Category Archives: Tamam Shud

Since ABC’s recent “My Name Is Charles” documentary (in its “Australian Stories” strand), I’ve been sitting back trying to make sense of it all. On the one hand, the film makers did a good job of bringing a human side to the whole “Carl/Charles/Charlie Webb is the Somerton Man” story, while grabbing the best bits from all their previous Tamam Shud docos. On the other hand, I’m far from convinced the family have got the, ummm, right Charlie yet.

The Family Image

Here’s the family image from the documentary, with Charlie highlighted near the top right:

I suspect the reason that commenters here have tied themselves in knots trying to date this image is because the person identified as “Charlie” looks a bit too young, and a bit too blond:

Charles Richard Webb

Yet Carl Webb (born 1905 in Footscray) wasn’t the only Charlie in the immediate Webb family. His oldest brother Russell (born 1893) had a son Charles Richard Webb (born 1917, m.1943, etc etc):

As a reminder, the Somerton Man looked like this (admittedly on a worse day):

So, which of these two Charlies is in the family photos? Personally, I think it’s Charles Richard Webb, but over to you all, convince me either way.

A very intriguing Somerton Man-related email arrived here today from CM commenter & researcher Angela. In her quest to find out a bit more of what happened to Dorothy Jean Webb, she decided to pay the nice people at South Australian Genealogy & Heraldry Society to do some additional research for her, and wants to share her findings with everyone!

This is because Genealogy SA’s research coordinator Beryl Schahinger has just reported back to Angela to let her know that “she had found an entry in the marriage index for the District of Daly (which includes Kadina and Bute) for a Dorothy Jean Webb to Geoffrey A. Lockyer in 1952. This fits nicely with Dorothy’s divorce. Unfortunately, there is a 75-year embargo on marriage records for the State of South Australia.“

Angela has also managed to dig up the following information about Geoffrey Arthur Lockyer:

• Born 12 Jan 1918 in Perth, Western Australia (WA: 224/1921).
• Served in WWII.
• Married for the first time in 1941 in Western Australia (WA: 334/1941; spouse: Ada Teresa Jones; Divorced in WA 1945).
• He moved to “the only available house” in Port Wakefield in late 1951
• He was working as a designing engineer for the Hydraulic Equipment Co. Ltd. in Bute, South Australia, in 1952 (as per Trove advert in the ‘Tiser)
• He was fined for betting at the Henley Hotel, Henley Beach in 1953 (though I’d note that he is described there as a “grazier”?)
• His “light blue Holden sedan” was stolen in 1954
• He is in the WA Electoral Rolls in 1963 and 1968, at 280 Welshpool Road, Queens Park.
• He died in Western Australia in Feb 1976 (WA: 738/1976), and was buried in Karrakatta Cemetery.

Also living at the 280 Welshpool Road address was a Mary Lockyer. Angela suspects either that Geoffrey and Dorothy were divorced sometime between 1952 and 1963 (i.e. he subsequently remarried), or that ~conceivably~ Dorothy Jean changed her name to “Mary”. (Findagrave.com has a likely grave for Mary Lockyer, who died 2011 in Wembley Downs aged 90, and was also buried in Karrakatta Cemetery.)

Interesting! So… what do you all think?

Frustrated by our collective inability to access the divorce papers that Dorothy Jean Webb attempted to serve on her (by then late) husband Carl Webb, Cipher Mysteries commenter Behrooz decided to write to the Honorable Chief Justice Anne Ferguson of Victoria. And – rather wonderfully – his polite (and quietly persuasive) request for the two documents to be released into the public domain was agreed to.

