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):
- 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.
- [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/-/-.”
- [J Keane] Colac Courts, Victoria. 17th March 1930, Conviction: “Drunk”.
- 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”.
- 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.
- 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?
This one was born in Adelaide on 18 Nov 1896: https://wc.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=sabmd&id=I56181
This one died on 28 Nov 1938 (also buried West Terrace Cemetery): https://de.findagrave.com/memorial/159722882/john-joseph-keane
Thomas: yes, and he (father: John Joseph Keane, mother: Nora McKague) seems to link up with the John Joseph Keane who died 20th January 1941 and who was buried with Delia McKague. So it would seem we can now probably cross two (related) John Joseph Keanes off our list, thanks! 🙂
I don’t think I’ve ever disagreed with one of your posts more….
I won’t argue over the suitcase (because I’ll agree it’s harder to dismiss it than link it – although I think it’s not ‘catgorically’ linked), but I think ‘Keane’ is a bigger leap.
1) Kean vs Keane? I’ll accept (maybe) that an E faded (maybe we can confimr this?), but anything else is difficult. I get that names evolve, but normally this evolution would be generational (that is one generation is Keane, the next Kean (or vice versa) rather than someone simultaneously referring to themselves with both (unless it’s an evolving alias – in which case we’re still no better off)
2) Why is the other identifying stuff gone? I (sort of) accept that the ones that were left are things that were written on possessions (as opposed to on tags), but the absence of tags means there was a reason for their removal (for which our best bet is because they had id on them – which I think is supported by a tag being present on a new shirt with no identification). If you are so conscious of concealing your ID that you feel the need to remove your name, why keep articles that you can’t remove it from (especially the laundry bag, IMO). Without getting too conspiratorial (and reaching into the “they were deliberately planted” territory), I can think of 4 reasons (there’s likely more): (a) The stuff with Kean/e on it wasn’t yours (and for whatever reason you either couldn’t avoid having it, or you didn’t think you’d be found with it, or you didn’t think a link to Kean/e was problematic (b) The clothes had been sourced from a 2nd hand store (the laundry bag is problematic here, I think) (c) The removed tags were for your old identity, and Kean/e was your new identity (this one’s hard to believe, because why not then add Keane to some otherclothes – like the new shirt) (d) You deliberately want people to link to Kean/e (but I think this assumes too much foresight into what happened).
3) I also think ‘Unnameable’ man is problematic. I can see why you’d be scared to go to the police to report a known thug for something. I can (maybe) imagine family being scared to link to a known thug in case his enemies come for you. But there must be hundreds of other people vaguely familiar with – who wouldn’t consider reporting his identity to police posing them any threat. Further, if he was such a big underworld identity that people would be so scared, wouldn’t the Fuzz likely already know him?
4) (You’ll have to accept my point #3 here – because if you don’t, this is obviously redundnt – i.e. that I disagree with the Omerta idea) It’s interesting that nobody at the time came forward suggesting he was a Kean/e. While they didn’t know of the existence of the labelled possessions, isn’t it unusual that if that was his true identity nobody thought it might have been him (or even a relative of his) etc?
TBH, I think the simplest explanation to why nobody identified him is that the picture in the paper did not sufficiently resemble him in life (how many people were convinced they knew the identity until they saw the bust – which you have to admit looks different to the picture?).
So while I think the Kean/e angle is interesting (and even important because I think there’s a strong chance of a Kean/e connection one way or another), I can’t agree with the leap that SM’s surname was definitively Keane. I think it’s possible that he used the surname Keane at some point, but I’m not convinced that was his actual identity….
one more thing:
“… 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.”
I’m assuming that’s based on the articles you previously posted about the case, but I’m not finding:
1) Any reference to Melbourne Gangsters
2) Any mention of who he was buying a car from in Melbourne
While he didn’t mention who he was getting the car for, my reading is he wasn’t asked for that informtaion – so I don’t entirely see where he “specifically refused” to name one of them.
