Frustrated by our collective inability to access the divorce papers that Dorothy Jean Webb attempted to serve on her (by then late) husband Carl Webb, Cipher Mysteries commenter Behrooz decided to write to the Honorable Chief Justice Anne Ferguson of Victoria. And – rather wonderfully – his polite (and quietly persuasive) request for the two documents to be released into the public domain was agreed to.
He has (just today) posted the two PDFs on his blog:
Please use the comments below to discuss what we learn from these two (I think extremely central) documents. Please also remember to thank him heartily for his efforts! 🙂
The Bare Facts
Dorothy Jean Webb says that she was a “Pharmacist and Chiropodist” prior to marrying Carl Webb. (DWA p.2)
Carl Webb “wrote many poems, most of them on the subject of death, which he claims to be his greatest desire”. (DWA p.4)
He was sullen, moody and changeable, once threatening a friend with a carving knife after losing at cards. Their marriage broke down: she described how he beat her on different occasions; forced her to move to the front room; and finally locked her out of the flat completely. (DWA p.4)
She went to stay in Lorne for 14 days, but things were no better on her return. (DWA p.5)
In March 1946, he – and I think there is no real doubt of this – tried to commit suicide by taking 40 phenobarbitol tablets. Once Dorothy had nursed him back to health, he then continued to verbally abuse her (etc) as before. (DWA. pp.5-6)
Dorothy called the St Kilda police around on several occasions, but each time Carl convinced them (she thought) that she was just imagining things. (DWA p.6)
In September 1946, not long after her father came back from Darwin, Carl offered her £60 to leave the flat: she wanted £50 plus some furniture, and they did not agree. He later said that she would get nothing from him “ever”.
She had a maintenance order (for £1/10 weekly) served on him (dated 1st May 1947) (DWA p.7). At that time, he was “working in a machine shop in Prahran” (WvW p.15), named as “Red Point Tool Co. of 66 St Johns Street Prahran” (WvW p.21).
A neighbour recalled that Webb had sold all his furniture (WvW p.17).
I encourage everyone to read Behrooz’s letters, congratulations and thank you Behrooz! I think your quiet determination and reason were the key to unlocking this door, which I for one, didn’t believe could be opened with out some serious bureaucratic clout! You presented a compelling case and they heard you!
It’s a sad and dreadful story… poor Dorothy!
Here is more info on where Carl worked: https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/sher-william-peter-11679 – Red Point Tool Co – founded by a savvy Viennese man fleeing the Nazis, so no Dunera connections… It all feels rather weird, I know the building on St John Street, just off Chapel Street, Prahran where the company was then based. Dorothy probably worked at a chemist on busy Chapel Street. Derek Abbott has already put an article on Red Point from Trove up on his website… I it’s consistent with my earlier theory about Kelly and Lewis of Springvale. I think I got most other things wrong…
I got drawn into all of this believing there was a signals intelligence angle. I found one, with my husband’s step father’s father…I spotted his name, giving evidence in favour of Red Point at a tarif hearing in 1951. Basil worked in signals in Afghanistan and Iraq in World War I – I knew some of his story and have now accessed his NAA file…
I don’t know where this will all go from here! The lingering question for me is the phone number on the Rubiayat!
Dorothy? I imagine her parents gave her money, hence she wasn’t in the will. There is a mention of Kadina… It doesn’t sound as though she knew Ruby, even though they may have briefly been in the same neighbourhood. Wherever she went I hope she was OK.
Thank you Behrooz!
@ Nick Pelling
Thank you and others (as noted in the other thread), for opening a space for discussing Dorothy Jean Webb’s divorce files.
@ all,
I am not at a point yet of sharing all things I can say about the files and will have to read more. But what I wish to direct your attention to is the following.
At no point does Dorothy Jean Webb make any reference to what had happened in Carl’s life recently (loss of brother and nephew in the same year 1943, earlier his dad in 1939, but also re. his mother’s current condition before passing in late 1946 for which she helped out early on during the mother’s illness, but not entirely it seems), nor does she say anything about any physical illness (foot, or as Byron noted connective tissue disease, of which MPA or MPAN is a variety) Carl may have suffered from (other than his state of mind). I have been very curious to know if she did refer to those details in Carl’s life, and find this very strange that she did not. It is as if she was not, even superficially, aware or and/or empathizing with what Carl had just gone through as a (part) reason for his obviously troubled state of mind (according to her). There is nothing there, at all. It would be hard to believe that Carl had not told her about his family events, to rule out the possible answer that she did not know.
Also, in the other file, you will see Carl’s sisters were contacted about his whereabouts in 1951, and only Doris responded (in phone call), to say they had no idea where he was. So, we know, at their face value at least, that she did not reply. Freda apparently did not receive the request for information due to address change, and Gladys never replied (then), but surely they would have all known about the inquiry being made about Carl’s whereabouts as far as Dorothy’s divorce file process was concerned.
I am not sure the unofficial team had access to the second file, since otherwise they would have had or shared the information about Carl’s employment (which is mostly after 1940). So, the second file must even be news to them.
One other point, there is a little detail that links this Carl Webb to the Somerton Man, and it is that carving knife. I hope you all noticed that!
I have to read the files again, since I am not sure how to even begin to add more of what I can say at this point.
Dorothy got very lucky or knew the right people when she filed her affidavit. The lawyer (notary public) who had the authority and administered her oath in Kadina was James Crimeen Ellery McCarthy. He was born in Auburn and lived for a time in Adelaide before moving to Kadina where he also became mayor! His wife was a lawyer too. They had three sons, one of which became a physicist. Here is a summary of that son’s career that includes information about James Crimeen:
https://www.science.org.au/fellowship/fellows/biographical-memoirs/ian-ellery-mccarthy-1930–2005
Briefly:
Ian Ellery McCarthy was born on 19 June 1930 in Adelaide, South Australia, the eldest son of James Cremeen Ellery and Gwendolen Helen McCarthy (née Ure), both South Australians. The law was a major influence in the McCarthy household, with both parents involved in the firm of J. C. E. and G. H. McCarthy at Kadina, South Australia. Ian’s father was an outstanding barrister with a reputation for never having lost a case in the State Supreme Court. His mother was an early woman Law graduate of the University of Adelaide, and her outstanding undergraduate career included being awarded the Stow medal in 1923. Both of Ian’s brothers followed their parents in the law. Ian’s only close scientific relative was a great-uncle on his mother’s father’s side, Robert Ramsay Wright, who was a professor of biology at the University of Toronto.
Ian’s childhood was spent in Kadina, South Australia, where the family had a house with a large garden and a small paddock on the edge of the town. His father served as Mayor of Kadina for several terms after the Second World War. The town was poor since its major industry, copper mining, closed in the Depression. It was, however, the centre of a prosperous farming district. Ian attended Kadina Primary School from 1936 to 1942. The school was too poor to have sporting facilities. Recreation consisted of swimming at Wallaroo six miles away.
The 1943 Electoral Roll includes the following:
Joyce Mary Davies – 63 Bromby Street, ballet dancer
Thomas William Davies – 63 Bromby Street, draughtsman
Mary Marray Davies – Bromby Street, home duties
In 1949, the Electoral Roll no longer includes Joyce Mary Davies
It does include both Thomas William and Mary Marray still living at 63 Bromby Street.
So there were definitely “Davies” neighbours. Perhaps it was Joyce that let Dorothy stay over (maybe at the front) and she was gone by the time solicitors came around to confirm information?
Joyce Mary Davies marries Henry Chester Carter in 1944 and is back at 63 Bromby Street in the 1953 Electoral Rolls. This time as “hd”. Henry Chester is not with her. Mary Marray Davies is also at 63 Bromby on this listing but Thomas William is no longer listed.
Firstly I want to thank Behrooz for his efforts to obtain the divorce papers. We had our dispute in the past but I hope that is all water under the bridge.
At least this can stop all that Bute vs Boort nonsense and suchlike. I have defended Abbott and Fitzpatrick here before, and although they do appear wide of the mark at times, they are both serious researchers and not likely to get their facts mixed up to such an absurd degree as some have suggested. When I broke the news of Colleen’s Gray Hughes appearance here on 21 August (on the Charles Webb at Swinburne Technological College thread), giving full details, my post was all but ignored, and later on her revelations were rubbished and Dorothy described as a fantasist.
On September 28 as Ann O I wrote in a reply to Colonel Sanders (Bute or Boort?): “The most pertinent revelation in the initial Gray Hughes Colleen Fitzpatrick video that I posted a link to here a day after its release (as Steve H) was for me the statement that Carl had tried to commit suicide. I can’t for the life of me see why Doff would need to make that up in her divorce papers. After all the man had “deserted” her in 1947.” On October 8 (on the same thread) I posted a comment to Nick about my overall thoughts about the case. I said then: “Nothing I have read or watched in recent weeks on the SM case has really led me to conclude that this is anything other than a suicide – whether deliberate and unassisted, assisted, or by the personal neglect of the man’s health and wellbeing. If we are to accept Colleen Fitzpatrick’s account of Doff’s account of the unhappy marriage then we have evidence that Carl had made at least one previous suicide attempt.”
Of course we needn’t accept everything Dorothy says in her affidavit. Having said that I have personally been surprised at some of the” defence “arguments to justify Carl (supposing the allegations are true). Regardless of any traumatic experiences or mental instability he suffered from, wife beating is wife beating and totally inexcusable in my opinion. And why are men given more credit than women when it comes to telling the “truth”?
I note a few points from the affidavit:
1) Carl is described as an “electrical ENGINEER and instrument fitter”.
2) Carl “terminated the matrimonial relationship” in January 1946.
3) Dorothy left the flat in September 1946.
4) Dorothy blames Carl for “breaking up old friendships of mine” and says that he “had no particular friends of his own.”
5) The violence Carl inflicted on Dorothy was savage and sustained.
6) Carl threatened her life on more than one occasion.
From the Webb-v- Webb divorce file:
1) The cause of the citation for the dissolution of the marriage is given as “desertion for a period of three years and upwards.” (I have made the point before that that in itself would be sufficient to gain the divorce, regardless of the
sordid details of the marriage itself).
2) Dorothy had not heard from or seen Carl since she left the flat but believed he had moved out in April 1947.
3) The sisters didn’t appear to be very helpful or cooperative.
4) The summons for maintenance was sent in April 1947 to Red Point Tool Company of 66 St Johns Street, Prahran.
On Facebook Prof Abbott has written: “So it seems the company Charlie worked for…made electric drills, electric grinders, and power screwdrivers. So his role would probably be fitting switches and armatures.”
Not being a hermeneutician I won’t attempt to analyse the texts of these documents for any “codes” or “hidden meanings”. But there are new leads to follow, and speaking for myself I hope that some of the attention now returns to Adelaide and what happened there, and away from the minutiae of Carl’s family tree in Victoria and other matters which may be interesting to some but often seem irrelevant to the case.
Whither Kev D’Arcy now? Is that a little bird I hear – being strangled?
THANKS A LOT, BEHROOZ!
I’m currently trying to write down a list of events (where and when they took place), but I just would like to point out to something that Dorothy wrote in the affidavit.
‘4. I am 30 years of age and was born at Ballarat in the State of Victoria. I am and have been for two years and upwards domiciled in the State of Victoria.’
Does it mean she wasn’t in Victoria for the last two years? Sorry if this is a stupid question, but the English language can be tricky!
@ Steve
I spoke to Kevin Alexander’s brother & his wife on Tuesday, very nice people who knew nothing about Dorothy. This was a day before Behrooz posted. Maybe there is another Mr D’Arcy… who knows? I think Nick took information from one of Dorothy’s ageing relatives on good faith, why wouldn’t he?
Thanks for this, Nick, Behrooz, it answers many questions.
Jo: you did brilliantly well with the D’Arcy’s, I’m now trying to find out what went wrong with my informant in the first place. 🙁
There is an overwhelming undeniable predicated logic with regard to both a given time table for Carl Webb’s suspicious demise and likely presence of the victim’s neglected wife Dorothy Jean nee Robertson and estranged brother-in-law Gerald Thomas Keane in late 1948. Dorothy’s cousin Dr. John Barkley Bennett was himself present to provide his crucial time of death & causal opions, evidence given by him at the 1949 death inquest with it’s non specific ‘Sine Die’ outcome.
No need to reiterate on suspicions of Dorothy and Gerald being in Adelaide at the relevant period and it’s clear that Dr. Bennett, who resigned his internship at R.A.H so soon thereafter was insitu for his part. Based mostly on my own considered opinions both recent and past, the odds for this family group including deceased occurring by pure chance ‘five hundred miles from home’ must be infinitesimal at least or ‘according to Hoyle’ within the range of sweet Buckly’s & none at all.
Nick Pelling: it became quite apparent to me, as you’ll recall, that when you gave up the name Kevin D’Arcy with no named informant, you had been takien in by the most unreliable source immaginable, ie., Bruce Bennett, son of co-conspirator Dr. (Death) Bennett. In your favour, if ignorance be a valid excuse there lies the sad fact that you were not cognizant of his relationship to Dorothy at that point in time thus innocent of any neglect.
@ Nick – she may have known Kevin D’Arcy, there was a large age gap between him and his brother, the brother pointed out that Kevin would be 101 this year! Everything has been worth a try and I think Behrooz’s erudition, sincerity & compelling case about confusing partial disclosures must have struck a chord with those reading his letter. I think they made the right decision.
@Jo, Steve H, Pat, misca, and Petebowes. Thanks again, and it is my pleasure to help out. Needless to say, I have benefited a lot from all your work and energies.
@ Pat, I wondered about that too. Perhaps Jo can help out as she is most qualified especially in these matters re. Australia.
Just guessing, Dorothy is perhaps saying that although she is filing it from Bute, being “from there,” she still has had her permanent address in the state of Victoria for that past two plus years (counting in 1951). What is confusing is the implication that she was not domiciled in Victoria before that, meaning also during her marriage with Carl, which would not make sense?
Or, it could mean somehow after Sept. 1946, she changed her domicile to somewhere other than Victoria, such as SA, and then got back to being domiciled there again for the past 2 plus years (counting in 1951). If this interpretation holds, she left the state soon after Sept. 1946 (perhaps even going to Bute then) and changing her domicile to SA state until, say, 1949, and then she came back to Victoria as a permanent resident, even though she was still in 1951 in Bute.
If this holds, it would be interesting, as if something happened in 1948 (hint!) that made her feel safe to come back to Victoria to have a permanent resident, even though she was still living in Bute.
Any ways, good thing you asked what I also wondered about, and I am not sure at all what the answer is, if not the above. Hopefully others will clarify.
Head honcho of red point tools was Austrian immigrant William Peter Sher who got his electrical engineering credentials pre arrival in Australia and started making power drills etc., shortly before ww2. In 1940 his operations were seconded by the government to assist the war effort and remained thus for the duration. So little doubt that Carl Webb got a war service exemption by virtue of employment in an essential service capacity after all.
Pat,
“‘I am and have been for two years and upwards domiciled in the State of Victoria.’
“Does it mean she wasn’t in Victoria for the last two years?”
At a guess, it appears that, as a requirement of the divorce process in Victoria at the time, Dorothy had to make a sworn declaration that she had resided in Victoria for ar least two years. Before the 1970s, family law in Australia could differ significantly from one state to another; possibly such a declaration was intended to prevent “jurisdiction shopping” by one or both parties (e.g. I’m guessing, but possibly the Victorian courts had a reputation for speedier processes, being more more lenient or generous in some respects etc).
Did the Keane’s change address by the time we hit 1951? Just curious, had been thinking the Keanes were probably the closest family connection to Carl, and maybe Dorothy, but if Dorothy could only give their address as “Brunswick”, h’mm, what’s that all about …… or was she covering, didn’t want them in the picture? Thanks again, Behrooz and Nick, completely fabulous.
Have been looking into 21 year olds who are being called pharmacists back in the day – this is from NSW, but hey …. can anyone find her in the Pharmacy Register?
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/230224414?searchTerm=young%20pharmacist%20bettina
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/229009596?searchTerm=chemists%20say%20they%20have%20a%20quest%20tonic
@steve H
We need to know who was where in November 1948. The family minutae are important. For example, Dorothy didn’t know where the Keane family lived in 1951. It could be Carl travelled to Adelaide to see the Keane family and visited Somerton while waiting around, or he even lived with them in Adelaide. He had given up his job with the power drill company around 1947.
How did the court work out where his employer was? They must have found the documents from the Court of Petty Sessions for her maintenance order?
@misca
Was McCarthy advertising as a public notary? How would she know in Bute where to go in Kadina or was she advised by her solicitor in Melbourne to save a trip?
There are a lot of stamps to pay for on those legal documents. Dorothy must have suddenly had money from somewhere. Did her father die in 1951?
@ Pat and Behrooz
I think Furphy’s interpretation is correct – Dorothy would need to be a resident of Victoria for two years in order for her case to be heard by a Victorian court (as opposed to that of another state).
We have all been pursuing different lines and working from different starting points within our sleuthing – I know mine was intelligence services and signals intelligence. Whist I was completely wrong about Carl Webb I think I have found one, maybe two people within my family network who were involved in WWII intelligence services… (one, an electrical engineer! has an open record confirming WWI intelligence work; his second, un-assessed file runs from 1939 until1985…). The second person was his first wife’s adopted daughter (an orphan from Poland) , who became his second wife, after the death of the first (a kind of Woody Allen scenario)… I was given her gloves as my “something old” when I married, she was an introverted, highly intelligent person who completed a Masters in English just before the war broke out. I never met either of them. The family say they think would explains a lot about their lives and the succeeding intergenerational ripples and want to leave it at that!
@ David Morgan has had a thing about the Dunera detainees and the Hay and Tatura camps. Again, I don’t think this was part of Carl Webb’s story. Perhaps one of the most famous of the Tatura detainees however, may have lived for a while in the garage or shed, behind 63 Bromby Street and would have missed the Webbs by perhaps only a month. He may have been interviewed by the young law clerk, David Patterson Connell, when he made enquiries amongst the 63 Bromby Street tennants (it sounds as though Connell spoke to Derry George’s wife, Rita).
This was the German-Australian Jewish photographer, Helmut Newton, who arrived in Australian on the Queen Mary (a much better voyage than the Dunera) and was interred at Tatura, before being released as a “refugee alien” for farming and then war service. Although famous as a fashion photographer, Helmut Newton had his break filming the Geelong Shell oil refinery and its employees. His friend and rival, Berlin born Wolfgang Sievers, worked in a similar industrial genre and photographed the iconic photograph “Shift Change and Kelly and Lewis” for their fiftieth year commemorative book, again just missing Carl Webb (if he did work there).
http://www3.slv.vic.gov.au/latrobejournal/issue/latrobe-76/t1-g-t8.html (this says 3 Bromby Street, which doesn’t fit the description, but 63 does…)
I’m not sure where this all leaves us, lead poisoning and dodgy car deals?
What if x3239 was simply a catalogue number for a type of welder? (I know this wouldn’t work for 1948 but try Googling x3239 welder!!).
Thank you, Behrooz for your stellar work on this. Quite an achievement, and all of here appreciate you sharing these important documents.
I saw them yesterday but waited to comment…They are really sad. I now do believe Dorothy’s allegations—She obviously had witnesses and there must be documentation of the police calls. Whatever Carl’s trials were with regard to his family losses, it is not a reason for his treatment of her.
There is NO excuse whatsoever for his abuse. It seems our former mystery man was a very unpleasant person at the very least, and not just to Doff. It seems also that suicide is seeming more and more likely as the cause of his death, but there are still a lot of holes in the story, and I hope we can find more information.
Why did he have Jessica’s phone number? What was he doing in Adelaide? Why did he quit his job? Did he have another? Was there an affair with the nurse—or someone else? We would all of course love to learn what happened to Dorothy as well. This whole thing is such a sad, pathetic story. I feel sorry for Dorothy. It’s now obvious that Carl/Charles had some kind of mental issues.
I wish we could find people he worked with and get there take on him and how he behaved at work. Probably too late for any hope of that…
@Mary Spencer
We should try to suspend judgement on Carl as we have a one-sided story. When Dorothy was away for 2 weeks on holiday he may have been really nice looking after the cat. We have no way of knowing. The fact she left the cat with him suggests some level of trust. The fact she was saying she had paid £60 into their home over a 4-year period and wanted her money back. If the rent was £2 /week – it was £104 per year. so Carl had paid about £350 in rent versus her £60. It seems a strange point to raise. Is she saying he was supposed to be her provider?
