Search Results: Baccarat

For some time, I have been looking at the Somerton Man case from the point of view of tangible evidence. For a start, the much-repeated belief that he was unidentified simply doesn’t hold true: the suitcase that he (without any real doubt) left at the railway station contained three items with the name “KEANE” on them. And any reconstruction of his life (or indeed death) that starts with some kind of spy thriller-inspired ‘clean-up crew’ sanitising his effects to cover up his real name is just of zero interest to me.

So, whether you happen to like it or not, he has a surname: KEANE.

Us and Them

Of course, the South Australian Police searched high and low (and even interstate) for anybody with that particular surname who had recently gone missing. But no such person ever turned up. Even when Gerry Feltus managed to track down the mysterious nurse (whose phone number had been written on the back of the Rubaiyat connected to the dead man by a slip of paper in his trouser fob pocket), he encountered nothing apart from evasions and stonewalling from her.

Gerry knew he was being shut out of the truth, but didn’t know why. I think it should have been obvious because, as I’ve blogged before, this specific behaviour has a name: omertà, the Mafia / gangster code of silence. The nurse’s husband – Prosper (“George”) Thomson – had been tangled up with some Melbourne gangster second-hand car dealers, the name of one of whom he specifically refused to reveal in his court case against Daphne Page. So any suggestion that the nurse knew nothing of gangsters or the gangland code of silence would be completely untenable, in my opinion.

What I think Gerry perhaps didn’t grasp was the degree of antipathy that Australians felt towards the police (and even the law itself) in the period after the Second World War. In particular, the Price Commission’s arbitrary price-pegging (carried over from the war years) meant that many people’s economic activities were suddenly only viable on the black market. Trove is full of stories of butchers and greengrocers being prosecuted because they charged at the wrong price: this was a sustained failure of the social contract between a government and its people.

Really, the Price Commission made criminals of just about everyone: buying or selling a car almost inevitably became an exercise in white-collar crime. The main beneficiary of all this was organized crime groups, which clawed their way into dockside unions, off-track gambling, baccarat schools, betting on two-up, and dodgy car sales (particularly interstate, and particularly with imported American cars). Even with meat and vegetable sales!

Put all this together, and you see that the post-Second World War years in Australia were a time of Us and Them, with ‘Them’ being the government and the police. The police were really not loved: but neither were the gangsters who enabled and controlled lots of the activity on the other side of the same line. So the widespread dislike of the police was mirrored by a dislike of the gangsters, along with a fear of violent gangland reprisals.

To my eyes, this is the historical context that’s missing from people’s reconstructions of the Somerton Man’s world.

The Sound of Silence

We hear the sound of silence in the Daphne Page court case, and we hear it in Jo Thomson’s long decades of stonewalling: but I think we hear it loudest of all in the sustained lack of response to the Somerton Man. Remember:

• Nobody saw him.
• Nobody said a word.
• No trace was found.

Bless Gerry Feltus’ heart, but he only allowed himself to draw inferences from what people did say: where they remained silent, he was blocked.

For me, though, this sound of silence tells us one thing above all else: that the Somerton Man moved in gangster circles. I have no doubt at all that there were plenty of people in Adelaide and elsewhere who knew exactly who he was, but chose to say nothing. He was, as per my post on this some years ago, not so much the “Unknown Man” as the “Known Man”: despite clearly having a surname, he was an Unnameable Man.

This may not superficially appear like much, but anything that can winnow down the (apparently still rising) mountain of historical chaff to even moderately manageable proportions is a huge step in the right direction.

But how does being sure he was connected to gangsters help us, exactly?

The Baccarat School Nitkeeper

In January 1949, “two prominent Melbourne baccarat players” came forward to say that they thought the man had worked as a nitkeeper in a Lonsdale Street baccarat school “about four years previously” (i.e. ~1945). They thought he had worked there for ten weeks before disappearing, never to be seen again (until his face was in the paper, that is).

Of all the mountains of Somerton Man-related speculation and punditry, this alone stood out for me as something that could be worked with, as a research lead that had some kind of archival promise. And so I have assiduously read hundreds of articles and new reports in Trove, to try to make sense of how this part of the post-war economy worked.

It’s true that a fair few policeman back then took bribes from the gambling bosses to turn a blind eye (this was remarked upon in numerous news stories of the day). But even so, one striking fact is that the laws in Victoria relating to nitkeeping were much harsher than elsewhere in Australia:

• First offence: £20
• Second offence: £250
• Third offence: six months in prison

Because principals paid nitkeepers’ fines, it simply wasn’t in their interest to hire anyone with a prior conviction for nitkeeping, not when the fine for a second conviction leapt up to a staggering £250.

