The two tenets of Intellectual History are that (a) (almost) all evidence is deposited in good faith, and that as a result (b) historians should, as their default position, accept that evidence in good faith too.

Yet for cases such as that of the Somerton Man, the jumbled fragments we have to work with appear oddly paradoxical and often contradictory. Can we fit every one of these resolutely square pegs into the uniformly round holes of a single narrative?

What I’m going to present here is an oddly inferential Somerton Man account, based on various difficult pieces of evidence that rarely get mentioned in Tamam Shud presentations, but which Intellectual Historians would surely advise us not to overlook.

20th November 1948 – Parafield

Gery Feltus reports that he has talked several times with the (even now anonymous) man in whose car the Rubaiyat with the torn end-page was found. The man specifically claimed that it had been left there around the time of the RAAF Air Display at Parafield – 20th November 1948.

However, because this seems ten days too early, Somerton Man researchers tend to dismiss it by asserting that the guy ‘must have’ misremembered that date. But staying with the Intellectual Historian methodology, I say: if that’s what the man said, let’s assume he was telling the truth.

It therefore seems likely to me that the Somerton Man was also in Adelaide ten or so days before he died, because the “Tamam Shud” torn from that copy ended up in one of his pockets.

Around 30th November 1948 – Glenelg

“An amazing coincidence was revealed […] when another Adelaide businessman called at police headquarters with a copy of the “Rubaiyat” which he had found in his motor car at Glenelg about the time the body was found. This book was a different edition.”

If we also take this very specific newspaper article where the above claim appears in good faith, we now have two different Rubaiyats being left in the back of two different cars in Glenelg in the second half of November 1948.

What can we infer from this hugely improbable coincidence? The only explanation I can think of as to why two copies of the same book would have been left in the backs of two strangers’ cars at roughly the same time is as a pre-arranged anonymous signal. Though spies knew this as a “dead drop”, criminals with more than a touch of paranoia used this too.

It therefore seems highly likely to me that this second (but barely ever mentioned) Rubaiyat was also directly involved in the sequence of events that led to the Somerton Man’s death.

30th November 1948 – Adelaide Railway Station

The Somerton Man buys a train ticket for Henley Beach, but does not use it. He then leaves his suitcase at the Left Luggage department at Adelaide Station between 11am and noon; then catches a bus towards Glenelg at around 11.15am, but gets off at Somerton.

When you put these three pieces together, I think the resulting implication is that he originally intended to meet someone in Henley Beach and leave his suitcase with them before going on to Somerton Beach; but that when this proved not possible or not desirable, he left that suitcase at the station and instead went straight to Somerton Beach on a bus instead.

(I originally proposed that this also meant that the person he was intending to meet in Henley Beach must therefore have owned or had access to a car or other vehicle: but Helen Ensikat notes that there may well have been a bus going South along the coast from there to Somerton Beach. If there was, then I agree with her that that coast road bus would be a more likely alternative scenario.)

1st December 1948 – Somerton Beach

The Somerton Man is found dead on Somerton Beach at around 6am. He has no hat, no id, no ration card, no wallet, and no money. His stomach contains traces of blood: yet there is no sign of vomit on his clothes or shoes or anywhere nearby.

The presence of blood implies that he would very probably have experienced convulsions and vomiting not long before his death. However, the absence of vomit implies that where he was found was not where he died.

The man’s body has a strong lividity at the back of his head: yet his body is found propped up.

This mismatch implies either (a) that he died right there on the beach but that his blood was prevented from pooling lower by some kind of blockage caused by the specific way he was laying (the theory espoused by Derek Abbott); or (b) that after he died, his body was left laid on its back for some time with his head tilted slightly backwards (i.e. making it the lowest point of his body) which was then carried to the beach and posed there as if he had died there.

While I concede that Derek’s (a) is conceivable, I contend that the evidence points strongly to (b).

Ever the agent provocateur, Pete Bowes has just published a post arguing that the long-standing Somerton Man story about the Hillman Minx was entirely made up. Rather than just snap at the bait, let’s examine the actual evidence and make up our own minds…

The Trigger

As we shall see below, what triggered this whole sequence was a short article in the Adelaide News mentioning the police’s search for a Rubaiyat. There had been no other mention of the Rubaiyat in any Adelaide newspaper since a brief mention at the start of the first inquest more than a month earlier, where the Rubaiyat was no more than a footnote tucked away at the end of the article. Hence the following article – which focused specifically on the police’s ongoing search for a copy of the Rubaiyat – would have come as a surprise to all but the most attentive of South Australian readers.

