The mysterious stone near Plougastel-Daoulas, continued…

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I mentioned this mysterious stone here a few days ago, since when the story has been picked up by many more news outlets, largely justifying the mairie‘s decision to put a 2000 euro price on its head, it would seem.

And so I, like probably many others, emailed through a filled-out form to say I’d like more information: and received a link to a 12MB PDF, which
contained mainly photos of the rock in question.

Société Archéologique du Finistère

It also contained a copy of what may well be the only time this stone has been discussed in some kind of journal or book. This was (as I suspected) the Bulletin of the Société Archéologique du Finistère, which has a long-running kind of ‘mop-up’ feature entitled “Monuments et objets d’art du Finistère. Études, découvertes, restaurations“, for small items that don’t quite merit a full article. I don’t know precisely which Bulletin this is, but from the page numbers visible in the copy (pp. 332 and 333), I’d guess it was the 1979 Bulletin (it certainly can’t be any earlier).

Here’s what it says:

PLOUGASTEL-DAOULAS
Anse du Caro

Une inscription énigmatique du XVIIIe siècle

                Après bien des hésitations, nous livrons le relevé d’une longue inscription gravée en creux sur des rochers au nord de l’anse du Caro, dans la presqu’île de Plougastel-Daoulas. Elle nous a été signalée en 1979 par Bernard Tanguy. Nous communiquons ce que nous avons pu en relever, dans l’espoir que quelque membre de la Société y exerce sa sagacité, afin que l’on puisse obtenir des éclaircissements, comme cela a été le cas pour l’inscription de Guengat (cf. supra).

                Les coordonnées de l’inscription du Caro, selon la carte I.G.N. au 1/25000, sont les suivantes : X : 098 00, Y : 094 15, soit à 500m, à vol d’oiseau, à l’ouest de village d’Illien-an-Traon. On peut, à marée basse, suivre la côte vers le nord en partant de l’anse du Caro, et repérer les rochers entre la pointe qui s’avance dans la mer et la falaise.

                Sommairement gravée en caractères dont la majorité est en capitales, il ne fait pas de doute q’elle est en langue bretonne. Vieille de deux siècles, le rocher sur laquelle on la lit s’est débité sous l’action des marées, plusieurs signes sont érodés et la surface de la pierre est éclatée par endroits.

My rough-and-ready translation:

An enigmatic inscription from the eighteenth century
After much hesitation on our part, here is a record of a long[-ish] carved inscription found on the rocks in the Plougastel-Daoulas peninsula, north of Anse du Caro. This was first reported to us by Bernard Tanguy in 1979. We hope that, by publishing here what we have been able to discover, some member of the Société will apply his or her sagacity to it, so that we can gain greater clarity, as indeed happened for the Guengat inscription (cf. supra).

The coordinates of the inscription du Caro, according to the 1/25000 scale I.G.N. [Institut Géographique National] map, are as follows: X: 098 00, Y: 094 15; this is 500m west of the village of Illien-an-Traon as the crow flies. If, at low tide, you follow the coast northwards along from Anse du Caro, you should be able to locate the rock between the tide-line and the cliff.

Looking at the lightly engraved in characters (of which the majority are capitals), there is surely no doubt that this is written in the Breton language. Two centuries on, however, the rock on which it was carved has been damaged by the action of the tides, several of its glyphs have been eroded away, while in places the surface of the stone is smashed up.

The First Transcription

We have two basic sources for the inscription: the version that appeared in the Bulletin (just after the above-translated text), and the hand-written version that appears in the mairie‘s PDF. Firstly, here’s the SAF version:

ROC AR B…
DRE AR GRIO SE EVELOH
AR VIRIONES BAOAVEL… R I
… GENBICEN DA BEN ESOA… S E
DIASBOANT…
…EKGES…
BO…FET
DAR
ASOMGAROPA
VARLAEOERIATQDAO
NELACIEOD – ET… F… AOMA
CVLESEDAREIDIMEVSMES
ARPRIGILOD1787
(coeur et croix) OBIIE: BRISBVILAR… FROIK… AL
…ALVOA ARBORSINET
CARCLONEPR ES (SAKI) ASONRES E I BEL
(ANNDDIN) VMS
… (ABAN) SDARANDOC (SAOU) ADREIRIO
(FAN) 1786 NEIS
… CL…
… DOS…
SARMIS – UT
177IMESO
EMGAR
DALOTOGREC
TRE: C-N

D’une autre main, la date de 1920…

All the same, I have to point that this SAF transcription isn’t really doing justice to the lettering on the rock. For a start, the first letter resembles a lower case ‘d’ more than a ‘D’; several of the letters seem to have backwards ‘N’ shapes; and so forth.

Even so, this first transcription was (without much doubt) done in good faith some years ago, and we must be aware that the process of cleaning it up and preparing it for public view in 2017-2019 may possibly have added a layer of interpretation to these carvings that wasn’t originally there.

As an aside, Bernard Tanguy is without doubt the Brittany historian who was for many years president of the SAF, so it is hardly a surprise that he chose to pass his discovery on to its members. He may well have also photographed this mysterious rock when he first encountered it, but I don’t know if this particular angle has been pursued by anyone.


