Category Archives: Historical Ciphers

Imagine, if you will, that everything about the Somerton Man is somehow embedded in the name written on the back of the off-white tie found in the suitcase left in Adelaide Station. Can we decrypt the life hidden in this writing?

Well… we can certainly try to, right? As normal, let’s examine it reaaaaally closely…

A Name of Two Halves

The first thing to notice is that the initial (followed by the dot) and the K are not only much bigger than the rest of the letters, they are also stylistically very different. Moreover, whereas the “EANE” part was written in legible compressed block capitals, there’s no easy way of telling what the initial letter at the start is – is it a ‘T’ (as SAPOL thought in 1949), or a ‘J’, or perhaps even an ‘I’ or an ‘L’? And finally, the letter K has an unusual construction (which we’ll come to later).

From all that, we start with a visual paradox: that even though the stylised (and largely indeterminate) initial letter is typical of a signature (i.e. writing made for personality), the EANE ending would seem to be more typical of clothes block marking (i.e. writing made for clarity). How can these two very different writing styles be reconciled?

My suggestion (perhaps it has been made before, I honestly don’t know) is that the writer wrote the first two letters as a signature, but then changed his mind, perhaps from the difficulty of writing on fabric. And so I suspect his writing strategy changed after writing the ‘K’, leaving us with a hybrid that was part-signature and part-clothes marking.

Because the second (block capital) half doesn’t really offer us any obvious help, we only really have a single letter to work with here – the K. However, this is a letter with a very unusual construction…

Anatomy of a ‘K’

To me, an individual’s handwriting expresses a set of compromises between an idealised set of letterforms (design) and the individual’s desire for speed (impatience), clarity (beauty), ornament (fanciness), reproducibility (consistency), or whatever. Note that I’m talking not about graphology here, but about the practicalities of real-world writing.

From that point of view, capital K is actually quite a difficult letter to write. Once you’ve formed its main vertical bar (normally downwards), you then have to lift your pen off the paper and decide where to begin your next stroke. And then, in the context of cursive writing, you have to consider how you are going to join the end of your final K stroke with the start of the following stroke. All these practical micro-decisions yield a wide range of possibilities.

Looking closer at the K, I suspect we can see three separate stroke parts (probably made by a right hander): an initial downward ‘spine’ stroke (annotated red below), a second downward diagonal stroke (blue), and a third stroke upwards and slightly curved around (green). It’s not 100% clear to me what direction the green stroke was made in (i.e away from the second stroke or towards it):

It could well be that the green stroke started at top right, looped down to the midpoint of the first stroke, and then became the start of the blue stroke. Here, the stroke sequence would be 1-3-2:

Either way, this seems a somewhat unusual and awkward way of constructing a K: but with an historian’s hat on, where might we find a corpus of signatures to compare this particular K construction against?

WWI Irish Soldier Wills

Given that Keane is a predominantly Irish surname (“Kean” appears much more in Scotland), I made a speculative leap here that a good place to look for a set of signatures would be in the Irish archives. (If there’s a far more global handwriting archive I could have used, please tell me!)

However, almost all the Irish genealogical archive holdings online (e.g. via Ancestry.com) were of official registers (Petty Sessions, even the Dog Licence Register!), which were normally filled in by a small number of official hands. Rather, what I wanted wasn’t names written by a professional hand, but a set of signatures left by ordinary people.

Usefully (but nonetheless tragically), this is where I found that the Irish archives contain a long series of Last Wills and Testaments (many on scraps of paper, and with a fair few reconstructed by witnesses from conversations) from Irish soldiers who died in WWI. Reading these, you can’t help but be affected by the senseless waste of young life: so many were just boys, bequeathing their possessions and pay to their mothers or sisters in shaky pencil in their Army Book 64.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the archival query engine wasn’t quite designed for what I was trying to do: so I first searched for all soldiers called John, drew up a list of the surnames beginning with K, and then searched all of those surnames.

This yielded about 500 individual documents; about fifty of which were missing; of the rest, roughly fifty had no signature (e.g. when the will was relayed by witnesses), so I think the final corpus size was not far off 400 signatures.

Normal Ks and Special Ks

In this sample, it seemed to me that the majority of the capital Ks were formed of a big vertical downstroke (often embellished), followed by a single second stroke (sometimes embellished) which ran from top right diagonally down left to the centre of the first stroke (often pausing to loop there) before continuing diagonally down linearly right to end up at the bottom right of the letter, ready to be cursively joined with the following letter.

Another common construction began with a big vertical downstroke, but where the pen then restarted at the centre of the vertical to form a second curved downstroke, finishing off with a third more linear stroke upwards from the centre of the vertical.

There were also some some unusual two-stroke Ks where the gap between the two strokes was so wide that it was almost unrecognisable as a K. For example, here is how Denis Kelly wrote his wife’s name, which I must admit had me completely stumped for a couple of minutes:

What we see in the Somerton Man’s K is different to all three of these, in that it has a curve at top right and a straight line at bottom right.

Matching Ks

A couple of signatures do vaguely match the Somerton Man’s K, insofar as they have a main vertical stroke, a straight diagonally right downwards stroke, and a curved diagonally right upwards stroke.

• No. 14908 Rifleman J. Keelan, 2nd Battalion, Royal Irish Rifles, died 30-1-1915. Here he writes his father’s name:

• No. 16241 Private Patrick Kinsella, 6th Battalion, Yorkshire Regiment, died 3-2-1917.

Private Patrick Kinsella’s K was clearly the closer match of the two. (According to fold3, Kinsella was born 23-5-1884; his widow (separated) was Susan Lennon of 11 Railway St, Dublin; and his three children were Denis, Patrick & Mary Jane.)

Learning And Growing?

In my experience, people tend to attack cipher mysteries in a ‘vertical’ manner, i.e. by looking for causality, direct association, immediate linkage, relevance, etc. But sometimes historical research is better done horizontally, i.e. by building up a wider corpus and trying to situate your mystery item within that larger corpus.

What I tried to do here was a faltering first attempt at a horizontal search for the source of the marks on the tie, but I think it’s fair to say I didn’t really find anything in Ireland. Next time round, I plan to look at (mainland) British and/or American and/or Australian K shapes from this period (if I can find good signature corpora for them, all suggestions gratefully received!), to see if anything K-related happens to jump out at me.

It’s just a crying shame that we don’t have images of the other two KEAN[E] marks, or even any description of what they looked like. Unless you know better?

I’ve been raking over Ancestry.com, trying to take the search for the Somerton Man back to archival basics. For example:

• we have a first initial (T or J)
• we have a surname (Kean or Keane)
• we have a rough date of birth (1900, plus or minus five years)
• we know he had no tattoos / distinguishing markings
• his matrilineal DNA seems to be connected to the Baltic states
• we have practical reasons to connect him to America
• we have even better reasons to connect him to Australia, and yet…
• all efforts to find an Australian by that name seem to have failed.

The first half of the 20th century was a time of migrations: and I think the little we know about our mysterious man seems to echo that same mobility. Might we be able to catch a glimpse of him in the shipping records, that box of tricks so loved by genealogists? I went looking for Keans on ships…

John Hall Kean of Galashiels

Having previously put so much time into tracking down H. C. Reynolds on the R.M.S. Niagara, my Somerton Spidey Sense tingled when I saw a young J Kean working on the same ship roughly a year after Reynolds’ stint.

