As Derek Abbott liked to point out (particularly when he was trying to raise Somerton Man crowdfunding from Americans), we can easily imagine the Somerton Man having some US connection. This was not just from the distinctly American feather stitching on his coat, but also from his Juicy Fruit chewing gum, probably a habit picked up at a younger age (when he had more teeth to chew with).

So I’ve been playing around behind findmypast.com.au’s database paywall, seeing what’s there. And it was there that I found four American John Joseph Keanes all born in 1898, thanks to their First World War enlistment records.

These four American draftees should be worth a quick look, right?

JJK #1

Serial Number: 2271 / 3171. Address: 221 Vernon, Wakefield. Born: 28th June 1898. Description: Tall, Medium Build, Blue Eyes, Light Hair. Nationality: Irish. Next of kin: Mrs John Keane, Attymon, Galway. Drafted: Melrose City #28, Massachusetts. Occupation: Lead Busman. Employer: Thompson Scarnitt, Nitro, W. Virginia.

JJK #2

Serial Number: 2376 / 1388. Address: 2123 S. Opal, Phila, Phila, PA. Born: 13th September 1898. Description: Short Height, Medium Build, Gray Eyes, Brown Hair. Nationality: US born. Next of kin: Patrick Keane (Father), 2123 S. Opal. Drafted: Philadelphia City No. 51. Occupation: Assistant Blue Printer. Employer: United States Navy Yard, United States Govt.

There’s a John Keane, born 13th September 1898, who died in Pennsylvania in October 1966 (Social Security Number 164-05-1829): so it looks as though #2 may be fully accounted for. 🙂

JJK #3

Serial Number: 3841 / 5260. Address: 556 Paris St, San Francisco, CA. Born: 19th May 1898. Description: Medium Height, Medium Build, Blue Eyes, Auburn Hair. Next of kin: Ellen Keane, 556 Paris, San Francisco, CA. Drafted: San Francisco City No. 3. Occupation: Heater Boy. Employer: Schawbatchee shipyard, South San Francisco, San Mateo.

There’s a 1910 Census entry for 596 Athens Street, with John Keane (Head, born in Ireland), Ellen Keane (wife, born in Ireland), John J. [12] and James Keane [8] (all born in New York), and Katherine [6], Robert M. [4], Evelyn [3], and William Keane [2] (all born in California).

JJK #4

Serial Number: 1503 / 94638. Address: Brentwood, Suffolk, N.Y. Born: 25th Dec 1898. Description: Medium Height, Medium Build, Blue Eyes, Black Hair. Next of kin: Anna Keane (Mother), Galway Ireland. Drafted: Suffolk County No. 2, New York. Occupation: Farmer. Employer: Sisters, St Joseph, Brentwood, Suffolk, N.Y.

Any Matches?

Here’s the tie linked to the Somerton Man, with the name (T? or J?) Keane on it, which (I have to say) doesn’t look like any of the signatures. And we also know that the Somerton Man was tallish (5ft 11in) and with grey eyes. So it looks like we’re out of luck here, sorry.

But the point I’m trying to make (albeit implicitly) here is that this kind of archival search is extremely random and patchy. For these four draftees, we have a date of birth, a physical description, a next of kin, etc, which is really great: but this is the archival exception rather than anything like the rule. In just about every other case, we have only the tiniest of fragments – for example, marriage details are often little more than a pair of names, a place and a date. Unless you already know what you are looking for, you’re going to be struggling from the start: and that has been true of the research so far.

That Dulwich clerk, at last…

Even so, all my fine-tooth trawling through findmypast’s databases did mean that I found the Australian Electoral Rolls 1939, which (mirabile dictu!) lists:

• 5761 Keane, Clara Maude, 16 Union st, Dulwich, home duties F
• 5762 Keane, John Joseph, 16 Union st, Dulwich, clerk M

So it would seem that we finally have (probably) a wife for our Dulwich bookmakers’ clerk.

And this Clara Maude Keane in turn led (via the inevitable long string of intermediate dead-ends) to the following Family Notice in the Adelaide Chronicle of 23rd January 1941:

KEANE. —On the 20th of January [1941], John Joseph, dearly beloved husband of Clara Keane, of Gurney road, Dulwich, and loving father of Kevin and Ronald, beloved brother of Rita, Josie, and Kevin. Aged 44 years. Requiescat in pace

And so, I believe, this search ends.

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

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

Us and Them

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Sound of Silence

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Baccarat School Nitkeeper

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Victoria Petty Sessions Court

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

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

So, no definitive results here. Bah!

John Joseph Keane – BDM

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

Findmypast lists:

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

FamilySearch.org lists:

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

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

While (yet again) raking through Trove a while back for anything to do with the missing bookmaker’s clerk (and gambling nitkeeper) John Joseph Kean(e), I found two mentions (here and here) of a May 1948 divorce in a Sydney court between J. J. Kean and V. M. Kean in front of Mr. Justice Clancy in No. 2 Court.

Even though this trail had previously gone cold, I returned to it today to see if I could find anything more about “V. M. Kean”: and this time around, it turned out that the Gods of Trove were a little more on my side.

63 Jetty Road, really?

I first found a November 1945 open letter from “V. M. Keane” published in the Adelaide Advertiser on the 16th, 17th and 19th:

PERSONS who have left goods to be sold on commission make enquiries re same by December 1st, 1945, otherwise the undersigned will not be responsible (Signed) V. M. KEANE. 63 Jetty road. Glenelg

This then led me to find an article in the 30th October 1945 Adelaide News:

At Glenelg yesterday, while Mrs. Veronica Mary Kean was serving in her secondhand shop in Jetty road about 3 p.m., she left two rings on the counter. An hour later they were missing. […] One of them, an eternity ring, was valued at £4 and the other, a gold ring, at £3.