Bernard Tanguy, (1940-2015) – photograph fromLe Telegramme, 2015

The Second Transcription

In the following version of the hand-transcription released by the mairie, I have rendered the back-to-front ‘N’ as the Cyrillic capital I (i.e. ‘И’), and the back-to-front ‘S’ as ‘Ƨ ‘ (the Unicode character 01A7), etc. All of which is not perfect, sure, but it’s perhaps tolerably close:

GROCAR
dREAR DIOƧEEVbIO
ARVRFOИEƧLAΘENEL
PEИ AbEИEИEƧΘ182E
GEИbICEИG
EKGE (left-facing crescent moon shape)
AZOMOARΘ PA ꙋCDOFET
dAROA
AIELAChEODCET DA AOMA
CVLESELDdA RE IdIMEVƧMEƧ
ARPRIGILOd17(cross on top of a heart)87
ObIIE bRIƧbVILA
ALVQ4AKbORSIV . T
OSCARCLOIVEPRE 2 . T
ZOИREZE
VAR
dARAИdOL
AdREIRI9
1786 ИE12

Scans of the Mysterious Rock

I’ll finish up by illustrating the above with some example scans cropped from the mairie‘s kindly-provided set, so you can perhaps get a better idea of what we’re up against here.

Enjoy!

The Perplexing Mystery of the Voynichese ‘Languages’…

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Where will the first proper Voynich research breakthrough come from? To my mind, there is a good chance that this will be made by someone taking a fresh look at the mystery of the Voynichese ‘languages’.

For even though the notion that Voynichese is a simple, regular language seems to be the default decryption starting point for just about every YouTube codebreaker on the planet (e.g. “it’s obviously proto-Breton with Urdu loanwords“, etc etc), it simply isn’t.

Rather, when you put Voynichese under the linguistic microscope, you see a series of different (but closely related) languages / writing systems. And whatever you think Voynichese is, having to account for multiple variants of that thing is bemusing, if not downright perplexing.

The most fundamental challenge, then, that these variants present us is this: can we work out how these variants relate to each other? Furthermore, can work out how a letter / word / sentence written in one variant would be written in another? In short, can we somehow normalize all the Voynich Manuscript’s languages relative to each other, to step towards a single, regular system underlying them all?

For me, reaching even part of the way towards doing this would be perhaps the most significant Voynich research achievement yet.

The ‘Language’ Landscape…

It was top American cryptologist Captain Prescott Currier back in the 1970s who first inferred the presence of multiple Voynichese ‘languages’. He famously categorised Voynichese pages as having been written in either an ‘A’ language variant (now known as “Currier A”) or a ‘B’ language variant (A.K.A. “Currier B”). This was motivated by various statistical features of the text that he observed clustering together in A pages and B pages respectively. What is more, Currier’s A/B clustering largely holds true not only for both the pages on any given folio (i.e. recto and verso), but also for all the folios / panels on a single bifolio (or trifolio, etc).

Though Currier’s A/B division is a very useful categorisation tool, it remains somewhat problematic as an absolute measure, for (as Rene Zandbergen likes to point out) a few intermediate pages have both Currier A and Currier B features simultaneously. Rene points especially to the foldout folios for this: he says that Currier’s initial assessment was drawn from the herbal pages (which I think is very probably true), and that these super-wide pages behave a little differently.

Moreover, the variations of the languages used in different sections (e.g. “Herbal A”) present yet further dialect-like differences to be accounted for. Inferring from this that these differences ‘must therefore’ relate to the pages’ semantic content would be a convenient way of explaining them away: but there is as yet no evidence to support that conclusion. For now, these section clusters need to be handled with statistical white gloves too.

We additionally have codicological evidence that suggests that some sections of the manuscript were originally formed of pairs of gatherings (e.g. Q13 was Q13A + Q13B, Q20 was Q20A + Q20B), but nobody (as far as I know) has as yet gone looking for Voynichese text statistics that might support or refute these proposed divisions.

And on top of that, there is what has come to be called as ‘labelese’, i.e. the disjointed one-word-at-a-time text found on pages with ‘labels’ attached to parts of diagrams (e.g. the Astrological / Zodiac section). Here again, some people like to infer that it ‘must somehow be’ the semantic content of these labels that affects the way Voynichese works: but there is no evidence to support that conclusion, beyond wanting it to be true for an easy life. 😉

In summary, what we observe in Voynichese is a lot of language-like variation going on at a number of levels. In my opinion, we should stop trying to explain away these variations in terms of speculative concepts (e.g. ‘semantic differences’ or ‘labels’), and start instead to look at the basic statistical patterns that each text cluster presents, and use those results as our starting point moving forward.

Unsurprisingly, this is what the next section does. 🙂

A/B Observations…

It’s worth reprising Currier’s observations (which we will turn into actual statistical evidence shortly). He wrote (transcribed on Rene’s site):

(a) Final ‘dy’ is very high in Language ‘B’; almost non-existent in Language ‘A.’

(b) The symbol groups ‘chol’ and ‘chor’ are very high in ‘A’ and often occur repeated; low in ‘B’.

(c) The symbol groups ‘chain’ and ‘chaiin’ rarely occur in ‘B’; medium frequency in ‘A.’

(d) Initial ‘chot’ high in ‘A’; rare in ‘B.’

(e) Initial ‘cTh’ very high in ‘A’; very low in ‘B.’

(f) ‘Unattached’ finals scattered throughout Language ‘B’ texts in considerable profusion; generally much less noticeable in Language ‘A.’

Rene Zandbergen adds the following observations:

The very frequent character combination ‘ed’ is almost entirely non-existent in all A-language pages.

The very common character combination ‘qo’ is almost completely absent in the zodiac pages and the rosettes page, but appears everywhere else.

The common character combination ‘cho’ does not appear in the biological pages (and the rosettes page), but it does in other B-language pages.