In a parallel mystery (the 1970 Isdal Woman) a lawyer wrote a book about how a photographer was the likely killer. His evidence was based partly on a similar Affidavit from his wife in an Italian court over child custody and a false accusation of rape of a teenage girl.
But if you look online at the children (on FB) all their memories are with their dad.
@ Furphy
Thanks for the explanation! I wonder why her address would just be ‘Bute’? For her own protection (from a potentially violent husband) or because Bute didn’t have street names (I doubt it) or maybe because she lived in the countryside?
@ Jo
Thanks for the link! Great biography! So, do you think Helmut’s hut could have been behind 63 Bromby st flats? That would be very interesting, giving the fact that Carl was already working for Viennese William Peter Sher.
Great minds think alike. Only some of us think it well before others.
On Pete Bowes’ site today he writes about Carl:
“A man nothing like the creation of Canadian special effects artist Daniel Voshart, who devised the animation of the mystery man’s face and changed him into a toothsome Hollywood styled image.”
On August 19, on the ‘First photo of Carl Webb’ thread her I wrote:
“Looking at some of the choices for Webb [in the footy photo] I believe that some commenters have been swayed by the animations and paintings commissioned of SM, which make him look like a Hollywood film star.”
Just saying!.
Hmm….
If we consider the very important fact that the Respondent would be held responsible for paying the costs of the cause, wouldn’t it be in the interest of the Law Courts of Melbourne (and indirectly the Law Courts of South Australia) to know if said Respondent was dead? Who has paid the costs of the divorce in the end?
It sounds like an awful state of affairs, but it’s important to hear about them; brilliant work, Behrooz, and thanks for sharing.
Not to excuse his reported behavior in the slightest, but perhaps to better understand it: maybe Webb’s stormy temperament could at least in part have had something to do with brain trauma, perhaps incurred during his time playing football?
Threatening others at knifepoint over a game of cards doesn’t seem to me like anything a normally functioning person would do, let alone the other things Dorothy makes mention of, no matter what sorrows they’re going through. It sounds to me that frontal lobe damage could have been involved. I am reminded of the classic case study of Phineas Gage, whom was (at least for a time) rendered rather impulsive and disinhibited compared to the person he’d once been following an accident which affected that very portion of his brain. Though, Gage’s injury was a bit more… drastic:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage
Such changes to self-control don’t necessarily require any invasive damage to the brain at all; even repeated jarring of the head can do the trick. And unlike in Gage’s case, these thus more insidious changes can take time to manifest, and (due to the more generalized nature of the injury) would likely be accompanied by symptoms associated with other areas of the brain as well. Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), most documented in athletes including those involved in contact sports, can first present itself years after repeated mild trauma to the brain, and entails observable changes to the organ itself. As such, the host of possible symptoms involved (which come in stages if the disease progresses) sound pretty miserable:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_traumatic_encephalopathy#Signs_and_symptoms
Perhaps Webb suffered from some degree of CTE, or something akin to it. It certainly sounds like he was moody, depressed, suicidal, and prone to impulsivity and aggression, though to what extent he may have exhibited the many other listed potential symptoms (if any) is unclear. Perhaps these other signs were not so pronounced in his case, or maybe not until near the end, in which instance: even if they’d been evident, would anyone have been left in his life by that point to notice or care?
Though their injuries would have been very different, it seems that Gage was able to regain some level of normalcy within the years following his accident by means of a structured life including plenty of social contact. It seems that Webb, on the other hand, firmly chose to relieve himself of at least this latter concept. Though social connection may not have helped his particular condition anyway (CTE being a degenerative disease), it is tragic that had he been at all embarrassed about it, it may be that he’d opted not to relate much with others (especially those as close as his wife) specifically in order to avoid exposing the deteriorating state of his faculties. Thus, eventually no one would have been around him to voice their concern over changes which, having known him for a long while, they might have recognized whereas others would not have, and he would have remained largely alone and unaided.
I certainly don’t mean to suggest that this would explain all of his peculiarities, but I think it might help. And to end off, a little PSA: abuse is wrong and take care of that noggin!
….have we looked at this as an unstable man with a possible drug abuse history and the death as a possible overdose of something?
I have been doing a little research into Colonel Sanders’ bold claim that Gerald Keane would definitely have been in Adelaide on Nov 30 (or was it Nov 31?) to attend the premiere of ‘The Listeners’, a ballet based on a Walter de la Mare poem (I prefer his ghost stories to his poems myself). Totally unproven of course, but interesting nevertheless, I’ll give the old bugger that.
“Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
Of the forest’s ferny floor:
And a bird flew up out of the turret,
Above the Traveller’s head…”
I wonder if the bird flew off to whisper something in Nick’s ear?
One fact I noticed, which may well have been mentioned here before, was that the ballet had “decor and costumes” by Kenneth Rowell,” See:
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/43791893?searchTerm=%22tivoli%20theatre%22%20%22kenneth%20rowell%22%20the%20listeners
Rowell was a Melbourne artist who also trained as a dancer. According to nickwatersart.co.uk he “was a painter in watercolour and gouache, a printmaker, theatrical designer and photographer. He was born in Melbourne, Australia, he began taking dance lessons in the late 1930s and was a student at the Borovansky Ballet Academy in Melbourne from 1940. Rowell danced minor roles in some early Borovansky performances in the early 1940s and designed backcloths and costumes for other productions during that period.”
Following this lead one can read in the Australian Dictionary of Biography about [Czech-born] Edouard Borovansky and his wife Xenia who “established their Melbourne Academy of Russian Ballet where ‘Classical and Character Dancing, Mime and Make Up’ were to be taught. Instruction was basically Xenia’s field, Boro himself acting rather as producer and entrepreneur.”
Further: “In July 1942 he presented a five-night season at the shabbily grandiose Princess Theatre [Melbourne]. The programme, mixing classics with lightweight, new creations, filled the house, and proved to the management of J. C. Williamson Theatres Ltd that ballet was potentially big business. On this basis, ‘the Firm’ allied itself to Borovansky, so that he gained access to its theatres throughout Australia…”
Of course we know Gerald Keane worked for J. C. Williamson. In 1940 he had “been on the staff of J. C. Williamson for over twenty years [and] was in Camperdown on Thursday, on a visit to his people. Mr. Keane has had an extended trip with the Russian ballet, visiting Adelaide, and then Brisbane.” (From the Camperdown Chronicle 20 July 1940.
The “Russian ballet” would have been the Ballets Russes, “a generic name given to a succession of ballet companies which emerged in Europe after the demise of Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in 1929…During the 1930s and 1940s there were several Ballets Russes companies which toured throughout Europe, the Americas and to Australasia. Three Ballets Russes companies were formed for touring to Australia between 1936 and 1940.”
From December 1939 to August 1940 ” Colonel W. de Basil’s Covent Garden Ballet (also known as Colonel W. de Basil’s Ballet Company and The Original Ballet Russe) toured to Sydney-Melbourne-Adelaide-Brisbane-Sydney.” They were in Melbourne at His Majesty’s Theatre from 14 March to 4 June 1940. in Adelaide at the Theatre Royal from 5 to 22 June 1940, and in Brisbane at His Majesty’s Theatre from 26 June to 11 July 1940. This would fit with the Camperdown Chronicle report of 23 July 1940 on Gerald’s visit to “his people”.
For more details of the tour see: https://www.nla.gov.au/sites/default/files/ballets-russes-finding-aid-2013_0.pdf#:~:text=In%201913%2C%20Adeline%20Genee%20toured%20to%20Australia%20with,headed%20by%20the%20famous%20Russian%20ballerina%20Olga%20Spessivtzeva.
So one might wonder whether Gerald knew Kenneth Rowell and so did indeed go to the Tivoli in Adelaide on that fateful day in November 1948. Perhaps he even knew Borovansky.
I had to laugh because back in 2016 a certain John Sanders was speculating that Somerton Man was Thadee Slavinsky who “may have concocted with the help of others to feign his demise [in 1945], only to die in most unusual circumstances at Adelaide on [the] opening night of ‘The Listener’s (sic)” (From michellepotter.org.)
The Warsaw born Slavinsky had danced with Ballets Russes. According to dancelines.com.au: “During the Borovansky Ballet tour of New Zealand Slavinsky had a heart attack and was taken from his hotel to Dunedin Hospital where he died on 22 January, 1945.” Or perhaps not! Previously, “on 5 October, 1940, Slavinsky, then living in Sydney where he ran a dance studio at Henrietta Lane, was ‘alleged to have made subversive utterances in the bar of Usher’s Hotel, Sydney’” according to police reports. Dammit, I’d be prepared to bet that the Colonel himself made out that report back in the days when he was one of the finest blue heelers in the whole of NSW..
I think I said this some time ago, but it does rather look like suicide. However these revelations make it look more like Abbott got it right and Carl Webb is the man.
Not only did the Courts of Justice not investigate the possibility of Carl’s death, I also think the lawyers were quite careless about Freda Keane’s address. If one of the lawyers checked Carl’s address on the electoral roll, why didn’t he also look up Freda’s address instead of sending a letter addressed to ‘Mrs. Freda Keane, Brunswick’. They didn’t want to find him.
@ Pat
Helmut Newton – the renowned German-Australian photographer and ex Tatura detainee:
“By mid–1946 he was back at Camp Pell where he was assigned duties at the Footscray Canning Factory, Colonial Sugar Refinery and at the Docks.19 But the duties were light and it was not even necessary to reside at the Camp; instead a small hut at the rear of an apartment house at 3 Bromby Street, South Yarra, became his residence.”
3 Bromby Street is an old Victorian house belonging to Melbourne Grammar School (I think historically the headmaster’s house), it doesn’t have a hut. The description does, however, fit 63 Bromby Street to a tee! He probably missed the Webbs by weeks. What a pity he wasn’t around to help our Dorothy! Newton married June Browne, known as actor and model June Brunell or Newton and then photographer, Alice Springs!
I think these ads are for the sale of furniture from Bromby Street (even though they are listed as Flat 1).
There is a bedroom suite for sale in January 1946, followed by a complete clearance in November 1946. This means that the hand tools advertised in mid 1947 may have belonged to Derry George and that Carl left soon after Dorothy (who gives her leaving date as Friday 13 September, 1946).
The neighbour, Thomas William Davies, a draftsman, died in 1949.
Bedroom suite, January 1946:
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/22224290?searchTerm=furniture%20sale%2063%20bromby%20street
Flat clearance – November 1946:
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/22391233?searchTerm=furniture%20sale%2063%20bromby%20street
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/22393548?searchTerm=furniture%20sale%2063%20bromby%20street
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/204952512?searchTerm=furniture%20sale%2063%20bromby%20street
Steve H: well researched and glad you took the time for bringing up old Thadee Slavinsky concerning his curious short lived second NZ tour with Borovanski’s 40 troup, delayed by suspicions of his nazi leanings. His alleged death? in Dunedin Nzlnd 22/1/45 was only liightly covered for such a renowed artiste on the world stage (partnered Anna Pavlova 20s). Surprised you didn’t pick up on the little known fact that Thadee’s Anderson’s Bay cemetery tombstone is adorned with a polished J.C Williamson mememorial plaque, nor that his bigamous wife Marie Doran could not not attend the service due to a prior Tivoli engagement (or did she know something) in Melbourne. She remarried in 1947 to a Port Pirie born chemist ex RAAF Sqn. Leader husband and settled at Henley Beach from memory. It be little known also that Thadee’s UK/US family, his youngest daughter in particular born in 1936, was still enquiring after her long lost dad on Ancestry? circa. 2016. Knowing you’re thouroughness to detail (albeit self serving) you’ll surely have seen in much later TS/SM posts that my TS had a brother Felix Slawinsky, himself a Tivoli performer who toured Adelaide during 1946 with the Worth Circus, as did Thaddee himself in 1937 with Ballets Russes. Should you chose to delve further you’ll find a most intriguing aftermath on Felix (and his best mate Arno), more to the point his identity theft substitute’s return to Adelaide in ’54 and his subsequent passing in a Melbourne assylum. Sadly none of my well detailed though oft maligned on line TS (note initial significance) ballet posts of 2016 or subsequent retakes were given fair hearing until you thought to resurrect memories of my fanciful musings; so thanks anyway for the reminder, a learning curve for me of which of I’m quite unabashed if truth be known.
Punters all: in this new age of enlightement, continuing with theme variations of enumerable and boringly repetitious past musings of little factual basis will never pass muster, so to cease and desist with such frivolous irrelevance might be a wise progressive move. It is indeed a sad indightement on our thus far joint incapacity to take on board the areas deemed of most need for resolution, eg., meeting and courting of the unlikely couple, both apparently by then disowned by their own kith & kin, detail that needed to have been thorougly veted from the get go, to the exclusion of a farcical rambling and unsuccessful pursuit of ellusive Kevin ‘bloody’ D’Arcy and it’s related one upmanship rantings off the mark genial. pursuitists. If we could turn a new leaf by hencefoth employingnuseful strategies in the form of progressive logic, well researched discourse supported by a dictum of ‘keep it simple stupid’, such might yet serve to win the day. This beung in order to satisfy a covenant of sound reasoning entrusted to us by benefactor Behrooz …my own esteemed gratitude for your long overdue imput here and elsewhere Prof.
I’m thinking that I’ve followed Carl and Dorothy long and far enough! The narrative now moves on from Bromby Street and there are some good theories for what may have happened next… none of them good for Carl but hopefully happier times for Dorothy. She didn’t want to be found and I respect that. (She may have thought that Carl had gone to the Keanes’ for a while and may have been right).
I hope Professor Abbott has removed Mr Somerton’s portrait from his home and that Rachel can find some measure of relief that Prosper T is her grandfather and not Carl. It seems that neither Prof Abbott nor Prof Fitzpatrick had seen part II of the file! So again, well done Behrooz on your truth seeking!
I like to see the best in people and wonder what damage sustained lead poisoning might have done in relation to Carl’s character and temperament. It is sad to think that bright, sober and hard working young boy turned into an abusive middle aged man. It will be interesting to see what South Australia Police (SAPOL) say in time…
Whilst some might follow Carl from Bromby Street and the Red Point Tool Company around a few corners to Tibor Kaldor’s place, at nearby 10 The Avenue, Windsor, I think that’s highly speculative…
I’ve enjoyed interacting with all of you regular ciphermysteries crew, seeing your skills and knowledge in action and learning a lot about my own back yard, back in time… I apologise if I haven’t been able to curb the teacherly instincts! Thanks Nick for all the moderating of our rambling speculations and posts!
I quite like verse 50 of the Second Edition of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, which almost nods to a futurity of DNA technology! :
Would you that spangle of Existence spend
About the SECRET – quick about it, Friend!
A Hair, they say, divides the False and True –
And upon what, prithee, does Life depend?
I’ve been very absorbed in all of this but Shud really get back to work!
After (second edition) verse 48!
When You and I behind the Veil are past,
Oh but the long long while the World shall last,
Which of our Coming and Departure heeds
As much as Ocean of a pebble-cast.
Does anyone know the law about maintenance orders – how they are paid (i.e. deduction from wages by employer), sent to a solicitor or sent directly by Carl to Dorothy? Presumably, Carl made a few maintenance payments and left the company in Prahran in 1947.
Dorothy had paid out about 2 week’s rent in stamps to chase her divorce. If she was living in a commune I wonder where her income came from in 1951?
It is strange how Carl Webb is a bit if a Viennese magnet – the photographer (Helmut Newtron) in the shed – perhaps just outside his back door (or no 3), the other Adelaide suicide (Tibor Kaldor) and his boss at work Mr WP Sher. Are we sure his dad was a Hamburger?
I said I’d finish but… just ran into a friend who worked on the Melbourne Jewish museum’s Helmut Newton exhibition – yes, he lived at the rear of 63 Bromby Street, but probably wasn’t there much, so we miss out on an opportunity for some top photos of Carl and Dorothy.
@ David Morgan- on whether Dunera detainees may have been given Globalité suitcases – “Not bloody likely!” From Ms Rosenthal! In fact, many of their well tailored European clothes were nicked!
Why would Professor Cleland have wanted a specimen of Webb’s six month old brain?
Peteb: you’ll have to wait up a bit and try to wangle it out of Paul, it was his baby after all. Far as I’m aware Gordon Cramer’s ‘original’ brain went to Bob Cowan via Scan Sutherland at behest of John Dwyer, along with blood and tissue samples for screening and possibly didn’t make it back home to the dome.
Interesting that a “Mrs Robertson” is listed as living at Waring St, Kadina in the 1947 & 1948 Sands & McDougall directories.
Petebowes:
CTE (mentioned in my above post), which commonly appears in athletes years after the fact, involves not only a host of mental and behavioral problems but also changes to the brain from what is considered normal (even today the condition can only be confirmed after death via studying the brain). At that time, it was not too well-studied a phenomenon; the seminal work on CTE was published only that very same year in 1949. So Webb’s brain may have been viewed as one with unique peculiarities never before seen, or at least not by Cleland, anyway, and he may have wished to examine it further.
Although, I imagine that wanting a unique specimen for further study could have been his reasoning whether CTE was actually present or not; there might have been other things about that particular brain which caught his interest…
Jo: unfortunately Carl never got a chance to have a say in how the breakdown in his relationship with Dorothy came about, no doubting that he would have had some contrary views truth be known….”Judge not lest ye be judged” says the gospel according to Matt 7 (St James). So let us not make rash judgement or be too quick to condemn the accused. Better to bide awhile in a spirit of fairness to the accused at least. If it should transpire that she was implicated somehow in the poor chap’s untimely demise, as I suspect, than perhaps her side of the story, as detailed in her affidivat for disolusion will then be vindicated.
@Jo
Do they have Helmut’s shed photos – just to prove the location as 63 not 3. He was working at the docks while living in the shed but was he required to return to the camp? He had a fine (I think rescinded) – NAA site – for staying out late.
@ David – number 3 has no shed and isn’t an apartment house… I had Helmut’s shed ringed as where Carl might have tinkered with cars… There’s a “Keep Out” sign that I thought might have been Carl’s work! My friend who researched Helmut Newton for the Melbourne Jewish Museum confirmed that it was the shed where he stayed, but probably not full time… He also rented a studio in the city early after his discharge…
Jamie S,
I agree with you that SM MAY have had some brain damage—He certainly had mental issues of some kind. There was talk over the years that Lizzy Borden (of US 1890s axe murder fame) had some type of frontal lobe damage. I also now think it possible that he may have been bi-polar.
Dave,
I understand people lie on divorce petitions sometimes, but I can’t dismiss Dorothy’s allegations when there were easily checked witnesses and police reports. Carl may have had some stories of his own, but I do feel personally that he had demons and that there is quite a bit of truth to what Doff had to say. (Aside, I too am fascinated by the Isdal Woman case)!
I never paid much attention to that one photo recreation of him smiling. He DID look like some Hollywood star and it didn’t seem accurate to me. On the other hand, in his days at Swinburne, he looked like a pretty nice looking young man. One wonders how far back the temper tantrum/depression/self-harming thoughts and actions went? Were there signs in his earlier years? I for one would love to have some way of finding out if there was talk among fellow employees of “weird Carl” or “crabby Carl” or “that guy’s a nutball” Carl.
Did he ever lose a job due to his temper or any outrageous behavior? How did Dorothy and Carl meet and court in the first place? These are a sample of the questions I personally would love to have answers to. I can’t go off on speculative and wild, improbable tangents. I would just like to have the answers about this man’s life, the details of perhaps how this all came to be, and the rest of a rather sad story.
Forgive me if this has already been posted. If so, I missed it.
“JOYCE GRAEME, as she appeared in “The Listeners.” The picture is from Helmut Newton’s exhibition of. theatrical photography, which opens in the Rowden
White library at Melbourne University next Friday.”
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/22904352?searchTerm=%22the%20listeners%22%20ballet&searchLimits=
John Sanders,
You seem to required your spark of incredulousness (a little) since this document has been brought to light, which is good to see. Yes, its curious to me to see “our SM” being so thoroughly raked over the coals, in absentia. Oh, who was it on Dorothy’s (who went afterwards to parts *still* unknown, yes?) on her list of names who “might” have called the attorney while he was out? Do the other names listed have anything to do with the current case? I doubt it. Speak up.and prove me wrong if you are so inclined.