From this, my suspicion is that the man the two baccarat players were talking about had been caught in a raid after working in Melbourne for ten weeks and fined £20. And with a fine under his belt, none of the schools would then re-hire him as a nitkeeper: that would have been the end of the line.

Moreover, Byron Deveson uncovered SAPOL records for a John Joseph Keane (apparently born in 1898) who had been convicted of hindering / nitkeeping in Adelaide, and whom I then pursued through Trove.

If only I could see the Victoria court records for 1944 / 1945…

Victoria Petty Sessions Court

The records for the Victoria Petty Sessions Court are behind a findmypast paywall. So here’s what it threw up for John Keane (some or none of which may be our man John Joseph Keane):

1. The Geelong ledger is dated 23rd September 1924. “Defendant at Geelong on the 7th September 1924 did behave in an offensive manner in a public place, to wit Eastern Beach”. Pleaded guilty, but case was dismissed.
2. [John Francis Keane]: “Defendant between 10th and 11th December 1929 at [Geelong?] did break and enter the warehouse of the Geelong [???] Water Company Pty and steal therein 13 cases of Dewars whisky seven cases of Johnny Walker whisky five cases of Gilbeys gin and two cases of Hennesys brandy valued at £190”. Result: “Committed for trial at the first sittings of the Supreme Court to be held in Geelong 1930. Bail allowed accused in the sum of £200/-/-.”
3. [J Keane] Colac Courts, Victoria. 17th March 1930, Conviction: “Drunk”.
4. The Geelong ledger is dated 19th March 1940, but the stamp on the page is marked 10th Feb 1940. The Sergeant of Police was Arthur De La Rue. Keane (and indeed 49 others) were accused of: “Defendant at Geelong did commit a breach of Act 3749 Section 148 – Found in common gaming house”. The case was “Dismissed”.
5. The Geelong ledger is dated 24th November 1944, but the stamp on the page related to Keane’s being found (along with 25 others) in a common gaming house on 25th September 1944, with a summons dated 11th October 1944. The case was adjourned until 8th December 1944. The Senior Constable of Police was Colin Egerton.
6. On 8th December 1944, Keane returned to Geelong court and admitted that he had been present on that occasion, but pleaded not guilty. There seems to be no records of the court’s response (most of the other defendants on that occasion were represented by a Mr Sullivan, and pled that they had not been present), but the other defendants who also admitted being present while pleading not guilty were discharged with a caution.

So, no definitive results here. Bah!

John Joseph Keane – BDM

Finally: are there any fragments of Birth / Death / Marriages that we might stitch together to eliminate some or all of the possible John Joseph Keanes out there? Here’s what I found:

Findmypast lists:

• John Joseph Keane born 1898, died 1950 in Shepp (registration 21625).
• John Joseph Keane marrying Florence Mary Clancy in Victoria in 1930 (registration 6892)
• John Joseph Keane marrying Alma Maude McKay in Victoria in 1939 (registration 346)

FamilySearch.org lists:

• John Joseph Keane died 20th January 1941, buried West Terrace Cemetery, Adelaide (billiongraves image). Also with the same headstone: Delia McKague (died 15th January 1939, findmypast says she was born in 1863 and died in Glen Osmond), Kevin Newland Keane (died 29th June 1967, findmypast says KNK was born in 1902, married Alleyne Maud(e) Dinnis (born 1905) 19th December 1927, lived at 6 Smith St Southwark), and Marguerite Ellen Wilson (died 12th April 1984 aged 85 years).
• John Joseph Keane (retired) died 7th August 1967, in Brunswick, Victoria
• John Joseph Keane (grocer) died 17th June 1972, in Castlemaine, Victoria

If there’s a way of stitching all, some or even a few of these strands together, I for one certainly can’t see it yet. But perhaps you will?

OK, we’ve had a few posts looking for (what turned out to be) Thomas Joseph Kean (1898-1968) from Forestville, who was – I’m now moderately sure – the first of the two men flagged up by Byron Deveson. So now it’s time to move onto John Joseph Keane of Union Street, Dulwich, Adelaide, who was a bookmaker’s clerk and nitkeeper in the years before WW2.

As before, we have little to go on. Keane’s age was reported as being 34 on 5/9/1932, and as being 40 on 26/1/1939: if both are correct, they imply he was born between 27/1/1898 and 5/9/1898, which is a tolerably narrow range of birth dates. And he was a bookmaker’s clerk in 1939. What can Trove tell us?