Marco Ponzi further added:

The ‘cluster’ aiin has more or less the same frequency in A and B, but as a stand-alone word it is about three times as frequent in B than in A.

Prescott Currier also noted a number of striking language oddities in the ‘Biological B’ section:

This ‘word-final effect’ first became evident in a study of the Biol. B index wherein it was noted that the final symbol of ‘words’ preceding ‘words’ with an initial ‘qo’ was restricted pretty largely to ‘y’; and that initial ‘ch, Sh’ was preceded much more frequently than expected by finals of the ‘iin’ series and the ‘l’ series. Additionally, ‘words’ with initial ‘ch, Sh’ occur in line-initial position far less frequently than expected, which perhaps might be construed as being preceded by an ‘initial nil.’

This phenomenon occurs in other sections of the Manuscript, especially in those ‘written’ in Language B, but in no case with quite the same definity as in Biological B. Language A texts are fairly close to expected in this respect.

My own contribution to this line of inquiry has been to point out that word-initial ‘l-‘ is a very strong feature of B pages (particularly Q13). Emma May Smith similarly posted on the various “l + gallows” digraphs:

It should also be noted that <lk> is mostly a feature of the Currier B language. It is roughly twenty times less common on A pages than B pages.

The presence of digraphs composed of <l> and other gallows characters is less secure. The string <lt> occurs 107 times, <lp> occurs 40 times, and <lf> occurs 39 times. Although <lf> is the least of the three its rate is actually rather great, being nearly 8% of all <f> occurrences, approaching the 10% for <lk> of all <k>. Even so, these number are still small and could easily be overlooked if not for <lk>.

Like <lk>, <lt, lp, lf> all appear at the beginning of words, and mostly occur in Currier B. They seem to work in the same way, even if less common.

All in all, it seems to me that there are probably more than twenty Voynichese features that display a statistically significant difference between Currier A pages and Currier B pages. It also seems that many of these features have different relative frequencies between different clusters (e.g. Herbal A) and/or sections (e.g. Q13).

There is therefore plenty of work to be done here!

List of Distinctive Behaviours

Even though we have excellent transcriptions (EVA and otherwise), I think we’re collectively missing a foundational piece of Post-Currier empirical analysis here: a list of distinctive behaviours present and absent in sections of the Voynich Manuscript. This would extend Prescott Currier’s list to include many more features (such as the use of the EVA ‘x’ glyph, etc) that have been flagged up as distinctive in some way by researchers over the years, though with less of a pure A/B focus. Here is a preliminary list (based largely on the above), which I’m more than happy to extend with additional ones put forward in comments here or elsewhere:

-dyB
[chol]A
[chor]A
[chol.chol]A
[chor.chor]A
[chain]A
[chain]A
chot-A
cth-A
edB
[ar]B
qo-Absent in rosette
and zodiac pages
choAbsent in rosette
and Bio pages
cho*Rare in Q13
[aiin]Common in B as
standalone word
l-B
r-B, particularly
Q13 and Q20
lkB
lt-B
lp-B
lf-B
alyf58
xQ20
-m not at line-endBifolios f3-f6
& f17-f24

My core beliefs here are (a) that Voynichese will turn out to be fundamentally rational (if perhaps a bit strange); (b) that behaviours in one section will somehow rationally map to behaviours in many (if not all) different sections; and (c) that Voynichese will turn out to have an underlying story / evolution / growth path that we can reconstruct.

“Le mystère Champollion à Plougastel-Daoulas”…

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(Thanks very much to VViews for passing this story my way, much appreciated!) The original French article appeared in Le Télégramme, though behind a paywall (boo!). So here’s my free-and-easy English translation:

It is a rock that has intrigued Michel Paugam, councillor of Plougastel (29) for several years. In order to solve its mystery, the municipality is this month launching a national call for applications.

On a rock not far from Anse du Caro in Plougastel-Daoulas in Brittany is carved (what looks like) a message that begins “grocar drear diozeevbio …“, followed on by other strange writings. This text is further embellished with no-less-enigmatic drawings: a heart linked to a cross that might evoke the Chouans of the Vendée stranded in the peninsula, a sailboat close to the sea licking the base of the engraved rock at high tide…

Of the numbers on the rock, only two seem to be obviously decryptable: 1786 and 1787. These correspond to the construction years of the nearby Fort du Corbeau and of other batteries that protect the harbour. But that’s all! So far, no satisfactory translation has emerged, despite its having been shown to associations, organizations, and various brainy people. The only thing we can be certain of is that during the First World War, a Russian soldier in the garrison added the date of 1920 to the original message. Naturally, contacts were made with Russia, thinking that understanding Cyrillic might provide some answers: but once again, the riddle remained unanswered. The mystery is such that some have suggested calling it “le mystère Champollion à Plougastel-Daoulas” (in tribute to the Rosetta Stone).

Hence a national contest has now been launched to try to solve this enigma: the municipality has launched an appeal to linguists, historians, students, academics, enthusiasts and enthusiasts of all of l’Hexagone to finally understand the text and, thus, its history. Running until the end of November 2019, this “mystère Champollion” competition will allow entrants to submit their research in the form of reports to be analyzed by a jury composed, among others, of academics and a representative of the service départemental d’archéologie. A prize fund of € 2,000 will be distributed by the jury, though without the participants being able to claim any remuneration or compensation. To find out more, to learn about the terms of participation and the rules or to visit the site (or ask for photos), contact : [email protected]

Yes, I can already see the possible connection with the mysterious (and quite probably 18th century) rock carvings found in Mauritius. But let’s just start with getting better scans and see where we go from there, hein?