Mark Knowles, I am disinclined to think anything was proven here. it is interesting that it was an Abbott, George in this case along with Thomas Sackville I believe that sent John Dee on his merry way to Prague and environs casting doubt on his belief that anything much could be made of the idea of this so called “King Arthur” .I really think that case requires a new look see because of this, as strange as it may sound.
As far as the Pereisc papers, Nick um just a hunch by what you intimated…you might need more.
If you guys come up with anything more to solidify the SM case, I’m all ears.
@Mary Spencer, Jamie S., John Sanders, and Pat and Jo again, thanks.
David Morgan separately contacted me and asked if I could try, through the same channel kindly opened up for us, to seek the document re. maintenance order. I was reluctant at first not to exhaust the Supreme Judge’s assistance in case other questions come up later. But, having thought more about it, I realized David was absolutely correct in making that request, as that document can be very important to temporally fill a part of the story (David was more interested in DJW’s address at the time). So, I have requested that document, and I am hoping that we will find access to it. If and when I receive anything, I will let all know. Thanks David.
@Jo, I empathize a lot re. getting back to that thesis and other research, as I have faced the same challenge myself. I am trying to balance things a bit, but there is something very important this case has been trying to teach us over the past 70 plus years, and I am willing to give it more time, as I have on the side feeling exhausted (and with all the new sad stuff) drained frankly. But Khayyam, in his true Robaiyat originals speaks of not giving up on the Moon crest’s paled, thinned, and weak state, since it will be fulfilled again.
I think the Supreme Judge has entrusted us with a gift of documents, and the most responsible thing to do is to try to act as good judges. A judge would not immediately jump into conclusions in favor of one or another party, but will try the best to hear from all sides and then make a final judgment. Besides, I am a sociologist, in particular favoring a sociological imagination approach, which suggests human life can be best understood in terms of understanding personal troubles in relation to public issues. So, as a sociologist, if there is a blame to go around, it does not stop with one man, or woman. This story is really an expression of a WWII, even WWI, played out in Australia in very sad but interesting ways.
Besides, DJW’s files are clearly legal documents, and given what I said before about what is clearly not included in her reports and related files, she and her lawyers are after shedding the worst possible light on Carl Webb. It is their right to do, but, in a good court of law, legal actions should be treated as legal actions. Carl Webb did not have a chance to offer his at that time, though my sense is that what we have been exposed to over the past 70+ years is actually that of trying to hear his side of story, and he has done it in his own poetic way. So, I am willing to give that a chance still, since I see this whole pursuit of the case as one aiming for understanding, and not blame, since, believe me, there are lots of blame to go around, and I don’t mean that just in personal terms. John Sanders is correct in encouraging us to be more patient.
One thing that struck me most, and I hope all pay attention to, is the case of CW’s mother. I had assumed she just died in 1946 after a quick illness of old age. But now we know that is not the case at all. She had a prolonged illness starting at least in 1941, if not from 1939 when her husband died. So, these family losses, especially that of his mother, were not a one or two day events. That decades was very difficult for their family.
Whether or not his mothers was mentally aware (not struck by, say, Alzheimers, or dementia), she lost a son and a grandson in 1943, perhaps reported in the same month! Carl Webb may have expected, right or wrong, for his new wife (trained medically to some extent), to help out as part of a traditional expectation of starting a family in health and in sickness, during a time when she acknowledges he paid for all the bills. Dorothy seems to have helped out for a few weeks, but then got ill and miserable herself. I can see she is a newly wed, and young, and expectation of “new clothes” can be important for her, and there is nothing wrong with that. But her medical bills and others and not helping out with what CW expected, again right or wrong on his part, must have added more pain for him deeply. He did not have to lose his brain lobes to feel that way. His mother is a woman too, and CW may have tried to take a stand in favor of her condition, and other sisters helping her out (or not), finding his wife’s priorities not meeting what he expected. But then, the sisters were facing their own losses too, and perhaps he took a stand for them. This is why I find it odd that DJW did not even try to articulate those events in CW as part of her own legal rationale, since surely they would have come up in a court of law, had CW decided to participate.
Nothing justifies abuse, verbal or physical. Two adults who get married, if they find they are incompatible should just go their separate ways and divorce. As judges, we need to be careful, however, about the story of what happened. We really don’t know if the abuse was reciprocal or not. DJW also says she threw sugar basin at him “for protection.” But were there other things she threw that she did not tell us? Were there other subtler ways she abused him too, if not in swear words? Who started this or that? He agreed to pay 60 to separate, she refused, asking for more. Later, she agreed with less, but he was not willing to offer. What were the pills doing in the house, and I don’t mean it in terms of any ill intention on her part? He must have needed them for some pain, physical and/or mental, no? She speaks of her own illness, but nothing about his, other than portraying his mood swings as not indicating medical illness, calling for empathy.
So, my goal in this really is not that of placing blame, but finding understanding, since without the latter, none of the sad events can be prevented in advance, otherwise we will be playing these wars, personal or global, forever. The best and most responsible thing to do, really, is try to be good judges, and so far we do not have just a letter or two from Dorothy, but a legal document filed in the court of law. We have waited 70+ years, and we can try a bit more. I think we are getting very close to seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. I know I am, at least hope so.
Dorothy’s maiden name was Stratford. As I recall John Robertson and Alicia begat her in 1920 not long after he returned from the Middle East in mid 1919 and I’m thinking with my jaundiced eye, perhaps a little too close for comfort. As a matter of interest I note that in 1948 there were Stratfords residing at 281 Brighton Rd. just up from Somerton Beach; so happens that first attending plod Constable John Moss was not far off at 298. Half a coincidental chance there’s a connection here but blowed if I’m going to jump in head first by adding the word suspicious.
@John Sanders,
Read my last post on the Dorothy Jean Robertson/Dorothy Jean Webb entry. Her mother, Alice, was probably adopted by the Stratfords, giving the fact that Charles Stratford, Alice’s alleged father, died in 1892 and she was born in 1896. Moreover, J.C. Robertson has stated in Dorothy’s birth record that Alice was born in Fitzroy, not Avon Plains or St. Arnaud, where all her alleged siblings were born.
@behrooz,
Excellent news. DJW’s address (if it doesn’t say generic Bute again) will show Carl potentially knew where she lived. She likely only did the Bute move after 1948. Perhaps Carl threatened her.
I can’t understand why the court or Dorothy didn’t act on his failure to keep up the maintenance payments. Perhaps the payments stopped because she earned more than him. There must have been some basis on why she was only paid £1 and 10 shillings. It would not be enough to rent in Bromby street and eat.
There may be follow-up letters from the court to the employer and from Dorothy to the court after the MO. For example: He only paid for x weeks…. with a reply from Red Tool saying he left our company and he didn’t give a forwarding address. Or the court may have asked for her salary details at Carl’s request and it exceeded Carl’s.
I agree with Behrooz that there are 2 sides to a story. I only personally feel that there is truth to some things Dorothy said in these sad documents. I think all of us still want to know the whole story; the whole truth. This is one reason I am curious to know if anyone Carl worked with noticed any irrational behavior, explosive anger, etc. It goes toward establishing a pattern, if one existed. If no one in Carl’s life saw any of what Dorothy claimed, or the story of the throwing down of the knife during a card game is nebulous, or if any of those Bromby St. neighbors saw and heard nothing untoward during the tenure of Carl and Dorothy, then we have to re-examine her claims. It’s just a search for the honest truth. Her claims of abuse are horrendous and I feel one must take them seriously and yet, we all want to make any efforts we can to see if they can be substantiated by other sources who knew them both at the time. I would also love to see some of Carl’s poetry. I hope that all of us on this quest can have some of these answers someday.
I don’t think the divorce files mention any drunkenness of Carl Webb. There was an explanation of the early hotel bar closing rules forcing drunken behaviour in men which was used to explain Carl going to bed at 7pm. Did they have shift work at the drill factory?
@ misca,
Do the electoral rolls for the Davies family state which flat or just 63 Bromby st?
Pat –
Louisa Reiither and Charles Alexander Stratford had a son Charles Frederick Byron Stratford (born 1873, died 1896). I have wondered if he possibly had a child and Louisa adopted her? Louisa was 42 when Alice was born and yes, her husband had died four years earlier.
Behrooz:
Well said! My ponderings are of course meant to be tentative, being based only on my own understanding of the facts thus far. It is a fact that Dorothy has claimed such things about him, and so my thoughts were shared from the standpoint of: “if these claims are true, then perhaps…”
I think that sharing our ideas and hearing others’ responses might help us get closer to substantiating or refuting them, potentially introducing new avenues to pursue and ideally leading us closer to the overall truth. For example, thanks to Petebowes’ earlier comment, it has occurred to me that if some of Webb’s brain still exists out there somewhere, then it may be possible to tell whether he had in fact suffered from a condition such as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (or whether he likely hadn’t), and this in turn might help us gain a clearer picture of his perspective (which would have informed so much else about him).
You are of course absolutely right that there are multiple sides to every story. We should endeavor to understand the other side of this one, reserving definitive judgment, and as we learn more we may very well change our opinions (as I think it should always be).
Pat –
It does not list which flat. Just 63 Bromby st. That’s the same for the electoral rolls for Dorothy and Charles. No flat numbers.
@ All,
Does anybody know where Phyllis and Jim Crick were living after their marriage?
@Gordon Cramer,
I’m restricted on Abbott’s site to 1 post per day. But you should try
https://www.fdr.uni-hamburg.de/record/902#.Y0nKLHbMLHY
for handwriting analysis of Tibor Kaldor. I used it to show that the handwriting of the 1970 Isdal Woman in the last hotel differed significantly from the others.
It takes a little bit of learning. But I was helped by the software author.
Random, while I currently obsess about everything you’re all putting up here ….. if you type “Bute SA” in the “Keywords” box on the ANA site it throws up 405 results, could be there’s a Dorothy connection lurking in there; maybe.
https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ListingReports/ItemsListing.aspx
Currently also obsessing about the two policemen mentioned by Dorothy, need their first names … if one is called Aubrey Harold Carter, h’mm, that’s a bit interesting. First-Constable Coleman was known personally to Carl too, so gotta find out who he is. At this point I’m not sure who the unhinged one is, Dorothy or Carl, agree with others here need to hear both sides or some corroborating evidence.
And maybe this is young Joyce Davies?
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/243999762?searchTerm=ballet%20joyce%20davies
@ Behrooz – you’re right, the historical and sociological imaginations are a big part of this!
It is interesting that Dorothy doesn’t give the Keane’s address as it looks as though this is where Eliza Webb was living when she died. We know that Dorothy helped to look after Eliza on at least one occasion. Were there more, or was she expected to help and didn’t? Dorothy reportedly leaves Bromby Street two months before Elizas’s death. The ads for the furniture being sold from Bromby Street, presumably by Carl, are from just after Eliza’s death. Perhaps he went to stay with the Keanes and this is where Dorothy thought he might be?
@Pat – I’m confused about the flat numbers, Carl’s first small ad was for number two but the furniture was sold from number one. We know that Derry George later lived at number two and that the young law clerk interviewed the occupant of number two who was there at the same time as the Webbs… There are also some ads relating to furniture sales and probate when Mr Davies dies, I think from flat 3 in 1949.
@ Misca – it’s interesting that Helmut Newton and also possibly Gerald Keane we’re in Adelaide for the ballet production of the Listeners!
Thanks to Behrooz for the documents. When I first read his letter to the court, I assumed it had almost zero chance of success, but here we are.
A few minor items:
@misca – “Dorothy got very lucky or knew the right people”. Why do you say that? Was there some irregularity in the filing that was overlooked?
@Pat – “why just Bute?” – does seem a bit strange. In the U.S. there would be some form of address for outlying farms (for example, “rural route 2” or RR2 for short). I don’t doubt that mail without the route number would still be delivered in tiny communities where the postal service employees know everybody, but there would still be a more specific address than just the city.
@Pat – “Not only did the Courts of Justice not investigate the possibility of Carl’s death” – Firstly I doubt that the courts have an investigative role, but I’m not Australian, so maybe. Secondly, “lack of proof is not proof of lack”. There’s a good chance the lawyers searched all Australian states for a death record and came up empty. We know he died in 1948, but the body was unidentified until this year. If a death certificate had been found, the marriage would be over and there would not have been a divorce action.
@Behrooz – “prolonged illness starting at least in 1941″ – Maybe, but she could certainly have recovered from the 1941 illness long before her death.
@Behrooz – ” lost a son and a grandson in 1943, perhaps reported in the same month!” – The grandson died in a prisoner of war camp. Most likely, the military authorities and therefore the family, wouldn’t have known about the death until the camp was liberated sometime late in the war.
@Mary Spence – “did fellow employees say “Wierd Carl”?” – It would be interesting to know, but unlikely now. A 17 year old co-worker when Carl was 43 would have been born about 1930 and be in his 90s. It would also be interesting to know about Dorothy’s nicknames. Was she “Doff her rocker Webb”? (I don’t know how well that works in Australian English. Off his/her rocker in U.S. slang means he/she is crazy.) Since she outlived him by many years, we think, there might be some chance of finding some younger co-workers if we can find an employer for her.
Nick, very nice site. Lots of interesting material.
A little present for the Colonel:
https://youtu.be/9S2xCxHhJ3Q
Yes, I get the significance of TS!
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/22766585?searchTerm=William%20Davies%20Bromby%20Street
It seems that Joyce Davies, the ballet dancer, then hairdresser, married a Mr Carter of Massachusetts, I wonder whether he was one of the Americans at Melbourne Grammar School? She may have been friends with Dorothy.
@ David Morgan – you can check 66 St Johns Street Windsor on Google earth. It would have been a large workshop, in a Victorian building, rather than a modern factory. Today it is part of Grill’d Windsor hamburger restaurant, near Melbourne Polytechnic (ex Swinburne Prahran) and the National Institute of Circus Arts. Red Point moved to larger premises in Collingwood in the early 2959s.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/22766585?searchTerm=William%20Davies%20Bromby%20Street
It seems that Joyce Davies, the ballet dancer, then hairdresser, married a Mr Carter of Massachusetts, I wonder whether he was one of the Americans at Melbourne Grammar School? She may have been friends with Dorothy.
@ David Morgan – you can check 66 St Johns Street Windsor on Google earth. It would have been a large workshop, in a Victorian building, rather than a modern factory. Today it is part of Grill’d Windsor hamburger restaurant, near Melbourne Polytechnic (ex Swinburne Prahran) and the National Institute of Circus Arts. Red Point moved to larger premises in Collingwood in the early 1950s.
Was this the ‘Lodge’ where John Comber Robertson lived while `trapping birds and animals in the bush to stock the sanctuary`?
https://www.news.com.au/finance/real-estate/melbourne-vic/heritage-balwyn-mansion-that-had-its-own-zoo-and-artificial-lake-listed-with-20m-price-tag/news-story/2eb504de98699d1103e533de7cae1c79
See the photo ‘A four-roomed lodge was built beside the imposing wrought-iron entrance gates, likely in the 1930s.’
Wow. Did not expect this…
“DAVIES. — On July 2t. at Bromby Street, South Yarra, Thomas William,
beloved husband of Mary Davles and beloved father of Joyce (Mra N. Carter.
Mass.. USA),”
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/243675836?searchTerm=%22Bromby%20Street%22
It would be interesting to know who owned 63 Bromby. There certainly seems to have been a lot of interesting characters staying there.
It can all get so confusing. GC seems to have taken a post down but he mentioned that Wilhelm Sher arrived in Australia on the Oronsay in 1939. He’s correct. Same ship and time that Helmut (Honig) Hendon’s cousin Wolfgang floated in on…
12 hours between when we can see each others comments is a stickler for conversation huh? There are maybe 10-15 of us here reading and posting…Can’t you give a few of us who are obviously not here to cause problems a little bit of a green light Nick?
So frustrating.
Hello Pat. I answered you this morning and expect that you will see my most benign and simple post about 24 hours from now. Hang in there.
Pat,
“I wonder why her address would just be ‘Bute’? For her own protection (from a potentially violent husband) or because Bute didn’t have street names (I doubt it) or maybe because she lived in the countryside?”
For her protection. Then as now Bute is small; about 300 people in an area of about 15 town blocks. A stranger turning up, uninvited, there in the late 1940s, asking about the exact address of a newly-arrived resident would attract attention.
Two Stratfords out of 14 in S&Mc for 1948, a dentist C.R. in Nth. Glenelg and the aforementioned Mrs. W. R. at 281 Brighton Rd. which seems to have been insitu with the Holdfast Bay Baptist Church (cnr block) and now 1 Harrow Rd. It’s worth noting that there be no mention of any W. R.’s at S.A. Geni. site but there has been a ‘Tony’ Bennett (not Bruce) looking on Myheritage inquiring after Walter Stratford. Could be worth chasing up on John Moss’ ex neighbour as she may well have been a widow set on retiring to a beach environ. Be a blast if we could hook her up with Alicia or better still Dorothy come down from Bute by rail to visit her relative.
JohnSanders .. I’m sure Professor Cleland would have known if Webb’s brain was not where it should have been.
Peteb: don’t know where you got your info from but, according to Hoyle and other certifiable research available, the first frontal Leucotomy surgical resection of the cranial lobe undertaken in Australia, was by a Dr. L.C.E. Lindon in 1949 at Parkside Mental Hospital Adelaide. Bad luck for Carl, if only he could have kept his mind and body active for a tad longer, self destruction, assisted suicide or murder most foul may indeed have been avoidable.
A wild card theory on Dorothy and Carl – what if we have been looking in all the wrong places for a Kevin D’Arcy. What if Dorothy, like her neighbour, Joyce Davies, had been fraternising with American servicemen, leading Carl to threaten said Americans with knives when losing at cards and flying into violent rages and abusive name calling. I’m not excusing him at all, just trying to contextualise…He may have been a wildly controlling and jealous man who liked emotional order and control in his life. There were plenty of young Americans in the area…. Dorothy was quite a lot younger than Carl…
Having bin through the whole kit & Caboodle, near nothing comes up for a W. R. Stratford in Australian indices. There is one such mention in a Canberra spread which details a Vietnam Veteran roll of honour with those particular initials and identifing with an Ordinance Corps soldier. Alas he does not make it over to the online Nominal Rolls for further info. Re: NOK or birth parts etc., so it’s come in spinner for moi.
@ Poppins
Very interesting picture of young Joyce Davies with dancers from Jennie Brenan’s dance school! Jennie Brenan was a major source of dancers for J C Williamson! (Gerald Keane’s employer!). See her biography: https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/brenan-jennie-frances-5343
Jennie Brenan’s dancers also danced for troops’ entertainment- there are some Australian War Memorial photographs.
I wonder whether Dorothy assisted dancers to care for their feet? (Random thought with no evidence).
@ Misca – I haven’t found any evidence of Bromby Street ever being sold, it’s possibly been in the same family for a long time…
Does anyone know who “Keep Hands Off Aussie Day” on Derek Abbott’s Facebook is? They are asking about the Australian Society of Illuminating Engineers who met at Adelaide Town Hall on 30 November 1948.
Jo: “Plenty of young Americans in the area”… may well have been just what Dorothy thought about, anything to get away from Carl and his tirades, possibly a new, brighter life in the USA, have a family?? Just the kind of threat Carl must also have thought about.
John Sanders : The world’s first lobotomy was performed in 1935 by a Portuguese neurologist by the name of António Egas Moniz. His original method involved drilling holes into the skull and pumping absolute alcohol into the frontal cortex, essentially destroying brain tissue.
Later, Moniz began to use an instrument of his own design, called a leucotome, to remove chunks of tissue from the frontal lobes.
Moniz was awarded the 1949 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of the prefrontal lobotomy as a radical therapy for mental disorders.
Within a year of Moniz’s procedure, neurologist Walter Freeman and neurosurgeon James Watts performed the first prefrontal lobotomy in the United States. Although Freeman found this procedure great, he wanted to develop a procedure that would be faster, more effective, and require fewer resources and specialized tools.
But Freeman wanted lobotomies to be a more streamlined process. So, in 1946—10 years after performing his first lobotomy in the U.S.—Freeman developed a new method called the transorbital lobotomy.
Instead of drilling into the skull to sever the connections in the frontal lobes, Freeman used a hammer to drive an ice pick into his patients’ brains through their eye sockets.