He has (just today) posted the two PDFs on his blog:

• Dorothy Webb Affidavit
• Webb v Webb divorce file

Please use the comments below to discuss what we learn from these two (I think extremely central) documents. Please also remember to thank him heartily for his efforts! 🙂

The Bare Facts

Dorothy Jean Webb says that she was a “Pharmacist and Chiropodist” prior to marrying Carl Webb. (DWA p.2)

Carl Webb “wrote many poems, most of them on the subject of death, which he claims to be his greatest desire”. (DWA p.4)

He was sullen, moody and changeable, once threatening a friend with a carving knife after losing at cards. Their marriage broke down: she described how he beat her on different occasions; forced her to move to the front room; and finally locked her out of the flat completely. (DWA p.4)

She went to stay in Lorne for 14 days, but things were no better on her return. (DWA p.5)

In March 1946, he – and I think there is no real doubt of this – tried to commit suicide by taking 40 phenobarbitol tablets. Once Dorothy had nursed him back to health, he then continued to verbally abuse her (etc) as before. (DWA. pp.5-6)

Dorothy called the St Kilda police around on several occasions, but each time Carl convinced them (she thought) that she was just imagining things. (DWA p.6)

In September 1946, not long after her father came back from Darwin, Carl offered her £60 to leave the flat: she wanted £50 plus some furniture, and they did not agree. He later said that she would get nothing from him “ever”.

She had a maintenance order (for £1/10 weekly) served on him (dated 1st May 1947) (DWA p.7). At that time, he was “working in a machine shop in Prahran” (WvW p.15), named as “Red Point Tool Co. of 66 St Johns Street Prahran” (WvW p.21).

A neighbour recalled that Webb had sold all his furniture (WvW p.17).

Trying to work out what happened to Dorothy Jean “Doff” Webb (nee Robertson), I was told a few weeks back that after getting divorced (in absentia) from Carl Webb, Doff’s subsequent partner was Kevin D’Arcy. However, even though I can see that a Kevin Alexander D’Arcy is included in various private family trees online, nobody has so far written down much about him.

So here’s my attempt to put that (at least partially) right.

Kevin Alexander D’Arcy Family Tree

I started with some of the information suggested by commenter Belinda here. It didn’t take too long to find William “Billy” D’Arcy (b. 1893 Ballarat, died 1987 Bacchus Marsh) and his wife Florence (“Flora”) Jane D’Arcy (nee McKay) (b. 1899 Warrion, died 1986 Bacchus Marsh) and their son Kevin Alexander D’Arcy (b. 4 May 1923 Melbourne, d. 21 May 1991, “Rtd Taxation Officer” in the probate record).

In the electoral rolls, we can see Kevin’s parents living in Bacchus Marsh (1949, 1954, 1958, 1963, 1967, 1972, 1977, 1980), with Kevin appearing on the rolls only in 1977 and 1980. There’s also a James Allen D’Arcy (“valuer”) who appears there in the 1960s. One family tree asserts that they had five children (but no names, no evidence).

Kevin Alexander D’Arcy Military Records

What I found interesting was that Private Kevin Alexander D’Arcy (clerk, single, enlisted 1943, VX142120, 37/52 Australian Infantry Battalion, discharged 27 Aug 1946, 5ft 5in, blue eyes, medium complexion, light brown hair, no marks or scars) was marked up as living in Boort, Victoria in 1943 with his father W. D’Arcy.

Note that the correspondence in the file lists various other addresses:

• 1946, 3 Kembla St, Hawthorn
• 1953: 62 Coppin St, Richmond
• 1971: 49 Keith St, Alphington 3078

Could it be that the mention of “Bute” was merely ‘Chinese Whispers’, and the place we should have been looking at was actually Boort, waaaay inland in Victoria, near Lake Boort, in the vaguely Tolkienesque shire of Loddon? What on earth has ever happened in Boort? I mean, I’m every bit as big a fan of “gourmet green tomatoes” (apparently Boort’s most famous product) as the next man (…if the next man doesn’t happen to like them very much).

And indeed, if you look at the electoral rolls for Boort in 1942, you see William “Darey” (public servant) and Flora Jane “Darey” (i.e. both misspelled!), S.R.W.S. Res., Holloway St, Boort. (But they’re in neither the 1937 nor 1949 electoral rolls for Boort.) So this whole sequence does seem to be basically correct.

But what about prior to 1943? If you search Trove for “Billy D’Arcy”, you’ll find (ignoring the lightweight boxer of the same name!) a 03 Sep 1932 Bacchus Marsh Express column called “Melton As Coursing Centre”, which mentions Billy D’Arcy.