Bookmaker’s Licence

Here’s something that we might reasonably identify with our elusive man, from the Adelaide Advertiser, 11 Aug 1934:

BETTING CONTROL BOARD.
NOTICE is hereby given that the BOOKMAKER’S LICENCE heretofore granted by the Betting Control Board to MERVYN GIFFORD WILSON, has been CANCELLED by the Betting Control Board.
NOTICE is also given that the under-mentioned bookmakers have NOT RENEWED their LICENCES to bet after the 31st JULY 1934.
KEANE John Joseph.
HEATH George Moore.
MOSS Roy Henry.
NOTICE is also given that all persons (if any) who may have CLAIMS against any of the above mentioned bookmakers, in respect of betting transactions, must file the claims with full particulars thereof at the office of the Betting Control Board not later than the 31st day of AUGUST, 1934, and NOTICE is hereby given that any claims made after the said 31st day of August 1934 will be disregarded by the Betting Control Board so that they will not be covered by the Security or Bond held by the Board.
By order of the Board.
A. G. ALEXANDER Secretary. 17 Flinders Street, Adelaide.

Knowing that, it didn’t take long to find the matching licencing notice, in the Adelaide Advertiser of 9th Feb 1934:

J. J. Keane. 29 Stuart road, Dulwich

J. J. Keane has registered a shop at 29 Stuart road, Dulwich. On one side of the premises are private residences, and there are private homes opposite.

Note that there was also an Adelaide bookmaker called Edmund Joseph Keane, as per this Adelaide News report of 3rd Oct 1935:

Youth Fined for Being In Betting Shop
A fine of £6 with 15/ costs was imposed by Mr. H. M. Muirhead, P.M. in the Adelaide Police Court today on Harry Britt, aged 19, of Park terrace, North Unley, unemployed. Britt pleaded guilty to a charge of having, on September 25, at Adelaide, been present on the licensed bookmaking premises of Edmund Joseph Keane, at South terrace, Adelaide.

Note that this Edmund Keane also did not renew his bookmaking licence on 1st August 1936, according to the notice in the Adelaide News of 7 Aug 1936.

A Fool’s Gold Rush?

The reason that so many bookmakers were popping up in 1934 was that the Lottery and Gaming Act of 1933 had simultaneously decriminalised and licensed off-track bookmaking in South Australia. As a result, there had been a sudden gold rush of people applying for bookmaking licences. Many of the Sportsmen’s clubs of the day were complaining, saying that there were now far too many bookmakers, and that the whole business had become unsustainable: and why oh why can’t we go back to the good old days of on-track betting only? (etc)

At the same time, billiard halls (which were where a great deal of illegal betting had previously been carried) were feeling the pinch from all the new (legal) bookmakers eating their metaphorical lunch: and so many of them too applied for betting licences (but were initially turned down). Billiard hall owners wanted bookmakers to be situated a certain distance away from residential areas as part of their licence conditions, so that both groups could compete fairly with each other: as normal, there were many conflicting opinions.

Whichever way you look at it, though, there was a sharp spike in gambling at that time, as well as an oversupply of (newly-legal) off-track bookmakers. Hence it probably shouldn’t be surprising to us that John Joseph Keane not only applied for a bookmaker’s licence in February 1934 (right at the start of the wave) but also didn’t renew his licence in August 1934 (presumably when bookmaking failed to work out as well as he – and indeed many others – had hoped). Basically, it was like opening a vape shop in 2018. 😉

Dulwich Addresses

We now have several Dulwich addresses for John Joseph Keane through the 1930s:

• Greenhill road (30 Aug 1933) – unspecified, illegal wireless radio
• 29 Stuart road [rented] (09 Feb 1934) – bookmaker, n/a
• [16] Union street (13 Aug 1936) – labourer, hindering
• [16] Union street (25 Jan 1939) – bookmaker’s clerk, hindering

Commenter milongal previously found (via the S&M directory) that there was a “J J Keane, clerk” living at 16 Union Street, Dulwich “from at least 1937 to 1940 […] the clerk in Union St”, which fits neatly with the above timeline. Milongal also found a further “J J Keane” living in (no number) Shierlaw Street, Richmond from about 1940 to 1947, who may or may not be the same person.

As an aside, milongal also noted that “15 Union St was a Billiard Hall with a gambling license (proprietor JJ Collins, I think)”. Similarly, I just noticed that 17 Union Street was the 1935 address of course bookmaker F. J. Dally (“Special Flat” section).

