religiously, geographically and with personal names, than was conventional at the time.
@Peter Davidson
Without real family members who know ‘of the people’ you have no quality check on your family tree. Effectively you have created people. Helen Cass (?) should show where she fits in the tree.
For example – let’s say Carl and Roy are really Gerald Keane’s children which would explain why Richard wouldn’t give them his name for a middle name. That type of information could only be known by family members.
@ Furphy,
Thanks, but that link still doesn’t work for me. Maybe it’s just for Australian IP addresses? And thanks for the info on the Harkness/Lee couple!
@ Peter Davidson,
I still don’t get it, sorry. She said Eliza Amelia was a Stephens, not a Grace. What exactly is ‘technically right’ about it? That she wasn’t a Grace? Well, that doesn’t make her a Stephens! And I agree with David Morgan regarding the family trees that don’t give any evidence. Why would someone name a person but not the source? Because they don’t have evidence…
@ Peter Davidson,
Regarding John Wilson Morris, I know he was Eliza Amelia’s biological father. And he and Robert Grace were ‘mates’ in Moonambel (Avoca Mail, 2 Sept 1879 / Page 2 / Warden’s Court Avoca, Monday 1st Sep 1879 – John McSorley and William Cotter v Robert Grace)
I wondered why none of these football players remembered Carl Webb.
https://afltables.com/afl/stats/players/J/Jack_Webb.html
https://afltables.com/afl/stats/players/A/Alf_Sampson.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Sampson_(footballer)
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/189782220?searchTerm=%22bruce%20Andrew%22%2C%20collingwood&fbclid=IwAR2iCg9S33m_dDbcxxeShZTbN8cpie0bxvVSLFkUXxHMcQSW3znGgopXQcc
If he played for 10 years someone would have crossed his path.
Was he using a different name as a player?
@David Morgan.
Of course Genealogical sites can only usually be built on actual BDM records and other documentary evidence, in the absence of any family member verifying that the actual biological father is different to the registered father, together with DNA evidence. Whether such a theory has got anything to do with Carl’s death might be a better question to ask.
Anyhow,
As for Helen Cass, who’s been helping with the tree.
Helen Dangerfield (nee Cass) is Carl Webb AKA Somerton Man’s great niece!
Carl Webb AKA Somerton Man
→ Doris Maude Martin (nee Webb)
his sister → Cass (nee Martin)
her daughter → Helen Dangerfield (nee Cass)
her daughter
Source: https://www.geni.com/path/Carl-Webb-AKA-Somerton-Man+is+related+to+Helen-Cass?from=6000000129853684907&path_type=blood&to=6000000075413309860
It’s probable that the McMinn family and the Webb family were close enough, growing up in the same area, that Percival McMinn being a few years younger than Carl, followed Carl’s career path, being that Percival went to Footscray Tech to do electrical engineering and became an apprentice instrument fitter at Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation. Hence why I’ve been looking for evidence of Carl at Fishermans Bend. Hence why GC found a posted a photo of a group at Fishermans Bend on his blog that lists a Webb as being amongst those in the photo.
The question I’m trying to fathom is whether his job had anything to do with his death?
Percival Gilbert Mcminn is Carl Webb AKA Somerton Man’s brother-in-law’s first cousin once removed!
Carl Webb AKA Somerton Man
→ Freda Grace Keane (Webb)
his sister → ‘Gerald’ Thomas Gerald Thomas Keane
her husband → ‘Will’ William Thomas Alpius Keane
his father → John William Keane
his brother → ‘Nellie” Selina Jane Mcminn (Keane)
his daughter → Percival Gilbert Mcminn
her son
For more information on Percival McMinn see my post on the BF Somerton Man forum.
Peter Davidson: don’t be so shy about siding with GC on his positive Carl Webb ID re the Fisherman’s Bend CAC group photo. Regarding there having been a Webb in the shot, I must have missed it or, perhaps Gordon forgot to enlighten his hordes of anonymous followers in fear that it might start a rush for more enlightenment.
Who is Mary Vanderfeen? Linkedin simply has a Greater Melbourne researcher
https://www.geni.com/search?search_type=people&names=Selina+Jane+Mcminn
Who is
Thomas Raynor Keane
Caroline Keane
Florence Keane
Jack Keane and 1 other?