If you further search the two Bacchus Marsh papers in Trove for “D’Arcy”, you’ll see a 28 Feb 1953 engagement of Doreen Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Mr & Mrs W. D’Arcy of Maddingley, to Andrew Connell. There’s also the 1952 marriage of Joan D’Arcy (younger daughter of Mr & Mrs W. D’Arcy) to Mr Raymond Marett.

When in October 1951 Carl Webb’s wife filed a divorce petition (apparently not knowing of his 1948 demise on/near Somerton Beach), it listed Webb’s address as “formerly of Bromby-street, South Yarra, but now of parts unknown”. The 1942 electoral rolls then helped us narrow this to 63 Bromby Street, with small ads in The Argus narrowing it further to Flat 2, 63 Bromby Street.

So now let’s take a trip baaaack in tiiiime (cue wavy transition)…

Maps of Bromby Street

Here’s the relevant section of an 1895 Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works detail map (courtesy of the State Library of Victoria), showing the tramway engine house on the left that became Kellow House, with #63 three doors down to the East (there is no #65, or #69), with a R[ight] of W[ay] down the laneway:

In this section of Map 39 from Morgan’s 1951 Street Directory, courtesy of the State Library of Victoria, the road layout hasn’t changed at all (I couldn’t find the 897 detail map of the 1948 MMBW set, bah):

Here’s the same area in Google Maps today (the Royce Hotel on the left is the former Kellow House, the Kellow Falkiner car showroom built in 1928):

Photos of Bromby Street

A few days ago, Cipher Mysteries commenter (and Melburnian) Jo headed over to Bromby Street to have a snoop around. Jo’s first photograph was taken looking down Bromby Street, where #63 is the white building on the left hand side further down the street:

The next photo shows Melbourne Grammar School (which was taken over by American forces during WWII) as viewed from the laneway beside #63:

This photo shows #63 (and the laneway going to the back) as viewed from the Melbourne Grammar side of the road:

Finally, here’s a picture of the front of Kellow House (the former car showroom that was taken over by RAAF signals during the war):

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?

When Derek Abbott first named Carl Webb as the Somerton Man, he noted that his brother-in-law was Gerald Thomas Keane, and speculated that the “J/T Kean[e]”-named clothes in the Somerton Man’s suitcase might have belonged to him. I immediately pointed out that Gerald Keane was known as “Gerald Keane” (rather than “Thomas Keane”), and wondered – hopefully more usefully – whether the Keane in question might have been John Russell “Jack” Keane, Gerald Keane’s son, who died in an air accident in 1943. I also – rather more specifically – speculated whether the Somerton Man’s suitcase might actually have been Jack Keane’s suitcase.

In that vein, I threw some money at NAA to get Jack Keane’s 129-page service record digitised: which finally came online yesterday.

Meet Jack Keane

Born 3rd September 1917 in Camperdown, Victoria, son of Gerald Keane (“Theatre Employee”, of 194 Stewart St, Brunswick East), John Russell Keane was educated after 12 at St Monica’s, Wingfield St, Footscray from 1929 to 1931 (p.128), passing his Christian Brothers Scholarship exams in Maths, History, Geography and English in 1930. His occupation since school was as an electrical fitter’s assistant (Radio Service, 3 years), and then as a Motor Mechanic (Lanes Motors, Dorcas Street, South Melbourne, 18 months). He had a single traffic offence (fined £2).

Prior to enrolling in the RAAF Reserve in 1941, he had had two 30-minutes instructional flights in a dual-control plane (courtesy of Essendon Aero Club), plus 3 months “Universal (military) Training” with 8th Field Regiment. His 1934 character reference was from Charles Williams of Amalgamated Wireless Australasia (AWA), who had known him “since his childhood days” (p.126). His 1940 character reference was from A. A. Howitt of 156 Toorak Road, South Yarra, who had known “Jack Keane for many years and [had] every confidence in his ability and integrity” (p.124).

So, here’s Jack Keane (p.68):

Training in the RAAF

Though not initially assessed as being commissioning officer material, Jack Keane did extremely well in training, finishing top in his class of 62 pilots. His instructors’ assessments were all “average” or “above average”, with the only occasional note of caution being a tendency towards “overconfidence” (this appears multiple times). It’s true that one particular training session was assessed as “bloody awful”, but everyone can have an off day, right?