• 10 Oct 1919 Honolulu, Hawaii (from Vancouver) “cadet”, engaged 2/10/19 in Vancouver
• 28 Oct 1919 Sydney, New South Wales (from Vancouver) “cadet”, age 19, born in Scotland
• 8 Apr 1920 Honolulu, Hawaii (from Vancouver) “2nd grade”, engaged 27/2/20 in Sydney
• 26 Apr 1920 Sydney, New South Wales (from Vancouver) “2nd grade”, age 20, born in Galashiels
• 16 May 1920 Honolulu, Hawaii (from Sydney) “2nd grade steward”, engaged 30/4/20 in Sydney, able to read, age 20.
• 3 Jun 1920 Honolulu, Hawaii (from Vancouver) “2nd grade steward”, engaged 30/4/20 in Sydney, able to read, age 20.
• 21 Jun 1920 Sydney, New South Wales (from Vancouver) “2nd grade steward”, age 20, born in Galashiels
• 10 Jul 1920 Honolulu, Hawaii (from Sydney) “2nd grade steward”, engaged 24/6/20 in Sydney, age 20

These are surely all the same J. Kean, from Galashiels in Scotland.

(We also see a 21-year-old 5′ 9″ Scottish-born J. Kean arriving in California in 1921 on the S.S. Bradford. And a 5′ 5″ 160lb Scottish-born John Kean arriving in Seattle from Vancouver on 19 Dec 1922. I’m guessing these are him too,)

Knowing that, it didn’t take too long to work out that his full name was John Hall Kean, his parents were John Patrick Kean and Margaret Kean (nee Murray) (both born in Galashiels), and that he, his parents, and brothers Thomas Murray Kean and Louis Ennis Kean all emigrated from Scotland to Vancouver in 1910. (You can see them all listed in the 1911 Canada Census.) His birth date is listed there as August 1901.

We next see him working as a clerk, and getting married in 30 Jun 1923 to Vancouver-born Olympia Emily Svenciski (it’s a Polish surname). The Vancouver Daily World noted that she was the “second daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Anthony Svenciski, of this city”.

However, it’s through Olympia’s findagrave entry that we find John Hall Kean’s death, on 20 Dec 1940 at Trail (a town in British Columbia).

Oh well. 🙁

John William Kean of Hull

There’s a J.W.Kean who also made a number of trips:

• 07 Nov 1920 New York, age 20, on the Justin, signed on 25 Sep 1920, Newport, News (and then immediately signed back on again)
• 07 Nov 1920 New York, he is listed as John W. Kean, “sailor”, English, British, 5′ 6″, 150lb, headed off to Pernambuco (in Brazil)
• 15 Feb 1921 New York, age 20, on the Justin, discharged
• 29 Apr 1921 Sydney, New South Wales on the SS Port Melbourne from New York via Melbourne, age 20, from Hull, “sailor”
• 22 Jun 1921 Sydney, New South Wales on the SS Port Melbourne from Wellington NZ, age 20, from Hull, “sailor”
• 14 Feb 1922 New York from Brazil on the Justin, age 20, British, signed on Nov 28th 1920, NY

Familysearch helpfully suggests a John William Kean, whose birth was registered in Hull in the Jul-Aug-Sep quarter of 1901, and who did his military service in the Royal Navy from ~1918 to ~1921.

There’s also this guy from 1930, who sounds like the same person but now with American citizenship:

• 28 Nov 1930 New York on the Capulin, John W. Kean, A.B., engages on 16 Oct 1930 in Norfolk, aged 29, American race and nationality, 5′ 6″

Personally, I think John William Kean’s height is sufficient to rule him out from being the Somerton Man, but perhaps others will feel compelled to pursue him further.

John Kean of Skerries, Dublin

The next Kean I looked at was on the Ajana in Nov 1919, an 18-year old “AB” (able-bodied seaman) arriving in Sydney from New Zealand via Melbourne.

This was probably the same John Kean of Skerries, Dublin who received his Second Mate’s Certificate of Competency on the 6th December 1922.

After a fair bit of to-ing and fro-ing looking at Ireland’s Superintendant Registration (SR) Districts, the single candidate in Ireland’s (actually extremely good) online BDM database seems to be a John Keane, born 29 August 1901 in the SR District of Balrothery.

According to the register, his father John Keane was a sailor from Skerries, and his mother was Rosanna Keane (nee McGowan). (We can also see their marriage of 02 Jun 1890 online.) The “informant” was Mary Dooley of Skerries (who was “present at the birth”).

The Irish archives have one more trick for us. On 03 Mar 1930, a John Keane (a “grocer”, aged “Adult”) of Skerries married Alice Seaver (also aged “Adult”) of Skerries: John Keane’s father John Keane was noted as being a “sea captain”. It seems very likely to me that this was the same John Keane.

But… what happened to this John Keane and Alice Keane?

Note that an Alice Mary Keane died in East Geelong on 08 Nov 1999: however, we can see her living at 46 Gheringhap St in Geelong in 1937 (“home duties”) with a John Francis Keane (“labourer”), and then again in 24 Garden St in 1942, so we can almost certainly rule her out.

So the short answer is that I have no idea just yet, sorry. 🙁

A Quick Summary

I didn’t have to look very hard to find three J. Kean[e]s who each fits the broad template of what we are looking for, insofar as their lives linked Europe with both America and Australia (albeit perhaps only briefly).

And it was nice to discover that genealogy tools – when they work well – now make it almost comically easy to trace and eliminate candidates. They all have their quirks, sure: but what would take a matter of weeks or months is now very often no more than a handful of mouse-clicks away.

However, I’m also well aware that what I picked to work with were undoubtedly the lowest-hanging fruits. Having ten or more data points to work with meant that just about everything here clicked in as you’d hope.

All the same, this has left me wondering whether it might be worthwhile to build up a list of pretty much all the J/T Kean[e]s born around 1900 (say 1895-1905), and then trace them all. Even though Ireland’s BDM database lists numerous J/T Kean[e]s, it also (once you get the hang of the SR Districts etc) gives you enough other data to rule most of them in or out very quickly.

Is that crazy? Or might it actually be achievable?

James Robert Walker’s life story, smuggled out of Pentridge Jail just before his suicide, was sensationally serialized in the Argus in September 1954 to October 1954. If you want to read it, I edited it into a single downloadable file here. I found it of particular interest because in the early 1940s Walker ran his own small Melbourne baccarat school.

Walker referred to many of the people involved by their real names, or by their nicknames (such as James Coates, widely known as “The Mark Foy”).

But who were the prominent underworld people Walker used coded names for? I’m thinking specifically of:

• “The Brain”
• “Darkie”
• “The Gambler”
• “The Thing”
• “The Fix”

I decided to go looking…

Not Much Luck So Far..

In my initial mooch around the interwebs, I found very little indeed. 🙁

One of the only hints was in Robert Chuter’s “Funny People of Fitzroy Street“:

A few months ago [written in 2020] there died a man, ex-pug, ex-bookmaker, and ex-school principal who had been a habitue of Fitzroy Street for many years. Drink hastened his end. He was discovered dead sitting upon a cafe toilet, trousers around his ankles. Police knew him as “The Thing” mentioned in the Robert Walker story, published in The Argus after Walker’s suicide in Pentridge Gaol.