A similar article appeared here in the Adelaide ‘Tiser:

Two rings, together valued at £7, were stolen from the secondhand shop of Mrs Veronica Mary Kean, home duties, of Jetty road, Glenelg, on Monday. PCC Rawson is enquiring.

There’s a reference to “Kean, Veronica Mary” in the 1945 SA Police Gazette (category H: “Stealing In Dwellings etc”), the index to which is visible online.

In 1951, we see a business at the same address: “Miss Muffet 63 JETTY ROAD, GLENELG The Children’s Wear Specialists Large range of Over coats and Frocks in all shades and sizes.”

The shop was already called “Miss Muffet” in January 1946, as per this article:

In aid of the RSL Building fund, a variety show and mannequin parade will be held in the Glenelg Town Hall at 8 p.m on Wednesday February 13. Organiser is Mrs. S. Eitzen and compere Malcolm Ellenby. Mannequins—Mary Rennie (bathing beauty candidate), Zita Minagall, Beth Habib, Patricia Rennie, Mary Abbley, Gipsy Rowe, Lorraine Hart, Barbara Jacob. Cynthia Marshall. Mona Allison Stella Minney and June Lord. Clothes displayed by courtesy of leading Glenelg stores. Bookings at “Miss Muffet,” Jetty road, Glenelg.

Was Veronica Mary Kean also the owner of the Miss Muffet shop? I suspect not, because the letter in the Advertiser seems to imply that she had had the lease of her second hand shop’s premises withdrawn as of 1st December 1945. But a branch of The National Bank of Australasia opened at 63 Jetty Road on 2nd January 1952, giving any Miss Muffet searchers an end date to work with.

Marriage or Death?

So, can we find details of her marriage? The only SA marriage I found for a Veronica Mary Keane was from 1946:

KEANE — SMITH.— The marriage of Veronica Mary, only daughter of Mr. and Mrs. A. H. Smith, of St. Peters, to Hillary Ignatius, fifth son of the late Mr. and Mrs. B. J. Keane, of Goodwood, was solemnised at St. Francis Xavier’s Cathedral on July 20, at 6 p.m.

However, NSW’s BDM website found me a 1926 marriage between James J Kean and Veronica M O’Brien in Glebe (refs: 11392/1926 and 11392/1926). Sadly, images for these aren’t available online.

As for her death, the LDS FamilySearch website yields only a death on 20th December 1968 of a widow called “Keena, Veronica Mary” in Warrnambool: but I somewhat doubt that that was her. Similarly, GenealogySA only suggests a Veronica Mary Keane (whose deceased husband was William Joseph Keane) who died in 1971.

What do I think?

OK, I admit I got a little bit excited when I found Veronica Mary Kean(e) running a second hand shop on 63 Jetty Road, Glenelg in 1945. But it does seem as though she was not the same V. M. Kean who divorced J. J. Kean in Sydney in May 1948 – realistically, that was almost certainly James J. Kean and Veronica Mary Kean (nee O’Brien) terminating their 1926 Glebe marriage.

My best guess is therefore that the Veronica Mary Keane of 63 Jetty Road was in fact the Veronica Mary Smith who married Hillary Ignatius Keane on 20th July 1946, and whose engagement was announced in the Adelaide Advertiser on 3rd November 1945:

SMITH—KEANE. —Mr. and Mrs. A. H. Smith, of St. Peters, wish to announce the engagement of their only daughter, Veronica M., to Hillary I. (RAAF. Pacific), fifth son of the late Mr. and Mrs. B. P. Keane, of Goodwood.

Like another Adelaidean with whom Somerton Man researchers are thoroughly familiar, it seems that Veronica Mary was using her married surname after getting engaged but prior to getting married.

So, it would appear to be no more than normal frustrating chance that put Veronica Mary Keane and her 63 Jetty Road second hand shop in the path of my research steamroller. Well worth a look, undoubtedly close, but… no Tamam Shud cigar this time, sorry! 🙁

While yet again raking through Trove for bookmakers’ clerk John Joseph Keane, I found another Keane: Jack Gordon Keane of Broken Hill. Back in 1916, this J. G. Keane was prosecuted by Mr B. J. Kearney, who (more than a decade later) represented John Joseph Keane in court (which may be a coincidence).

Jack Gordon Kean was ordered two months’ imprisonment, the warrant not to issue for 10 days, for non-compliance with an order for the payment of 5/ a week towards the maintenance of his child.

The Trove links I found are:

• 13 July 1916
• 14 July 1916
• 26 Oct 1917 and here

In Broken Hill’s Barrier Miner, I also found a report of a 1917 case relating to a saddle (stolen from the Southern Cross Hotel), where a John Gordon Kean (“barman employed at the Commercial Hotel”) gave evidence (he advised the recipient of the purloined saddle to go to the police).

Similarly, a “J. G. Keane” was selected for relief work on “Crystal and Kaolin Streets, near Miners Arm Hotel” in Broken Hill in July 1919.

Now, please understand that I don’t for a moment think that this is the same person as the (name-changing) John Joseph Keane I was looking for. What I’m actually wondering is whether, given that the child maintenance orders were issued in an Adelaide court, this might in fact be John Joseph Keane’s father.

Can anyone please do better than I did and track down John Gordon Keane (his surname appears with and without the final ‘e’ in different reports), plus the name of his unsupported child?

Possibly (but, as always, not necessarily) connected is that there was a Mrs J. Keane and Dorothy Keane of “78 Piper-street”, Broken Hill on a broken-down train in March 1919. Similarly, a “J Keane” of “78 Piper-street” objected to a mining concession in February 1926, and to other proposals here and here. But that might be no more than a (different) coincidence.