There’s a nice picture of him in his training notes (p.36):

Though admittedly his next photo is a bit more scowly:

His RAAF timeline looks something like this:

• 10 Oct 1941 – 4 I.T.S. (Victor Harbour)
  • 31 Jan 1942 – 5 days’ leave
• 05 Feb 1942 – No. 3 E.F.T.S Essendon
• 20 Apr 1942 – No. 11 E.F.T.S Bonalla
  • Embarked Sydney 9/8/1942
  • Disembarked Canada 2/9/1942
• 02 Sep 1942 – No. 3 “M” Depot Edmonton
• 27 Sep 1942 – No. 4 E.F.T.S Aylmer
• 22 Jan 1943 – Appointed to a commissioned rank
  • 23 Jan 1943 – 14 days leave
  • 10 Apr 1943 – 7 days leave
  • 29 Jun 1943 – 14 days leave
  • 16 Jul 1943 – Embarked New York
  • 17 Jul 1943 – Embarked Halifax, Canada
  • 22 Jul 1943 – Disembarked UK
• 22 Jul 1943 – Promoted
• 23 Jul 1943 – No.11 P.D.R.C.
  • 10 Aug 1943 – 7 days leave
• 23 Aug 1943 – A.C.O.S. Sidmouth
• 05 Oct 1943 – No.1. O.T.U. Thornaby
• 08 Oct 1943 – 5 O.T.U.

His progression was marred by an incident where he was courtmartialed for stealing 4 gallons of petrol from Essendon on 14th April 1942, and so spent 90 days in military detention (and was docked 91 days’ pay). When he continued his training after a four month gap, he was inevitably a little rusty at first but soon got back on track. He gained his pilot wings in January 1943, and flew several types of plane (Yale, Harvard, Hudson, Anson?)

Sadly, on 29th November 1943 Jack Keane was killed in an air accident in a Hudson at Loughmore in County Antrim, one mile south-east of Dunadry.

Signatures

Everyone loves signatures, so here are some of Jack Keane’s from the file:

Jack Keane’s Personal Effects

A little bit more digging revealed that the A705 (Directorate of Personnel Services RAAF) Casualty Section report for Jack Keane had (to my surprise) already been digitised (and I’d missed it).

According to the report, this included:

Much as you’d expect, there’s a map of New York, a Statue of Liberty souvenir, eleven souvenir coins, plus a map of Chicago and a “Menu of Wings party”. This was all sent in a “steel trunk” and a “tin suitcase” (blue metal).

After his personal effects were delivered by hand to Mrs Keane on 13th September 1944, she wrote to complain that many of Jack’s things were missing (p.12):

From the records, it seems that these missing items were never recovered or returned.

Sadly, I also have to add that the report on the accident (included in the report) noted that Jack Keane was the pilot of the plane that crashed. Having completed a bombing exercise, he proceeded to perform some steep turns (as part of some “unauthorised flying”), one of which to port caused the engines to stall. The problem was that this happened too close to the surface, meaning that Keane had insufficient time to regain control of the plane in the air before it hit the ground.

Probably not the Somerton Man’s suitcase…

Though it was well worth pursuing this whole lead through the archival trail, it now seems perfectly clear that the Somerton Man’s suitcase was neither the “steel trunk” nor the “tin suitcase” in which Jack Keane’s personal effects returned to Brunswick East. Similarly, the contents of the Somerton Man’s suitcase seem entirely unlike the items listed above. Though Keane had plenty of ties (6 black, 1 blue, 1 blue check), there was also no sign of the Somerton Man’s mysterious white tie (which has vexed us all so much).

And so we are – alas – back to square one, even if that is a familiar place for Somerton Man researchers.

Cipher Mysteries readers may recall that I recently suggested that, to find out more on the suggested connection between Carl Webb and the “C Webb” at Swinburne Technical College in the early 1920s, it would be good to ask the archivists at Swinburne (now Winburne University). Well, I did: but sadly the only things they were aware of were the same football team photographs we had all been debating here. They too tried cross-referencing between different photographs, but (like us) only managed to work out a couple of names.