I’ve therefore asked Robert if he knows The Thing’s actual name, and will update this page when I hear back. But as to the other code names, I have still basically got nowhere. 🙁

As an aside, Walker’s story mentions “The Brain”‘s (claimed) remorse over the death of Taylor and ‘Snowy’ Cutmore in 1927. Given that Taylor was (according to Gangland Melbourne) connected to Harry Stokes, you might wonder whether Stokes was The Brain. Unfortunately, The Brain was (according to Walker) still alive, which would seem to rule Stokes out.

Who were all these encrypted crims? Can you decode Walker’s code names?

Carrying on with the Somerton Man Melbourne nitkeeper research thread, here’s a timeline I’ve reconstructed for the (in)famous baccarat school that Christos Paizes (AKA “Harry Carillo”) and Gerald Francis Regan ran on the first floor above the Old Canton Cafe at 158 Swanston Street, Melbourne. (Swanston St runs between Lonsdale St and Little Lonsdale St.)

Note that as of 21 Jun 1943, 158 Swanston St was advertising for a “Pantry Maid” (“over 45; £3 10/ p. wk., no night work“), so presumably the building was still in use as a cafe at that date.

Phase 1 – Baccarat still legal

Because Victoria’s gaming laws had been drafted by listing specific games that were deemed to be illegal (e.g. the Aussie favourite two-up), Melbourne police needed overwhelming physical proof in order to prosecute anyone playing a game not on the prohibited list.

As a result, this first phase of the timeline sees the police very much on the back foot. What’s more, none of the cunning stunts they used to try to gain evidence against the baccarat schools impressed the courts. For example:

16 July 1942: The Truth’s influential 18 Jun 1944 exposé (it was mentioned in Hansard) discussed how police attempts to prosecute Regan & Carello in their baccarat school in Flinders St in 1942 had miserably failed:

[…] a charge at the Petty Sessions of acting in the conduct of a common gaming house at 510 Flinders Street, was withdrawn. On that occasion, police watched a baccarat game through holes in the ceiling, but they obtained no evidence that percentages were deducted from the winnings — an all-important point in law.

By 1943, the police started to find ways of prosecuting individuals involved with these gaming schools. One target was the nitpickers (or “cockatoos”), whose job was to raise the alarm when a police raid was in progress, and who could be charged with ‘hindering’ or ‘obstruction’:

[Gerald Francis Regan] was convicted for obstructing the police, when they entered a gaming house.

By June 1944, the Melbourne baccarat scene was (as per The Truth’s exposé) well and truly flourishing: there seemed almost nothing that the police could do about it. For all The Truth’s thundering, you can’t help but notice that they did helpfully include the exact address to take your money to:

At Stokes’ schools, the game is big, but if it is a bit severe on the pocket, you can be accommodated at Regan and Carello’s school, on the first floor of a building at 158 Swanston St. You won’t like it much here, because you will find a definitely low type crowd, mostly Italians, Greeks and European refugees. In the crowd of 100, there will be about 20 women.

Phase 2 – Baccarat Made Illegal

Perhaps surprisingly, The Truth’s moralistic tabloid ranting against the baccarat schools (which incidentally made the gangsters running them so livid that they offered £500 for the identity of the person who had given the paper the inside story on both Stokes’ school and Paizes’ school) stirred up enough Victorian political indignation to change the law.

Hence from 1st July 1944, baccarat found itself added to the list of games that were illegal to play in Victoria: which meant that the police were able to steam in, door-bashing sledgehammer in hand, confident that the gaming law was (at last) on their side.

The moment this became law (1am on 1 Jul 1944), raid on a Swanston Street baccarat school led (in the Third City Court in August 1944) to a group of baccarat players being fined under the newly extended gaming laws:

When police broke into a baccarat school in Swanston-street with a sledge hammer early this morning, they found a “League of Nations Assembly” around the table.

Among the 40 players— 17 of them women— were Russians, Poles, Italians, Lebanese, Albanians, Syrians and Britons. Three men were fined £3 because they had prior convictions: the remainder £2.

Fety Murat, 33, of Drummond-street, Carlton, waiter, who had charge of the game, was fined £50. It was the first raid since legislation was passed to make baccarat illegal.

(Note that a different report gave the address as “303 Swanston St”, but perhaps 158 was the downstairs address, and 303 the upstairs address.)

Phase 3 – Shutting Down the School

Over the next year, the next phase of the police operation involved building up (what they hoped would be) a sufficiently strong case to convince the courts to close down the Old Canton Cafe baccarat school for good.

On 19 July 1945, Mr Justice Lowe at the Practice Court received the following:

An affidavit by Sub-Inspector Abley, officer in charge of the gaming police, stated that police officers had seen baccarat played on the premises. The police had visited the premises almost every night for approximately six months. The only means of access was a narrow stairway, having doors both at the top and bottom. There was a person always on guard at the top of the stairway to ensure that the police could not enter without warning. For four months, said the affidavit, the premises had been run ostensibly as a club. On many occasions the police entered the premises after a short delay, and saw people scattering from a table suitable for baccarat. After quoting various matters in his affidavit, Sub-Inspector Abley said he had reasonable grounds for suspecting that baccarat was carried on, and that the premises constituted a common gaming house.

According to a different report, the affidavit further asserted that…

[…] the persons having the control and management were Christos Paizes (alias Harry Carillo), William John Elkins, Gerald Francis Regan and Richard Thomas (alias Abishara) and a man known as Balutz.

Christos Paizes responded with his own affidavit:

[…] Christos Paizes, of Mathoura-road; Toorak, stated that, with Gerald Francis Regan, of High-street, St. Kilda, he had been the tenant of part of the first floor of the building in Swanston-street, known as the Old Canton Cafe. Since they had occupied the premises they had never been used as a common gaming house. Until January, 1945, they conducted the premises as a cafe and lounge. Since then they had conducted the premises as a proprietary club. In the club refreshments were supplied to members, who used the premises to play various games of cards and checkers, but no unlawful games were permitted on the premises. With the exception of the addition of one door on the stairway, the premises were in the same condition as when first occupied by them.

Moreover (as you’d expect), Paizes utterly denied having a nitkeeper:

Paizes denied the various allegations made in Sub-Inspector Abley’s affidavit, and said it was not true there was anyone on guard to ensure that police officers did not enter without warning.

However, Mr Justice Lowe judged that what was being run above the Old Canton Cafe was indeed a gaming house:

An order declaring that the premises formerly known as the Old Canton Cafe, Swanston-street, Melbourne, and being that portion of the first floor of the building leased by Christos Paizes were a common gaming house, was made by Mr. Justice Lowe in the Practice Court yesterday. His Honor stated that the order would take effect as from Wednesday, August 1.

And so notice was served on the premises: which effectively marked the end of Melbourne’s Golden Age of baccarat schools. Which is not to say that baccarat suddenly stopped (because it most certainly did not): rather, it was that baccarat’s gilded era had finished, and it became just a low-life activity.

A Dissenting View

Oddly, “Gangland Melbourne” (which, though lively, often seems to me to get stuff wrong) asserts that Harry Stokes (prior to his death in 1945) had (p.81):

“teamed up with Gerald Francis (‘Frank’) Regan and Lou the Lombard running games at the Canton cafe in Swanston Street. Opposed to them were Kim Lenfield, Charlie Carlton, Hymie Bayer and Abe Trunley at the Ace of Clubs, Elizabeth Street. Ralph Pring of the VRC financed the Kim Syndicate, which also ran games at 52 Collins Street. The old-time confidence man Harry ‘Dictionary Harry’ Harrison […] had also returned to Melbourne and become involved in the baccarat schools.”