Once the ice pick was inside, he literally wiggled it around, severing the nerves connecting the prefrontal cortex to the thalamus. This adapted procedure became known as an “ice pick lobotomy.”
One of the nice things about Derek Abbott’s ‘Identifying the Somerton Man’ Facebook page is that I can now put faces to several of my friends and colleagues here by the simple expedient of clicking on the icon of anyone who had made a comment, posted a like and so on. One of our most frequent contributors here is even represented by a lovely pink flower.
It is to that flower that I address the following observations.
Claude James (Jim) Crick’s parents at the time of his marriage lived at 81 Neville Street, Middle Park:
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/165030811?searchTerm=%22c%20crick%22%20neville%20street
A Claude J Crick is listed in the Sands and McDougall for Victoria,1950 as living at 18 Windsor Avenue, Essendon North. His father Claude Crick is listed at 81 Neville Street. His father’s first name was John.
John Claude was involved in a nasty bus crash in 1953:
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/206449643?searchTerm=%22claude%20crick%22%20neville%20street
The lodge at Balwyn is definitely the right one as the house was built for Oliver Gilpin. I have previously posted comments about J C Robertson and O Gilpin Limited, eg a Darwin link:
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/22432034?searchTerm=%22o%20gilpin%22%20john%20coomber%20robertson
Great find and some nice photos.
The Maintenance Order for Dorothy was unusual:
In 1946 a judge awarded £2 10s – with £2 for her and 10s for 2 children.
In 1949 a judge awarded £2 for a wife.
So why was there a £1 and 10s allocation? Why were two shillings deducted for Dorothy? They didn’t have 2 children.
In one case, a permanent maintenance order was paid at a lower rate than a temporary maintenance order. Possibly she applied for a permanent maintenance order because she said she was unable to work due to ill health.
It still doesn’t explain why after only a few payments she didn’t return to the court. If she couldn’t work she would have needed it more.
@ Steve H
Thanks for the information about the Crick couple! Did they have no relationship with Dorothy? It seems strange that the two sisters got separated while their father was in Darwin and their mother… where was she, any mention of Alice Robertson on the Vic electoral rolls? Are there electoral rolls for Darwin?
Yes, it’s me, I don’t hide behind pseudonyms (yet, haha). I’ll probably delete my comments on Abbot’s FB because he’s already deleted several.
This flower blooms when all other plants are dormant or dead during the dry season. It is a symbol of persistence and daring disobedience.
@ misca
Thanks! We live in different time zones so things can get a bit gridlocked haha. No worries. Great find on the Aussie/American couple!
@ Furphy
Thanks, it makes sense… if these documents could be accessed by anyone other than solicitors and courts, but I suppose not. Anyway, if Bute only had 300 people it wouldn’t be hard for him to find her there even without an exact address.
@ Jerry Klindt
Welcome to the discussion!
I wasn’t clear when I said the courts should have investigated (sorry for my bad English). I meant that the judge should have asked the solicitors to prove that the Respondent was not dead, in the first place. And I also meant that while they probably searched ‘all Australian states for a death record,’ they could also have searched for unidentified bodies and missing persons. As for ‘address: Bute’, I suppose all the documents would have been addressed to her solicitors in Melbourne, not Bute? Other interesting aspect is that, according to Abbott, Bute historians haven’t found anything on a Dorothy Jean (Webb/Robertson/other) and as you and Furphy had pointed out, a newly-arrived resident would have attracted attention!
Jo –
I thought I posted this yesterday but I can’t find it in the comments now so, at the risk of repeating myself, I will post again. An unusual explosion near Bromby Street…Do you have any means of finding out more about this?
9 July 1947:
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/22440765?searchTerm=%22Bromby%20St%22
@Pat
Idylwylde’s lodge and the grounds must have been a great place for the young Robertson sisters to frolic in.
Idylwylde was built at a huge cost by Oliver Gilpin but he never lived in it and after his death it was eventually sold – to the Roman Catholic Church for use as a hospital – for a fraction of the cost of building it.
See for example:
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/101436558?searchTerm=balwyn%20idylwylde
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/223545142?searchTerm=balwyn%20idylwylde
All I know about Alice Robertson is that she worked with Jack in munitions during WW2 before he went to Darwin. By 1946 she was/they were living at Charnwood Road, East St Kilda. Jack then took a job at Ballarat Airport at some point. In the 1950 Sands and McDougall there is a John C Robertson listed for 805a Eyre Street, Ballarat, but there are a couple of other John Cs (12 Garton Street, Port Melbourne and 52 Ruskin Street, Elwood).
I also use my real name on Abbott’s Facebook page but with no photo – the clue to my “avatar” is this spooky intro to a TV programme I remember from my youth:
https://youtu.be/NW8k0uECh_o
Derek hasn’t answered my recent questions, perhaps he’s too busy. I wouldn’t take it too personally if he “loses” a few of your comments though.
There is a find-a-grave for Joyce. She seems to have died in Australia. Not sure what happened to her husband.
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/212619050/joyce-mary-carter?_gl=1*4ykg2a*_ga*NjM2OTk3NzM0LjE2NjE3MTM4OTI.*_ga_4QT8FMEX30*MTY2NTg1MDE5My4yNDMuMS4xNjY1ODYzNDM3LjE2LjAuMA..
Jerry Klindt
I too live in US—New Hampshire. In my post, mentioning Carl’s co-workers, I certainly inferred that finding any alive was pretty impossible. I just said it would be nice if we could search for some kind of evidence for Carl being unstable or not in his dealings with other people besides Dorothy. For example, was he ever fired or lost a job because of aggressive or erratic behavior? Company records might have info like that. Was he treated for a mental illness? Records may survive. These are just examples of ways to refute or corroborate the allegations. There are all kinds of records out there. We’re all just doing what they do on shows like ‘Who Do You Think You Are’—Trying to find extant documentation to learn about someone who lived years ago, and seeing if we can find some pieces to fit the puzzle together.
Phyllis wedding bells 7th September 1946. Dorothy divorce klaxons 14th September 1946 (when they split up).
Was their failure to attend the wedding a reason for their final break up?
Again a key milestone was missed by Dorothy in the divorce document to explain the issues in their marriage. He wouldn’t let me attend the wedding of my sister or I couldn’t afford to buy a wedding dress etc.
@ Steve H
Thanks! Impressive! Both the house and Mr. Oliver Gilpin’s life!
Thanks for the info on John Comber. Alice is harder to track down, but I suppose that was the norm for most women, only mentioned by name when they were brides or recently deceased.
Re Abbott, I never expected him to reply, he (or one of his mods) has actually deleted my posts!
Thanks Jo, a lot of J.C. Williamson links! It’s pretty interesting, hey.
Pat and Steve H, ah, I hadn’t thought of looking into the O’Gilipin family for photos or info on Dorothy and Phyllis, could be some out there.
At point 5 in Dorothy’s affidavit she says that Carl was born at Yarraville in the State of Victoria where he still had his home and was domiciled at the time of the said marriage”. This is new info, isn’t it, that Carl was living in Yarraville just prior to marriage, that’s something we’ve been wanting to find out.
Fingers crossed for the maintenance order info, great idea and would be super informative one would think.
**Off topic: I just love the old terms in these archived newspapers, “they motored to Sydney”, etc – and three columns in the paper describing what everyone was wearing, lol, 500 ladies all get their outfits described – “Jean had on a blue Georgette with ruffles, Milly had a green lace dress with velvet trim”, it sounds hilarious now but back in the day must have been fabulous to have your outfit described in detail in the daily paper!
@Poppins
I thought about that too, but then I though that it could mean that Carl still had his home and was domiciled in Victoria, not necessarily Yarraville. And we have good evidence that he was living at Glenlyon rd in 1940.
Yes, the old terms are great, I don’t think they’re hilarious at all, there was room for romance and glamour despite all the shite going on!
Not really related to much apart from Dorothy’s claim that she took care of her mother-in-law…
The last listing I have been able to find for Eliza Amelia Webb is as follows:
Name: Eliza Amelia Webb
Gender: Female
Electoral Date: 1942
Electoral Place: Caulfield West, Balaclava, Victoria, Australia
Specifically at 112 Hotham St., S.2
@ Pat and Steve
The link to Idlewylde is fantastic! This is a famed part of “Lost Melbourne”. I hadn’t made the connection! As Pat has discovered the house is currently for sale, so lots of recent pictures. There are also quite a few articles and old photographs of the original garden. It was a bit of a Great Gatsby kind of place! Dorothy probably lived here as a teenager! What a strange and magical world! I wonder what the effect of being surrounded by so much opulence clearly belonging to others might have been?
In terms of schools, Balwyn High School didn’t open until 1956, so Dorothy probably went to an independent school or left a government school after “middle school”. She may have attended Methodist Ladies College, near Swinburne – Warwick Dunbar found a Dorothy Webb on the electoral roll, living near MLC in the 1980s, so back to familiar territory?
@ Misca
I had read about the explosion near Bromby Street when I was looking for car related articles! As per the first of the maps that Nick posted under “Bromby Street” there was a tramways engine house at the corner of Bromby Street, on the site later occupied by Kellow House and now the Royce Hotel (currently being renovated). There were lots of underground tunnels and apparently gas had built up in one of them! I also found a couple of instances of drunken drivers – some from the St Kilda Road Barracks, driving girls home!
All of the references to JCWilliamson give a sense of the world before television and mass vehicle ownership (the Australian car industry began just as Carl was dying) – there is a great documentary running at the moment “The Lost City of Melbourne” which shows how big theatre and cinema were in Melbourne prior to 1950.
@ Poppins – I think the “domiciled in” refers to Victoria more generally, rather than Yarraville specifically. I think the period after Bromby Street is a bit of a mystery… probably not a good period…
I think my theory about cars and Bromby Street was off the mark – Helmut Newton rented the garage/s at least for some of the time. It looks as though Derry George did work on cars at the yard between Bromby Street and Motorworks. (via his nephew). Derry George was a skilled early racing driver!
I wonder also whether the Webbs actually lived at 1/63 Bromby Street? This is where the furniture was sold from when Carl left. The young law clerk interviewed a tennant at 2/63 who had been there at the same time as the Webbs. This may have been Mrs George…
I wonder whether the person who posted on Derek Abbott’s Facebook site, about the National Council of Illuminating Engineering Societies, which met at Adelaide Town Hall between 29 November and 3 December may be on to something. Carl may have been in Adelaide to try and find work – hence the smart clothes and blank stationery (for improvised business cards). I know of someone who was a member of this society and also an associate of Will Sher – he supported Sher in tariff hearings in the 1950s. The Electrical and Radio Federation were founding members of the National Council of Illuminating Engineering Societies.
This doesn’t explain the lack of a hat or wallet or forms of identification… or the Thomson’s phone number, if that is what it was. Perhaps he knew and was hoping to stay with Prosper and Jess? It could be the case of a sick man down on his luck, wanting things to end… Perhaps someone took the wallet and repositioned the body to avoid being implicated…
Nobody picking up on the no history, mystery new 1939 tenant Mrs. W.R Stratford of 281 Brighton Rd. Brighton/1 Harrow Rd. to Somerton Park convenience. Too bad but, seems like an interesting enough locstat jumping off point for any possible links to newly designated pants off Doff the US. Marine Corps temptress or, maybe her previously untested near namesake Dorothy Jean Stratford from the Rivertown district. I’m in need for a bit of assistance if’n any of our genealogy sleuths care to hop in for their fair share of any spoils re. familial involvement in a falsely maligned decent fellow’s sad passing.
Misca: No need to check with factualy effluent Gerry Feltus nor his Unknown Man fantasy. The ex defective detective is a no show these days and for good reasons, along with his original and anonymous motley band of Inner sanctimonious SM warriors. They included are the likes of atom spy advocate John Ruffles, now a convert to the Abbott doctrine of suicide by assisted ‘asystol’ overdose. It was John who started this conundrum rolling with his nurse Jestyn/Alf Boxall marriage of convenience on Inside Story, then Gordon charlatan Cramer, the crook with his host of central European anonymous alter egos. jumped in with Major Moulds MBE to stir the oppussum. As for our old pal Peteb, his delusions are at times plausable and at least possess the creative craft of the honest injun wordsmith. He’s also prepared to take a kick up the kyber for his poorly researched anatomical fuck-ups which must be tough on his huge ego. Excuse my French sil te? plait mon cheri.
@ Misca
I think 112 Hotham Street was a boardinghouse
https://victoriancollections.net.au/items/5363014f9821f40c64c6caae
There are some historical notes on the house – Palmyra.
@ David Morgan
Phyllis’ marriage may have provided an opportunity to solicit some family assistance and resources to leave… Dorothy may have been left out of JCR’s will because she had already received financial assistance to leave and proceed with the divorce.
The Illuminating Engineers were going wild about poor lighting in schools in their November 1948 meeting in Adelaide. This was probably a smart move as secondary education expanded massively in the 1950s, so lots of new schools to design optimum lighting for…The world that Carl left was quite different to the one that lay ahead…
Jo: you start so well and your input is mostly in sync with the general trending discussions; Then you jump onto the hypothetical ROK code page Thomson phone number (with disclaimer) which has a multitude of alluring possibilities; none of them tested and all dependant on the volume’s rather deniable existance perse. That is to say in the form reported by the Adelaide News but, never given to having much credulity in subseqent police reports, if at all.
John Sanders … speaking of compelling reasons for engaging a quack to engage upon performing a lobotomy, I have a contact in Adelaide that may assist you with dealing with your aggressive and completely unnecessary online behaviour. A small fee may be asked of you though I’m sure you have the means to see it through. Best wishes … and you have our support.
Pete
An eager chirpopodist Miss E. Elizabeth, with no S.A. history is advertising her trade and calling in the Kadina newspaper circa. 1951, just for the record. Can’t imagine a competitor for her limited customer base being similarly engaged.
Peteb: strangely enough, I did have a similar procedure performed late 1968 at Adelaide Repatriation hospital Dawes Park for removal of shrapnel front inner cranial cavity which was not a success. But, thanks for your heartfelt considerations and I’ll keep your sound advice in mind should the need for follow up surgical intervention be called for. NB. The SM bust was completed at the West Terrace mortuary from memory, not Parkside asylum’s facility as you so erronously stipulate.
@Pat
Consider yourself lucky that Prof Abbott deletes your posts – he just ignores mine, which is much more humiliating. I found the best approach was to feign some ignorance, eg pretending I thought Doff died in Bute. Eminent profs love nothing better than explaining things to the naive and ignorant and correcting their mistakes.
I will here allow myself to indulge in yet another boring personal anecdote, only relevant in that it occurred in Adelaide (in 1985). I was doing a little research into the Aboriginal art market and went to visit a famous prof (a specialist in early Celtic art and contemporary Australian Indigenous art) at Flinders University in the south of the city. I told him that I had some inside information that the local branch of the govt sponsored outlet for Aboriginal art and craft was due to close, but he was very dismissive, and pompously told me it was doing very well, he was a great friend of the woman who managed it, he had his ear to the ground etc etc. At that moment the ‘phone rang and – yes, it was his friend with the bad news she had just been given and the shop was closing! I spent the rest of my time with him with a wry (and ungraciously triumphant) smile on my face.
I have just listened to Prof Abbott’s interview with the chap who does the Unexplained podcast – see: http://www.unexplainedpodcast.com/episodes
‘Closing the Webb’ from September 30. In it he explains that he has taken the whole SM case as far as he can and will now leave it to the “internet sleuths”. Nick Pilchard had better watch out cos he said that he is now concentrating on the Voynich manuscript and will have “an important announcement” to make next year!
As I now know you love flowers, to brighten a Sunday I will here provide a link to one of my favourite Antonio Carlos Jobim tunes, ‘Stone Flower’:
https://youtu.be/XOvm_3Jbkwo
When I was a kid ‘Stone Flower’ was my favourite track off Santana’s Caravanserai album, although he put silly lyrics to it:
“All around there’s a feeling in the air
That with the grace of time we’ll be getting closer there
But day by day I can see they walk away
And I wonder, Lord will they ever know.”
Anyone recall poster Thomas’ complete work history on John Comber Robertson that included time spent in Darwin in the war years labour tasking on air strips under goverment construction and that he remained in that occupation until ’47. And yet here we have it detailed in the marriage dissolution affidavit of his poorly used spouse that her dad was present at the house of horrors pre September ’46 to see her through some alleged marital spat with wife bashing and mean fisted Carl. On a similar lesser level of credulity, a Darwin gent John Robertson was a big lottery winner in the Territory soon after. Suppose it’s possible JCR could have taken a well earned furlough at said time in distant Melbourne town though such concessions to menial labour hire would not have been handed out willy nilly in those tough times. Agree on that Peteb?
….mistakes can sometimes occur in this type of imprecise research activity where supposition be more preferable than truth seeking. Seems Doff’s dad worked as a ganger 1943/45 in both the Alice and Darwin and scored a brief leave of absence to Melbourne in mid 1944. So she may well have got her 1946 date for Daddy’s timely intervention quite correct and the bio stuff was somehow misconstued. My bad.
Does anyone know specifically when John Comber worked for Oliver Gilpin? Do we know for sure that he and Alice lived on the grounds?
@John Sanders
Dorothy Webb’s great grandfather was the notorious bigamist, Mason Gerard Stratford, 5th Earl of Aldborough. The Stratford name might of been used as part of an alias to rent a property, since it’d be a name that would be an easy one by his many descendants to remember when transacting some business where an easy to remember alias that might not be know to one’s estranged husband could be useful, such as renting a property to hide out in.
@Jo
Perhaps Carl caught the bus to St Leonards to sign Mr Gordon Wald’s lampshade: – see ‘Autographs’ here
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/129896318?searchTerm=%22osmond%20street%22%20st%20leonards
On another note I read in your link for William Peter Sher that upon graduating in 1922, after “working as a lighting engineer, he took a job with the French railways at Marseilles.” Later on arrival in Melbourne in 1939 he “was employed by Richardson Gears Pty Ltd at Footscray”. Is it possible Carl worked there too? I also observe that ” Red Point Tool Co. Pty Ltd…moved to Prahran, where they produced power tools and alarm sirens for the war effort”. When I was speculating about Airlie (which I somehow misnamed Airedale!), Domain Road, a while back I read that the ISD (later SRD) contracted with local firms to produce items for the Z Special Unit covert operations. I’m still just about hanging on by my beautifully pedicured toenails to the idea that Carl did something naughty in or just after the war – maybe that added to his woes and worries.
Have you put your offer in for Idylwylde/The Connault yet? estimates are somewhere around $20 million I see.
https://www.commo.com.au/properties/2022/09/26/balwyn-landmark-connault-sale-cbre-and-marshall-white%C2%A0/1664174169
Can someone confirm (or not) that Helen Cass’s Myheritage account for Carl Webb contains a wedding picture(s) which includes Carl Webb aged about 18.
When I contacted the ABC journalist Garcia she said she would ask Prof Abbott about the image but for some reason her twisted ankle prevented her from doing that.
When I posted the picture and Alexandrina improved the image using Myheritage – prof Abbott’s admin restricted our access to his FB group account. Alexandrina subsequently removed all her posts.
These may all be coincidences: a twisted ankle, FB accounts being restricted. Nothing to see here.
But nevertheless, the 18-year-old Carl Webb image remains as the only photograph that can link Carl to the Webb family and prove who he is.
misca
J C Robertson’s previous address is noted as Winmallee Road, Balwyn in a newspaper article from 1947 – see my Gilpin/Robertson/Darwin link above. Idylwylde is listed at both that address and Yarrbat Avenue in the newspapers. See for example:
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/1108235?searchTerm=idylwylde%20yarrbat%20avenue
J C is listed in the Victoria Sands and McDougall for1940 at the Winmallee Road address (p1895). See also:
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/11172027?searchTerm=%22o%20gilpin%22%20j%20c%20robertson
The earliest ref to Gilpin’s property at Balwyn I can find is from 1933, obviously not yet built:
rove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/201302076?searchTerm=idylwylde
From WikiTree: “[In the late 1920s Jack and Alice Robertson] moved to town and Jack was the manager of the Benevolent Home in Royal Park for five years. During this time he became involved in voluntary work for the Zoological Gardens and was responsible for much of the landscaping. He did the layout and design of Poplar Street. In 1935 he became the factory manager for O Gilpin Stores, a drapery chain, and then manager of Oliver Gilpin’s property in Balwyn. Here Gilpin had a large house and 40 acres of wildlife sanctuary. Jack lived in The Lodge and amongst his jobs was that of trapping birds and animals in the bush to stock the sanctuary.”