Adelaide News, 22nd July 1949

Although police realise they are acting on a mlIlion to one chance, a search for a book with a torn page which may throw some light on the Somerton body mystery is continuing throughout Australia.

A torn page of Fitzgerald’s translation of the “Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam” was found in the pocket of the victim.

Det.-Sgt. Leane and Det. Brown believe the torn book may still be on the shelves of a library. They think that if they can find it, they can trace the man to the city or town he was in before he came to Adelaide With this information, it may be possible to establish his identity.

Melbourne police have made a search of public libraries and libraries in Victorian provincial towns, but have failed to find the torn volume. Although a number of city and suburban libraries have been checked here, others in country districts have not yet been investigated. The cause of death will probably never be known. A plaster cast of the victim’s head and shoulders, which was exhibited at the inquest, is now in a store room at Adelaide Museum. No request for it to be displayed has yet been made by the authorities.

The Wytkin Rubaiyat

The immediate problem we face is that newspaper reports now offer us two completely parallel narratives to consider, and they both start on the evening of the day the above report appeared.

The Adelaide Advertiser, 23rd July 1949

A bus conductor informed police last night that he believed he knew the whereabouts of a book, which, if it were the correct one, might provide a very important clue in the Somerton body mystery. […] Last night Mr. L. F. Wytkins, bus conductor, of Partridge street, Glenelg, told police that several months ago he found a book answering the description of the one required by the police. He handed it in to the lost property office at the Tramways Trust. Mr. Wytkins said he was not sure when he found the book, but he believed it to be about the time the man’s body was found on the beach at Somerton.

This was Leslie Francis Wytkin (not “Wytkins”). Here’s a photo of him in 1947 from the Adelaide News:

Wytkin died on 10th September 1991 at the age of 84, and was buried at Swan Reach cemetery, 80-odd miles north-east of Adelaide.

If there is any further mention of Wytkin’s Rubaiyat from 1949 or after, I have completely failed to notice it: so unless anyone knows better, it seems that this is where this lead both started and ended.

The Jetty Road Rubaiyat

A second, far more long-lived Rubaiyat story began at precisely the same time: that of the Jetty Road Rubaiyat:-

Adelaide News, 23rd July 1949

Fresh hope that the Somerton body mystery may be solved come today with the finding of a copy of the ‘Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam’ with the last page torn.

POLICE have been searching for such a book through out Australia in the hope it might provide the missing clue to the body’s identity. Last night an Adelaide businessman read of the search in ‘The News’ and recalled that in November he had found a copy of the book which had been thrown on the back seat of his car while it was parked in Jetty road, Glenelg. The book, the last page of which is torn, has been handed to police. If scientific tests, to be conducted next week, show the scrap of paper found on the dead man’s clothing had been taken from the book, police will have brought off a million to one chance.

[…] The finder of the book today handed it to Det.-Sgt. R. L. Leane. On the last page the words ‘Tamam Shud’ had been torn out. On the back of the book are several telephone numbers and a series of capital letters, written in pencil, the meaning of which have not yet been deciphered. As the scrap of paper found on the dead man had been trimmed, police were unable to identify the book merely by fitting it into the torn page. Proof will now rest with tests on the paper and the print.

Though the man was later referred to as “Ronald Francis”, that was not his real name: Gerry Feltus claims to know his real identity, and says that he spoke to him relatively recently (though he may since have passed away), but that he was elderly and unable to give any more useful details. The only extra detail we have was that he thought the book had been dumped in the back of the car around the time of the RAAF Air Display at Parafield on the 20th November 1948.

Feltus additionally noted that the man had told him that the car was a “little Hillman Minx” (“The Unknown Man”, p.105). But apart from the fact that the tear in the back page broadly matched the missing “Tamam Shud” and that the two sets of paper were a match, that’s all we ever knew about this Rubaiyat: it went missing many years ago, along with the suitcase, clothes and all the other evidence relating to the case.