Lou the Lombard would pop up again in 1951 in “Gangland Australia” (p.131), running a baccarat game “on the corner of Elizabeth Street and Flinders Lane”. But apart from that slightly circular reference, everything else in the above account seems a bit free-floating (as you’ll find if you try searching any of the names in Trove, apart from Dictionary Harry).

So, did The Truth completely misread the baccarat school ‘scene’? Or might the Gangland Melbourne authors have been given dud information? (I suspect the latter, but I thought I ought to mention the former.)

Alternatively, if you know of a book (say, a Melbourne police memoir?) that covers this period of time a little more reliably, please say! (And yes, I’ve read Robert Walker’s serialised memoirs, but thanks for asking.)

Phase 4 – Life After Baccarat

In April 1950, we see Richard Thomas (AKA Abishara, but now manager of the Copacabana Restaurant in Collins Street), Christos Paizes (a shareholder in the Copacabana) and Feti Murat (now a “market gardener”) in a brawl with undercover policemen in Swanston Street. “Murat, who described himself as a market gardener, said he had worked for Paizes some years ago.“

As for William John Elkins, it seems he was born in 1911; in 1938, he was “charged with having had the care and management of a gaming house”; in 1941, we can see him resisting extradition from Fitzroy to Adelaide in connection with a stolen radio; he died in 1964.

So, once again it seems that the only major player we cannot trace beyond 1944 is the mysterious Balutz.

Who Were The Two Gamblers?

If you recall, the Somerton Man was tentatively identified in 1949 as a nitkeeper:

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.

But who might these “two prominent Melbourne baccarat players” have been? Trawling through all the stories in Trove (particularly from The Truth) has thrown up various prominent baccarat player names (of course, Christos Paizes himself started as a gambler), such as:

• super-gambler (and super-litigant) Michael Pitt (who hated the press)
• James Coates (‘The Mark Foy’, murdered in 1947 so we can rule him out)

My favourite baccarat gambler news story from the period was from 18 Dec 1946, relating to a loan made on 15 Jun 1945 between two baccarat players (“Charles [Albert] Darley, outdoor salesman, of St. Kilda” [and] “Eric Allen Kermode, assistant manager of a poultry business in Camberwell“) at a baccarat school at the Canton Cafe. (The case was dismissed with costs.)

To be honest, though, unless the descendants of a 1940s baccarat player step forward to recount the hoary old Somerton Man nitkeeper camp-fire tale their (grand-)father used to tell them, this detail is probably lost to history.

Where To Look Now?

There’s no shortage of police activity documented here: six months of active surveillance on a single site would have involved amassing dossiers on every baccarat school principal, so a ton of paperwork must have been generated. But what happened to that? Can all of it simply have been lost?

There is little doubt in my mind that Victoria Police’s Archive Services Centre – dubbed the “Bermuda Triangle of police files” – contains everything we would like to know.

[…] 135,000 boxes packed floor to ceiling in a cop version of a Costco.

More than one-third have not been catalogued, and records are rudimentary at best for many others.

“It’s a rabbit warren. Police keep almost everything and it’s an organisational nightmare down there,” a former senior police commander says.

Hence it seems to me to be a reasonably safe bet that it is in there, right next to the box containing the Ark of the Covenant. Here’s hoping!

I was recently reminded that, having got sidetracked by Triantafillos & Stelios Balutis, I hadn’t got round to returning to the Balutz line of inquiry. So here are some notes on Balutz-surnamed people to keep you going. 🙂

By the way, even though you might think that “Balutz” came from the slum district of Bałuty in northern Łódź (the one that became a horrific ghetto in WWII), I actually suspect that the two aren’t connected in any useful way. (But please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong!)

Balutz to think about

Despite (as previously discussed) Trove offering up only the single (albeit intensely interesting baccarat-school-related) mention of Balutz, American newspapers and archives offer up a fair few Balutzes to work with.

So, whereas my last post here discussed Lithuanian migration to Britain 1868-1905, this post’s focus is mainly on Romanians and Hungarians called Balutz emigrating to the US, mainly via the port of Hamburg.

Typical of this wider narrative are Miklos Balutz (b. ~1881), Avisalom Balutz (b. ~1880), and Samuel Balutz (b. ~1870), all from Keresd in Hungary (well, in that part of Transylvania which is now in Romania). In the 1905 New York State Census, we can see all three living as boarders in Ellicott Place, Lancaster, Erie: the annotation says that they are a “laborer family“.

For Miklos, you can see him departing Hamburg on 11 Dec 1904, travelling on the S.S. Patricia to New York via Dover and Boulogne, arriving 25th Dec 1904. Similarly, Avisalom travelled from Liverpool to New York, arriving on 6 Nov 1904: and appears to have travelled again from Hamburg to New York (via Cuxhaven, Southampton & Cherbourg), arriving on 14 Sep 1912.

In 1917-1918, we can see “non-declarant alien” Avisalom Joan Balutz (born Feb 1880), now a laborer of 212 Plum Alley, Trumbull County, Ohio, enlisting in the US Army. (Note that there are now plenty of people with the surname Balut in Trumbull County.) Avisalom’s next of kin was a John Balutz of 619 Powersdale Avenue, Youngstown, Ohio. Presumably this was the same John Balutz who was a laborer boarding in 40 Tenth in Youngstown, PA in 1915.

Elsewhere in Pennsylvania, this was broadly around the same time (according to a Wasilchak/Balutz family tree on ancestry.com) that a John Balutz married Anna Truhan (1896-1974) and begat Peter (?), Helen (1917-1942), Nicholas (1919-), Paul (1920-) and Mary Balutz (1922-2011), many of whom were born in Jessup, PA.

On 28 Feb 1923, we hear of an Anna Balutz having surgical treatment in Ellwood Hospital: but on 09 Mar 1917, we also read of Zack Balutz (of Second Street, Ellwood) also being admitted to hospital.

In 1930-1945, John, Anna and Mary Balutz were resident in 120 Palm St, Olyphant, Lackawanna, PA, yielding a further cluster of Balutz archival sightings. On 17 Aug 1931, we see a Helen Balutz, 14, of the same address being involved in an accident (for which she was awarded damages in Nov 1931): the same Helen Balutz died in October 1942 after a short illness.

Are all these John Balutz and Anna Balutz sightings at both ends of Pennsylvania of the same people? (I guess so, but I don’t know for sure.)

More Balutzes from Keresd

Apart from the above, we also have the Julie Lanke Dudrick family tree on ancestry.com to work with. This flags an Atyim (John) Balutz (1861-), father of Zachary (Zaharia) Băluț (check out my diacritics, all you doubters), (b. 1884 in Malincrav, Romania, d. 21 December 1941, Terre Haute, Indiana).

We first see an Atkime Balutz aged 42 from Keresd travelling from Bremen to Baltimore in 1902, to stay with a “Bath, Joh.”.

Though I can’t make out the rest of the destination, it seems he had already made the trip before in 1899. We then see Atyim Balutz arriving in Baltimore, Maryland from Bremen in 1903, heading for Alliance, Ohio.

After that, we see Zachary arrive in New York from Bremen in 1907 on the Kaiser Wilhelm Der Grosse. In 1920, he was living at 1913 8th Avenue with his brother-in-law Peter (Petru) Saracin and sister Sophy (Zenovia) Saracin. In Ellwood City in 1922, he saved a fellow worker from being gassed.