So it seems reasonably likely to me that all these people had ended up in the Venn diagram intersection between struggling billiard hall people and struggling bookmaker people, trying desperately to make ends meet until (say) the whole baccarat school scam took off in the mid-1940s. That, or the whole war-time inter-state Price Commission black market car scam. 🙂

Where Next From Here?

Awkwardly, the answer right now is that I don’t really know. Perhaps there are other police records or police gazettes we should be looking at?

In the absence of any obvious family information to go scurrying around with, Trove also seems a little parched and desert-like. Can you find any Australian ‘John Joseph Keane’s at all born in the narrow date range? (I found seventeen ‘John Keane’s born in Ireland in 1898, but that’s not a huge amount of use.)

And yes, I know about the John Joseph Keane born in Adelaide in 1896, but he doesn’t seem to be our man. 🙁

The ever-industrious Byron Deveson recently started to attack the fallow ground of Australian police gazettes with his investigatory trowel, and as a consequence has just dug up two intriguing new Kean(e)s for us to track down.

#1. Thomas John Kean(e) of Forestville

The first interesting Kean(e) that Byron found in the South Australia Police Gazette was caught drinking alcohol illegally in Glenelg:

Thomas John Keane (38). ……breaches of the Licensing Act, Section 150 at the All Night Cafe, Glenelg. … fined two (pounds) and costs one (pound)…. Tried at Glenelg 28/1/1937.”

Keane’s stated age was 38, so this would make his year of birth 1898 (or 1899 at a stretch). According to this Adelaide ‘Tizer article from 29 Jan 1937, Thomas John Kean was a clerk from Forestville (almost certainly the Forestville that is an Adelaide suburb just beside the main road heading out towards Glenelg, not the one in northern Sydney):

Michael Hilary Galvin, tailor, of Glenelg, and Thomas John Kean, clerk, of Forestville, were each fined £2, with £1 costs, by Messrs. A. Martin and J. C. Comley, in the Glenelg Magistrates’ Court yesterday, for having on Sunday, January 17, drunk liquor on unlicensed premises known as the All Night Cafe, Moseley square.

The same All-Night Cafe was advertising for day staff in 30th November 1948, so it’s a reasonably safe bet it was open on the night that the Somerton Man died:

WAITRESS, part or full time, no night work, good hours. All Night Cafe, Glenelg. X 2182.

Perhaps this was also where the Somerton Man had his late-night pasty, who can say? It’s a better theory than just about anything I’ve heard so far.

I then went looking for Keanes in Forestville (there can’t have been that many there back then, can there?), and found a Sapper L. J. Keane from Forestville in the 1st Australian General Hospital in Heliopolis in 1916 (here and here). A Mr L. J. Keane’s mother-in-law passed away in 1921 (she was from Adelaide & had family in Broken Hill, there’s another Trove link here).

DICKER.-On the 6th November, at her residence, 52 West terrace, City, Mary Ann (relict of Joseph Dicker), and beloved mother of R Dicker, and of Mrs. L. J. Keane, of West terrace, and sister of Mrs. M. Cullard and Mr. H. F. Nott, of Broken Hill, aged 45 years.

A young May Kean of 41 First avenue, Forestville sent this joke in to the 13 Jun 1936 Adelaide Mail:

Customer— Ginger ale.
Waiter— Pale?
Customer — No; just a glass.
May Kean, 41 First avenue, Forestville — Yellow Certificate.

Are any of these Forestville Kean(e)s connected to Thomas John Kean? Whatever happened to Thomas John Kean? Any answers that Cipher Mysteries genealogists can uncover would be really appreciated!

#2. John Joseph Kean(e) of Dulwich

Given my recent post (which explored the suggestion by two Melbourne baccarat players that the Somerton Man was a ‘nitkeeper’ at a Lonsdale Street baccarat school circa 1944), Byron’s second new Keane looks like he might just be research gold.

John Joseph Keane (34) … breach of the Lottery and Gaming Act …. at Arab Street Hotel, Adelaide. Tried at Adelaide 5/9/1932.

30 Aug 1933
FINED FOR UNLICENSED WIRELESS SETS
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/128425875
The following persons were fined in the Adelaide Police Court today for having used unlicensed wireless sets:- Albert William Sutton, of Leader street, Forestville (£5 in all): John Joseph Keane, of Greenhill road, Dulwich (£1 15/); […]

14 Aug 1936
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/48169753
John Joseph Keane, laborer, of Union street. Dulwich, was fined £5, with £1 costs, by Mr. Morgan, S.M., in No. 2 Adelaide Police Court yesterday, on a charge of having on June 17 hindered Constables Mitchell and Lavender while they were endeavoring to detect liquor offences at the Imperial Hotel, city. He pleaded not guilty.