In 1938: “At the premises of O. Gilpin. Yarrbat-avenue, Balwyn, a windmill used
for generating electric current was damaged. Several of the sails were blown off and one fell on the roof of a neighboring house. As the dismantled mill constituted a danger, the police got in touch with the caretaker, and electrical
experts were summoned. The mill was stopped and temporary repairs were
effected.” From The Age 18 April.
Bad link above. Should be:
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/201302076?searchTerm=o%20gilpin%20balwyn
Thanks Steve H!
I will go through it all when I have a moment. Lots of information to digest. I have a few electoral rolls for him that aren’t quite lining up but he may have been carrying two jobs at once at some point which could explain it.
Peter Davidson –
Several trees assume the Stratford lineage you describe but Alice was born in 1896 and Charles Alexander Stratford died in 1892. It’s one of the reasons I suggest that perhaps she was the daughter of Louise’s son Charles Frederick Byron (b. 1873 d. 1896). I haven’t been able to find a birth certificate for Alice so far.
It sounds like he went from working at Gilpin’s estate to Darwin:
June 1947:
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/22432034?searchTerm=%22john%20robertson%22%20darwin
Can someone explain the actions of suicide Carl Webb who removes the locks on the apartment door and the bathroom door. It would surely be a cry for help. A person who wanted to be found drowning in the bath?
His suicide attempt seemed to be timed with Dorothy returning, – from the cinema with her friends perhaps. Another cry for help?
I’ve only skimmed the comments, so apologies if someone’s mentioned it….
Does it seem a little odd that police had attended their apartment at least 3 times (I’d be inclined to think more often if she’s just relating edited highlights, and you’d imagine separately some of Webb’s other behaviours should have attracted police attention too), including a 1st Constable who “whom he knew personally” (para 15) – but presumably didn’t recognise his pic when it got forwarded around the the traps.
(Also a contemplating what “know personally” means in terms of an apparent loner – is it a copper he’s encountered before in some incident, or an acquaintance from the TAB, or something else entirely).
Also, para 4, “I am and have been for two years domiciled in Victoria” – is the ‘am’ a mistake, or am I just not understanding legal English?
Finally, I find the story she tells very much suggests she genuinely doesn’t know he’s dead (granted that might be lawyers instructing her not to mention it – but I think it’s still a solid effort).
@david morgan, it is typical borderline personality behaviour….on the flip side they can be very charming and manipulative ….as to convince that Dorothy was just making everything up
question : when he would disappear, where did he go? gambling , casino?
@David M: I read it as removed the locks off her bedroom door and the bathroom door…..more about making it problematic for her to stay there, I would think.
@ Steve H/AnnO
Oh for a lazy $20m!! Here is a picture of the Idylewylde garden:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theft_of_The_Weeping_Woman_from_the_National_Gallery_of_Victoria
But, to quote the famous 1940s Australian poet, Ern Malley, I
“…shall never be that verb
Perched on the sole Arabian Tree”
If you haven’t come across Ern Malley yet, I think you’d love his story:
https://www.ernmalley.net/
I actually think his poems have merit!
Now, on to serious Somerton business… the lampshade is a bit kooky! It would be interesting to see the signatures if it has survived. Perhaps we could compare the handwriting to that on the ROK!
I’ve wondered too about Sher’s business and supplies to the many intelligence related locations in the area… (Airlie, Cranleigh, Monterrey Appartments, Fawkner Park, Grosvenor, Harlow House)… I had missed Sher originally being a lighting engineer… It would be interesting to see your reference.
Re the ROK being in the car outside the Chemists’ – I wonder whether Carl tossed it in after purchasing a draught of something… I wonder whether his timeline could include a trip to the Town Hall?
Sorry Colonel if I’ve slipped badly out of sync here! What with Ern Malley and stuff…
Steve H: 32 Charnwood Street, St. Kilda was where the Robertson’s resided in 1943 when J. C. R. heard the call to duty and headed north for a stint of hard yakka for the war effort, leaving his dear wife Alice at home with three nicker a fourtnight for her keep. Generous to fault was old Jack Coomber [sic] Robertson.
misca: as I explained to your apparant disinclination to credit my input, seems you were ten years off the mark with your 1996 birth year for Alice Robertson her year of birth being given on geni sites as 1886; yes seven years older than Jack and it shows in her 1926 pic with the bub. Nonetheless your comment to Peter Davidson is a caution to be allert to disinformation gained through less than credible sources.
Misca: seems O. Gilpin & Co., may not have been kept in the loop re their former head gardener’s precise movements post employment with them. Unless of course his stated St. Kilda address given when undertaking work for the govt. up north circa.1943/45 was an internally generated misnomer based on out of date office filings. The 1947 share disclosure needs some further vetting if deemed relevant to your own research.
@ Steve
For Z Unit planning and Airlie, have you seen?:
https://www.ozatwar.com/locations/airlie.htm
Its a very good site in general. I just don’t want to think about what happened to the two suspected German sympathisers…
Can you remember where you saw the ad/reference for local suppliers and Airlie? Airlie is one of the only surviving mansions of espionage. The Monterrey Apartments are still around, as apartments.
Re Red Point Tool Company
66 St John Street is a large two storey Victorian building. In earlier editions of the Sands and Mc directory it isn’t listed as it joins a shop on Chapel Street (indeed it is now an extension of the Grill’d hamburger shop on Chapel Street). I’m wondering if this was the workshop and office for the company and if they also had a small factory on the neighbouring site, just over Mechanics Lane. This is still a small factory site but of a later vintage… It would be hard to tell as most of St John Street is now taken up by Melbourne Polytechnic and has been redeveloped. Leslie Spottiswood is listed at 64 St John Street (a very small house, still there) in 1945 and Mechanics Lane is not mentioned… I’m trying to get a sense of the scope of the business… ie. whether it was quite small and bespoke, operating in an old Victorian building, or somewhere a bit more industrial…
There were also other instrument making businesses in the area (one detailed at the front of the 1945 Sands and Mc directory).
63 Bromby Street is listed in the 1945 edition of the the Sands and Mc directory as Murray Flats and Yarram Flats, under the name Thomas Zimmerman. (I can’t see a middle name, Bob…). I’m more sure now, from the affidavit and furniture ads, that the Webbs lived at number 1, which would be downstairs, closest to St Kilda Road – quite a dark flat.
Many of the apartment owners in this area were and still are Jewish as it is very close to the Melbourne Synagogue – a beautiful building that isn’t used much now as the main Jewish communities have moved further to the South…
Here is a link to the story of Viennese man Walter Glaser’s letter to Uncle Borer, which was read at a South Yarra dinner party, around the corner from Bromby Street. It’s one of my favourite South Yarra tales but a major digression from SM related business… (sorry!!)
https://www.smh.com.au/national/a-random-act-of-kindness-how-a-south-yarra-dinner-party-and-the-future-prime-minister-harold-holt-saved-a-jewish-boy-from-hitler-20161114-gsorw4.html
@ John Sanders
I think you are correct in placing significance on Roy Webb’s death on the Thai-Burma railway. The horrors and number of people dead would only be emerging in early 1946 wouldn’t they? This is also when the Webb’s marriage begins to further and rapidly unravel – eg Dorothy had been having fun with others (I don’t think she needs to have slept with them), whilst Australian servicemen were suffering horrors abroad. I know this was a common narrative at the time … I think travel to the railway was a later phenomenon. (I’ve been there myself, on the Thai side and was very moved by the care of the cemeteries and respect of the young Thai people).
Steve H: For benefit of your inclination towards self doubt and others not up to SM speed pre Derek Abbotts recent Carl Webb revelations, this is in regards to the general belief held by new punters that there was no identification made of Carl from improvised contemporary press releases. Of course we old SM hands know better and, in fact there be some likely common denominational ground between an early identifier and a certain Carl (Thompsen) his nominee. Keith Mangnoson, a shell shock patient at Fairfield/Parkside pschyciatric hospital from 19th November to 6th December 1948 viewed the body at West Terrace mortuary soon after his release and was quite satisfied that the stiff was his old mate Carl. Some confusion might naturally be expected with those of unsound mind, memory retention abilty in particular. In Mangnoson’s case he had some history of getting his wires crossed location wise as well and so we might be on the mark to suggest said recognitition was just as likely to be of a fellow inmate of quite recent familiarity. Shoud you or like ferrets wish to go down this particular bunny hole, go ahead be my guest.
@ JS
Further to the above, I don’t think cruelty and misogynistic behaviour was a good response… I know the American servicemen narrative from family members in Queensland – it was a common refrain from drunken and frequently abusive, war affected men for decades after the war (ie women were having fun with charming American servicemen whilst husbands and brothers were in out in the jungles of PNG).
@Pat, Furphy, Jo, and all
Regarding the issue Pat originally asked and I said I had wondered about also, offering a possible explanation, one that was then followed up by comments by Furphy and Jo, I would like to add the following.
In 1954 (so, around 1951), in Trove https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/224911190?searchTerm=%22Marriage%20annulment%22%20domicile a legal advice for divorce states that if the husband resides in Victoria, the desertion period is at least 3 years, while the domicile period requirement for wife (in the example given) is actually just one year (12 months). So, DJW had to show that he had deserted her 3+ years, which she does in clause 3. But in clause 4, all she had to say, based on your explanation, is that she was and had been domiciled in Victoria for one year, or even could have said two years to make it a stronger statement, no need even for that “and upwards.” In fact, if she had never left Victoria following separation, all she could have said was “I am and have been continually domiciled in Victoria, where I was born and married.”
The point, going back to my original possible explanation, is that oddly there is something specific being stated by her, in terms of wording of the period of her having been domiciled in Victoria, suggesting that she indeed had left Victoria after separation (since, before, she was obviously living there during marriage), then returning back to Victoria, even though she was filing her divorce action in Bute, SA, at the time (June 1951).
Let us say she left soon after filing the maintenance order (which we will hopefully find more about if the files are provided, where David Morgan’s question about her address at the time becomes also relevant) in March 1947, or just before or after that. For safety reasons, she moves to Bute, thinking that she would be living there from now on to receive her maintenance dues there, still feeling unsafe in Victoria. But, for some reason, she feels safe again living (or declaring living) in Victoria in 1949 (about six months after Carl’s death). So, let’s say, still she has business that she had started living in or around Bute (for example in Kadina, about 22 minutes drive away, where she filed for divorce), but now decides to be formally domiciled in Victoria, realizing that at some point, which must have been at least three years past April 1947, she can file for divorce.
Let us count the years for desertion requirement: April 1947 to June 29 1951 (time divorce affidavit filed), that is 3 years and two months. Requirement almost just in time fulfilled.
For domicile in Victoria requirement, counting back from June 29, 1951, two and plus years would be several months (but less than a year) before June 29, 1949. This clearly means she decided to be domiciled again in Victoria most likely after Nov. 30, 1948—could be before that, about 4 months (but not to make it a year, since from Dec. 1 to June 29 is 7 months), but most likely after that date, if the safety issue was of concern.
So there is a reasonable basis to consider that she left Victoria following separation after March/April 1947 but returned to her domicile in Victoria most likely sometime after Dec. 1948.
So, the question is: Did she, formally admitting it or not, know Carl Webb had died when she filed for divorce in 1951? Is this a Freudian slip, so to speak, unknowingly giving away her knowledge that he had died?
In her file she does not at all discuss why she was residing in SA/Bute and filing her divorce files from there. Given all she says about matter of threat and safety, it would have been actually quite relevant for her to have a clause saying, say, “I left for Bute because I was fearful of my safety, and that is why I am filing for divorce from here.” She did not have to say anything about that, but the silence may be significant.
It seems the silence was important because had she stated the reason she left for Bute, it being a matter of safety, she would have had to explain why her domicile was back to Victoria sometime in 1949, if she still was concerned about safety, assuming that he was still around in Victoria. Remaining silent on offering the safety issue as a reason for moving to Bute, therefore, saved her any troubles with meeting the domicile requirement for divorce starting in 1951.
Am I getting this wrong? Hopefully you can correct me. It seems to be an important point.
@ milongal, sorry I meant to address that question to you as well, sorry. You had also asked questions about from me before I left the talks for a while. I wish that you know I am mindful of that and hopefully will get back to them as part of a broader explanation of things at some point.
@ Nick
There are those who think that the notes in the ROK are simply horse names, a mnemonic, short hand poetry or nonsense and those who believe they hold some more profound message or truth.
Whist we scramble away at the above, as a Keats man, I wonder what your opinion of the poems of Ern Mally might be? The poems are one of the better known outputs from employees of the Australian WWII DORCA – Directorate of Research and Civil Affairs (widely believed to be an intelligence organisation – it had a wide and varied remit – eg producing maps of the Northern Territory, finding substitutes for quinine…)
https://www.ernmalley.net/malley-poetry
In an alternative universe, I would have Carl meeting Max Harris and showing him his poems. Max would advise him to write something a bit more chipper, modernist and less morose and Carl, with his hard knocks, Springvale background would become the working class poet that the Angry Penguins hankered for… In which case, he would probably be long forgotten by now… or maybe not. Dorothy? She’d be on a farm in Kansas with Mr D’Arcy, the handsome serviceman…
Alas, real lives can be far harder and less poetic, endings that are not so neat…
…comes to mind that Carl seemed to be noticeably absent from the Melbourne scene for who knows how long, from a period tending dads cart horses after his trade qualifications into the late thirties before he set up home with his Doff in 1940. Keith Mangnoson was nutty as a fruit cake but, no fool and just maybe his recollection of meeting up with Carl in the Riverland malley district in 1939 could indeed have been the connection. The Carl Keith knew was not working on scrub busting like himself and time spent with cart horses in the bush would seem to fit the man’s wish to be on his Pat Malone. Makes more clear sense than partnering with Prosper on interstate auto transportation rackets right?
@Misca I agree. I noted it in her bio. The deceased Charles is most likely her grandfather.lack of birth certificate suggests that her mum is one of the daughters with an unknown father imo. By the time she died the reporting relative probably only knew of her grandparents and mis attributed them as her parents.
Doesn’t alter the infamy of the 5th Earl though. The 6th Earl burnt his house down and spent his life as a recluse in Spain thus ending the Earldom for good.
There’s a lot of hate in his family
Anyone taken heed of how flighty all these Webb families seem to have been, in an era of mostly staid and static lifestyle in quiet leafy suburbs for folks to raise their brats to similar conditioning norms. Not this crowd, constantly moving and causing upheaval amongst our frustrated key tapping, non connecting family researches, all plagued by disappearing D’arcys and other unlikely contenders for links with the mysterious Carl, Dorothy and Mrs. Robertson et al. My heart goes out to them.
@David Morgan: I have looked at the account on MyHertiage that you mentioned. She is an active user, but I could not find any photos of Carl other than the well-known post-mortem image. I have sent her a direct message asking if she has any photos of the Webb family (incl. Carl) that she might be willing to share. I took a screen shot of the photo of “young Carl” that you posted, and looking at the partial URL it would appear that it was stored somewhere on Ancestry?
I purchased a copy of Eliza Amelia Webb’s death record. She suffered a major stroke and died on 24 Nov 1946. Her place of death was 35 Mitchell Street, East Brunswick (possibly where the Keane’s were living), and her usual place of residence was 9 Peterleigh Grove, Essendon (her daughter Gladys Scott’s address). Carl was the informant for the death, giving his address as 63 Bromby Street. He was described as “in attendance during last illness.” I would imagine that this event would have been very distressing for him, especially as Eliza lived for a few days after suffering the stroke, with no hope of recovery.
Reading Dorothy’s affidavit, and her account of Carl’s escalating behaviour throughout 1945/6, she was fortunate to have left the marital home in September 1946, prior to Eliza’s death.
Thank you so much Behrooz for persuading the Victorian Supreme Court to release the files.
Jo, there may be a poetic reason why the code has the letter A placed in the seventh position of every line, bar the one struck out.
Misca/Peter Davidson: my failure to not get my last and penultimate last posts on Alice was a blessing in disguise. Now I can let you in on the not so secret early life of J.C.R but not likely to satisfy either of your self serving notions re dad’s passing before her birth in 1896 in your case Misca or M.G. Stratford 5th or 6th Earl (what’s it to be mate) of Aldborough, now a nolo contendere courtesy of Davo. Listen up kids and listen good if you want the goods on Doff’s mum Alicia Elizabeth Stratford, according to the only half reliable Myheritage site, she was born in 1886; yes that’s right not 1896 and passed in 1933 at age 47 and yep that adds up. You’ll note also that she was seven or eight years senior to J. B. R. and my how it shows up in the Bruce Bennett inspired 1926 mum & bub photo. The pair of you can now jointly recapitulate, not on the unfortunate 1896 blooper but, hopefully on what might come out of it re new enlightenment.
Jo: ‘Soldier’s Women’ is a novel by Xavier Herbert; not about the hectic Melbourne GI generated ‘Over Sexed Over Paid (untrue) & Over Here’ social upheavals but, more about the lives of lusting Sydney suburban housewives separated from their husbands up north fighting tooth and nail to keep loved ones out of harm’s way. All the while their good time Charlie women are out there getting laid by Army HQ Staff, RAAF desk pilots, naval code breakers and the like. Not one of Alf’s greatest but perhaps to the point on what may have been calalyst for Dorothy’s marital woes.
@ Behrooz
I’m just not sure… I’m inclined to believe that Dorothy really didn’t know that Carl was dead. I do think that she was being evasive for some reason with the Keane’s address though… I think the timings may be at the advice of her lawyers, to fit within the legal requirements.
Jo: thanks for the heads up on the Thai/Burma railway concept that didn’t create a lot of interest amongst punters who had better home based angles to follow, so be it. I was particularly keyed up by the fact that a Qld. High Court Justice in the form of namesake William Webb had been, as early as 1943, appointed to head up an International commission of inquiry to investigate wartime attrocities. Committed by Japanese military in forced labour camps involving POWs from Australia, UK and Holland in particular. Investigators collected evidence over three years and results became the basis for three lengthy reports culminating in subsequent the Tokyo prosecutions. One might well imagine Carl Webb, through what happened to little brother Roy, being eager to get the truth and so joining with the ligitimate cause for punishing the monsters responsible.
@behrooz,
The problem I have with the safety issue is she hung around to start the maintenance order. In April 1947 Carl had left Bromby street after selling off his furniture. When the order was started to be paid in May 1947 that would be a good point for Dorothy to move to Bute. She had what she wanted/needed. But she appears in an electoral roll and in a newspaper competition. When the payments stop in June 1947, it is likely Carl lost/changed his job. We also know that his sister hadn’t seen him for 3 or 4 years in 1951. Suggesting he had moved away from Melbourne or even Australia.
There is also the question of why she was awarded 2 shillings less than other women in a similar situation in her maintenance order. £2 was standard. Knowing the details of her situation in 1947 would help evaluate their relationship and why she let him off the hook in June 1947.
It would be strange if they both moved away from Melbourne in the same month.
Just for the record, should there be any doubts, impecably credentialled Behrooz gives varifiable Victorian birth record numbered listings for Dorothy’s mum as having been Alice, not Louise and her dad Johnathan, so not Charles at all. This is obviously out of wack with results obtained through sceptically unreliable and thus misleading and unamed sources. All courtesy of Robertson family historian Bruce Bennett on Wiki Tree; and no surprise by my estimation.
There is a 1977 electoral roll (the latest I have yet managed to find) of Alice Robertson living at 8 Marlton Ct., St. Kilda. Her husband John Comber Robertson is listed at the same address and he is listed as a caretaker.
As I have said before, I have not found a birth certificate for Alice but the Australian death index for her reads as follows:
Name: Alice Robertson
Death Age: 84
Birth Date: abt 1896
Death Date: Abt 1980
Death Place: Brunswick, Victoria
Registration Date: 1980
Registration Place: Australia
Father:
Char Stratford
Mother:
Louise
Registration Number: 05849
There is a find-a-grave listing for her that matches this information and includes her husband, who is buried in the same cemetery:
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/212176647/alice-robertson?_gl=1*m6e8cy*_ga*NjM2OTk3NzM0LjE2NjE3MTM4OTI.*_ga_4QT8FMEX30*MTY2NjAwNTY4Mi4yNDcuMS4xNjY2MDEwNDk2LjUzLjAuMA..
misca: Someone’s getting their wires crossed. We’re actually talking about Alice Robertson’s mother Alice (Alicia) Elizabeth Stratford better known as Ellen, an accepted short form of Elizabeth who died on August, 1933 and was inturred at St. Kilda cemetery. I’ll go with Behrooz on his record to date. See Dorothy Stratford birth details August 19 re Reg. No. 17944/1920 giving parents as Alice and Jno. if that’s acceptable by your estimation.