And… there are about a further 30 or 40 Balutzes, whose immigrant lives simply don’t seem to hit the suburban newspaper chatterati’s radar.

Do You See The Problem Here?

Despite having tried to trace a fair few Balutzes above, there’s actually very little narrative thread to grab hold of and follow. Rather, what we seem to be seeing here is a broad brush of history being dourly daubed, as a whole generation of European immigrants found itself absorbed into and consumed by America’s circa-1900 capitalist machinery.

Some, like John Balutz, married and raised families: but many, perhaps isolated by language / culture / prejudice / racism / whatever, seem to have struggled to find a place for themselves in America beyond simply their narrowly-allocated role as raw muscle.

Within the sphere of genealogical research, this working class invisibility seems to impose a kind of lower bound, below which almost nothing is visible. It makes the tools of genealogy seem impossibly middle class, as if we are trying to understand bats by dissecting cuttlefish. Honestly? Right now, I’m sorry but it feels like we don’t stand the faintest chance here. 🙁

So… Where Next, Nick?

So I’m still interested by the mysterious baccarat school Balutz: unless anyone knows better, he seems likely to me to have been born to Romanian parents around the turn of the century, perhaps in America.

All the same, I have to say that the archival tides don’t seem to be flowing in our direction here. Really, we need the archives to provide us with a lucky break, which – as I hope you already know – only normally happens in Dan Brown novels.

But… let’s just cross our collective fingers and hope for the best, eh?

This is, of the course, the single question that bothered me most after writing my most recent post on the Somerton Man. As you’d expect, almost all the Keans/Keanes I found were Scottish or Irish immigrants: but, sticking out like a sore thumb, there was a single British Joseph Kean with two Lithuanian parents. I set out to figure out what was going on there…

Lithuanian emigration

In the century and more before 1918 (when Lithuania reconstituted itself as a freestanding state), Lithuania was a region controlled by the Russian Empire. Its language (Lithuanian) and religion (almost entirely Roman Catholic) both found themselves being increasingly suppressed, as part of Imperial attempts to damp down its nationalist fervour for independence.

When Lithuanians were hit by a great famine in 1867-1868, the response of many was to emigrate: all in all, it lost 20% of its population to emigration from 1868 to 1900 or so.

In the 19th century, one of the most popular places immigrants looked to move to was Great Britain, a country that allowed pretty much anyone in. (This was to change with the 1905 Aliens Act, which gave control over immigration to the Home Secretary, a dragon-nose-snorting feeling of power that seems to define the kind of populist idiot politician who goes for that job.)

So it should be no surprise that, post-1868, Lithuanian émigré communities started to pop up in London, Manchester, Liverpool, Nottingham, etc. The fifteenth century Catholic Saint Casimir Jagiellon was their patron saint, so processions, chapels and even churches dedicated to St. Casimir also started to appear (around 1900 or so).

I think this forms the basic historical narrative framework to bear in mind when trying to understand the experience and situation of Lithuanian immigrants 1800-1900.

Basic Facts About Joseph Kean

The genealogical archives give us four basic records relating to Joseph Kean:

1. His 1922 emigration from Liverpool to Philadelphia on the S.S. Pittsburgh with his wife Frances
2. His 1926 application for naturalization
3. The 1930 US Census (he is living in Cuyahoga, Cleveland, OH with wife Frances and son John).
4. The 1940 US Census (no change there)

They also tell us a few more details about Frances Kean…

• born 24th Mar 1896, died 1st Jun 1970 (when her status was “married”)
• buried in All Saints Cemetery, Northfield, Summit County, Ohio, USA

…and John Joseph Kean…

• born 3rd Nov 1923, died 30 Sep 1969
• buried in All Saints Cemetery, Northfield, Summit County, Ohio, USA

Note that there’s also a Joseph F. Kean (who died 7th March 1983) buried in All Saints Cemetery, but there’s no date of birth or picture, so it’s not yet clear to me if this is the same Joseph Kean we’re interested in.

Joseph Kean’s Family

Joseph Kean’s 1922 immigration record from the S.S. Pittsburgh includes a number of telling details:

• Though he was born in Britain, his race was “Lithuanian”
• Joseph’s occupation was “Miner”, Frances’ was “Housewife”
• Their last abode was “Manchester”
• They were heading for Cleveland, Ohio.
• The next of kin (for both him and his wife Frances) was listed as “Aunt Mrs Majaikas, 59 Lankin Lane, Liverpool” (more on her later)

However, the most interesting thing was a handwritten note that was added to the typed list – “Smirpunas, used for convenience in army“:

So it seems Joseph Kean’s given surname had originally been “Smirpunas” (or something like it), but that he had changed it to “Kean” for convenience in the British Army.

It didn’t take me long to find his parents Jonas and Antonina “Surpunas”, travelling across to Philadelphia at almost exactly the same time (but aboard the White Star Line’s S.S. Haverford), departing Liverpool on 19 Nov 1921.

We can also see miner Jonas Snirpunas (though now from Paeyerus, Russia, and only “48” years old, so obviously it was a very refreshing journey) and Antonina Snirpunas arriving in Philadelphia on 30th November 1921, along with (and here’s a surprise) English-born 17-year-old son William Snirpunas (also a miner). All three’s next of kin is marked as “Cousin Vincent Majackis, of 59 Limekiln Lane, Liverpool”.

From this we can tell that in 1921, Jonas Snirpunas was a Lithuanian-born miner (either 48 or 52, while his Lithuanian-born wife Antonina was 52), who had been living in 91 Station Road, Haydock St Helens. Which, according to Google Maps, now looks like this:

Knowing that his parents had been living in Haydock St Helens then made it easy to find Joseph Kean’s British WWI records. Private Joseph Kean 428778 of the Labouring Corps was discharged with a military pension on 6th March 1919 because of “neurasthenia” (“20%” of which was caused by military service). His address was “91 Station Road, Haydock St Helens”.

It seems that this (eight shillings a week) pension ceased on 24/5/1921, and that the paperwork was “transferred to Foreign & Colonial 5/7/[19]22”. My guess (and it’s only a guess) would be that the end of his military pension in May 1921 may have helped trigger Joseph’s emigration to America later that same year.

Regardless, Joseph’s 1927 petition for naturalization included his birth name (“Joseph Snirpunas”) and his changed name (“Joseph Kean”), and gave his birth date as 19th October 1899. His address was given as 3134 Superior Avenue, Cleveland Ohio. The dates of birth given above for his wife and son are both also confirmed here.

What next for the Snirpunas family?

Just to complete the big fat record dump, William Snirpunas married Johanna A. Feltz, and they had two daughters that I could find:

• Antionette Snirpunas (b. 30 Mar 1925 in Cleveland, Ohio, d. Jun 1984), SSN 289200917 – “Sep 1942: ANTIONETTE PETERSON SNIRPUNAS; Mar 1947: ANTIONETTE E GIBBY; Jul 1962: ANTOINETTE E HOGAN; 29 Dec 1987: ANTOINETTE HOGAN”
• Marion Snirpunas (b. 22 Dec 1927 in Cleveland Cu[yahoga] Ohio, d. 10 Oct 2004), SSN 293263472 – “Mar 1947: MARION PETERSON; Feb 1952: MARION BROWN”.