13 Aug 1936
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/131875215
Hindered Police.
John Joseph Keane, laborer, of Dulwich, was fined £5 with £1 costs by Mr. Morgan, S.M., in the Adelaide Police Court today for having hindered two members of the police force in the execution of their duty in King William street on June 17.

25 Jan 1939
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/49791434
Charged With Hindering Police
The hearing of a charge against John Joseph Kean, bookmaker’s clerk, of Union street, Dulwich, of having, on December 25, unlawfully hindered Constables Shipway and Horsnell while they were endeavoring to detect breaches of the Licensing Act, was adjourned until tomorrow by Mr. Muirhead, P.M., in the Adelaide Police Court yesterday.

John Joseph Keane (40) ……..hindering police (nit keeping) at the Seven Stars Hotel, Adelaide. Tried at Adelaide on 26/1/1939.

27 Jan 1939
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/74411920
Hindering Charge Dismissed
A charge against John Joseph Kean, bookmaker’s clerk, of Union street, Dulwich, of having, on December 25, unlawfully hindered Constables Shipway and Horsnell while they were endeavoring to detect breaches of the Licensing Act, was dismissed by Mr. Muirhead, P.M., in the Adelaide Police Court yesterday.

In case you don’t know (I certainly didn’t), Dulwich is a suburb of Eastern Adelaide, so not too far away from the Somerton Man action.

If the Somerton Man were to turn out to have been a bookmaker’s clerk (and indeed a nitkeeper), that might turn a lot of what we know about him on its head. For example, we would probably need no explanation as to why the South Australian Grandstand Bookmakers’ Association so generously paid for his burial licence, “to prevent the victim being buried as a pauper“.

So, whatever happened to “John Joseph Kean, bookmaker’s clerk, of Union street, Dulwich”?

One Final Thought…

I hope it’s not just me who noticed that there’s something a bit odd about the two Kean(e)s. Both were born in 1898: both had John in their name; both were “clerks”; both were connected to Adelaide; both were in light trouble with the police; neither seemed to be able to spell their shared surname.

Might these two men have in fact been the same person? Entries in the police gazettes of the day were rife with crims using multiple identities (often not too different from each other so they can remember them all), so this dodgy Mr Kean(e) was not the first person to have aliases.

Seventy years ago this weekend, a man’s body was found on Somerton Beach just south-west of Adelaide: our inability to identify this “Somerton Man” or even to reconstruct any significant part of his life has turned him into one of South Australia’s favourite cold cases. His unexplained death has inspired books, novels, TV documentaries and countless web pages and blog posts: behind this mini-industry is a panoply of breathless conspiracy theories, ranging from spurned suicidal lover to Russian rocket spy to inter-state car criminal (as if anyone would even consider such a thing, hrrmmmh).

On this day, though, I think it’s time to take a rest from that whole treadmill, and to look at the Somerton Man from a quite different angle.

History, Evidence, Disappointment

Cold cases are, almost definition, historical: so to “do history” on them, we need to select both historical evidence and a historical methodology / mindset.

But even though social historians love nothing more than diaries, journals, or even tax records of ordinary people, for the Somerton Man we only have what one might call tertiary social history evidence – incidental objects of low social signification such as cigarettes, laundry tags, chewing gum, combs, and (what I would categorise as) a fairly random assortment of men’s clothes. Can we read social history clues and cues to locate the Somerton Man in a social milieu? People have tried this trick, for sure: but I think it is fair to say that this has yielded very little of use.

Similarly, even though political historians tend to work from a more high-end (yet slim) frame of reference (from Chifley to Churchill), it hasn’t stopped researchers from trying to read the mysterious unreadable note attributed to the Somerton Man as implying some kind of espionage-centric back-story for him: a Russian spy scouting out South Australia’s uranium secrets, or defecting from some international conference. Yet the supposed ‘tradecraft’ evidence holding this aloft is something that I’ve never found any genuine substance to.

Finally, despite the South Australian police’s loss of almost all its evidence (Gerry Feltus had only a small folder of fragments to work with), hundreds of newspaper articles on Trove plus the detailed text of inquest reports have yielded a fine factual slurry for researchers to sieve and then rake over in search of That Single Golden Nugget Of Information That Turns Everything Upside Down. Yet even the massed eyeballs of the Internet’s army of DIY forensic historians – sometimes derided as armchair detectives, but who have actually managed to uncover all manner of interesting evidence – have struggled to gain any significant kind of purchase on the Somerton Man’s slippy upwards slopes. What was his profession? What was his nationality? Satisfactory answers remain out of reach for even such (apparently basic) questions as “if the Somerton Man wasn’t “T. Keane”, why did his suitcase have T. Keane’s tie and underwear?”