The late, great Frank Sidebottom has one last cryptic laugh…

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2010 marked the untimely death of Chris Sievey, the creator and performer of cult musical act Frank Sidebottom, prompting much sadness from friends and fans. One touching response was the genuinely charming statue erected in Timperley:

Chris’s death also prompted a great many people to step forward claiming to have been fans, even though they had never quite found the time in their busy schedules to go to one of his chaotic Frank Sidebottom gigs. But perhaps that’s the nature of silly cults.

Anyway, not many people know that Chris Sievey had originally created the (cranially) larger than life character to support his ZX Spectrum home computer game The Biz; or that Mrs Merton (Caroline Aherne) started out as Frank’s sidekick on Radio Timperley (though fans prefer his anatomically-correct hand-puppet Little Frank); or that an exhibition of the wonderfully subversive drawings Chris drew his whole life appeared at the Chelsea Space Gallery in 2007; or that his whole (so-called) ‘adult’ life was like a kind of hand-to-mouth performance art show; or that he died penniless.

No, they just remember his (pre-Frank) band The Freshies and its hit single “I’m in Love with the Girl on the Manchester Virgin Megastore Checkout Desk”. Which sounds like this:

Until recently, the biggest Frank Sidebottom news was the release of the Kickstarter-funded film-length documentary “Being Frank”, which is currently (April 2019) playing in various art cinema venues around the UK. (Excellent reviews, by the way.) Or the “Frank Sidebottom’s Bobbins Bitter” and “Frank Sidebottom’s Timperley Rhubarb Ale”, launched at FRANKAMANIA in Wigan (a free show of Frank Sidebottom memorabilia).

But that was all so yesterday. Today is really quite different…

“BOBBINS” is the new “HEIL HITLER”

BBC News (since 2016 the spiritual home of endless Brexit debate) has today put out a news story describing how GCHQ had managed to decrypt codes (actually ciphers, but let’s not let that come between us) that Chris Sievey had embedded in the borders of a number of Frank Sidebottom-related drawings. For example, the border of this Frank Sidebottom newsletter “COM 13” reads: “The Man From Fish EP is top secret“.

Much as with Enigma decades before it, the “small but dedicated [Frank Sidebottom] following” among GCHQ staff noticed a distinctive pattern of symbols corresponding to Sidebottom’s favouritest word: “BOBBINS”. And the rest is (crypto-) history.

Inevitably, the day after GCHQ decrypted it, the cipher key was found in the back of one of Chris Sievey’s notebooks. But that’s how last laughs work. 😉

Might the Hollow River Cipher be a hoax?

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I’ve had an intriguing email from Cipher Mysteries commenter Paul Relkin concerning the Hollow River Cipher.

He had thought to contact Linda Outcalt, whose (inverted) photograph of Sterling Ramsay was on the cover of his book “folklore prince edward island”. (Though the book credits only mention Hilda Woolnough.) Ms Outcalt suggested he should instead contact Harry Holman, “a prominent archivist for the Prince Edward Island government”. Paul continues:

This was a great suggestion! Mr. Holman was not only familiar with the Hollow River Cipher but he was able to produce documentation from a local newspaper establishing that the cipher was actually solved many years ago. He also provided some excellent commentary about the story behind the cipher. He has given me permission to share this with Cipher Mysteries on his behalf.

Here’s what Harry Holman wrote:

Harry Holman on Hollow River…

I have read your postings on Cipher Mysteries with interest but am afraid I must challenge your claim of being the first to decipher the coded message appearing in the Prince Edward Island Magazine. I have found evidence from 1935, and republished in 1946, that the message was deciphered by Blythe Hurst, a school teacher, naturalist and author who wrote under the pen name “Agricola.” The solution was published in the Charlottetown Guardian newspaper on 20 April 1935 p. 12 and again on 20 April 1946 p. 9.

My initial thought was that Hurst might have been connected with the appearance of the original Prince Edward Island Magazine article but it appears he immigrated to Prince Edward Island only in 1910. While he does not publish the entire text of the message it is clear that he has identified the key for interpreting the message and the main elements have been revealed.

As to the original PEI Magazine articles, it is important to place the publication in context. The Magazine, which ran from 1899 until 1905 provided a forum for a great many authors, many of who were identified only by initials or by pseudonyms. While it contained a number of high-quality and well-researched historical articles it was also a platform for a flourishing creative writing community. Many of the fiction pieces picked up on themes popular at the time. Ghost stories based on historical incidents seemed to strike a particularly responsive chord with readers. Only last week I wrote of the background of one of these, The Ghost of Holland Cove.

In that case the author was identified, but I have little doubt that the submissions by “Senachie” and “D.A.W.” are of the same character. A hint may be that the Gaelic basis of Senachie is “professional storyteller”

While a scattering of facts is essential to establish the credibility of historical fiction, a super-abundance of them is evidence of a fabrication. Such is the case here – especially in the supposed “back story” supplied by DAW. While Hollow River is a real place it is an unlikely setting for such an elaborate tale. I have been there and it is hard to imagine an area less likely to be chosen as a cache for guns and treasure. In the late 1730s it was entirely uninhabited although there was some French settlement at Naufrage to the east of the site. The river itself is a mere trickle emptying across a thin strip of sand which is backed by rocks and cliffs. It was one of the last areas of the colony to be settled and a road did not run through the thinly settled area until the 1830s. By the beginning of the 20th century the shore road had been abandoned and a new line of road dating from the 1860s or 1870s was in use.