Maybe I’ve skimmed over the articles too fast, or maybe there’s other information not in your earlier post – but can you clarify where he specifically refuses to name someone?
There is now S&Ms available fro Victoria (some of them are also Canberra). They dont seem to have as comprehensive a collection as SA, but they are much easier to search.
Looking at 1944/45:
KEAN J d’ry 13 Anne St Bentleigh
KEAN Jno E 30 Fenwick St Thornbury
KEAN Jno, J 4 First Ave Brunswick
KEAN Jno T 20 Oxford St, Northcote
KEAN Jno W 59 Nimmo St, Essendon
KEAN Jos M 1 Trinfour St Moonee Ponds
KEANE J hrdsr 77 Warrigal Rd Oakleigh
KEANE J T solr 362 Hargreave St, Bendigo (Note: This is not metro)
KEANE John 44 Albion Rd, Box Hill
KEANE Jno 107 Victoria St, Brunswick
KEANE Jno 114 Corio St Geelong (Not metro)
KEANE Jno F 26 Garden St Geelong (Not metro)
KEANE Jno L 45 trenerry Cres Abbotsford
KEANE Jos 262 Victoria St Brunswick West
There’s also 2 Thos KEAN, 4 Thos KEANE and 1 Terence KEANE
There is no Harkness znd no Thom(p)son that look interesting (not sure what time period they might have been in Melbourne – I sort of assume that’d be more 46/47 – which we haven’t got records for)
Milongal .. I looked pretty hard for any pics of SM in the papers at about the time, there wasn’t many, especially out of State. No surprise it had not been generally seen.
There might have been some editorial resistance in over publicising the face of a dead man as well.
milongal: I simply cannot believe that a claim that a man in Melbourne had bounced a sizeable cheque (one that was central to the case) would not be tested even slightly in court. What was the man’s name? Can you produce the cheque? Why did you not pursue him for the money?
Who else but a crim would bounce a cheque for what was a serious amount of money in 1948 and get away with it? As I recall, you could buy a house for less money back then.
milongal: the step between “there were no identifying tags” and “all identifying tags were removed” goes from forensics to conspiracy theory, period. Likewise for “new identity” / “old identity”: I just don’t see why there is any requirement for conspiracy.
Maybe some of the Fuzz did know him, who can tell? Plenty of policemen were taking money from gangsters and betting principals back then.
The way that Jo Thomson talked about it to her daughter (and the way she didn’t talk about it to Gerry Feltus) makes omerta the #1 explanation: and that was 50+ years later, sorry.
NP . Someone sworn to silence would do the same.
NP: Perhaps I missed something (I’m working purely off your post re Daphne that you linked to). I can’t believe all sorts of things wouldn’t have been tested either (just as much in SM lore), but I think you have to remember we’re trusting the papers (which are not always accurate) and the information they have (which is often surpressed). So I’m still struggling with “…specifically refused to name…”
My understanding of Page vs Prosper was that Page sold a car worth (I’m using the dollar sign because our US keyboards can’t do a pound) $442 and received $450. She claimed she’d lent a further $400 for him to buy a car and sell it in Melbourne; but he claimed she’d asked $900 for the car and negotiated to $850….
So in this particular instance, the only Melbourne connexion is in Page’s story….not seeing a gangster, or a bounced cheque, or too Prosper being too cagey – so it feels like I’m not reading the same things you are??
PB: There’s a few pics around (not sure on timelines). In particular, there’s one from QLD that appears to either have been taken from the other side or reversed (that has always interested me). But I guess my point was, even with a picture if there’s no obvious resemblence to the living person, then little wonder noone recognised it – I’d be interested to know what some of these people looked like (eg EC Johnson) – We’ve got pictures of Walsh, obviously, and don’t forget Boxall was considered to have a resemblence (I know that wasn’t the reason for the police interest, but they were certainly surprised to find him alive).