Pete’s Hillman Minx Conspiracy Theory

Of course, the official line has always been that the Rubaiyat found by Wytkin was a dud and that the Jetty Road Rubaiyat was the real thing.

But Pete Bowes doesn’t like coincidences, and he thinks the fact that both Rubaiyats (re)appeared on the same evening of the same day is just too much.

And so, he mused, what if there never was a Jetty Road Rubaiyat? What if the whole Jetty Road story was just a feint, a front, a misdirection; and Wytkin’s Rubaiyat was the real one all along?

Moreover – and here’s what really seems to clinch it for him – this would mean that “Ronald Francis” was actually “Leslie Francis Wytkin” all along.

It would also mean that there never was a Hillman Minx (presumably it was Gerry Feltus who cooked that up): and hence that we can’t really trust anything the South Australian police say, because they’re all obviously Freemasons or Oddfellows or whatever, and therefore duty-bound by the code of their Lodge to protect Wytkin at all cost.

So… What Do I Think?

Pete has worked really hard at this case, and I would be entirely unsurprised if one of the many things he’s figured out along the way turns out to be the key to cracking the whole mystery: if it did, I’d be the first to applaud.

But as far this present issue goes, I’m personally happy to believe that there were indeed two quite separate Rubaiyats; that the shared trigger for their near-simultaneous appearance was the article in the Adelaide News; and that while Wytkin’s Rubaiyat didn’t have its “Tamam Shud” torn out, the Jetty Road Rubaiyat did. Sorry, Pete, but I just don’t see it.

When I was assembling the Broken Hill + Somerton Beach timeline, one thing stuck out like a non-proverbial prominently-sticking-out-thing: Henley Beach. Why did the Somerton Man…

* …buy a single ticket to Henley Beach (but not use it)
* …instead catch a bus to Somerton Beach (where he later died)?

From this simple starting point, people have constructed all kind of spy-related narratives (usually involving the Somerton Man’s being followed and hence trying to shake off his tail, TV gangster-style). But I just don’t believe them: and Gerry Feltus’ Appendix 2 would seem to rule out almost all of them in a fairly comprehensive and common-sense manner.

Similarly, the suggestion that the unused train ticket was planted in the dead man’s pocket after his death seems just a bit too contrived, a bit too ‘Hollywood’: a somewhat melodramatic thesis, one might say. Hence I also think that this will prove to be well wide of the mark.

Finally, Gerry Feltus also passes along the suggestion that a planned (but never actually built) train extension from Henley Beach station to Glenelg may have been marked up on some of the maps at the station in 1948: and hence that the Somerton Man might possibly have mistakenly bought a ticket to Henley Beach thinking he could continue directly on to Glenelg. But, once again, this seems a bit elaborate and hopeful, and is somehow missing a simple ring of truth.

Gerry, ever keen to keep his text free from the blight of speculation, never offers his own explanation for Henley Beach, but instead asks a long series of hard-to-answer questions, presumably to try to help people proposing their own Henley Beach theory to stay at least a little grounded.

So what did happen? My own chain of speculation is that the Somerton Man…

* Arrived in Adelaide on a train that morning.
* Bought a ticket to Henley Beach, where he was planning to meet someone (and perhaps drop off his suitcase with them) before going on to Glenelg after lunch.
* This was only a single ticket because that person in Henley Beach had their own car (or was there perhaps a bus service running directly between Henley Beach and Glenelg? I don’t know, but please leave a comment below if you do).
* Probably went to the City Baths to get freshened up, have a shave etc.
* Tried again to telephone that person to confirm, but got no answer.
* Hung around at the station for a while, and perhaps tried to call again just before the 10.50am train to Henley Beach departed, but changed plan when that again yielded no response.
* Left the suitcase in Adelaide Railway Station left luggage just after 11am.
* Caught the bus to St Leonards (near Glenelg) at 11.15am.

All of which speculation may not mean much, but the upshot is that I now suspect that someone else knew who the Somerton Man was: a person who I expect lived close to Henley Beach and owned a car.

From my perspective, my belief is that biggest lie about the whole Somerton Man case will turn out to be the notion that nobody (or perhaps only Jessica Thomson) knew who he was.

Rather, I suspect that a fair number of people knew exactly who he was, exactly why he was in Adelaide, and exactly how it all ended up. Not a conspiracy of action as such, but rather a mutual wall of silence. Nobody said a word: for had they done so, surely no good would have come of it.