The use of the multiply layered narrative was a common literary device during the period at the end of the 19th century. Here we have an account of an alleged diary entry recounting a mysterious note in a bottle telling of an incident. All the accounts lack credibility and have errors of fact or interpretation. The language used in the diary entry is quite unreflective of the actual writing of the mid 18th century. I have read a number of diaries from the period and they read nothing like this and the form and content is quite an anachronistic and imaginative interpretation of how a diary of the period might read.

I note that a number of contributors to the Cipher Mysteries website have raised practical objections to the facts of the story including the difficulty and pointlessness of transferring cannon to a barren shore. I think that such objections could be raised to almost every assertion made in the account but I do not think it necessary to parse it further.

For these and many other reasons I conclude that the Hollow River mystery is almost certainly a complete fabrication. The cypher message appears to be merely a “brain teaser” created by the author of the story and is unlikely to have any factual basis.

Without a single documentary support the pyramid of “facts” crumbles, but that has not prevented the story from being included in anthologies of ghost stories and folklore, particularly of the uncritical sort.

Thank you for reminding me of this tale.

Nick’s Further Thoughts…

The reason that I find cipher mysteries – long-unsolved historical ciphers where even the history surrounding them is suspect – so head-shakingly fascinating is that it can be ridiculously hard to tell the true, the false, and the merely hopeful apart. The (almost entirely false) Beale Papers wrapped around the (probably entirely genuine) Beale Ciphers form a case in point.

For the Hollow River Cipher, I share with Harry Holman many of the same doubts about the (supposed) diary entry: moreover, I think it no less likely that many other (supposedly meshing) parts of the story as presented in the PEI Magazine could have been camp-fire confabulations, back-filled around the same core cipher.

In fact, if someone were to propose to me that – more or less exactly mirroring the Beale Ciphers and Beale Papers – the Hollow River Cipher itself was genuine but that everything else wrapped around it was fake (perhaps in the spirit of multiple contributions to the same lightly-literary pirate-ghost jest), I’d be hard-pressed to demur.

And so I now find myself in the same awkward position with both the Beale Cipher and the Hollow River Cipher: that while I’m not enough of a Cipher True Believer for armchair treasure hunters (who seem to want every scrap of evidence to be true), I also seem to have more faith in the ciphers themselves than people who are comfortable writing all the evidence off in one go as no more than a long-running in-joke.

Though Holman handily highlights the presence of a super-abundance of facts (I certainly didn’t know that the settlement just East of the site was called Naufrage), this would surely seem to be more of a witness for the defence than for his prosection. In many ways, perhaps it should be best taken as an epistemological red flag to us all, signalling that we instead need to look and think more clearly at the different accounts making up the picture, to see which (if any) are true, false, or merely amusing or hopeful.

J. J. Kean, jockey…

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While trying to dig up more on John Joseph Keane (our mysterious bookmaker and Adelaide nitkeeper), I stumbled across a South Australian jockey by the name of J. J. Kean – or rather, across those few parts of his sporting life that made it into the newspapers of the day.

It really shouldn’t take a huge stretch of the imagination to wonder whether a bookmaker might have previously had a career as a jockey, so this seems like it could easily be the same person. Similarly, all Somerton Man researchers worth their salt know Paul Lawson’s speculations about the Somerton Man’s pronounced calf muscles: but rather than being a transvestite wearing high-heeled shoes, might he have simply been a jockey?

Anyway, here are my preliminary research notes, please feel free to chime in with anything else interesting you can find in Trove, because back then newspapers were full of racing news (hence I’m bound to have missed tons of stuff).

Orroroo Jockey Club

Adelaide Critic, 12 Feb 1919:

HANDICAP JUMPERS’ FLAT. […] £93 15/—Korea. 10.0 (J. Kean) […] Dividend Korea. £1 16/. Time. 2 min. 15 1/2 sec.
WELTER HANDICAP. […] £18 15/—Albaree, 8.2 (J. Kean) .. .. 3

Adelaide Express and Telegraph, 20 Feb 1919:

The rider of Korea in the Jumpers’ Flat was questioned by the stewards for his exhibition, and was suspended for one month. […]

Orroroo Handicap, one and a quarter miles. — Mr. H. E. Gregory’s Wee Spec by St. Anton— Escopete, 7 st. 11 lb. (Florence), 1; Mr. T. D. McGahan’s Warcast, 7 st. (Kean), 2; […]

Jumpers’ Flat, one and a quarter miles.—Mr. A. McDonald’s b g Lulabar, by Curtain Lecture —Miss Musk, 9 at. 13 lb. (McDonald), 1; Mr. T. D. McGahan’s Korea, 10 st 2 lb. (Kean), 2; Mr. E. A. Wickens’ Dextral, 9 st 2 lb; (Mr. F. Gammon). 3. Other starter-Conning Tower, 9 st.” (Cilento). Lulabar led out from Conning Tower, Dextral, Korea, and they continued in this order to the back of the course, where Lulabar increased his lead by ten lengths. At the home turn, Korea put in a run, but never troubled the leader, and at the finish ten lengths separated first and second, and a similar distance third.

Quorn Mercury, 21 Feb 1919:

Kean (the rider of Korea) was stood down for a month over his showing in the Jumpers Flat, which was very lenient treatment for a miserable performance.

Adelaide Advertiser, 12 Mar 1919 (and copied in many other newspapers):

The suspension by the stewards of the Orroroo Jockey Club of J. J. Kean for one month from February 13, 1919, for incompetence, has been adopted by the committee of the S.A.J.C.