In relation to Gerald Keane?
By my rough count, there have been no fewer than 57 Keanes mentioned during this so called ‘peaked cycle’, only two or three being connected to Carl Webb or to his Germanic roots, going by the tried and tested ‘six degrees of separation’ rules governing human relativety. Not a single Heinze which would have been a pleasant change to the by now all too repetitive and almost totally irrelevant bean mix.
@David Morgan
Mary Vanderfeen is Carl Webb AKA Somerton Man’s brother-in-law’s second cousin once removed’s wife’s brother’s wife’s third cousin once removed.
Source:
https://www.geni.com/path/Carl-Webb-AKA-Somerton-Man+is+related+to+Mary-Vanderfeen?from=6000000129853684907&path_type=inlaw&to=6000000027256687251
What if Dorothy was in Bute on hols or visiting friends because she was studying Pharmacy somewhere in SA (anywhere apart from Adelaide where I supposed Abbott’s minions have already checked)? What would be the places to get a Pharmaceutical degree over there? According to Abbott/Fitzpatrick she left home in April 47 to return at some point before September when Carl left for good. Could she be already attending the course ‘remotely’ by correspondence and then she went to SA to have pharmacy training? That could explain the alleged reason for Carl being in Adelaide looking for her.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/206078981?browse=ndp%3Abrowse%2Ftitle%2FA%2Ftitle%2F809%2F1949%2F05%2F28%2Fpage%2F19601093%2Farticle%2F206078981
You know, the fact that Carl hadn’t been home for five years, wouldn’t that be enough reason to be granted a divorce, hey; why did she have to come up with around eight pages of stories about him being a woeful husband? H’mm, it’s all so suspicious … I’m really beginning to wonder about the Dorothy story, it’s very strange and mysterious, in my humble opinion. I’d be interested to know if her father contributed to the document to verify some events, that’d be interesting.
Is there another Charles Webb born in 1905 in Victoria?
CassPaula on FamilySearch had added an info on Carl ‘Charles’ Webb tree, apparently back in 2016!
https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/LR91-P4B
It’s a passenger’s list
https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:DSJ9-6D6Z
I hadn’t seen this before, Charles Webb at Camperdown State School qualifying certificate … just in case it hasn’t been put up before, popping it in here.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/65015092?searchTerm=merit%20certificate%20charles%20webb
Poppins:
Good find! I see that the article is from 1916… could this lend more credence to that one badged-up little fellow in the ’17 Swinburne Junior boys’ photos being Charles after all? You might call him… a Keaner!
Here is another article I managed to find from around the same time where the Qualifying Certificate’s significance (at least in Newcastle and Maitland) is explained, in quite a bit of detail:
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/131150990
Is there any information on when Carl left his job at Red Point Tools? I found someone from the company using the work address looking for a flat, thought if he was still working he may have been living with family or friends after leaving the flat with his wife and then used the work address to find accommodation. 🤔
@ Sharon – all of the information on Carl’s time at Red Point is in the Webb vs Webb divorce file (available on an earlier post – the Webb vs Webb divorce files, October 2022). Dorothy’s May 1946 maintenance order was served on him at work, at Red Point. In 1951 coworkers said that Charlie had left three or four years ago. I believe he left Bromby Street in November 1946, after his mother’s death. He gives his address as 63 Bromby Street on her death certificate, there are also newspaper ads regarding the sale of furniture from 1/63 Bromby Street during the week of her death and the following one. This also concurs with the landlord’s statement in the divorce deposition.
@Poppins,
Great find! And another one from 1918!
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/32180360?browse=ndp%3Abrowse%2Ftitle%2FC%2Ftitle%2F43%2F1918%2F10%2F22%2Fpage%2F4018498%2Farticle%2F32180360
Thanks Jo
That’s a great find Pat, hadn’t seen that before! Love it.
@JamieS, super interesting article re the qualifying certificate.
Have the yearly unclaimed money lists been checked for Carl’s and Doff’s names? These lists (a legal requirement for banks etc) were published yearly in newspapers up until recently. Even small amounts of money were reported.