I couldn’t see what became of Jonas or Antonina Snirpunas.

Was Joseph Kean the Somerton Man?

Joseph Kean fits the bill in so many ways: a miner of the right age, a “Britisher”, an immigrant, and with Baltic DNA.

But the archives haven’t yielded all their secrets yet. Knowing his date and place of birth, we can trace his US WWII draft card, which tells us:

Weight:	155 [lbs]
Complexion:	Ruddy
Eye Colour:	Gray
Hair Colour:	Blonde
Height:	5” 7 1/2″

However, I feel fairly certain that this is also Joseph Kean, SSN 282-05-6088, born 18th October 1899, last residence 44141, Brecksville, Cuyahoga, Ohio, USA, died March 1983 – without much doubt the same Joseph Kean buried in All Saints Cemetery.

So: no, I don’t think that Joseph Kean (né Snirpunas) was the Somerton Man.

Last thoughts, Nick?

For me, the main point of chasing down this rabbit hole was to see if there was any systematic reason why a Lithuanian guy might end up with a name like Joseph Kean – such as the whole supposed “KEANIC” thing (which I never really understood).

In the end, this particular instance seems to have been nothing more complex than an immigrant opportunistically swapping one Catholic immigrant surname for another more pronounceable (and less alien) one to try to blend in in the British Army in WWI. In the big scheme of things, though, I’d be surprised if this was anything more than an outlier.

However, what I did find out was that the US Census records include a lot of detail about parental nationality: and so I wonder if there is a way to search the various US Censuses for all people called Kean or Keane whose mother was Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian, Finnish, or Polish.

When I tried this out, the closest Lithuanian I could find was Maurice Kean (b. ~1906) and Julius Kean (b. ~1910), whose father Samuel Kean was a Jewish tailor from Lithuania. So, no maternal match there.

No hits for Latvia or Estonia: for Poland, I found a Michael and Caroline Kean (both born in Poland) living in Chicago with all their children.

For Russia, however, I found a Jeremy Kean of 79 Garfield Ave, New London CT (b. 1900 to Benjamin and Rosie Kean, both of Russia); a Nathan Kean (b. 1900 to David and Sarah Kean, both of Russia); and so on and so on.

Essentially, it seems that the pattern being followed by a good number of Russian Jewish families was that they Americanised their names to Kean: and I would be unsurprised if this was usually from Cohen / Kohn / etc.

Of course, the Somerton Man was famously uncircumcised, so it would perhaps seem a little unlikely that he was a Cohen-turned-Kean. But… who can tell?

Ever the provocateur, Pete Bowes’ latest challenge concerns the fact that if you look at each of the four short uncrossed-out lines of mysterious text indented on the back of the Somerton Man’s Rubaiyat, the seventh letter is always A. Well, he says, what are the odds of that, then?

So Let’s Run the Numbers…

For the sake of argument, let’s work with the transcription of the four lines that appears on Wikipedia (simply because it’s somewhere to start):

W R G O A B A B D
W T B I M P A N E T P
M L I A B O A I A Q C
I T T M T S A M S T G A B

OK: it’s dead easy to see the column of four A’s Pete is highlighting, so let’s try to calculate how (un)likely that pattern is.

The four lines contain 2, 1, 3, and 2 As respectively: and no other letter appears on all four lines. So, we might reasonably wonder what the probability of this would be if you randomly anagram each of the four lines. For this to work, all four As would have to fall in the first nine columns.

• Line #2: the probability that its single A falls in any of the matchable 9 columns is 9/11. We’ll use whichever column this falls in for the rest of the calculation.
• Line #1: two As and 9 columns, probability = 2/9
• Line #3: three As and 11 columns, probability = 3/11
• Line #4: two As and 13 columns. Probability = 2/13

Multiply these four individual probabilities together (because they all have to be true simultaneously), and you get (9/11)*(2/9)*(3/11)*(2/13) = (12/1573).

So, if you randomly anagrammed each of the four lines, the odds that you would see a column of four As is roughly 1 in 131. Which I think is good to know, because it seems to rule out the possibility that any heavy-duty ciphers (where any such pattern would be destroyed) was employed here.

In short, this is looking even more like an acrostic than it did before.

All ‘Ands On Deck

The suggestion that we are looking at the first letters of four lines of poetry has been floated countless times before. Let’s face it, given that the four lines were written on the back of a book of quatrains (i.e. four-line poems), that hardly requires a huge stretch of the imagination.

But if we centre the same four odd-length lines a bit more, we can see that four As sit extremely close to the centre of each line:

    W R G O   A   B A B D
  W T B I M P   A   N E T P
  M L I A B O   A   I A Q C
I T T M T S   A   M S T G A B

Looking at this, I’m wondering if this might suggest that two or more of these very central As might be the first letter of the word AND.

Back in 2015, I discussed Barry Traish’s excellent bacronymic poem that he imaginatively reconstructed from the Rubaiyat message’s initials (note that Barry used a slightly different transcription from the one on Wikipedia):

“My road goes on, and by and by divides,
Now two branches, into morning, past a new evening that provides,
My love is a barren oblivion, and itself alone quite certain,
It’s time to move the soul among magic stars, then gently asleep besides.”

You can see that Barry has replaced the As on line #1 and line #3 with AND, so that after a short first idea (“My road goes on”) and following pause (“,”), he uses AND to link the line on to the second idea (“by and by divides”). This is a natural (if somewhat clichéd) way of constructing a simple poem.

Stress Doesn’t Have To Be Stressful

Rearranged yet another way…

    W R G O   A   B A B D
W T B I M P   A   N E T P
M L I A B O   A   I A Q C
I T T M T S   A   M S T G A B

…I’m wondering whether all the central A-words in this third arrangement are unstressed. I’m pretty sold on Barry’s “And By And By” in line #1, and it’s no surprise that the A-words Barry selected are all unstressed:

and and / a / a and alone / among asleep

Moreover: laid out like this, I’m left wondering whether the first half of the first line might have ended up too short: compared to the other three, [W/M] R G O feels like it has a beat missing. Sure, it might conceivably use words with more syllables, but that doesn’t quite feel right to me.

Errm… You Mentioned Tolkien?

Long-suffering Cipher Mysteries readers surely know that I occasionally like to drop in fairly tangential references to J. R. R. Tolkien. And why not? Tolkien loved runes and old languages, and he even very probably saw a scratchy rotoscope rotograph copy of the Voynich Manuscript that was floating around Oxford in the 1930s, back when he was an academic there.

Of course, the big thing Tolkien did in the 1930s was write The Hobbit (released in September 1937). The first edition of 1500 copies sold out quickly, and a second edition was printed immediately afterwards: despite paper shortages in WW2, it has never been out of print since.

The book was a huge success in Britain and the US: yet if you look for it in Trove, it only appears in 1937 and 1938, and then you’ll find no mention until Tolkien’s Fellowship of the Ring was published in the 1950s.

Why do I mention all this? Simply because I suspect the first line of the poem penned on the back of the Rubaiyat may have been ripped off from directly inspired by the poem that Bilbo recites in the last chapter of The Hobbit, at the end of his long journey back to the Shire:

Roads go ever ever on,
Over rock and under tree,
By caves where never sun has shone,
By streams that never find the sea;
Over snow by winter sown,
And through the merry flowers of June,
Over grass and over stone,
And under mountains in the moon.