In other news (see my spams on the Jetty Rd Keanes), it seems K.R. Thompson was well respected (from trove /newspaper/article/74442026 (1/05/40)):
COUNCIL’S GRANT TO GLETELG INSTITUTE
Mayor Refuses To Sign Cheque
Opposition by the Mayor of Glenelg (Mr. Frank Smith) to a grant of £100 being made by the council to the Glenelg Institute became more pronounced at a meeting of the council last night, when Mr. Smith refused to sign the cheaue which the corporation had -decided, by a majority of aa€. to pay to the library. Mr. Smith’s objections to the grant being made were that the institute was mismanaged, that it was being used as a lending library and not as an institution in tbe true meaning. He contended that if the library had been conducted as a private undertaking would have been run, it would not have required a £100 grant nor a Government subsidy. Mr. K. R. Thompson, of Glenelg, had offered to run the library for six months without any fee. He was prepared to put up a £1,000 bond to prove that his offer was genuine and that he would not receive
any personal gain. At the end of six months, if the council desired, he would be prepared to run the library at a nominal fee of £25 a year.
‘Will Not Sign As Protest’
‘I still am not going to sign the cheque as a protest.’ said Mr. Smith.
‘I do not mind the council being against me. The members are entitled to their own opinions.’
He added that great discourtesy was shown to Mr. K R. Thompson, who, he said, had made a generous offer In connection with the library. Councillor J. R. Cohen moved that Alderman Percival and the town clerk (Mr. F. A. Lewis) he appointed to sign the cheque. The town clerk said that the mayor and two councillors usually signed the cheques If the signature of two councillors and the counter signature of the town clerk were attached, it would be sufficient.
Alderman W. Allen— What would the bank say to that?
Town Clerk — I don’t know. Councillor Johnson said that the cheque would be paid if signed as suggested, but it was placing the mayor in a very awkward position.
It was decided that Alderman Percival and Councillor Buttrose should sign the cheque.
NB: I think the bookie stuff I previously mentioned was licenses to work as bookmakers at a Christmas event for the Port Adelaide races (or similar). I *assume* this means at Cheltenham (which would probably be the closest racecourse). Of no significance (but interesting nonethteless) a J.K Keane of Glandore was also granted a licence.
Re Jo and her daughter vs Feltus. We know she avoided Feltus – and I trust his word on that. Her daughter suggests loose allusions to some knowledge (in a TV interview) – all of which is harder for me to take at face value.
Extrapolating a fraction, let’s agree with Omerta in 1948. If in 2010 she’s still unwilling to talk (I assume even with a promise of secrecy), that presumably means she’s still afraid of repercussion (I’d struggle to agree it’s just that she’s trained herself to be afraid because of the original fear). So that would suggest whatever forces got to him are still (potentially) threatening 60+ year later. So now we’re talking a major criminal organisation that still has relevance a half a century later (yet as far as I know if you asked a modern-day Adelaidean about criminal organisations, the best they could do is roll off the names of 4 or 5 Bikie Gangs)….I’m just struggling to agree with this one….
Because I’m disagreeing, I’ll disagree on the tags too. I’ll have to see if I can find things originally said about them (because I will grant that if the intrigue about them came later – eg with Littlemore’s doco – then they are a lot more mundane). Absence of names means nothing. I (admittedly from a luckier generation) don’t have any names on any clothing I can think of. Absence of tags (which may or may not have had names) starts to become more interesting – especially if (and I don’t know this is the case) in those poorer times people were more inclined to declare ownership of any possessions they had.
Where some of this becomes particularly interesting (especially the different spellings) is if (As has been floated before) he’d beein in an institution or hospital – and someone else labelled his tie, laundry bag and singlet (? what was the 3rd item). Even if that wasn’t in the immediate past, he may still have them, and Keane becomes a likely identity. So while I take the point “lack of identifying labels” is different to “identifying labels removed” I think we need to dig back on what was reported – because “lack of any identifying features, and all labels removed” becomes interesting even if we don’t know the labels had names written on them….