I also suggested that more information might be found in the Examination Results books for Swinburne Technical College, though these were held not by Swinburne but by the Public Records Office of Victoria. So you can probably imagine my delight when Melbourne-based CM commenter Jo took time out from the demands of doing a PhD to look at these very same results books!

Charles Webb’s Examination Results

What Jo found were not only the two “beautifully bound” Examination Results books for the 1909-1929 Engineering Department I had hoped for, but also the 1916-1922 Departmental and Annual Supps book, “a rather more used looking book, comprising type written pages glued onto the pages of more officious looking ledger”, and where results were often signed off “Yours obediently”.

Hence we can merge these two sources together to get a timeline for what Webb was studying there:

1920:

• Practical Plane Geometry [Pass]:

• Arithmetic (Practical Mathematics) (73)

• Algebra (Practical Mathematics) (90) joint 2nd with Lisle Clegg behind Douglas Dumsday:

• Geometry (60)

1921:

• Algebra Grade I [73]:

• Practical Solid Geometry – Fail! (Footballer A. Dubberlin failed the same class)

• Junior Technical Certificate – Pass with Credit [“C Webb”]

• Education Department Technical Schools Annual Examinations in Practical Mathematics [Pass]:

• Elementary Modelling. (No photo)

1922:

• Engineering Drawing Grade I [75] Credit:

• Electricity and Magnetism I [62]:

Absent from the archives

Even though historical archives are – almost necessarily – incomplete, there are some obvious gaps. For a start, the list of Scholarships awarded to Evening Students in 1921 by the College Council included only Leonard Bennett and Stanley Preece (i.e. no sign of Webb), which is perhaps a little odd.

But more importantly, there seems to be no sign of Webb there after 1922, even though (for example) fellow footballer Austin Marshall continued taking his Engineering and Building subjects through to 1924.

Why? In my opinion, the most likely explanation is that Carl Webb (born 1905) was only at Swinburne Technical College for two years. From the electoral rolls, his family had lived at Camperdown (120 miles west of Melbourne) until around 1918, before next appearing in Malvern (64 Glenferrie Rd) in 1922, and then Oakleigh (50 Kangaroo Rd) in 1924. Glenferrie Rd itself runs directly north straight to Swinburne Tech, and is five miles by bike or tram: whereas Oakleigh is just a little bit further (more like seven miles).

So my guess is that the Webb family moved from Malvern to Oakleigh during 1922, at which point Charles stopped going to Swinburne. Yet we know that, according to Russell Webb (reported in the Camperdown Herald) Carl Webb was still “going to school” in November 1926. (And, as noted below, Webb received a scholarship to study further, and was an “electrical fitter” later in the same decade.) So… which college could Carl Webb have moved to after Swinburne?

Jo points out that “Technical schools were still quite new, their establishment was provided for by the Education Act of 1910 (though some like Swinburne and the Melbourne Working Men’s College [later RMIT] were already up and running by then). The first Chief Inspector of Technical Schools was appointed in 1911.“

In practice, technical colleges in Victoria all seem to be clustered either close to Melbourne or miles & miles away (e.g. Geelong, Bendigo, Echuca, Daylesford, Sale, Wangaratta, Yallourn, Ballarat School of Mines, etc). However, I did manage to find one (non-Swinburne) Technical College in the south-eastern suburbs – Caulfield Technical School (which opened in 1922). (Note that Moorabbin Technical School seems to have opened only in 1939, which is too late for Webb: and there may possibly have been something in Frankston, but I’m not sure.)

Looking in Trove, Caulfield Technical School ran courses in Coach Building, Farriery, Blacksmithing, Memory Drawing, Geometrical Drawing, Engineering Drawing, Model Drawing, Drawing From a Flat Example, Drawing Plant Forms From Nature, Mechanics and Heat, Millinery, Dress Making, Applied Mechanics, Algebra, Geometry, Carpentry (a very popular course), Turning and Fitting, Machine Shop Practice, Typing, Shorthand, Plumbing, English (Student teachers), Commercial English, Economic Geology, Signwriting, Milling and Gear Cutting, and Bookkeeping. And probably others too.