Everyone in that network had something to lose.

Here’s a quick work-in-progress timeline for the hypothesis linking Broken Hill to the Somerton Man case.

Sunday 19 Sep 1948.
* Prosper Thomson drives his out-of-town-only taxi sedan to Broken Hill.

Saturday 25 September 1948.
* Prosper Thomson places a small ad to sell his 12-h.p. Vauxhall sedan, or to swap it for a sedan more suited to taxi runs.

Friday 26 November 1948.
* Evening: an unnamed boy steals a motorbike (belonging to William Horace Coffey, of 637 Lane Lane, Broken Hill) outside Broken Hill Central Power Station.

Saturday 27 November 1948.
* Unnamed boy dumps a suitcase on Somerton Beach.
* Unnamed boy dumps the stolen motorbike in the sand dunes at Glenelg.

Sunday 28 November 1948.
* Unnamed boy walks 12 miles to Port Noarlunga and steals a motor car (belonging to Maxwell John McCormack), but then gets arrested by police while driving North towards Adelaide.
* A man’s three-piece suit, sports trousers, a shoe, several pairs of socks and an overcoat plus a rifle stock are all found by police near the water’s edge on Somerton Beach.
* Unnamed boy confirms to police that these items were indeed all in the suitcase that he had dropped there, but that at the time the rifle still had its rifle barrel with it.

Monday 29 November 1948.
* Unnamed boy appears in Adelaide Juvenile Court and is remanded until Tuesday 6th December 1948.

Tuesday 30 November 1948.
* Broken Hill Express arrives at Adelaide Railway Station at 9.17am.
* Between 11am and 12am: Somerton Man checks a (different) suitcase into the Adelaide Railway Station cloakroom
* Between 6.15am and 2pm: Somerton Man buys a one-way train ticket to Henley Beach (from Douglas George Townsend, a student “temporarily employed by the S.A.R. as a ticket clerk”), but does not use it. (Trains to Henley Beach left at 9.30am, 10.50am, and 11.52am that morning: oddly, Henley Beach is about 10km north of Glenelg and Somerton Beach.)
* 11.15am: Somerton Man catches a bus to St Leonards from South Terraces, roughly a 2km walk from Adelaide station. (Oddly, he can catch a tram directly to Glenelg instead, but he does not do so.)
* 7.30pm: a man is seen lying on his back on the beach.
* 10.30pm: a man is seen being carried on another man’s shoulders near the beach

Wednesday 01 December 1948.
* 6am – the Somerton Man is found dead on Somerton Beach, near where the man was seen lying down the previous evening. He has no hat, no wallet, no cash, no ration cards, no identification cards: and shiny shoes. He also has no luggage docket for the suitcase he left at the station the previous day, and no onward or return train ticket.

Tuesday 06 December 1948.
* The unnamed boy (presumably) appears in Adelaide Juvenile Court again. Outcome currently unknown.

14 January 1949.
* An unclaimed suitcase is found in Adelaide Railway Station’s luggage office: mysteriously, it contains no socks. Police quickly link this to the Somerton Man.

Various Somerton Man bloggers and commenters seem to have got a bit feverish about “Clinic Distributors”, some even suggesting that it might be a euphemism for a clinic dealing with sexually transmitted diseases.

Let’s take a closer look at the constellation of ads placed in the Adelaide Advertiser by the Thomsons between 1947 and 1949 to see if we can reduce the temperature and get a bit more clarity…

Trove Adverts

Trove holds plenty of small ads placed by Prosper Thomson. The one from 1st March 1947 mentions “Clinic Distributors”, and dates to a specific period when he was looking to buy a sedan to start an out-of-town taxi business:-

MORRIS 10 h.p. saloon. Series M. 1940. same cars now selling as 1947 models for £635. This car has just been rebored, crankshaft ground, all bearings renewed, brakes relined. king pins replaced, and is definitely equal to new car and represents rare opportunity to acquire most popular sedan. Doing approx. 40 m.p. gal of petrol. We require large sedan or coupe, like Chev., Dodge or similar, suitable country traveller, on exchange basis. NSPR of Morris £298. genuine NSPR deal. See Mr. Thomson. Clinic Distributors. 200 Hindley st, business hours.