And I don’t mean to simply be obstructionist (or obstreperous?) I just don’t agree with some of your conclusions on this one (nor even your explanation on how you got there)…..
milongal: here are the news reports (in time sequence):
* https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/43775476
* https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/43775666
* https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/43775803
* https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/129909334
* https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/43779281
milongal: I suspect the notion started with labels not being present (or having been removed) on the suitcase, and then spreading to other parts of his clothing by a kind of evidential quasi-osmosis.
As far as Keane goes: if your starting point is denying that the man’s surname was Keane but based on nothing at all, how on earth are you doing justice to what little evidence we do have? Just because the poh-leece couldn’t find a missing Mr Keane doesn’t mean there wasn’t one.
Peteb: an individual, yes. But was everyone who knew him sworn to the same silence? I don’t think so. 😐
Boxall showed signs of it .. you have probably played his interview as many times as I have, but only recently I’ve observed how easily he turns Littlemore’s questions into a personal narrative, and in doing so avoids lying ..
My late point being Harkness stayed silent for the same reason; in order not to lie to the police.
Boxall comes across as cagey…..”It’s a very melodramatic thesis, isn’t it?”
And yet there’s part of me that thinks cause/effect…..is it because he was involved, or because he has been implicated in something he finds quite intriguing himself?
Hey Nick, I posted a reply but it seems to have got lost (could’ve been as much a block on the technologies on my end as yours). In short, I’m not saying it WASN’T Keane, I’m arguing/questioning why we think it was. I 100% take your point that the absence of labels is different to “were removed”, and intend to trace back whether in the years immediately after the term “removed” was used, or whether that’s something that appeared in Littlemore’s commentary. At the same time, I point out that Kean vs Keane (I’ll agrree possibly by an E washing away, but less so that someone was in the middle of a mid-generational name change – I’ll also entertain the idea that he didn’t write his own name on the possessions (eg if he’d been in care) so the spelling was messed up)…..
nb: In the lost posts I also apologised that (Even though it was in your linked stuf) I totally missed the bit about the cheque. That said, given it was a civil case (ie Joe Pleb vs Jane Pleb) rather than criminal (ie the Crown vs Joe Pleb) neither party had any interest in the cheque – from Daphne’s perspective, the case is against Prosper, not any excuses he can muster. From Prosper’s perspective it’s none of her business (in fact his argument seemed to be that the agreement was always for $450….). Even in a criminal case (in Australia) it’s not for the judge to probe detail like that – that’s “due diligence” (sorry buzzwords) on the prosecutor. That the bouncing cheque was never more deeply investigated is 100% not surprising – the courts have no interest, Daphne has no interest; and Prosper wouldn’t want to…..(not withstanding all the stuff about the Cheque could be totally fabricated by either party).
Short Version: (a) Point taken on absence of labels vs labels removed, but think that needs more fleshing out. (b) the stuff about gangsters and bouncing cheques wasn’t further investigated because it had no direct importance to the people involved.
The SA Attorney General has approved the exhumation of SM.
https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/subscribe/news/1/?sourceCode=AAWEB_MRE170_a_FBK&dest=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.adelaidenow.com.au%2Ftruecrimeaustralia%2Fattorneygeneral-vickie-chapman-wants-to-solve-somerton-man-cold-case-conditional-funding-approved%2Fnews-story%2F6531247eee73fa0e227fe5fd518dc751&memtype=anonymous&mode=premium&offerset=aa_truecrime_premium&v21suffix=56-b
Byron: that’s behind a paywall, alas, but there is separate coverage on the Mirror’s “Weird News” section:
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/australias-biggest-unsolved-mystery-reopened-20585926
That’s the one I’ve been reading
or here:
https://www.news.com.au/national/south-australia/approval-granted-to-exhume-the-somerton-man-possibly-ending-70yearold-mystery/news-story/bbcd5ffe4ff65750d2327ff04034cec4
another post seems to have dropped (I might try to post it from elsewhere and see how I go).