.
Angela –
Thanks for purchasing and sharing Eliza’s death record. It adds a bit more information to understanding everyone’s circumstances at the time. It’s possible that Eliza had already had a stroke in early 1941 when Dorothy claims that she helped to take care of her and that, most probably, would have been quite stressful.
@Jo
I’ll take a critical look at Ern Malley’s life and work when I’ve got a bit more time.
The only ref I have to Sher is the link you posted at the top of the thread:
https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/sher-william-peter-11679
Perhaps if we all club together – and I’ll put in my fiver – we can put in a bid for the Connault and set it up as a home for those unfortunates who have been physically exhausted and mentally damaged by a surfeit of SM research. I’m sure the Colonel would keep us all entertained in the bar with his boastful tales of being on the hunt since the early days of December 1948 (or even 31 Nov) and I could regale one and all with stories about the Manchester music scene of the ’80s.
On Airlie I found the info here, but it’s a long read!
https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=235324
See esp Chapter VII ‘Stores Directorate’ pp 91-108
Russell Richard Keane’s illegitimate son, Douglas Russell McCluskey, is listed as belonging to “Z SPEC” on his NAA war record but it’s all a bit speculative. I’m still a bit bothered by the thought that there was some sort of cover up with SM – can’t believe no-one recognised the photo. As milongal points out above one of the policemen who intervened between the unhappily married couple knew Carl personally for example.
From the revelations from Doff about Carl that Colleen first gave us back in August (if true, as I firmly believe they are in substance) I think it might be more useful to look at Z Ward at Adelaide’s Parkside “Lunatic Asylum” – the ward for the criminally insane – than Z Special Unit. See:
https://www.weekendnotes.com/z-ward-glenside-hospital/
They have been speculating about Parkside on the Bowes site for a while without any evidence – lobotomies feature large – but it’s an interesting avenue or rabbit hole (actually most of the “fun” in this whole sleuthing business is finding out about Australia’s hidden history).
From this: https://www.abc.net.au/local/photos/2011/05/11/3213910.htm
“In 1929 malaria treatment was introduced, infecting patients with a controlled form of the disease.
1930 saw the introduction of arsenical treatment to try to curb the influx of syphilis derived dementia.
By 1938 the hospital was trialling insulin shock treatment, which placed the person in a diabetic coma.
Cardiazol injections were also administered, with high doses causing convulsions.
This practice was known as ‘convulsive therapy’.
In 1941 Electro-convulsive shock treatment (ECT) began, with Parkside the first to introduce the procedure to Australia.
As Australia became gripped in the early stages of World War 2, the style of timing devices required for ECT machines were reserved for bombing mechanisms.
The Physics Department of the University of Adelaide struck on the idea of substituting timers with the dial mechanism from a rotary telephone.
Machines were initially tested on rabbits, before being used on patients with schizophrenia or those suffering from manic-depression.
Patients were also put under the knife, with the first psychosurgery procedure completed at Parkside in 1945”.
Nick Pilchard might censor the above – I have been in trouble here before for daring to mention STDs! Funnily enough Parkside was renamed Glenside, the same name as Bristol’s largest asylum. Local lad Cary Grant (born 5 mins from where I grew up/live) was told his mother was dead when in fact she had been put in Glenside (then known as Bristol Lunatic Asylum). See:
https://ezinearticles.com/?The-Amazing-True-Story-of-Cary-Grants-Mother&id=2947980
Born “in a Bristol slum” indeed! Bullshit with a capital B.
I’m not sure if the whole ROK thing isn’t a red herring. We don’t really know the details of it at all, let alone if Carl (or anybody else) did toss it into a car. But supposing the Tamam Shud slip wasn’t a “plant” it is the most mysterioso part of the whole case although perhaps it was just a little OCD thing for Carl to put it there or something like that.
I’m going to have a few words with Ann O next time I see her!
@ Angela. You are welcome, and that is a very helpful set of info about Carl’s mother’s death reason and situation you shared. Although it shows her passing of a sudden stroke (perhaps you meant heart) illness, I am actually inclined to think that her being of still a sound mind, to whatever extent available, must have made it even more difficult for her to experience the year 1943 losses, and perhaps know of Carl’s marital troubles. Also, his being present by her bed shows he was involved in family and had contacts with and cared for his mom. This is very important.
@ Jerry Klindt. Welcome and thanks for your feedback. I agree that her having recovered is a possibility. But from our vantage point looking back, I am inclined to think that since her husband passing away in 1939, Carl’s mom went on a decline, with an illness (at least for a few weeks) in 1941, with 1943 losses (whether known in one month or not), and then stroke in 1946, being contributing factors. My point of this was more in terms of how Carl would have experienced his mom’ life, given what he was experiencing in 1940s maritally.
@ David Morgan. I think we need to now connect the dots a bit more carefully. The reason safety issue became elevated was precisely BECAUSE of that maintenance order action at the almost exact time. In the second divorce file, page 21 of the pdf, it confirms that actually the summons was delivered to Carl in April 1947 in Red Point Tool Co (it does not say he was not there at that time, perhaps we will know this for sure if and when we get the maintenance order file).
So, this is a very important finding to learn that indeed the very timing of April 1947 as Carl leaving job or residence had a lot to do with that summons receipt. I don’t read anywhere in the files that he actually paid any of the dues (if the employer had to pay from his pay, that is a different matter). So, Dorothy would be particularly concerned with safety from April 1947 on because she knew Carl would get the summons then. It did not just “happen” that Carl ended his job in April 1947, David. I think his departure in April was exactly BECAUSE of the maintenance summons receipt, or knowledge thereof. This is very important for understanding what happened later, and a lot more.
@ Jo, I will wait for others to comment on the domicile issue, but it requires very careful attention. I have reasonable doubts now, to be hopefully cleared per responses, that she did not know about Carl’s death. This does not mean her lawyers knew and that she told them so. Having read it in the news, and waited for six or so months following Dec. 1, 1948, would have given her enough of a sense that he had not been identified. All she could do is deny knowing the unknown man was Carl, if ever confronted, just supposing at this point. Regarding knowing Keane’s address, it actually proves not evasiveness, in my reading, but that she actually had little contact with them, especially with the Keane family. She would have provided exact addresses, if she had them, I am sure.
Any ways, I will await others responses. All I can say, there is really no point of her being so specific about the “two year and upwards” domicile.
David Morgan,
I have a copy of the KNOWN photo of Carl taken at sister’s wedding. When it was put up on Abbot’s facebook page I took a screen grab of it, and have it. Not a great quality, but if you need it, let me know. My email is on my website.
John Sanders
You have forgotten your usually impeccable manners in not thanking me for posting a video here (on October 14 at 10:32 pm) featuring Thadee Slavinsky as “the Moor” in Colonel de Basil’s Ballets Russes 1936 interpretation of ‘Petrouchka’.
Old chap you really must learn how to do links cos if you don’t perishers like me will think you’re just making stuff up. Where’s all this info about John Co(o)mber coming from? As far as his residence in Darwin is concerned I think he was spending some time in the Territory and some back in Melbourne during the ’41-’47 period so it’s impossible to be precise about dates. I originally posted (as Ann O) the link to the 1947 article about Jack’s Darwin Gilpin share certificates on September 1 – also mentioning the Balwyn property which has caused some excitement amongst punters recently – long before characters such as yourself got into a lather about him winning the lotto which turned out to be prime time BS!
Talking about prime time BS that crock of the brown stuff about Carl Thompsen died a death years ago. I leave rabbit holes to Alice and her ilk, preferring at present to follow Dorothy down the yellow brick road, as I stated before. I have though made some remarks about Parkside in my reply to Jo above.
I may have only posted HERE from August 5 onwards but I have followed this case since, oh, 2019, although as I said in that first post I latched on to the mystery because I thought it concerned Somerton, Somerset, England – I was born 5 mins stroll from the Somerset border, just across IK Brunel’s magnificent Clifton Suspension Bridge, which before they put up barriers was one of the country’s favoured suicide locations. I even saw a body once in the early morn floating back down the river having gone way up on the tide the previous night.
Honestly, you and others have proposed so many participants in the causing of or assisting with this death that it all resembles the great Hitch’s ‘The Trouble with Harry’ (which someone mentioned once on, I think, the Bowes site). THE TROUBLE WITH CHARLIE perhaps, exchanging Vermont for sunny Adelaide. As I’m sure you’ll remember in the film several people on seeing a body think they may have been responsible for the death and bury/hide the corpse several times before dumping it back on the hill.
I loved ol’ Hitch despite his failings and several of his films must be faves of contributors here. Pilchard’s would be ‘The Birds’ who supply him with silly rumours. Yours of course would be ‘Psycho’, or maybe ‘To Catch a Thief’. Jo’s would be ‘North by Northwest’, Pat’s would be the Rio set ‘Notorious’ and several trolls (you know who you are) would choose ‘Sabotage’. It would be immodest of me to suggest that mine would be ‘The Man Who Knew Too Much’!
The wonderful Jeff Alexander provided the arrangements for Alf’s ‘Music to be Murdered By’ album: eg https://youtu.be/GjfF8apJ0UE
I gave up self doubt after my little brush with death a few years ago due to severe depression – which also, on my revival, oddly made me very partial to the avant-garde and experimental electronic music that I struggled with for years.
@ Mary Spencer,
What David Morgan wants to see is not the photo itself, which he has found on the website PimEyes https://pimeyes.com/en by uploading another photo of Carl for comparison. It’s the source of that photo, which PimEyse gives just a snapshot (unless you pay them), showing that it is an Ancestry’s url (I agree with Angela and have already told David a while ago), meaning that someone who has an Ancestry subscription can at least try to find on which tree that photo has been posted (Webb, Robertson, Bennett, Martin, Cass and so on). It’s tricky as there could be a lot of family trees. As for PimEyes, I think that one of the journalists that have published articles about the case and maybe Abbott could have payed to see this url but haven’t disclosed what they found.
@ Nick, sorry, I was still writing the post when it suddenly was ‘awaiting moderation’ before I pressed ‘Post comment’. Oooohh!
@ John Sanders,
YOU have your wires crossed, mate.
Doff’s mum was Alice Stratford. Alice’s mom is still in dispute as nobody has found Alice’s birth record yet. The only sources we have are Bruce Bennet’s biographies on Wikitree, stating that she was the daughter of Louise Reichter (lots of different spellings) and Charles Stratford, who had died in 1892, four years before Alice’s estimated DOB, 1896 (as per age at DOD and information given by John Comber in Dorothy’s birth record, ‘Alice Stratford, 24.’). Another info he gave is place of birth FITZROY, which goes against Bruce Bennett’s account that she was a sibling of Louise and Charles offspring, all born and bred in St. Arnaud or Avon Plains.
The birth record you said Behrooz has provided is for Dorothy Robertson, not Dorothy Stratford. As for ‘Alice (Alicia) Elizabeth Stratford, better known as Ellen’, who died in 1933, do you have a number for her death record? Are you saying (or trying to) that she was Alice Straford’s mum? Anything on her husband or parents?
ALICIA ELIZABETH STRATFORD, Vic #15120/1886, born at Rich, was the daughter of ELLEN HOLLINGSWORTH and Edward Alfred Stratford.
So… she wasn’t ‘better known as Ellen’, her mom was.
And what is their connection to Dorothy?
@ misca,
Thanks for the info on Alice Robertson. I didn’t know Louise and Charles had been named on her death record. So maybe this is the source of her biography on Bruce Bennett’s Wikitree page. Anyway, she was adopted as Charles senior was dead and Louise was a bit old to be her mom. I also thought of their son Charles Byron as a candidate for being her father, based on his DOD, 1896, and the lack of other info on him, but as Peter Davidson points out, one of sisters might be a better candidate. There were plenty of them!
Pat –
I think some of the confusion is also because of the Victoria Death Index. The Australia Death Index is as I have shown above, but the Victoria Index is as follows:
Name: Alice Robertson
Death Registration Year: 1980
Death Registration Place: Victoria, Australia
Father: Charles Stratford
Mother Maiden Name: Reitchem
Reference Number: 5849
I am chasing down a potential fit that is non-“Reither”/Charles Alexander Stratford -related. I think perhaps Bruce Bennett assumed Reitchem is Reither but there are several other alternatives to what “Reichem” could be…It could even be a transcription error. Possibly, the best way to sort it out would be to see the marriage record for Alice and John Comber Robertson.
I think the main interest in knowing who Alice’s parents were is to try to see if there is any connection to where Dorothy might have gone…
For example, John Comber’s last known address was 30 Edward Street, Fawkner which is the address for Phyllis and James (Jim) Crick.
From Aunty Beeb’s website today:
HEADLESS BODY FOUND WITH BIBLE QUOTE AND ROPE, JURY HEARS
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-63289540
The rest of the news is all about Liz ‘Hernia’ ‘Truss. I thought that trusses were supposed to give comfort and support.
@ Misca – so it looks as though JCR was still working as a school caretaker in 1977? If so, I know someone who may have known him! I didn’t pursue this earlier as I assumed he would have retired by the time they worked at the school…
The dates of the ads for the sale of furniture from Bromby Street coïncide exactly with Eliza Webb’s death. The first ad appears on Saturday November 23, the day before she died, saying “after 2pm”. The ad is then repeated in two newspapers the following Saturday, 30 November. Basically everything is for sale – two bedroom suites, furniture, crockery, rugs… Carl must have been staying at the Keane’s and decided that he was not going to return to Bromby Street to live.
I think this is more likely to be when he also left the Red Point Tool Company?
The period between November 1947 and November 1948 is the mystery…we know that in 1949 Dorothy is living with the Campbells in Murphy Street, Elsternwick.
@ Steve H – I like your Idylewylde idea! We could all become “24 Hour Party People”! I am very happy that you are a mental health survivor – actually happy is a trite word here, probably profoundly respectful. I had a very eccentric brother who was a psychiatric nurse in training, a talented musician and song writer, Smiths aficionado and lover of Islamic art and architecture, I wish he was still here! Never let your light dim! I agree that discovering all these weird histories is a great part of the sleuth! I think I’m better at the former than the latter!
@ Pat, I think John Sanders made an error. He meant “Bruce” (for Bruce Bennett, I guess, as a WikiTree account editor) NOT “Behrooz.” I never provided such information about Dorothy’s mother or grandmother, and frankly am not interested in that line of inquiry at this time.
@ John Sanders, you made that error twice, it seems, so that makes me (and others) even more confused as to who offered that family tree information you are referring to (which I am not sure even what it is about, yet). Please correct that error. Thanks.
@ Behrooz
Okay, no worries, JS doesn’t make sense most of the time, hahaha.
@ misca
Yes, that’s why I am trying to know the ‘where and when’ regarding the Robertsons.
16 Jan 1946
Ian Nicoll Robertson, b.1912, (son of William Thomas Robertson and Ethel Sarah Nicoll), Colyton, NSW, NX101484, was discharged and he died at the same place in 1992.
Just one of the potential connections to NSW.
I’m writing down a timeline of events and interesting things are popping up.
I have found a Claude selling a car from 69 Murphy st, Elsternwick, end of 1946, but it’s probably a coincidence (based on the fact that Claude James Crick was known as Jim or James, but never Claude, unless..)
Forgot to say… sorry NICK!
@ misca,
Regarding Louise (Louisa) Reitchem (Reither)… I have posted a long time ago (for my standards regarding this saga), all the different spellings that can be found on many family trees that mention Louise (Louisa) Reither, but despite the confusion, all of them corroborate her marriage to Charles Stratford and the whole bunch of sons and daughters, all born in Avon Plains or St. Arnaud, minus Alice.
Behrooz: my companion piece in response to your own misunderstanding follows on the intoductory Dorothy Webb thread. Trust that it explains away some of the most important (to me) Stratford confusion to which I verily plead not guilty in any way manner or form. Cordially js
What on earth is all this confusion concerning Alice/Dorothy about?
The Colonel has completely got his knickers in a knot.
He DOES quote Behrooz as follows (from ‘Dorothy Jean Robertson/Dorothy Jean Webb’ thread):
Behrooz
on August 19, 2022 at 8:54 pm said:
Pat:
I think the date, at least its year, is from her marriage certificate a copy of which Nick Palling already has received, per his post. There she is listed as being 21 years old, the certificate date being 1941. Her birth certificate record searchable here https://www.bdm.vic.gov.au/research-and-family-history/search-your-family-history online has the following information:
Record information
Event: births
Registration number 17944 / 1920
Family name: ROBERTSON
Given name(s) Dorothy Jean
Place of event: BALLARAT, VIC, Australia
Personal detail
Mother’s name , Alice
Mother’s family name at birth STRATFORD
Father’s Name: , Jno Comber
But then he doesn’t seem able to distinguish Dorothy from Alice. Wrong kiddies’ book John.
RichardD on 20 August said:
“In regards to Pat’s query about Dorothy’s exact date of birth, I obtained a copy of her birth record which states: Date of birth 18 July 1920 (District of Ballarat) Father John Comber Robertson Farmer age 25 born Ensay Gippsland Married 2nd June 1919 Mildura Mother Alice Robertson nee Stratford age 24 born Fitzroy.”
In the war, according to the Colonel, John C went to Darwin AND Alice whereas Alice stayed in Melbourne. Another Alice! This one surname Springs.
@Jo
Sorry to hear about your brother. I like Islamic architecture too. When you mentioned The Smiths and lights dimming (or not) you should have said “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out”. And if it does just get the National Council of Illuminating Engineering Societies in. Poor old Morrissey has blotted his copybook somewhat of late and has been officially “cancelled” in many circles. When living in Mcr my mate went out with Mo’s cousin and she despised him – “lazy good for nothing” and so on! The Hacienda was pretty empty in the early days, nothing like 24hrPP at all. Nick Cave got in a couple of fights with audience members there but I managed to avoid trouble despite all my heckles.
Pat Valle: not much I can say but, to extend my sincere apologies for subjecting you to all this high level of confusion, ‘Strine Ingles’ not being your mother tongue and all. Meanwhile I’ll do my utmost, rest assured, to allay your fears on being seen by some as not quite up to the required level of comprehension. Trust me, js
Steve H. Musta missed your Thadee T. video but I would have seen it. Did you know he lost his mentored young American ballet protege Mira Dimina to sudden onset of blood poisoning in Adelaide late November 1936. Thaddee was away at the time in Melbourne at the races with the boss (see table talk item) and getting his teeth pulled so couldn’t make it back to base for the West Terrace funeral. Oh and unless you missed the other sad news (for me at least), according to unvarified (unlikely) reports, a widely renowned Brit. ballet star name of Margot Fonteyn nee Hookham who knew Thadee Slavinsky slightly, bumped into him over by Panama City circa. 1952/53, mention of which thrilled me not one iota back in 2016…Sorry to offend but, don’t do Facebook or links on privacy concerns.
@ Steve H
I’ve had a skim read of the Part I of Special Operations Australia Vol 1 – I’ll need to wait until the weekend to delve any further.
Although most of the signals equipment seems to have come from the UK it sounds as though there was some bespoke tweaking and additional equipment sourced locally. I wouldn’t be surprised if Mr Sher and Red Point were involved here… I was in the area last night and had a bit of look around, it wasn’t a large premises and doesn’t look at all factory like…
One thing intrigued me, if there is anyone on here with military knowledge, P91 of
https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=235324
“ISD was operating as a complete unit located at 260 Domain Road, South Yarra. A nucleous (sic) stores staff consisting of one clerk, one typist and 2 storemen were enlisted and an old stable and loft situated at the rear of the premises were converted into a store house. Arrangements were made for special explosive stores shipped by MO 1 (SP) War Office to be stored at 32 FAD Somerton.”
What is 32 FAD and is it Somerton SA?
I also wouldn’t be surprised if DORCA, the Ern Malley, Jack of miscellaneous trades, workplace at Victoria Barracks, wasn’t involved in researching and procuring supplies for Special Ops.