However, the single thing that unites all the numerous examination results listings from Caulfield Technical School that appear in Trove (I’ve checked up to 1927) is the complete absence of anything close to “C Webb”. So, despite the College’s excellent physical proximity to Malvern, it’s currently looking to me very much as though Carl Webb didn’t go there after Swinburne. Which is a shame, but eet ees what eet ees.

So… where next?

Hence we’re back to the eternal question – carve it on thy gravestone, O researchers!

Was there a different technical school in the south-east Melbourne suburbs that I’ve completely missed? Or did Carl Webb instead take up some kind of part-time / evening apprenticeship with a local firm? If the latter, we’re probably close to the end of the line here… but never say never, etc etc.

And yet… having now read up on how Senior Technical Scholarships work (they were awarded at a State level), I’m looking again at the 1921 scholarships awarded locally by Swinburne (on p.8 of The Swinburnian), which is where the Swinburne ball first (or do I mean “furst”?) started rolling:

SCHOLARSHIP WINNERS FOR 1921.
Engineering.—Day Course: H. R. Corr, L. A. Clegg, A. E. Dubberlin, A. O. Griffiths, A. G. Marshall, H. T. Popple. Evening Course: W. H. Sydserff, W . G. Gosbell, J. G. Endersbee, C. Webb.

My best guess now is that these were scholarships awarded by Swinburne to their best students to enable them to continue their education at any (i.e. not just Swinburne) Technical College or University in Melbourne / Victoria. So perhaps the route forward here is to (somehow) look at all Melbourne further education institutions offering evening courses in electrical engineering (or similar) in 1922. My starting point list of these looks like this (though I don’t yet know which specifically offered evening classes):

• Melbourne University
• Footscray Technical School
• West Melbourne Technical School
• Collingwood Technical School
• Castlemaine Technical School

It’s also possible that Webb used his scholarship money to stay in Maribyrnong with Freda Keane and Gerald Thomas Keane during this period (in which case Footscray Technical School would seem the most likely), but that’s no more than a hopeful guess at this point.

What do you think?

Ever since a Cipher Mysteries commenter noticed that a C Webb seemed to be linked to Swinburne Technical College, there’s been a lot of active discussion here about whether or not we have a photograph of our man. Though I’ll try to summarise the discussion below, note that I haven’t yet had a reply from the librarians / archivists at Swinburne (I asked whether they had student records from the 1920s, and if so if there was a Carl Webb listed), so this identification still falls short of 100%.

Football Crazy

The starting point is essentially this: that given that Carl Webb (b. 1905) is listed in the Victoria electoral rolls up to 1939 as an electrical fitter, he must have learnt his trade somewhere. So where?

Commenter Furphy kicked off the whole process with a comment noting that there was a “C Webb” of basically the right age in a picture of the Swinburne Technical College U-16 football team, Minor Premiers 1921. Though this helpfully lists the players’ names (“D Whitfield, K Millar, A Alderson, J Wilson, R James, R Hulse, J Scott, C Webb, A Mahsall, A Dubberlin, H Ainsworth, C Oriander, T Anderson, F Ward, A West, W Hunt, B Stockfield, W Taylor, G Wilson, H Derrick, Sportsmaster D C Chat”), it doesn’t actually say who is who.

Interestingly, we know from Trove (found by commenter Pat from Brazil) that Carl Webb was still playing football in October 1930:

During football playing on Show Day, Mr. C. Webb, of the bakery, fell and again injured his leg, thus placing him on the resting list.

However, Swinburne Technical College is in Central Melbourne and the Webb family home was in Camperdown (1916/1918), then Malvern (64 Glenferrie Rd in 1922) then Oakleigh (50 Kangaroo Rd in 1924/1925/1926/1927) then Springvale (Springvale Rd from 1928 onwards), so it’s not an obviously perfect fit. Yet Charles Webb doesn’t appear on the electoral rolls at Oakleigh, not even for 1927 (you had to be over 21 years to vote): his first entry is in Springvale (as an “electrical fitter”) in 1928. So while it seems a reasonable guess that he was living in the family home during that period, it’s not 100% certain.