At this point, J. J. Kean seems to disappear from Orroroo Jockey Club races: it seems overwhelmingly likely to me that Mr T. D. McGahan (the horse owner for whom Kean had been riding) had given Kean his marching orders following this suspension for ‘incompetence’.

Morphettville

Adelaide Chronicle, 05 Jan 1924:

J. J. Kean was suspended by the stewards from riding in races for two months for the careless riding of Tookawarrina in the first division of the Maiden Plate at Morphettville on Tuesday, caus[ing] interference to Pistolorgat and Royal Rip.

Adelaide Observer, 5 Jan 1924:

The stewards found that J. A. Hawthorn (rider of Lacepede in the Handicap Hurdle Race) accidentally interfered with Jim Cleary (ridden by J. Kean).

Later that same year, Tookawarrina broke a leg and was destroyed, according to the Adelaide Observer of 01 Nov 1924:

Tookawarrina was an aged gelding by Persian Chief, from Cilika, and was owned by Mrs. P. H. Suter. He displayed a bit of promise a year or two ago, but had been running disappointingly for some time.



Given that Kean never seemed to ride Tookawarrina after Jan 1924, it again seems fairly likely to me that he got the Order Of The Elbow from Mrs Suter following his two-month suspension.

Other Horses

Given the pithy nature of racing notes, it’s hard to be sure what other horses that “J. J. Kean” rode: but the name “Kean” appears as a jockey for numerous other horses from the time:

  • Coal King
  • St. Ality (Mr A. K. Hamilton, St. Spasa-Reality)
  • Yellow Arry
  • Departure
  • Strzelecki King (Mr. M. R. Oakes’ b.g., aged)
  • Miss Netley (A. E. Hamilton’s b m, 4yrs)
  • Haylander
  • Passado
  • Wee Trunnion (Mr. J. E. Bend’s br. g)
  • Sir Archibald
  • Full Dook
  • Some Seal
  • Tripedy

Interestingly, both St. Ality and Wee Trunnion are also ridden by “K. B. Keane” (definitely not a typo): might this be a younger brother or cousin of J. J. Kean(e)?

Concussion

The Adelaide News of 14 Jun 1924 reported on a fall during a jump race, “in front of the Derby Stand”:

J. Kean, rider of Sir Archibald, suffered from slight concussion as the result of his fall from that horse in the hurdle race.


Peterborough’s Times and Northern Advertiser of 3rd Apr 1925 reported on an injury to K. B. Keane:

Jockey K. B. Keane also received injuries when his mount, Jim Cleary, toppled over in the Hurdle Race.
The condition of jockey K. B. Keane showed a slight improvement on Monday last.

“Successful Lightweight”

Perhaps most usefully of all, there’s an overview of his career in the Adelaide Register News-Pictorial of 17 Feb 1931, which sounds a lot to me like an interview with someone returning to Adelaide after a period away and now looking for work afresh:

J. Kean, who recently won a double at the Port Lincoln carnival, was a successful lightweight in this State a few years ago. He was apprenticed to T. D. McGahan for several years. Kean won the Tennant Cup at Port Augusta in 1923 on St. Ality, which later was a useful jumper. With Kean in the saddle St. Ality was successful over the battens at the Port.
Kean was also associated with C. A. Northway’s stable at Victoria Park, and when the master of the Roachfield stables had Vesper Song in hand, Kean won on the gelding in the north. Arltunga King was ridden by Kean when he won the Copper City Cup at Kadina.
Kean was also successful on Cappeedee, dam of Some Seal, which he rode to victory at Port Lincoln.
He can go to scale at 7.3 and rides over hurdles as well as on the flat. Kean holds only a B licence, but he intends to apply for a permit to ride in the city area. Kean rides several horses in their work at Victoria Park every morning, and he should not find it difficult to get mounts in races.

I can’t find any race with Kean after this date: it seems as though this interview was effectively at the end of his career as a jockey.

John Joseph Keane, bookmaker’s clerk…

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

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

Bookmaker’s Licence

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

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


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

J. J. Keane. 29 Stuart road, Dulwich

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

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

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

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

A Fool’s Gold Rush?

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

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

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

Dulwich Addresses

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

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

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

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

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

Where Next From Here?

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

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

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

Finally, the rest of the Kean family…

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This strand started when Byron Deveson uncovered two interesting Kean(e) men mentioned in 1930s South Australian Police Gazettes. I followed this up with a blog post on Thomas Joseph Kean, born 10th April 1898 in Northgate, Victoria, who I suspected was one of the two. Since then, I have found out more about his family, most recently with help from the nice people at GenealogySA.

Eileen Jessie Kean

KEAN, Eileen Jessie. – On August 13 [1976], Eileen Jessie Kean, beloved wife of the late Thomas Joseph, loving mother of Pat Cottle, Marj Spooner and the late Maly Pill, grandmother of 15 grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren.

KEAN. – THE FRIENDS of the late Mrs. EILEEN JESSIE KEAN, are advised that her Funeral will leave our private parlor, 193 Unley road, Unley, THIS DAY (Saturday), at 9.45 a.m., for the W. A. Norman Memorial Chapel, Centennial Park Crematorium. Car Park adjoins parlor.