Douglas Russell McCluskey did very well to survive his Z Unit time, it looks as though so many didn’t!
I’m trending strongly towards the ROK notes being Carl’s shorthand poetry (as per Pete Bowes suggestion) and Carl’s death being suicide precipitated by lead poisoning and circumstance. I do, however, think there might be a war time signals or other connection and that some people who suspected that the Somerton Man was our Charlie hoped that the news would quietly move on without him…
Steve H: admittedly there is ongoing problems at both ends of the Stratford family spectrum but, bide with me a bit and all will eventually be explained. Meanwhile I’m looking for WW1 vet. Edward Charles Stratford 1889/1974 Richmond Victoria, brother to my nominate 1886 Alice. He married some sheila in 1920 from memory and they begat five including Mavis Peating 1921/15. I’m after further family detail, as is mystery researcher Tony Bennett, especially concerning Edward’s spouse and possible son W.R. Stratford, RA Ordinance Corps. Vietnam War Veteran.
I’m intrigued by 66 St John Street, Carl’s workplace and the premises of the Red Point Tool Company.
It’s not a large building for a workshop/factory. In earlier editions of the Sands and McDougall directory there isn’t a 66 St John Street listed, it is behind Piccone’s grocery store at 157 Chapel Street (a major and iconic shopping strip).
It wasn’t a secret location, its just off a busy main shopping strip. Will Sher was a keen stamp collector and there are lots of first edition envelopes, addressed to him at 66 St John Street, with Red Point Tool Co on the envelopes, floating around on the contemporary philately market…
There is a bit of “ghost writing” at the top of the building – it looks as though lots of businesses have come and gone and painted over each other’s work over the years… I couldn’t make out anything that might be Red Point Tool Company…
Sher power tools became a well known company in the post war period and their tools had a very good reputation. There is descendant in the US making power lathes.
@ John Sanders,
Here we go again. Why can’t you just admit you are a bit confused? I do admit I am a newbie regarding this case, but what I do is exactly the same thing as everyone else is doing, trying to find good evidence. Maybe you’re under the influence of some chemicals? Or maybe it’s just your huge ego eating your brains out? And ‘Strine’ is not a Portuguese or Brazilian Portuguese word, I can’t believe you don’t know how to use Google translator. Or post a link. The info you have on Dorothy’s was not originally posted by Behrooz, actually I’m pretty sure everyone here has posted something regarding Dorothy’s birth record, apart from you, who are still calling her Dorothy Stratford! And there’s absolutely nothing you can tell me about myself that I don’t know, so stop being a pain in the @rse!.
Pat –
18 June 1949
UTILITY. Chev., ’26 model, engine good, 5 tyres, perfect. 69 Murphy-
st„ N. Richmond. £87 10/.
3 Nov 1951
Ford V8. ’37 mod., good cond.,reg, 1O months; £450, or near offer,
69 Murphy-st.. Richmond.
Does the listing for Alice Stratford’s birth state Fitzroy, Victoria or Fitzroy, Somewhere else?
In 1949, Phyllis and Claude James were living at 18 Windsor Avenue, Essendon North.
@ Steve H
Alice Springs was also. the professional name of Helmut Newton’s actress/model/photographer wife June, when working as a photographer in Europe!
I’ve kind of lost touch with Morrissey but it does look as though he has very idiosyncratic politics! Personally, I think modern Britain can’t be seen separately to its entangled history of empire, I’ll drink a cup of tea and ponder that one…
Australia too is very different to the way it was in 1948, when it was at the cross roads of a hybrid British/American influenced pretty much white national identity (Indigenous people weren’t even included in the census until after 1967 and the White Australia migration policy was only officially abandoned in 1973)… Melbourne is now one of the most multicultural cities in the world! I quite enjoy it here…
@ Pat
Claude selling the car in 1946 could be Jim Crick as the car may have been registered under his official name, Claude! Good find! Again 🙂 !
@John Sanders, Pat, Steve H
I see now what happened, thanks to Steve H and all for clarifying it. Now, I see John was kindly drawing on what I had sent a while ago, but misread it inadvertently, which is fine and happens.
I didn’t remember that post since I had just copied directly from the birth certificate, my purpose being to share the info about Dorothy’s birth date, not her parents name (which were pasted along without my noticing it), so I didn’t remember I had done that for that purpose.
Any ways, I probably have to join Jo and Steve H’s club of those being affected by this case research, as I forgot about that. Hopefully I will meet John’s kind compliment standard some day, which was not meant for that other Bruce after all! So, yes, in a way John was correct in referring to me as having offered some data about Dorothy (even though he misread it), and I apologize to him for saying he wasn’t.
@ misca, thanks for clarifying why this line of inquiry can be important regarding Dorothy’s whereabouts.
@ Pat
Unfortunately the State Library doesn’t have a digital editions of Sands and Mc for 1946-50. In 1945 there is a Mrs Sarah Murray living at 69 Murphy Street. In 1950 it is listed under Mr Campbell, Dorothy’s housemate.
Steve H… Ah yes Alice Springs, Nevil Shute’s little gem set partly at a womens POW camp in Sumatra from memory. A film starring Peter Finch of Dad & Dave fame in which he played alongside the future RSL chief’s future wife Valerie Scanlan then sweet 18 as Sarah. The new couple settled at 15 Wilkinson St. Somerton beach and it was hubby that declined to give witness to his SM sighting on the big day. Back to Alice, you should be aware that when my Alice passed in ’33 most folks both black & white still called theirv quiet town Stuart, it’s former telegraphic station identity. There we go, nearly up to speed but, for one last humble plug for my impeccably researched Territorial employment dosier info. to wit J. C. Robertson ganger of 32 Charnwood St. Kilda from 23/5/1943 to term end 1945?. Leave Melbourne 15/3/44 to 24/3/44 finis.
@ all
Regarding the request for maintenance order, I just received a reply, kindly noting that the Supreme Court does not have access to the Court of Petty Session records. The letter states: “Please note, the Supreme Court of Victoria do not hold any records from Court of Petty Session. You will be required to direct your query regarding any dealings with Court of Petty Session to the Public Records Office of Victoria (PROV). You can contact PROV directly on (03) 9348 5600 or visit Homepage | PROV and request any information from them.” The link for the Homepage noted above is https://prov.vic.gov.au for those interested.
I visited the site and submitted a request and will let you know of any results.
PS- if you do a general search on that site for Dorothy Jean Webb, or Dorothy Jean Robertson, a couple of things come up that is hard to tell are relevant (most likely not). Anyone interested can try to find out.
A couple of ads posted by Red Point Tool. Co., Prahran from April and May 1947
Perhaps the May advert. was to replace Carl.
The Age 9 April 1947
http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article206030214
Draftsman and Production Engineer:
only strong personality wanted by the
only Aust. manuf of Portable el. tools.
Red Point Tool Co.. 66 St. John-st., Prah-
ran (near Maples). LA3747.
_____________
The Age 14 May 1947
http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article206030332
ELECTRICAL FITTER,
ELECTRICAL FITTER.
FOR PORTABLE ELECTRIC DRILLS.
VERY GOOD CONDITIONS.
RED POINT TOOL CO.,
66 ST. JOHN- ST.
PRAHRAN.
PRAHRAN. –
EVBAR MAPLES. LA3747,
And here is Dorothy’s father endeavouring to reclaim £50 about the very time Dorothy may well need financial assistance.
The Argus 10 June 1947
http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article22432034
O. GILPIN LIMITED.
Application has been made to the direc-
tors of this company to ISSUE to JOHN
COOMBER ROBERTSON, of Darwin, N.T.,
formerly of Winmallee rd., Balwyn, a FRESH
CERTIFICATE for fifty (50) shares of £1
each fully paid up, and numbered 858851, to
858900, inclusive, in this company, upon the
statement that the original certificate num-
bered 78, dated 20th December. 1939, has
been lost; and notice is hereby given that
if within 30 days from the date hereof no
claim or representation in respect of such
original certificate is made to the directors
they will then proceed to deal with such ap-
plication for a fresh certificate.
Dated the 9th June. 1947.
L. R. HILL. Secretary.
Behrooz, John Sanders’ word on any matter is the result of ceaseless research and untiring effort, despite a few life-threatening head injuries sustained in a ferocious war waged in the jungles of Indochina. Admittedly there are times he mixes fact and fiction, something I can fully understand however in some parts of this wide brown land – like Ballina – he is a revered entity and one we are justly proud of.
Johnno . . Please refer to CBA Ballina branch. BSB 987 009. ACC 123987465.
With respect.
My friend and her mum remember JCR – if it was him from St Michaels’. The mum worked as a PE teacher in the 1970s and 80s and my friend was a student from 1977 until the early 80s. They said he had a nickname that they can’t remember, so wasn’t known as Mr Robertson. He had a small house on the property of St Michaels’ and a dog called Laddie. He was very popular and Laddie was the school dog. It was a small girls’ school at the time. They can’t remember any daughters. My friend’s brother, sadly deceased, actually worked with him for around six months doing grounds work. Mr Robertson was supported by the principal Mrs Thomas, he was very old and had been there a long time. He was retired out when a new principal started in 1982 and the school became a larger, more prestigious co-ed school. My friend’s mum is in a flood zone at the moment and is about to experience flooding, planning for evacuation. If she remembers any more or if I manage to see her down here in Melbourne I’ll post.
Drat, wrong time and agenda for the new Mrs. Robertson as history, suggests I’m off base as usual. Turns out Alice learned to drive near the Victory Arch in Ballarat, so had to have been post construction in 1920.
Two adverts by Red Point Tool Co., in April and May 1947, the May ad perhaps to replace Carl.
The Age 9 April 1947
http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article206030214
Draftsman and Production Engineer:
only strong personality wanted by the
only Aust. manuf of Portable el. tools.
Red Point Tool Co.. 66 St. John-st., Prah-
ran (near Maples). LA3747.
_____________
The Age 14 May 1947
http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article206030332
ELECTRICAL FITTER,
ELECTRICAL FITTER.
FOR PORTABLE ELECTRIC DRILLS.
VERY GOOD CONDITIONS.
RED POINT TOOL CO.,
66 ST. JOHN- ST.
PRAHRAN.
PRAHRAN.
EVBAR MAPLES. LA3747
Peteb: nothing to worry over mate. DVA insist that it wasn’t result of hostile action and does not come within meaning of the act for passing the ultimate test of war caused injury, proof being that no shrapnel of Eastern block origin was obtained in the probe of soft cranial material..still there but, that’s long ago and far away right?
Behrooz,
First of all, my belated thanks for the trove of court documents that you have obtained.
“Remaining silent on offering the safety issue as a reason for moving to Bute, therefore, saved her any troubles with meeting the domicile requirement for divorce starting in 1951”
I don’t know. I’m not sure there is enough evidence and, in addition, the absence of specific evidence is insufficient to establish that “safety” was_not_ the reason for Dorothy’s movements.
Conversely, it is possible, and more. The apparent coincidence of significant dates (Nov/Dec 1948), along with the remarkable coincidence identified by John Sanders – that Dorothy’s cousin was the doctor who pronounced death for her husband on December 1 1948 – gives me further pause for thought.
Here’s a possible, admittedly melodramatic, somewhat “film noir” hypothetical scenario: Carl becomes aware, some time before 1947 that he is facing a long, slow and nasty decline, from an obscure degenerative disease. He devises a plot to see Dorothy comfortable after his death, and she cooperates, either actively or passively. Stage I: take out life insurance, under false pretences (i.e. a cooperative doctor signs off on Carl being perfectly fit and well). Stage II Carl’s assisted suicide at a place where no one is likely to know him. (This could possibly have involved Jessie and Prosper Thomson, either as accessories before or after the fact.) Perhaps a “disappearance” and later declaration of legal death attracts less attention than a suicide (or homicide). I believe there are often clauses in life insurance policies excluding suicide (and needless to say, had Carl been identified and his death been ruled a homicide, insurance matters would have become problematic indeed). Just a passing thought…
@Jo
Your friends’ memories of old John Robertson reminded me of that old Byrds classic, um, ‘Old John Robertson’:
https://youtu.be/7lQtKZ6NPf0
Did JC wear a Stetson? Get down Laddie!
I see that Derek Abbott has posted several comments about Sher and the Red Point Tool Company in the last few hours on Facebook. For those too lazy or unable to access FB here is a selection:
“Here’s [link to the bio Jo and I have posted above] the owner of the company that Charlie worked for. Would be interesting to find out if all company records are destroyed or archived somewhere.
It was not a large company so almost certain that William would have met Charlie”
“Important take away is that it [Red Point] started in 1940. So we know Charlie had to be elsewhere before then (probably at the bakery).
Seems that he would have worked on the electrical fittings for 3/8” hand-held power drills, which is what they did in the early forties.”
“Charlie’s divorce papers claim he left his residence in about April 1947. If this is true, then the timing of the job advertisement below (dated 14th May 1947) for an electrical fitter in his place of work could be for finding his replacement (assuming he quit his job about the same time). There’s a few assumptions there, but if correct it suggests he may have been working on electric hand drills.”
See: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/page/19539212
@ Behrooz / I can have a look for the Petty Sessions info, or if you are given a reference I can look. I have previously done searches for PROV files – there is a late 1990s probate document which is for another Dorothy Jean Webb (of Colac) and a 1947 court hearing and probably linked prison file for Charles Webb of Adderley Street, West Melbourne – so the same names but different people! If anyone finds anything else that can’t be accessed digitally I’m happy to make a quick trip.
Found a photo of Alice’s nephew Norm bn. 1923 the son of her brother Ted from Richmond. The Stratford family semblance is striking though I hasten to say they are certainly well short of being movie star potential. Can’t wait to see what Norm’s cousin Dorothy turned out like. I’m guessing on the shortish side, with dark hair & sallow omplexion, lean build and looks that only her mum would appreciate.
@Jo
As old posts are impossible to find this is my original comment from 15 August when I referred to “Airlie” as “Airedale”. I’ll be in the doghouse now.
“is anybody else talking about ‘Airedale’?
According to ‘The Official History of the Operations and Administration of Special Operations – Australia (SOA)’:
“While the stores section of ISD was busy with special equipment and food packs, Captain Jansen of the NEI section was designing and building suitable portable radio sets. The first two sets supplied to the New Guinea and Islands Section were constructed for ISD by a US workshop from prototypes designed and built in the workshop at 260 Domain Road, South Yarra [‘Airedale’] by Captain Jansen.”
I’m sure I don’t need to remind anyone that the ISD was the Inter-Allied Services Department and that NEI stands for Netherlands East Indies. For those who have forgotten, the ISD was formed on 17 April 1942 by SOE British Army Officer Lt, Col. G Egerton Mott. Later on 6 July 1942 the AIB (Allied Intelligence Bureau) was formed to coordinate operations of the ISD and similar organisations. ISD then became known as Section A within AIB, but disbanded in February 1943. A new organisation SOA (Special Operations Australia) was formed in April 1943, but it was not under the control of the AIB. Then in May 1943 it was given a “cover” name, Service Reconnaissance Department (SRD). The famous Z Special Unit was at that point transferred from the AIB to the SRD and a Special M Unit was set up for the AIB. Rather than me going on forever I will link to a couple of short videos on YouTube which explain the heroic role of the Z Special Unit in WW2:
https://youtu.be/XBCdfKVJOKE
https://youtu.be/RKzo0_Y3-4o
260 Domain Road is just a pleasant stroll from 274 Domain Road, where Charlie and Doff enjoyed (or not) their early wedded life together.
“The proposed role of all the Special Operations organisations in Australia was to comprise the training and equipping personnel for left behind parties in occupied territories to harass enemy lines of communication, general sabotage, attacks on shipping and organising and directing local resistance. It was also considered advisable, in view of the experiences in Malaya, to establish secret communication channels in areas likely to be occupied, such as the northern areas of Australia, New Guinea and New Caledonia.”
The existence of the ISD was to be known only to the Prime Minister and the High Command. Lt. Col. Mott started the ISD in the premises at ‘Airedale’ 260 Domain Road and Captain Jansen was head of the NEI Section (Wireless Telegraphy and Communications NEI). Z Special Unit was set up in June 1942. “Its formation increased security and was of great assistance in stabilising ISD’s stores arrangement with the maximum of security.” When the SRD replaced the ISD it remained in Melbourne, where the technical and signal workshop, administration, stores, training and medical sections “were to be located”.
At 260 Domain Road a “nucleus” stores staff were based and an old stable and loft situated in the rear of the premises were converted into a storeroom. Special explosive stores were shipped to Somerton. When the workload of the SRD increased the number of staff rapidly increased although “volunteers were not plentiful”. Stores were to supplied from local manufacturers or if necessary from US sources. Staff came from all three forces but mainly from the Australian Military Forces (AMF), ie the Army At the end of 1944 there were 144 members of staff, 53 of them active..
Records were destroyed after the war. As one of the fellows says in the video, participants in Special Operations were not allowed to talk about their wartime role for 30 years or more. Many must have suffered from terrible PTSD if they were sent on missions overseas.”
The Somerton referred to would be the one north of Melbourne.
The Campbells on the listing with Dorothy were John and Jessie Campbell. She is listed as hd and he as “textile”.
When exactly did Abbott have the divorce documents?
It was likely some months before us. The fact that only now he noticed Carl had a job suggests he didn’t read it. Otherwise, he would have confidently said he was an Electrical fitter at Red Point Tools.
It is a bit strange Colleen remembered the ether suicide attempt but not that he had a job. In fact, Colleen said on podcasts he wasn’t working when it was Dorothy who was working ‘sometimes’,
Under what conditions were Colleen and Abbott allowed to read the divorce documents – only with a lit match outside 63 Bromby street?
I don’t think they deliberately withheld info I just think they didn’t read it – properly.
Steve H: Me old dad turned up with a Sher 3/8th drill kit, musta been about ’59 or thereabouts. He used it, I abused it and far as know me middle aged lads still prefer it to the slick Chinee cordless jobs with the Mikita Jap labels that are in vogue these days. I’m quite sure the back has never come off so original carbon brushes are likely there for keep; a credit to old Bill and his obviously highly skilled techos the likes of Carl Webb and Co., God bless em.
@ Steve et al
Now I have another ear-worm to contend with! Old John Robertson! Give me back the Smiths!! I’ve quite enjoyed having “There is a light” playing on the bad jukebox of the mind!
@ Punters anon
For what its worth, despite what Dorothy said and Derek is saying, I don’t think Carl left Bromby Street until November 1947, as he gives his address as 63 Bromby Street on his mother’s notification of death on 24 November and clears the flat out after 30th (according to the landlord Thomas Zimmermann and the November furniture sales ads). He may well have left his job back in May 1947 to avoid Dorothy’s maintenance payments… Did he get another?
@ David Morgan and Behrooz
Re the Maintenance Order – let’s see what the PROV say – I’ve had a quick look online and it would take quite a bit of physical searching without a date and knowing which sessions court (eg Prahran) – the records aren’t digitally indexed. Is the main purpose here to see what the grounds are and what Dorothy’s address is?
There are supposed to be some records from Sher Tools at the University of Melbourne Archives, but I can’t find a reference… The State Library of Victoria have some reports from the 1960s and some excellent photos by Wolfgang Sievers, again from the 1960s (Gordon Cramer is on to these). Sievers also took some great photos in 1949 at Kelly and Lewis in Springvale – which is where I think Carl may have become an electrical fitter (I think the bakery work was during the lean Depression years, when K & L had to shed staff…).
That missing year – November 1947-8 – what was old Carl up to? And where was Dorothy?
@ David Morgan
I think that Profs Abbott and Fitzgerald had access to Dorothy’s affidavit but possibly not the Webb vs Webb divorce file. I wonder whether they had a family copy of the affidavit?
David –
He (DA) also seems to be under the impression that Charles worked at his father’s bakery before Red Point position. He may have been doing so part time but his electoral rolls for 1928, 1931, 1934, 1936 and 1937 (all the ones I could find) all list him as an “electrical fitter”.
Nick has written extensively about this. On his marriage certificate, he describes himself as an “instrument maker” which is also his job in his 1943 electoral roll.
John Sanders
As always I await your latest revelations with bated breath. Is your mystery researcher THE Mr Stranger in Paradise?