Though it has to be said that Thomson also placed a separate ad for this kind of car under his middle name, linked to GPO Box 1009J, e.g. 26th March 1947:-

WANTED urgently, tourer or roadster, by ex-serviceman, commencing business, utility will do, cash £75 to £150. Will inspect. McTaggart, Box 1009J. G.P.O.

Anyway, if we trace 200 Hindley Street forward to early 1949, we find other items for sales, e.g. 5th April 1949 and 6th April 1949:-

PAIR of binoculars. 200 Hindley st, City between 9 a.m.-5-3O p.m.

However, what seems to be the most likely explanation for all this is that 200 Hindley Street also appeared in a 3rd January 1948 job ad for Oilene Suprema Pty Ltd (a Melbourne hairdressing supply company that sold machines and supplies for steam perms etc).

LADIES’ Hairdressing Supply House requires Junior shorthand-typiste; also boy for store; 5-day week. Apply 9-10 Monday, 5th. Oilene Supreema, 200 Hindley st.

Hence my guess is that this was the city address of a hairdressing distribution company called Clinic Distributors (i.e. selling to ‘hairdressing clinics’), and that Thomson had some connection with the people working there.

Might it be that George Thomson and/or Jessica (soon-to-be) Thomson worked for Clinic Distributors at 200 Hindley Street around this time, and so used the company’s address for their small ads? It might be possible to check this: something to think about, anyway.

Other Adverts

Here’s another small-ad sale from 13th May 1948, this time with an evening telephone number L8409:-

ENGLISH cloth dress suit, as new. fit 36 in. chest. Inspect 200 Hindley St. 10-5. evening ring L8409.

Another small ad from 17th June 1950 uses the same phone number:-

AUSTIN Panel van, 1940, good order, £275. or near offer. Inspect week end, 4 Marlborough street, Henley Beach. L8409.

…and with the same address…

A.J.S. 1935 2 1/4 h.p, good condition. £35. Specialty Motor Cycle Repairs. 4 Marlborough St.. St. Peters, F5640

…and with the same address and number on 24th January 1948, but in the name of ‘Spicer’…

SPORTS racer, 2-seat Bugatti-Nash for sale; NSPR £270; accept £200. Ring. F5640. Spicer. 4 Marlborough st, St. Peters. Inspect this morn.

I’m don’t know whether or not this strand is connected to the Thomsons (I suspect it isn’t), but I thought I’d mention it anyway, having followed the trail so far. Perhaps a Cipher Mysteries reader will know the answer, they usually do. 🙂

The Broken Hill Connection

Interestingly, thanks to the diligent work of researcher Barry Traish going through Trove small ads, we can place George Thomson and his sedan taxi in Broken Hill in the second half of September 1948, vis-à-vis this ad in The Advertiser Wednesday 15th September 1948:-

NEW sedan leaving for Broken Hill Sunday, 3 seats, n/c. Phone X3239

Thomson then seems to have sold (or at least tried to sell) his sedan when he got back from Broken Hill (25th September 1948):-

VAUXHALL 12-h.p. sedan, new, 1948 model, mileage, 1,200. equipped radio and seat covers, exch. for sedan suitable for taxi, 1940 or later, G.M. or Chrysler product preferred. This is a genuine deal, based on new price both ways. No dealers, all genuine replies considered. Write, call or phone Thomson. 90a Moseley st., Glenelg. Phone X3239.

However, Thomson was not licensed to work as a taxi within the town, because he was also fined around this time for having done so (back in August 1948):-

Civil Sittings
BEFORE MR. L. E. CLARKE, SM:—
Drivers Charged.—Carrying passengers for hire in the city on August 26. while not being licensed by the City Council, cost Prosper McTaggart Thomson, of Moseley street. Glenelg. £2, with £1 19/ costs.
Mr. S. J. Jacobs for defendant.

…all of which surely explains why his ads specify “country trips, day tours, weddings &c”.

Prosper’s Rifle Advert

I’ll just paste this here for completeness: The Advertiser Saturday 18th June 1949

WANTED TO BUY
RIFLE, automatic Winchester, model 63 or similar, for cash. Thomson 90A Moseley st., Glenelg. X3239

Enough said for now! 🙂