This leads us quickly to…

Maly Josepha Pill (nee Kean)

We were looking for a May, but we now know her first name was actually Maly (presumably pronounced ‘May-Lee’). This leads us to her examination results (as “Maly J. Kean”) published 20th Dec 1937 in the Adelaide News – “Maly J. Kean. Bt. Eg, HA. AL. M. OD;“

According to this slice-of-life Melbourne Weekly Times article of 17th Jan 1945, Maly Kean spent at least part of the war working for the WAAAF at the “RAAF Flying Boat Repair Depot at Lake Boga. Here, right in the Mallee country, great flying-boats from combat areas circle round and land on the small, saucer-shaped lake for repairs and overhaul.” Having said that, her part in the great drama was fairly modest: “two attractive dental orderlies, Cpl. Maly Kean of Adelaide, and A.C.W. “Jacky” Mountier, of Sydney, who help to lessen the terrors of those called up for dental attention“.

We move swiftly on to the Melbourne Herald of 6th December 1947:

PILL-KEAN
THE marriage of Maly Josepha Kean, of South Yarra, to William Henry Pill, of Elwood, will be celebrated this afternoon at St. Joseph’s Church, South Yarra.
The bride, who is the youngest daughter of Mr and Mrs T. J. Kean, of Glenelg, SA, will be attended by Mrs Marjory Roberts and given away by Mr Geoffrey Taylor.
She will wear a classical gown of white satin and a tulle veil caught to the head with orange blossom.
The bridegroom is the only son of the late Mr and Mrs Norman Pill. Mr Daryl Berry will be his best man.

Nicely, there’s a picture of their wedding day in the Melbourne Argus of 8th December 1947 (“WEDDINGS CELEBRATED IN SUBURBAN CHURCHES”) – “MR W. PILL and bride at St Joseph’s, South Yarra. Bride was Miss M. Kean.“:

It also seems certain that this is Maly Pill (nee Kean)’s gravestone, [Anzac 2] 467 POR.2 at Mount Gravatt Cemetery in Brisbane City:

She died on 1st May 1976, just a few months before her mother’s passing.

Ellen McPhee

Maly Kean also leads us to her grandmother’s death notice in the Melbourne Age, 25th Oct 1943 (though the OCR was quite poor before I corrected it):

McPHEE. — On October 22, at 35 Charles-street, St. Kilda, Ellen McPhee, relict of the late James (late of Wandiligong), loving mother of Eileen, Jean and James, loved nana of Patricia, Marjory and Maly Kean, Eileen and Martin Murphy, James and Annett McPhee, great-grandmother of Phillipa Spooner and loved sister of Em, aged 78 years. R.I.P.

Marj Spooner (nee Kean)

The GenealogySA people also found me the (profoundly heartfelt) series of death notices for Marj Spooner from the Adelaide Advertiser of 8th Oct 2009 (she died on 5th Oct 2009). I’ll include only two here:

Loving mother of Phil, Mark, John, Helen, Julie, Janet, Greg and Mary.
Dearly loved mother-in-law-of Mail, Maureen, Albert, Graham, Greg, Judy and Tom.
Cherished grandmother of 17 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.
A beautiful woman who will be forever in our hearts and will never be forgotten.

In memory of a brilliant woman whose extraordinary intellect, sparkling wit and endless generosity was equally matched by the incredible sacrifices that she made for her family.
Bless you, and thank you for opening up the world for all of us.
In loving memory, Mary and Tom.

Marj Spooner was buried at Centennial Park Cemetery, Catholic “F” Section.

Kean Family Tree, Second Attempt

Thomas Joseph Kean, born 10th April 1898 (ref 13241/1898), Northgate, Victoria, died 1968 in Adelaide (53A/5511) (Parents: Thomas Francis Kean and [MaryAnn?] Deely)
–married:
Eileen Jessie McPhee, born 10th April 1896 in Wandiligong (Parents: James McPhee, and Eileen McPhee, died 22nd October 1943, St Kilda), died 13th August 1976, (Unley?).
–and had three daughters:

#1 Patricia Jean Kean, born 1919, died 2004.
She married Victor McDonnell (‘Vic’) Cottle, born 3rd July 1913 in Crystal Brook SA (son of George Henry Victor COTTLE and Lucieton Robe WHITINGTON).
They had (at least) two daughters, born 8th February 1944 and 20th October 1945.

#2 Marjorie Agnes (‘Marj’) Kean, born 1921, died 5th October 2009.
She married Alfred Raymond (‘Rip’) Spooner, born 3rd November 1913 in Birmingham, England; died 11th April 1979.
– Their children were Phillipa (Phil) born 18th February 1943, Mark Alfred born 30th June 1945, John born 17th March 1948, then Helen, Julie, Janet, Greg and Mary.

#3 Maly Josepha (‘May’) Kean, born 20th May 1922, died 1st May 1976 in Brisbane.
She married William Henry Pill of Elwood (son of Mr and Mrs Norman Pill) on 6th December 1947 in South Yarra.

Thomas Joseph Kean, died 1968.

Though it was (briefly) intriguing to find out that he and his family were living in Glenelg from at least 1945 to December 1947, this Thomas Joseph Kean was in fact the same Thomas Joseph Kean who died on 25th July 1968 in Coromandel Valley, and who was buried in Centennial Park. This information is, again, thanks to the GenealogySA database: though there are no newspaper death notices for him, there is a death record 53A/5511 on file for him in Adelaide, with Eileen Jessie Kean marked as his wife.

OK, so he clearly wasn’t the Somerton Man. But might he have been the same shady nitkeeper before the war we have been looking for? Was he the same Thomas Joseph Kean who retired as Clerk-in-Charge at Customs and Excise in November 1961? Or might he even have been both, i.e. a pre-war poacher turned post-war gamekeeper?