Roads go ever ever on
Under cloud and under star,
Yet feet that wandering have gone
Turn at last to home afar.
Eyes that fire and sword have seen
And horror in the halls of stone
Look at last on meadows green
And trees and hills they long have known.

To be precise, I suspect it wasn’t Tolkien’s scansion or rhyming or Hobbity doggerel that was the inspiration: but rather the way that the entire first line of the poem presents roads as a straightforward poetic metaphor for life’s journey long spent away but now finally back home.

And so I can’t help but suspect that the first line of the poem (with more than a small nod to Tolkien, & reinstating the Bilboesque ‘ever’ he omitted) was:

My road goes (ever) onwards; and by and by [divides?]

The Missing Child?

If you broadly accept this much (however much of a stretch you find it), then I think you also have to consider the possibility that the Somerton Man bought The Hobbit not for himself (for it was most definitely published as a children’s book), but rather to read to his young child(ren) at bedtime. (And if I had to, I’d guess that this was an eight-year-old boy circa 1938.)

(Yes, for my sins, I indeed read The Hobbit and the complete Lord of the Rings trilogy to my own son when he was young. Please therefore feel free to consider me impossibly old-fashioned, I really don’t mind.)

Putting all this together, I can’t help but feel more than a bit swayed by the (romantic and utterly speculative, but entirely plausible-sounding) notion that we might be able to glimpse the sweep of the Somerton Man’s life embedded in this single (reconstructed) first line: a man born in South Australia, living away in America, having a (Hobbit-loving) ten-year-old son in 1938, and – somewhat like Bilbo Baggins, but let’s not get too carried away, eh? – coming full circle back to the Shire South Australia in 1948.

Where he died, alas. The rest you already know.

Hopefully one day we’ll know if this was indeed how the Somerton Man’s life played out – whether we can see his world in (this) grain of sand. Or if we are – not for the first time – just kidding ourselves like hell. Who can tell?

And finally, the 1930 US Census…

As always, the Somerton Man researchers among us might now be itching to head over to the 1930 US census to look for a J. Kean[e] born around 1900 who had a child born around 1925-1930.

To save you the effort, I dropped by there myself. Here’s who I found:

• John Kean, born in Scotland in 1901, immigrated in 1922, machinist, living in Stamford, Fairfield, Connecticut with wife Jessie Kean (28, also from Scotland), daughter Mary Kean (age 1).
• John Kean, born 1897, a tile setter living in Queens, New York City with wife Florence Kean (25) and children Daniel (5), Anna (3), and Florence (1).
• John Kean, born in Scotland in 1900, immigrated in 1923, carpenter, living in Queens, New York City, with wife Isabel (26, also from Scotland) and son John Kean Jr (2).
• Joseph J Kean, born 1898, storeroom clerk in a chemical factory, living in Niagara Falls, with wife Ruth (35) and daughter Virginia (7).
• Joseph J Kean, born 1902, digger operator living in Michigan, with wife Mary (23) and children Mary (6), Joseph (5), William (3), Edward (1).
• Joseph Kean, born 1900 in England to Lithuanian parents, immigrated 1922, a carter on the elevators, living in Cleveland, Cuyahoga, Ohio with wife Frances (34, also born in England to Lithuanian parents), son John (6).
• Joseph Keane, born 1900 in Ireland, immigrated in 1923, plasterer living in New Rochelle, Westchester, New York with wife Helen (28), daughter Ritta (2), and son Joseph (0).
• John Keane, born to Irish parents, a salesman living in Yonkers, Westchester with wife Helen (26) and children Nancy (1) and Betty (3).
• John Keane, born in 1898, a manager in an asbestos factory, living in Jersey City with wife Anna (25) and daughter Doris (3).
• John Keane, born in Missouri in 1897, a confectionery proprietor, living in St. Louis Township MN with wife Edith (25) and son John (2).
• John Keane, born in New York in 1896 to Irish parents, a counterman in a restaurant, living in Manhattan with wife Bernice (35) and sons John (2) and James (1).
• John Keane, born in Ireland in 1895, immigrated in 1913, a letter carrier living in the Bronx with wife Catherine (26), and children John (1) and Margaret (0).
• John Keane, born in Illinois to Irish parents in 1895, an electrical contractor living in Chicago with wife Margret (32), and daughters Mary (7) and Betty (1).
• John Keane, born in Ireland in 1895, immigrated in 1916, a labourer living in Jersey City with wife Anna (32, also born in Ireland) and daughter Mary (5).
• James Keane, born in Ireland in 1899, immigrated in 1923, a labourer living in Chicago with wife Mary (32) and son James (0).
• James Keane, born in 1900 to Irish parents, a sugar truck chauffeur living in Brooklyn with wife Anna (26) and children Donald (6), Leonard (3) and Anna (0).
• James Keane, born in Ireland in 1898 to Irish parents, a butcher living in Newark with wife Bertha (26), and children James (3) and Betty (1)

Doubtless there are (many) others in the 1930 census who fit this (extremely speculative) pattern, but that’s the point where my will to go on gave way.

Anyone a-hunting haplogroup H4a1a1a (hi Byron!) will of course be heartened by the presence of British (but Lithuanian-parented) Joseph Kean in Cleveland OH in this list. Make of it all what you will!

And yes, he could have been all three, or indeed none of them. But please bear with me, there’s a lot of ground to cover here.

Boxing

The background here is that I suspect that in the late 1930s to the 1940s, the Somerton Man ended up as some kind of criminal ‘heavy’ (e.g. a standover man, a nitpicker, etc). My aim was to try to work backwards from there, i.e. to second-guess what the Somerton Man was doing in the 1920s.

So, my initial stab in the dark was that he might have been an unsuccessful amateur boxer: so that’s who I went digging for. What I found in Trove was that boxing turned into a really big-time Australian sport around 1929-1930, which is when you see an explosion in the number of stadiums, promoters, fighters, and sports newspaper column inches devoted to boxing.

Naturally, because some of the the clothes in the Somerton Man’s suitcase had the name “KEAN” / “KEANE” on them, my starting point was Australian boxers who shared that surname. This yielded Reg Keane (who trained at Ern Miller’s Goulburn Street gym, and boxed in 1931-1932), Billy Keane (1932), Telegraphist Keane in the Naval Reserve Championships (1933) who I suspect was V. C. Keane (1930), H. Keane of the Olympic Club, etc.

All seemed unsuccessful enough to fit the profile: reporting the bout between Bill Collins and Reg Keane, the 8th Feb 1931 Sydney Truth noted:

“The time was mostly spent with Keane picking himself off the floor. When he had been deposited there the fourth time, Joe Wallis stopped the fight and crowned Collins.”

However, this whole line of attack felt generally quite unproductive to me. The sports papers of the day seemed more concerned with the quantity of blood on the canvas and how long the loser spent in hospital after being knocked out, rather than any human interest side.

For instance, the only things that typically got reported about non-superstar boxers are their weight (because of the different weight categories), and which round they won/lost in (presumably because punters gambled on these). So there’s not a lot of grist for anyone’s historical mill there.

As an aside, I don’t believe we know the Somerton Man’s weight. Do you think he would have been a heavyweight?

Wrestling – Jack Keane Sr.

Because boxing and wrestling were often promoted together, I couldn’t help but notice two wrestlers both called Jack Keane.