Short version: Newspaper as early as 18 Jan 1949 talk about the labels on the clothes in the suitcase being “removed” rather than simply mentioning their absence (and if their absence was mundane, why mention it?). By February that’s extrapolated to “…just like the clothes on the body….”.
There is at least one article that talks about one lable being mutilated and governments trying to analyse under infra-red light to see if they can find a name.
Milongal : Without going through the inquest papers again, I do recollect Cleland (?) stating that the labels on his clothes had indeed been removed, but not recently. From that you could gather they may have been bought in a second hand clothing market, a common practice in the times I’m lead to believe.
Newspapers and journalists are notorious for getting the facts wrong and then repeating and improving on them.
Ellis-Jones, in her latest journalistic endeavour on the ABC, a show watched by hundreds of thousands, stated at the very beginning – ‘We now know for sure the body seen the night before was the same as the one found in the morning’ … or words to that effect.
Coroner Cleland didn’t think so and he was very clear about it.
Then Ellis-Jones said the dead man was wearing an ‘immaculate suit.’
It could drive a man to drink ..
PB: Yeap I took lots of issue with much of what the ‘Australian Story’ stated as fact.
100% agree that journalistic narratives deviate off course (and the ‘…just like the clothes on the body’ would certainly appear to be the beginnings of that).
The main reason for the comment was NP asserted the absence of tags != tags were removed. I’d sort of assumed the ‘removed’ bit was a recent (ie 1970s) deviation – but it’s there right from the beginning, and in one article even mentions infra-red analysis of the mutilated tag. I don’t really think (of course, I can’t be sure) that’s journalistic deviation, especially given the consistency of that report across multiple papers (realsiing, of course, that just like today sometimes the articles were copied verbatim rather than researched independently).
FWIW I think a large part of the (modern-day) confusion in this case is caused by inaccurate reporting – a good example is the articles about the 2nd Rubaiyat being found (which I suspect is a journalist keen for a scoop receiving the same report with marginally different detail (chemist vs businessman, for arguments sake) 2 days in a row – and in his haste publishing a businessman found the 2nd one, not realising it’s the same story (andit’s then picked up by other news sources – certainly it seems to fizzle pretty quickly). I think a lot has been read into the language in articles – which wasn’t necessarily intended to imply what we are reading into it – in fact I think (as I think I’ve said before) a lot of the confusion around the Henley train ticket is exactly that. In early reports it talks about the ticket being “…punched, but not used” – I suspect the “but not used” bit is speculative – that is, that they’re concluding it could not possibly have been used since the St Leonard’s bus ticket also existed and SM was found closer to St Leonards than Henley (and it is a lot harder to explain the bus ticket as unused – given it was bought on board a bus). In the modern day we (or many of us) take it as absolute fact that the train ticket was ‘unused’ – but even without getting into ideas about other people using the ticket and/or planting it on the body (which for mine are certainly plausible), there’s really not much proof** (as far as I know) that the train ticket was never used.
That said, a large part of the problem we have is that other than the inquest records, the media reports is basically the only reference we have to go on.
**I vaguely recall some mention that GF had spoken to someone from SAR and satisfied himself that the ticket hadn’t been used – but I’ve never seen an explanation on that conclusion….
PB – as luck would have it, I just found an article that supports the notion that “the train ticket was unused” was an assumption rather than provable fact:
1 Jan 1949, The Mail, P24:
“…Because the train ticket had been punched, police surmise the man passed through the platform barrier, just missed a Henley Beach train, walked across North terrace, and caught the St. Leonards bus…”
Well, that’s one way some folks have of explaining a gap in the logic .. A ticket attendant, the bloke at the gate, would hardly punch a ticket if the train had already left the station.