Thomas Joseph Kean, born 10th April 1898 in Northgate, Victoria…

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A few days ago, I was trying to track down three Kean girls who went to school together at CABRA, because at least one of them shared an address with one of the two Kean(e) men whose names Byron Deveson had turned up while diligently trawling through the South Australian Police Gazettes.

However, these three girls were proving hard to trace, even though I knew their first names (May, Marjorie, and Patricia) and one of their dates of birth (May, born 20th May 1922). Oddly, all the genealogy websites and databases were proving unhelpful.

Marjorie Agnes Spooner (née Kean)

Well… after raking through Trove a thousand times or more, I finally found that Marjorie Kean’s middle name might well be Agnes. There are two listings where this appears, firstly on 31st Jan 1936 in the Southern Cross:

DOMINICAN CONVENT SCHOOLS / ST. MARY’S DOMINICAN COLLEGE, CABRA. PAST SCHOLARS. […]

Marjorie Agnes Kean. — English, French, Book-keeping, Music, Shorthand.

Or alternatively in 26th January 1937’s Adelaide ‘Tizer, though noting that she didn’t achieve the minimum five passes needed:

Kean, Marjorie Agnes. H[istory] G[eo]g[raphy] T[y]p[ing]

Now, if I’ve got that right, Marjorie Agnes would have been born in 1921 (i.e. a year older than May Kean). And that quickly links us to a MyHeritage listing for a Marjorie Agnes Spooner:

Marjorie Agnes Spooner (born Kean) was born on [month day] 1921, at [birth place], to Thomas Joseph Kean and Eileen Jessie Kean (born McPhee). Thomas was born on April 10 1898, in Northgate, Victoria, Australia. Eileen was born on April 10 1896, in Wandiligong. Marjorie married Alfred Raymond Spooner. Alfred was born on November 3 1913, in Birmingham, England. Marjorie passed away in 2010, at age 88 at [death place].

Patricia Jean Cottle (née Kean)

This in turn quickly led to a different myHeritage page, this time for a Patricia Jean Cottle (née Kean):

Patricia Jean Cottle (born Kean) was born on [month day] 1919, at [birth place] to Thomas Joseph Kean and Eileen Jessie Kean (born McPhee). Thomas was born on April 10 1898, in Northgate Victoria. Eileen was born on April 10 1896, in Wandiligong. Patricia had 2 siblings. Patricia married Victor McDonnell Cottle. Victor was born on July 3 1913, in Crystal Brook SA. Patricia passed away on [month day] 2004, at age 84 at [death place].

Feeding Patricia’s name back into Trove yielded a single hit in 24th Jan 1935’s Adelaide ‘Tizer: “Bookkeeping, Candidates under sixteen years of age […] 4. Kean, Patricia Jean (St Mary’s Priory, Cabra).” Which would of course nicely fit her 1919 date of birth.

Thomas Joseph Kean

We started out looking for a Thomas John Kean, who was a clerk from Forestville born very close to 1898 (as reported in the Police Gazette and the Adelaide ‘Tizer). But what we instead found was a Thomas Joseph Kean, a man from Forestville born in 1898.

Might these two Thomas J Keans be the same person? Errrm… they/he certainly could be: or if they are not, it would certainly be a slightly jarring coincidence.

Note that we were at the same time also looking for a John Joseph Kean, who was a clerk similarly born in 1898, but from Union Street, Dulwich: and I idly wondered whether those two Keans might actually have been the same person. Now we arguably have the situation where we have a third name – Thomas Joseph Kean – to add to the mix. Might all three of these Keans have been the same man? Police gazettes reports often include (sometimes long) lists of aliases people operate under, so having three different (but subtly similar) names should hardly be a big surprise.

Perhaps all of this will become clearer when we find out more about the life of Thomas Joseph Kean born April 10 1898 in Northgate Victoria. So now it’s over to you all, what information is out there waiting to be known?

Alternatively, perhaps one of you will now have more luck tracking down May Kean now that we (almost certainly) know the name of her parents,
Thomas Joseph Kean and Eileen Jessie Kean (born McPhee). Even though her sisters (it would seem almost certain) have both passed away (in 2004 and 2010), May Kean herself may still be alive, who can tell?

Kean Family Tree, First Attempt

Thomas Joseph Kean, born 10th April 1898 (ref 13241/1898), Northgate, Victoria. (Parents: Thomas Francis Kean and DEELY)
–married:
Eileen Jessie McPhee, born 10th April 1896 in Wandiligong, died 1976.
–and had three daughters:

#1 Patricia Jean Kean, born 1919, died 2004.
She married Victor McDonnell Cottle, born 3rd July 1913 in Crystal Brook SA (son of George Henry Victor COTTLE and Lucieton Robe WHITINGTON).
They had two daughters, born 8th February 1944 and 20th October 1945.

#2 Marjorie Agnes Kean, born 1921, died 2010.
She married Alfred Raymond Spooner, born 3rd November 1913 in Birmingham, England; died 1979.
They had a daughter and two sons, born 18th February 1943, 30th June 1945 ( Mark Alfred Spooner), and 17th March 1948 respectively.

#3 May Kean, born 20th May 1922.
No further information.

Update: a revised version of the Kean family tree is here.

Two new Kean(e)s: Thomas John and John Joseph…

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

#1. Thomas John Kean(e) of Forestville

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#2. John Joseph Kean(e) of Dulwich

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One Final Thought…

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

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