The (much) older of the two was John Joseph (‘Jack’) Keane, described as having been an Irish-style wrestler. However, not only was he much too old to be the Somerton Man, he was also much too deceased (he died on 27 Nov 1938, aged 74 years). He and his wife Agnes Maude Keane (who died on 10 Mar 1947), had four children, John, Rita, Josie, and Kevin.

Trove has a few articles mentioning Jack Keane Sr: I quite liked this one from 1936, which included this picture:

I briefly got excited by the idea that his son (John Joseph Keane Jr.) might have been a wrestler too. However, even though JJK Jr was roughly the right age to be the Somerton Man, it turns out that he was the Dulwich bookmakers’ clerk who lived with his wife Clara Maude Keane in Union St, Dulwich (yes, the same clerk I spent so long trying to track down), and who died on the 20th January 1941.

Wrestling – the other Jack Keane

There was, however, an (apparently separate) wrestler called Jack Keane whose name pops up in Trove’s tiny margins. For example, here’s a 28 Jun 1932 sport story reporting a bout between Jack Kean and Jim Moore (one fall each in three five minute rounds).

Note that the best-known Australian wrestler of the day with the surname Keane was V. P. (‘Vin’) Keane, who was the South Australian amateur heavyweight wrestling champion in 1931. Because of (what I now think was) a typo in one article, it took me a while to be sure that this Vin Keane was (a) not Jack Keane by another name, and (b) still alive in 1949.

However, between 1939 and 1941, the Adelaide Sport ran an overtly female-oriented sports column called “Verities of Victoria” or “Sayings of Suzanne“. These tried to present a gossipy, ring-side view, often looking more at who was in the audience (and what fashionable clothes they were wearing) than the poor bloodied buggers slugging each other in the ring. For example, the 13 Sep 1940 Sayings of Suzanne noted that “Vin Keane’s wife was wearing the newest and latest in pastel grey at the wrestling“. Which was nice.

The reason this gets interesting is that the 19 Jan 1940 Sayings of Suzanne noted that:

“Jack Keane, who used to wrestle in a mask, saw somebody else taking the punishment for a change and Jimmy Bartlett aired yet another fancy shirt, buttercup yellow this time.”

So, if we are to believe the Adelaide Sport’s ‘Suzanne’ (and why not?), Jack Keane had in fact been a masked wrestler. But… which masked wrestler?

Masked Wrestlers in Australia

Yes, there were a fair few masked wrestlers pounding Australian canvases in the late 1920s and 1930s. Yet even by 1933, people were starting to tire of the gimmick, and there were calls to outlaw the use of masks in the ring.

Regardless, the first (and most famous) of these was Walter Miller, who was billed as the “Masked Man” and the “Masked Marvel”. Born in Poland (as Josef Banaski?), he had wrestled in America for some years, but following an injury moved out to Australia to keep wrestling while regaining his form. He was eventually unmasked in 1929.

Other American masked wrestlers active in Australia around this time included:

• The “Black Panther” (Frank Sexton)
• The “Red Shadow” (Leo Numa)
• The “Mysterious Ghost” (????)
• “Tarzan the Fearless” (named after the Buster Crabbe film; and no, I’m not making it up).

Australian masked wrestlers included Ossie Norman of Sydney (“The Masked Wrestler”) and Terry Morrison (“The Masked Man” and “The Masked Marvel”). Interestingly, Terry Morrison – who had also been a heavyweight boxer – later found himself in court in connection with an auto parts deal that went bad (he described himself to the Court as a “prospector”, though he seemed more like a somewhat self-defeating private detective along the lines of Jim Rockford).

So, which masked wrestler might Jack Keane have been? Though it is no doubt incomplete, my (self-compiled) list of Australian masked wrestlers from this era has only two names remaining: “Steel Grip” (who only seems to have wrestled once) and – my personal favourite – the “Masked Singing Wrestler“. And no, I’m really really not making this up.

Here’s the Queenslander’s account of the Masked Singing Wrestler’s fight from 22nd October 1936:

At the Bohemia Stadium on Saturday night, Bob King and the “Masked Singer” met in one of the fastest and most gruelling wrestling matches that have been seen for months. Having sung two ballads, the masked man divested himself of his dress suit to reveal a well-trained athlete in orthodox trunks. He kept his mask on. He gained two falls in the first four rounds—a Boston crab and an octopus. King gained falls in the fifth and seventh rounds, with a back-slam and body press and a variation of the Indian death lock. The end came in the eighth round, when King threw himself at his rival, who jumped clear for King to dive out of the ring on to his head. He was unable to continue, and the masked man got the decision.

We do know a little bit more about him:

The masked singing wrestler, who has returned from the South, is a pleasing type with plenty of personality and highly developed mat ability. He has defeated many opponents in a spectacular manner, while critics have praised his rendering of operatic airs.

Furthermore:

“The Masked Singing Wrestler” is said to be the possessor of a glorious tenor voice and is also claimed to be one of the greatest leg wrestlers at present in the game. He is tall, and of sinewy, muscular build.

And, on one occasion when the bout was delayed because of bad weather:

Special entertainment will be provided for patrons at the Allenstown Theatre tomorrow night, when a variety entertainment, to take the form of an Irish Night, will be presented. The popular masked singing wrestler has been engaged and will render popular Irish airs. Those who have heard this artist’s splendid voice over the air and elsewhere need no further introduction to his exceptional ability.

The Masked Singing Wrestler was briefly unmasked, but not identified:

Still not satisfied, he [O’Brien] raced across the ring and made an attack on the singer, who, caught in a surprise attack, had his mask ripped from his face. Few, however, were able to catch a glimpse of his features for he covered his face with his mask and hands, and made a hurried exit from the ring.

To summarize, we know that the MSW was a tall, sinewy wrestler from the South: and that he had a fine tenor voice and a penchant for operatic airs and Irish folk-songs, along with excellent mat work and leg work. He may even have sung on the radio.

Perhaps surprisingly, there were plenty of singing wrestlers at that time. My strong suspicion is MSW was not Jack Winrow or Russell Scarfe or the baritone Sam Burmister or Terry McGinnis or Tony Sanga or Pat Fraley but Al Costello, whose many years of poor luck in the wrestling business finally seemed to be turning around in 1948 (according to this story).

So, if ‘Suzanne’ was correct, under what name did Jack Keane wrestle while wearing a mask? I still don’t know, but I’m trying hard to find out…

Clog Dancing

Finally: going off on a little bit of a tangent, I was intrigued by Jack Keane Sr.’s other hobby: statue pedestal clog dancing.

Though almost completely forgotten now, this was a very specific form of clog dancing that begin in 1866 and was in vogue for several decades. Pedestal clog dancers would do a clog dance on a raised pedestal, whilst doing their level best to keep their upper body as rigid as a statue. Some performers (such as Henry E. Dixey) would even white themselves up to more closely resemble a dancing statue:

Oh, and just so you know, Charlie Chaplin started out as a clog dancer, as did Victorian comedian Dan Leno, along with Wilson and Keppel (though not any of the Bettys).

And so I couldn’t help but wonder: what if the Somerton Man’s curiously shaped feet and overdeveloped calf muscles (that Paul Lawson noted at the time) were a result of his having been a statue pedestal clog dancer?

So, perhaps what the Somerton Man was doing as a young man in the 1910s and 1920s was some form of clog dancing? Feel free to disagree, but that would makes more sense than just about every other foot-/calf-related SM theory I’ve heard. Just a thought!