In short, none of the historical hats we have worn when we try to understand the Somerton Man seems to have had the (mythical) power of a Holmesian deerstalker: and is the game even afoot in the way many (most?) people think it really ought to be? The answer would seem to be that it is not.

As of December 2018, I don’t believe that we have any genuine idea who the Somerton Man was, or precisely why he died (i.e. mishap, murder, or suicide), or where he had come from, or even what he was doing in Adelaide at all. For all of these, we have well-stocked warehouses of might-possibly-have-beens, for sure: but this is a situation only someone wanting to weave and embellish a story around the scanty facts could be truly satisfied with. Anyone who wants to know what happened to lead up to the Somerton Man’s death is, for now, likely to be in a state of disappointment.

Random Clothes

Putting all that accumulated historical disappointment to one side, I actually think we are very close to being able to reconstruct a little about the Somerton Man’s life and times in a useful way: and even if the precise details remain murky (and may remain so for some time), I suspect that there’s still a lot we can now say.

For a start, his clothes were not from a single shop or town or even country (some were American, some were Australian): even his shoes and slippers were different sizes. Others may disagree, but I don’t think this sartorial randomness can be read as a sign of affluence or of taste, or even of implying he was on some kind of undercover operation. Rather, to my eyes it strongly indicates that he was just plain poor – his clothing has all the hallmarks of charity donations, of Seaman’s Missions, of gifts by charity’s hospital visitors.

From all this, I strongly suspect that he, like so many others in the years immediately following WW2, was a recent immigrant to the country (he had air mail stickers in his suitcase), and quite probably not a legal one (no official record of him could be found). Exactly where he originally came from I can’t say: I suspect that the faded tan on his legs may imply that he had earlier that year been working outdoors, perhaps riding horses on a farm. Remember that Paul Lawson stated:

On looking at the deceased legs I am of the opinion that he was used to wearing high heel riding boots. I form that opinion because the muscles of his legs were formed high up behind the knees, similar to the muscles of a woman who wears high heeled shoes. [Gerry Feltus, “The Unknown Man”, p.85.]

I should also note what John Burton Cleland wrote about the air mail stickers:

Air-mail stickers in suitcase – corresponded with some one at a distance – other State more likely than Britain (special air-mail letter forms usually used for latter).

All the same, my current suspicion is that he arrived by surreptitious means (e.g. using fake papers) in Australia around October 1948, perhaps from the United States, perhaps staying in New Zealand for a period of time (where the Rubaiyat seems to have come from) en route, and – like Charles Mikkelsen – was corresponding with one or more people there. But all of that remains just a guess.

The Known Man

Who was the Somerton Man? Apart from the nurse Jessica Harkness / Jo Thomson (who told her daughter that she knew who the Somerton Man was, but wouldn’t tell the police at the time or even Gerry Feltus decades after the event), not a single person has admitted to knowing who he was. Nobody at all! As for me, I don’t believe for a New York second that the Somerton Man somehow entered Australia and made his way to Somerton Beach to die without encountering en route a whole load of people – fifty to a hundred at a minimum – who would subsequently recognize him if they wanted to. And so I think that the title of Gerry Feltus’s book – “The Unknown Man” – belies what I think will prove to be a difficult truth to swallow about the Somerton Man: that a whole set of people knew who he was, but for broadly the same reason chose to say nothing.

The Italian word for this is omertà – a code of silence surrounding Mafia criminal activities, along with a shared, mutual refusal to give any evidence to the police. (Even former police.) Everyone knows what happens to squealers, even the KGB: even though the CIA says the story about captured double agent Pyotr Popov being thrown alive into a furnace isn’t actually true, it is very likely still presented as if it were true to GRU new recruits, to persuade them of the value of “omertà-ski”. And let’s not pretend that the Novichok attack never happened, right?

Anyway, when Gerry Feltus had worked out the name of the (unnamed) nurse whose phone number was written on the specific Rubaiyat connected to the slip of paper in the dead man’s pocket, he interviewed her several times. Yet even though, as a retired police officer, he knew full well that she told him nothing of the truth surrounding the dead man that she was clearly aware of, he never really twigged why that was the case. For me, though, the reason for her prolonged silence seems all too obvious: that she was aware of the omertà surrounding the dead man, and wasn’t prepared to be the first one to say That Which Must Not Be Spoken out loud.