Furphy was also far from sure that any of the footballers’ faces strongly resembled the Somerton Man (though admittedly 27 years older and deceased). All the same, it’s a great starting point, one that begged to be advanced further…

Electrical Fitter

According to the Camperdown Herald, 01 Nov 1926 (again found by Pat), Carl Webb (Russell Webb’s youngest brother) was still “going to school” then, which I think fits the pattern of Carl Webb training as an electrical fitter in 1926 rather well:

Russell R .Webb, baker, Camperdown, said his father was suffering from an injury to the knee. He had two brothers, both going to school. There were three sisters, one was married. Exemption till November 30.

And so it wasn’t a huge surprise (to me, at least) when Furphy quickly found a different reference to C Webb at Swinburne, in The Swinburnian, vol. 1, no. 1, December 1922, p. 8:

“Engineering.—Day Course: H. R. Corr, L. A. Clegg, A. E. Dubberlin, A. O. Griffiths, A. G. Marshall, H. T. Popple. Evening Course: W. H. Sydserff, W . G. Gosbell, J. G. Endersbee, C. Webb. ”

Matching Other Players

This was the point where commenter Behrooz had the smart idea of cross-referencing the faces in the photo against other Swinburne photos. Other photos are accompanied by lists of names in order, which makes it very easy to see who is who. For example, this 1922 photo has “A Marshall” on the right end of the middle row:

Similarly, this 1923 image has A Marshall and G Wilson at the left-hand end of the middle row:

So here’s A Marshall in 1922:

And here’s A Marshall and G Wilson in 1923:

With this, I think we can identify G Wilson in the original photo as sitting in the front row (albeit with a slightly shorter hair cut):

And also A Marshall (front row, right end):

At Last, The Photo of Carl Webb (maybe)

However, even though the comparisons are really interesting, I disagree with Behrooz when he then tries to force a zigzag numbering onto the original list of names. Rather, I suspect that commenter Rena was correct to visually identify the footballer on the left end of the middle row as ‘our’ C Webb. For me, it’s the ears & nose that really do it, but perhaps you’ll disagree:

Any other opinions? Or any other Swinburne Technical College photos that prove this wrong?

If you look Carl Webb up in the Victoria electoral rolls (and indeed on his marriage certificate), you find him describing his job as “electrical fitter” (up to 1939), and then “instrument maker”. What do these mean? I certainly didn’t know; and from the looks of things, nobody else had much idea either.

Luckily, there seems to be a single right answer…

Industrial Pay Grades

Enthusiastic online commenter Pat in Brazil found a helpful presentation on the RAAF (warning: Prezi motion sickness alert on PCs!), where the most interesting part was grabbed from a 1940 article in Trove (of course it was).

I don’t believe that the RAAF invented any of these terms, they seems almost certain to have been the standard industrial pay grades for technical factory work used in Australia circa 1940.

Carl Webb’s Workplaces…?

Up until about 1939, we know (also from the Victoria electoral rolls) that Carl Webb was living in the Webb family home in Dandenong, before then moving to South Yarra. So if we’re looking for his places of work, these should be the two starting points.

After 1939, I think it probable that Webb (who seems not to have done any military service, despite being fit as a butcher’s dog) was working in one of the rapidly expanding Melbourne munitions factories.

His father-in-law Jack Comber Robertson was Inspector of Munitions, so perhaps Webb met his wife-to-be at a munitions factory social event, such as a 1940 dance? Perhaps this will appear in Trove, who knows?

As for before 1939, I briefly speculated whether Webb might have worked in a munitions factory in Dandenong itself. However, commenter Catherine (“Dandenong gal born and bred”) never heard of a munitions factory in her area, so that seems like it was a tad over-hopeful on my part.

All the same, Dandenong did have a good number of other factories, so I think it would be far from mad to bet that Webb worked in one of those.

Maribyrnong?

From about 1939 on, it could easily be that Webb worked at Defence Explosive Factory Maribyrnong. But that is a huge topic, which I’ll leave for another day (and to make sure this post doesn’t blow up too much). 😁