I don’t recall the pre 1980’s railway station, but certainly after the casino was built the gates weren’t for individual platforms. Because I never saw the layout in the 40’s I can’t guarantee it was the same (or exactly how the platform layout was, although I think they had 8 or less platforms then), but it’s quite possible the barrier-attendant isn’t aware if a particular train has left or not. It’s also possible someone wanders through the gates and onto wrong platforms before realising they’ve missed the train.
In any event, I’m comfortable with those folks’ explanations…
In fact, I’ll go a step further (and then take a step back)….
AFAIK, the ticket was not for a particular service -it was for travel on a particular line. So the ticket puncher doesn’t care whether a particular service left (because there’ll be anohter one along the same line later). In other words, it was a ticket for the Henley line, not a ticket for the 10:50 Henley service…
That said, I do have a bit of a problem with the scenario.
If you miss the train, why do you catch the bus to somewhere else? The best argument anyone ever seems to come up with is “he just wanted to go to a beach”….but I’m not sold on that. There were several other train lines that could have got him to the beach (there even would have been one to Marino – which goes through Brighton, which is only a little further from Somerton than Glenelg). It maybe suggests that he didn’t have money for a another train ticket – but in that case where’s the urgency? Why not wait for the next Henley train (and why not argue for a refund and/or different ticket – I’ll grant that we don’t know he didn’t (other than the tight timeline in this scenario makes it difficult), but it’s odd he held on to the ticket – if he’d been refused a refund, wouldn’t you throw the ticket away in anger? You wouldn’t hold onto it thinking you could ask a refund later, because the more time has elapsed since you bought it, the harder it is to demonstrate you were never on the train – especially when the ticket’s punched….
Airy-fairy speculation follows:
That said, in a pre-mobile age what makes you change your mind once your on the platform (or at least beyond the barriers)? Is it possible he met soemone on the platform (or alternatively was meant to meet, but didn’t) which changed his travel plans? Is it possible he was already travelling with someone else the whole time? I know I’ve previously dismissed the idea of him being unnoticed as nothing unusual, but perhaps people don’t remember seeing a man of his description travelling alone because he wasn’t travelling alone? What if we take that a step further and the reason the clerk didn’t really remember selling him a ticket was because he sold him (or his travelling companion) 2 tickets? (Possibly because people like the romantic narrative) there always seems an assumption he was travelling alone to wherever he was going….but is there any reason to think he couldn’t have been accompanied?
Here’s another Keane angle. There was a Senator Keane who went to USA in 1946 to close off the WW2 Lend Lease arrangements, but he ‘suddenly’ died in Washington. A scandal erupted following his death, regarding some trunks of jewellery brought into the country by a girl named Rosetta Kelly, but addressed to his wife, avoiding Customs duty. It became known as the Keane Trunks affair. The newspapers and the Liberal Party pursued it and early in December 1948 the push for an inquiry came to a head. It’s all in the newspapers on Trove. He had been going to and fro to USA and the smuggling involved jewellery, particularly some gold chains with the names of prominent citizens on them. Perhaps Somerton Man was involved somehow in all of this, and needed to be silenced? As Keane had died two years prior, maybe Somerton Man had picked up a few items of clothing from his belongings?
Here are a couple of pertinent articles. One gives the headlines regarding the scandal only weeks before SM’s death.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/248356496?searchTerm=keane%20trunks%20rosetta
The other tells how Rosetta Kelly was an American who had worked for the FBI, and had then moved to working at the Australian Division of Import Procurement during the War…..
Hmmm….”Verrrry interesting”…..
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/133180397?searchTerm=kelly%20senator%20keane
Anita: Sorry hon but that’s all been done and dusted and there’s no stand out connection though “veeeery interesting” as you have correctly pointed out. You might like to check back through Nick Pelling’s not to be missed CM archival section, I’d be surprised if senator Kean’s ‘trunk’ didn’t get a good going over back around 2012 or thereabouts.