The presence of an Italian organized crime syndicate in Melbourne is something that became all too apparent in the 1960s, with the spate of Victoria Market murders being triggered (literally) by the accession wars following the deaths (by natural causes) of crime godfather Domenico “The Pope” Italiano and his enforcer Antonio “The Toad” Barbara in 1962. This crime group was described at the time in a secret report by John T. Cusack as follows:

It is frequently referred to by its adherents as the Society. Some, particularly outsiders, call it mafia. Actually it is not mafia. The latter is exclusively Sicilian in origin and membership. Since the Society in Australia is exclusively Calabrian, it is obviously a derivation of the ancient Calabrian Secret Criminal Society known as the L’Onorata Societa (The Honoured Society), ‘Ndrangheta (Calabrian dialect for The Honoured Society), also referred to by some as Fibia.

From my perspective, the most powerful explanation for the silence surrounding the Somerton Man would be not that nobody knew who he was, but instead that he was some kind of footsoldier in a criminal society (I would predict Melbourne, given that the Melbourne train arrived in Adelaide early). I suspect this was (in 1948) not the ‘Ndrangheta, but rather home-grown gangsters The Combine (more on that in a moment). More broadly, my inference is that lots of people knew exactly who he was, but deliberately chose to say nothing. Gerry Feltus certainly knew he was being spun a line by Jo Thomson, but perhaps he will live to be surprised by how many people knew who exactly “The (Un)known Man” was.

I hope that some day soon someone will come forward – even anonymously, seventy years on – to defy the code of silence and finally tell even a small part of the Somerton Man’s story.

Daphne Page

What was it like to deal with omertà in Australia in the late 1940s? Fortunately, we have a pretty good idea. Jo Thomson’s (soon-to-be) husband Prosper (George) Thomson got involved in a court case where he was wedged between a lady called Daphne Page and a dangerous Melbourne individual who he would not name in court. The judge seems to have taken a hearty dislike to everyone involved, somewhat reluctantly judging the case in George’s favour but ordering him to pay the costs.

From this, we know that “Early in December [1947] he [Thomson] went to Melbourne to sell a car for another man.” When a cheque from the “other man” bounced, Thomson was unable to do anything about it: and so refused to pass on the “black market balance” (that he hadn’t received) of the failed transaction to Daphne Page back in Adelaide. Page then told him she’d get her whole family to pretend that she’d instead loaned him £400 and would take him to court. In the end, the judge thought that Thomson’s (who had welched on a black market deal with Page when the Melbourne crim he’d sold to had welched on his half of a deal, and then told her to forget all about it) poor behaviour was more legally justifiable than Page’s poor behaviour: but it’s hard to feel grotesquely sympathetic towards either.

But even so, that’s what can easily happen when things as simple as buying or selling a car for its actual value are, thanks to the Price Commission, effectively pushed out onto the black market and criminalized. According to the Barrier Miner 15th June 1948, p.8:

Men in the trade said honest secondhand car dealers had almost been forced out of business during the war. Records showed that 90 per cent of all used car sales were on a friend-to-friend basis and they never passed through the trade.

So: the man the nurse Jo Thomson was living with was directly connected to dangerous Melbourne criminals who operated under a code of silence (George Thomson wouldn’t name the man in court). This is not a conjecture, this is just a consequence of being a garage proprietor and car dealer in 1948, a time when 90% of car buying and selling was done on the black market. Thomson expressed no shame or sorrow for having tried to broker a black market car deal between Daphne Page and Melbourne criminals (even if it went wrong), because that is what he had to do to stay in the car business: you might as well have asked a dog not to bark as ask him to change his ways.

Suggested Links to Melbourne

One story that appeared in the Adelaide News (26th January 1949) (and in the Sydney Daily Telegraph and Geraldton Guardian) suggested a connection between the Somerton Man and a Melbourne baccarat school:

Gamblers believe dead man was “nitkeeper”

Melbourne.- Two promininent Melbourne baccarat players who desire to remain anonymous, believe they knew the unknown man in the “Somerton beach body mystery.”

They saw the man’s picture in a Melbourne newspaper and said they thought they recognised him as a “nitkeeper” who worked at a Lonsdale street baccarat school about four years ago. They could not recall his name.

They said the man talked to few people. He was employed at the baccarat school for about 10 weeks, then left without saying why or where he was going.

Nitkeepers / cockatoos were basically lookout men, hired to stop police and undercover officers from getting inside the door: they were equally part of the street bookie’s world.

Gerry Feltus’s “The Unknown Man” (p.118) also included a cutting from the Mirror (no date given, but much later):

One Mirror “investigator” had more than just an idea to go on.

The Tamam Shud, he said, was more than just a page torn from a book.

It was the usual signature of a man who had twice stood trial for murder.

Every big baccarat player in post-war Melbourne knew who “Tamam Shud” was.

He was the enforcer!

In the hey day of a man called “Twist” he said and “Freddie The Frog” Harrison – himself executed – “Tamam Shud” was known and in [the] nether world of sly grog and illegal baccarat, feared.

Obviously the dead man had fallen afoul of the underworld and had been executed.

In fact, Melbourne detectives had investigated the same theory years before.

But this apparently promising lead had been a dead end.

Note that “Twist” (Jack Eric Twist) and Freddie “The Frog” Harrison (who was killed in 1959) were two of the five people who made up “The Combine”, controlling much of the organized crime in Melbourne in the years following WW2, via the Federated Ship Painters’ and Dockers’ Union. The others were Harold Nugent, Norman Bradshaw (AKA “Cornelius”), and Joseph Patrick “Joey” Turner (AKA “Monash”).

The Lonsdale Street Baccarat School

There’s a nice 1947 introduction to Melbourne’s gambling scene here.

Interestingly, the baccarat school on Lonsdale Street (a part of Melbourne long associated with brothels) was raided and shut down two weeks after the Somerton Man’s death. An article in the Melbourne Argus dated 16th December 1948 runs:

BACCARAT DENS BROKEN, POLICE CLAIM

Big city school closed

WITH the closing of a notorious school in Lonsdale street, city, on Tuesday night, gaming police claim they have at last broken the baccarat racket.
The school was the second last of the big games which yielded promoters thousands of pounds in the last five years.
Police say that the only other school of any consequence is operating at Elwood. They are confident this will be closed in the near future.
On Tuesday night the gaming squad served a man in Lonsdale st with papers informing him that his premises have been declared a common gaming house.
Previously, other premises in Lonsdale st and also in Swanston st, city, were also “declared.”

ENRICHED CRIMINALS

Sergeant A. Biddington, gaming police chief, said yesterday that the fight to beat the racket had been long and hard.
There were 14 schools in Melbourne two and a half years ago, all run by desperate characters. Huge sums changed hands nightly, enriching many well-known criminals.
In the last 12 months, he said, baccarat schools were raided nightly at two-hourly intervals.
Not only were the “bosses” upset but players, many of them respectable citizens and inveterate gamblers, became frightened.
The result was that attendances dwindled and some schools closed down for lack of patrons.

“COCKATOOS” BUSY

Sgt Biddington explained that it was difficult to obtain evidence against the schools. Usually they were on the top floors of buildings, and ‘cockatoos’ were able to give a warning before police ascended stairs and made a raid.
Sgt Biddington added that by closing the baccarat dens, police will break up some of the city’s worst consorting spots for criminals.

Incidentally, the (brief, and probably not 100% truthful) memoirs of Melbourne baccarat school owner Robert Walker that ran in the Melbourne Argus in 1954 is on Trove, e.g. here. In another installment, Walker describes entering the Lonsdale Street baccalat school, on his way to see The Gambler:

To get to the club in Lonsdale st., you walk up three flights of stone steps and knock on a big fireproof steel door.

I did that, and a small trapdoor was opened.

A few minutes after doing this that day, Walker got shot in the leg by the doorman (though he lived to tell the tale). But that’s another story.

Where To From Here?

If the Somerton Man was (as was claimed) associated with the Lonsdale Street baccarat school around 1945 or so, it should be possible to piece together a list of names associated with it from the Police Gazettes and newspaper articles of the day, and then rule out all those who lived past 1st December 1948, or died before then. It might well be that if we can follow this through to its logical conclusion, we would find ourselves with a very short list of names indeed – maybe three or four. What will we then find?

As always, there’s a good chance that this will be yet another Somerton Man-style dead end, a “big fireproof steel door” at the top of the stairs that we cannot get through. But whatever the Somerton Man’s reason for being in Adelaide on the day he died, perhaps this thread offers us a glimpse not of what he was doing, but of the life he was living.

For he was a real person, living his own life in his own way, even if that isn’t how we choose to live our own lives, and that’s something that tends to get marginalized: while people who treat him purely as a historical puzzle to be solved or to give them ‘closure’ in some sense aren’t looking to remember him for what he was, but for what resolving the questions around him can do for them now. Today, though, I simply want to remember the Somerton Man, and to try to imagine (however imperfectly) the life he lived and lost.