Margot Fonteyn certainly pissed off poor ol’ Edouard Borovansky. From danceline.com.au: “Fonteyn was dismissive of Borovansky (as she confirms in her autobiography), and she let Ninette de Valois, (artistic director of the Royal Ballet), know how she felt.”
Alice Springs. My own experience of the Alice back in August ’83 was somewhat eventful. During the night of 18-19 August I heard an almighty bang just outside the camp site I was staying in which turned out to be a hit and run in which a female cyclist was killed. But when I turned on the radio in my little two man tent in the morning I heard even more disturbing news. I had spent the previous night at the Inland Motel at the base of Ayers Rock (now Uluru) and on the national news they were talking about that very doss-house. Turned out that some crazy individual had driven his truck into the bar killing five and injuring many more. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Crabbe – or does your paranoia over links mean you won’t click on anything? What’s up? Is ASIO on your trail or something? And surely you can copy and paste your source material for us all to peruse.
Don’t think you’ll get very far with your Stratford research, but each to their own. There have been some exciting new leads recently which you seem to have missed completely.
Not really following the whole Stratford saga so these have probably been posted before:
“NOTICE is hereby given, that after the expiry
of fourteen days from the publication hereof
application will be made to the Supreme, Court of
the Colony of Victoria, in the Probate jurisdiction,
that PROBATE of the WILL of CHARLES
ALEXANDER STRATFORD, late of Avon Plains in
the colony of Victoria, farmer and licensed victualler,
deceased, be granted to Louisa Wilhelmina Stratford,
of Avon Plains aforesaid, the widow of the said deceased
and sole executrix named in and appointed by
the said will.
Dated this twenty third day of November 1892.”
From: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/8486113?searchTerm=%22louisa%20wilhelmina%20stratford%22
“UNREGISTERED MIDWIVES
For having performed the duties of
a midwife without having been
registered, Louisa Wilhelmina Stratford
was fined £3 with £2/16/8 costs
by Mr. R. Mclver, P.M., at the Mildura
court yesterday. Rachael Vida
Ueeble, and Elizabeth Gansberg were
each fined £1 with £2/16/8 costs for
a similar offence. In dismissing the
case brought against Janet Krake,
Sir. Mclver told the defendant that
she had been “sailing close to the
wind.” Normal) Strahle, an inspector
for the Commission of Public Health,
appeared for t prosecution.”
From: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/258448190?searchTerm=%he22louisa%20wilhelmina%20stratford%22
Louisa Wilhelmina Stratford
If the above link to the midwives story doesn’t work it is from the Sunraysia Daily, Wed 25 May 1927
@Jo, thanks, all I have is a provisional number. I think they already have received the request to consider. If you mean to say you can directly go and fetch the files, physically, or somehow online (I doubt they were available open, none in the list were), I can provide the number (it is not a case number yet). My concern is a double request with the same number may confuse and delay things. My suggestion is, let us just wait a few days and if nothing happens, I will let you know of the number directly via Nick Pelling. They only just received it, and with the time difference, may not have even looked at it yet.
@David Morgan. There is no reason to doubt what happened, and give credit when it is not due. They did not have the Web v Web file, obviously, for otherwise they would have done what they are doing now re. CW’s employer information. They only had the Affidavit. That explains their not knowing CW’s employer. Whether they offer any acknowledgment, let alone appreciation, for our finding it, that is another question, which I doubt will happen. So, you are both right and wrong in saying they had the files before us. They had the affidavit, or at least had read it. They did not have the Web v. Web file. I am sorry to say, but the last sentence you have also is not exactly correct, and not sure why it tends to justify the problems with their sharing more information. If they had the Affidavit earlier, they obviously deliberately withheld sharing the document itself for months, or verbatim reporting of it (if they did little here little there, they could have certainly shared all its text). That is why, as Nick Pelling says on the top of this post, folks were frustrated.
@Belinda, thanks for those ad(s). It is odd but interesting the requirement of “strong personality.” Wonder if it is a boiler plate requirement, or it is a note on CW having left his job. The other finding about 50 pounds is also interesting. Thanks for sharing.
@ Furphy. Thanks for your thought and openness to various possibilities. Actually, what you said reminding me of John Sanders’s point about Dorothy’s cousin declaring TSM dead, if I understood that correctly, makes me even more lean on that interpretation. So, good point. For me, the phrasing “two years and upwards” can only be a letting know of a fact, that she had left her domicile before then. If the point was just to confirm meeting a legal requirement, one year would have sufficed. Two year, unnecessary, but at least rounded to two. But upwards makes it clear she was not domiciled there beyond 3 years. If she had never left, could have just said so.
How did this happen? I went down the rabbit hole after Louisa Wilhelmina Stratford. I don’t even care about her.
In Sands and McDougall 1925 & 1930 editions for Victoria “Mrs L W Stratford” is listed as “nurse, Mildura”
Back on 3 August Pat provided the following details:
“Charles Alexander Stratford (variations Char, Alex, Alexr) married to Louise (var. Louisa. Lousia)) Wilhelmina (var. Wilhe) Reiter (var. Reither, Riter, Reichtem, Reitcher, Reisher, Ruther, Reighter) Trust me, it’s the same person…
Now, the offspring:
1872 Alfred Edward
1874 Charles Frederick Byron
1875 Mary Georgina Louisa
1876 Henry Mason Gerrard
1878 Lawrence Conrad
1881 Powys Lorraine
1883 Jane Arundel
1885 Martin Harrold
1889 Ferdinand
1890 Florence Olivia
They were born in St. Arnaud or Avon Plains”
On Trove I found a couple of refs to the eldest son Alfred Edward Stratford. From the good ol’ Sunraysia Daily Saturday 21 Dec1929:
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/264348724?searchTerm=%22alfred%20edward%20stratford%22
“Alfred Edward Stratford, laborer, said he had been working in the fruit industry for about eight years. He was out of employment now…He was not married. He was renting part of a house and KEEPING HIS MOTHER (my emphasis).”
Don’t read this if you love horses (from the Ballarat Star, Wednesday 29 Oct 1902):
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/211471635?searchTerm=%22alfred%20edward%20stratford%22
@ misca,
All I know is that John Comber Robertson, as the informant on Dorothy’s birth record, wrote under her mother’s place of birth ‘Fitzroy’.
Here are the images of said birth record. I have taken some snapshots of the ‘Witnesses’ bit, as I can’t read what’s been written. Can you?
https://i.imgur.com/a8mpzPj.png
https://i.imgur.com/om5Zs2d.png
https://i.imgur.com/LR1BFig.png
https://i.imgur.com/LblgFLH.png
@behrooz,
It was the impression given by Colleen that Carl was a wife-beating, gambler who didn’t work while his wife was in the chemist working all hours and looking after Carl’s mother and him. When she said she had worked 6 months in 18 months. She also may have excluded the period of time in Domain Road and after her six months of work. She looked after Carl’s mother for 2 weeks in 1941. His mother had hypertension at that time. Presumably, Dorothy didn’t work again until leaving in September 1946. Possibly she worked 6 months from October 1941 to September 1946. A period of almost 5 years. They were a total mismatch in terms of age and interests. He wanted a pipe and slippers and she wanted to dance the night away. It is hard to figure out what Dorothy believed about Carl. Maybe living in Domain road with a roadster gave her the wrong idea about him being a wealthy fun-loving playboy.
Just for historical purposes, before someone punches me in the face again…
Dorothy was probably born at Nurse Oates’ Private Hospital, 520 Doveton st, Ballarat.
Last one from me today.
I see Gordon “The Moron” Cramer has recruited Behrooz as support for his misogynistic rant about Dorothy’s affidavit. From tamamshud.blogspot:
“… Behrooz’s latest update paints a different picture. In it, he positions himself as a Judge and notes the apparent one-sidedness of Dorothy’s account of the events within the marriage. Her evidence was, in effect, all about her, how she was the victim on every occasion and yet Carl by his actions in proposing a settlement, for example, showed that he was a reasonable and fair-minded person. Does that mean that he wasn’t an abuser? No, but neither does it mean that he was and Carl, having departed this world, was in no position to give the court his side of the story.
Social conditioning is a real issue, media, and various interest groups consistently and actively try to influence the public mind. We see it every day. Notably, this occurs in the Domestic Violence arena where women are always painted as the victim and men are always the perpetrators, but is that the truth? No, of course, it’s not, in the real world, both sexes can and do commit wilful acts of violence.”
He concludes “Behrooz provides us with a voice of reason for which this commentator will be eternally grateful.”
Jo,
Do you know how maintenance orders worked back in 1947? I keep thinking of a garnishee order but where the employer (not the bank) deducts it. I think most people were paid in cash every week in a little brown envelope. So once the offender Carl had all his wages what would be the mechanism of payment?
@ Steve H,
I thought you were going deeper and post about Charles Alexander Stratford’s origins as the son of the 5th Earl of Aldborough!
Biography (from WikiTree)
Mason Gerard Stratford, 5th Earl of Aldborough, eloped and married on 2 August 1804 in Kirkcudbright, Scotland to Cornelia Jane Tandy, eldest daughter of Charles Henry Tandy, Esq.[1]
Children included 2 sons and 2 daughters.
Benjamin O’Neale born about 1806
Mason absconded with Mrs Thomas Newcomen.
Mason was in debtor’s prison from 1818 to Sep 1826.
Cornelia sued for divorce in 1826 which was granted in Dec 1826.
Mason went to Paris and on 23 Sept 1826 married at the British Embassy to Mary Arundell. He was 42 yrs old, Mary was under 21 years. They had at least 5 children. This marriage was declared bigamous and the children were not entited to be called Earl of Aldborough.
Mason Gerard Stratford died on 4 Oct 1849, aged 65 years in the Italian seaport town of Leghorn. His debts were estimated to be £150,000 [2]
Sources
↑ “Baltinglass Chronicles, 1851-2001” by Paul Gorry publ 2007 p 18
↑ “Baltinglass Chronicles, 1851-2001” by Paul Gorry publ 2007 p 18
Burke’s EXTINCT PEERAGES (1883), p. 623
After Mason’s death in 1849, all his 5 children were baptised in Italy, Charles Alexander included. In November 1853 Charles A. Stratford arrived in Australia on board of the Sea Ranger, aged 24. He married Louisa Reither in 1871, she was the daughter of Carl (Charles) August Reither, b. 24 Aug 1826 in Danzig, d. 4 March 1901 in St. Arnaud.
Pat –
Wow. Those images are next to impossible to read. Especially the one with the full page. If you can blow up other parts like you did the last two, it might make it a bit easier as it would allow one to see more of his handwriting sample for guessing.
The last one you blew up could 1. be the name of a Dr. Sloss? And the second looks something Like Mrs. E J/or G ___ata?
There is a Dr. William Alexander Sloss (1872-1966) born in Bacchus Marsh.
“Dr. William Alexander Sloss: He has given medical service to Ballarat for over
50 years. In 1954 he completed 25 years of unbrokenservice as a member of the
Ballarat and District ‘ Base Hospital’s committee of management.”
@Steve H: That’s a safe site to ignore (your comment had me check it out and I notice one of his most recent is “if this Englishman as actually an Australian, then he must be our Webb, and therefore Webb isn’t SM”…..or something…..
@ Pat and Steve
With links to the Earl of Aldborough this is starting to sound like Doff of the Durbevilles! A very interesting background! I wonder how much of this Dorothy might have known…
@ David and Behrooz
I won’t do anything re the PROV if you are all already on to it, just here if short physical visits are required. And just a quick caution that some of the PROV leads for people with the same names have been followed and drawn blanks as they are for other people sharing the same names….
David – I really don’t know how maintenance and alimony might have worked in the 1940s. Even in the early twentieth century many factory workers received cash wages in an envelope, or a cheque. The 1940s were the days of cash, cheque or postal order? There may be information in the maintenance order on Dorothy’s whereabouts, although this would contradict her need for safety away from Carl…It will be interesting to see what emerges. I imagine lots of men were quite easily able to avoid their maintenance obligations!
@ Belinda
Well spotted! The Red Point Tool Company’s need for a foreman with a strong personality may have been on account of irascible employees, such as a certain Charlie Webb?!!
Pat –
Could the other name be Miss E J Oates? Elizabeth Jane Oates 1858 – 1940 was Nurse Oates.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/26543201?searchTerm=%22Nurse%20Oates%22
@misca
You can download the pdf file on FamilySearch (Angela’s tree for Dorothy Jean Robertson), but there’s not much more to see. I agree it could be the doctor you have found! No luck with the Mrs. name. From the name of the street, Doveton, I think she was born at the Nurse Oates’ Private Hospital, but maybe there were other hospitals at the same street. Let me know if you can’t download it on FamilySearch, but I think it’s going to work. Maybe Nick could make a post with the images of all available docs or are there copyright issues?
Thanks @Jo and @Pat re the Yarraville residence confusion, so just Victoria, I’ll cease looking for Yarraville footy pics 🙂
@JohnSanders, I’m quietly fascinated about the Stratford’s in Brighton now, will see what I can find to assist ….. I’m Mary Poppins and I’m here to help.
Behrooz: you might now like to give a little more thought to another more pressing subject; namely in that you and other dedicated researchers seem to have become enmeshed in an ultimately damaging deception by a determined perpetrator, blown open as luck transpired by one who, by your own definition is prone to making duplitous errors of judgement. The initial familial leads offered, though initially quite plausable born of our early frustrations, were obviously so tailored to enhance certain low value piecemeal information taking the form of a slow release capsule on the Abbott Facebook Page, at whim. So the not so dumb inheritors of family secrets, death doctor John Bennett’s sons Bruce and Anthony? used that as an initiative thus playing their hand to perfection; Well, not quite if we can count an unforseen coincidence which I just happened to become cognisant of quite by chance and I say that with all due modesty. For someone who by their own admissions to having had no pre conceptions on rules of engagement at time of entering our little quagmire, you selflessly set about getting our shaky confidence back on course and for that we be indebted. On a sad contrary note and in spite of all the well deserved accolades, your opting to accept one version of lineage data to the exclusion of another through personal preference you fall into a trap of your own making inn not having a clear appreciation of the facts and their limitiations. Cagey Bruce Bennett protector of family secrets played his hand to perfection, no doubt convincing our generally astute analysts that his offer of useful links to the families were genuine, revealing a stark lack of attention to detail by all accounts, gross nievity being more apt. As for my small part in his downfall, if we might call it that, this only came about by a close study of another researcher’s interesting yarn on a chance 1915 battle field encounter between two cousins, a Troop Sgt. Jack Robertson & medical Corpsman Norm Bennett. So I make no just claims on the disclosure, which in any case may not of itself offer up a realistic path towards any form of ultimate solution according to your assumed negative stance.
@ Misca et al
I’ve just checked JCR and Alice’s 1977 address – 8 Marlton Crescent St Kilda and it is a Victorian house (or possibly a house that is no longer there) in the grounds of St Michael’s Grammar School. If it is the Victorian house I’ve actually been there – it is now part of the school’s kindergarten. I’ll keep checking with friends who went to St Michaels during the late 70s, there may be photos, memories of daughters etc although I think the family I have spoken to were probably the ones with the strongest links amongst people I know… It would have been a very nice place to live. The original school building is an old mansion, fronting Chapel Street. Many of the contemporary school buildings are quite new, so there were probably beautiful grounds in the 70s – its still very leafy and well maintained. Its a very good school, one of the most expensive independent schools in Victoria, with a strong reputation for creativity and inclusivity.
This fella G. E. Stratford living there was born on 8 Feb and turns 22 in 1949.
Ad says 8/1/49 there but I think that’s a typo, per chance, he gets a birthday greeting for a few years in Feb. Could this lead to the mysterious W Stratford?
PS: I’m not on ancestry or family tree sites, but that’s a clue for searchers.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/36351892?searchTerm=Stratford%20281%20Brighton%20Rd
Steve H: don’t let the Charles & Willhemena dead end deal get you ruffled. In yon rabbit hole, there’s always an escape route to safety above ground if danger lurks. from snakes & goannas and we ferrits. Bunnys being also justly concerned with alternate more devious methods of escape when cunts like us choose to invade their space. Gotta tell you I beat you to ‘The Alice’ by a fare margin, during a tour of duty in 1976 where I also got to kick arse at CIA sponsored Pine Gap & Woomera facilities where a long haired anti US base protester scourge had assembled.
Pat
Blast! I just checked on here to see if my post re Cramer had been accepted and I saw your contribution.
If you really want to go into the Stratford family see:
https://www.genuki.org.uk/big/Colin/Misc/Stratfords/Stratfords01.html
You go right back!
Tidbit 1 “…in 1080, Water Stratford was held by Robert Doley of Turdtin, and his successors seemingly took the surname of Stratford.
In the year 1235 William De Stratford, held a Knight’s Fee, and again in 1240, along with his son, another William De Stratford, were witnesses to a Deed, whilst the elder William was described as Lord of Stratford. During the Reign of Henry the Third, William De Stratford, the son of William De Stratford, granted lands to Biddesdon Abbey. From 1279 until 1286, William De Stratford, held the Village consisting of eight hides, and his brothers Richard, Robert, and Water are mentioned in the same Deed. William must have died before 1302, for he was succeeded by his son John, who held the Estate until his death in 1346.
The Deeds, again cause some confusion, as he left the Estate to his Widow, Isabella and his three daughters, Elizabeth, Joan and Eleanor, but in 1359, William De Stratford, the son of John, the son of John, the son of John, recovered the Manor from Isabella. This William De Stratford left no living issue as his brother, Thomas was named as his heir, and eventually the Manor was reclaimed by the descendants of the three daughters of John De Stratford in 1437.
The Church of Water Stratford, was given by William De Stratford to Luffield Priory and confirmed his Grant in the year 1217.”
Tidbit 2: “Mason Gerard Stratford, the Fifth Earl, was the subject of much controversy and discussion. He married at Kirkudbright in Scotland, Cornelia Jane Tandy of Waterford, he being 20 yrs, and she 22 yrs. His statement, disposed in a letter after his death written by him stated. ‘ Before I saw Miss Tandy, I was married to Miss Maria Teresa Davenport, who was then alive.’
If he so was, the Marriage Certificate has not come to light. He was also married at the British Embassy in Paris on the 23rd of December 1826, to Mary the daughter of the late Samuel Arundell, who was a Minor, with her mother’s consent. By this bigamous marriage she bore him several children. The Divorce by the Arches Court of Canterbury took place on the 6th of December 1826, so I personally cannot see why his Marriage with Mary Arundell should have been declared illegal.”
From Ancestry.co.uk:
Mary Arundell was born in 1808 in Dursley, Gloucestershire (just up the road from me). Died 1876.
Charles Alexander Stratford listed as born in Belgium 1834.
Louisa Wilhelimina Reither born in Creswick, Victoria, Australia in 1854 to Charles (Carl) Augustus Reither and Susan Howard. She passed away on 31 Mar 1935 in Mildura, Victoria, Australia.
Susan Howard (1831-1911) born Torquay, Devon, (sort of just DOWN the road from me).
Alice listed as child of Louisa but no additional information
And so on and so on. Does this prove anything about Alice? Was she related by “blood” to any of these?
@ Jo and David Morgan
I received the reply re. maintenance order files. Basically the records are restricted per Public Records Act of 1973, so they can’t provide us. They just offered links for further information as below:
About closed records in general see here https://prov.vic.gov.au/closed-records
The basic point is for adults there is a 75 year period of no access, and 90% of all files are closed. I guess from 1947 to now 2022 it is 75, so we are at the cusp of it, but they did not say that, I am only supposing. Perhaps we just got unlucky seeking it this year, and next year it may be available.
There can be special access, can read about it here: https://prov.vic.gov.au/requesting-special-access
Requests can be mailed here:
Keeper of Public Records
Public Record Office Victoria
PO Box 2100
North Melbourne VIC 3051
Alternatively, can be contacted via email [email protected]
Copying rate information can be found here https://prov.vic.gov.au/copying-services-public-users (they think perhaps will be $22).
Any ways, that is about it. Jo, I will let you decide whether to pursue this or not. I will no longer pursue it. Even if we did find access, it will be restricted, I am sure, and cannot be shared as a document with all. So that is what you would expect if you try.
Thanks for offering for help, but please don’t feel you have to do it, as I am not sure it will be worth the trouble. If per experience you think it is doable for you, that will be great of course if you try.
Jo –
Woah Nelly! You casually slip in info about the landlord Thomas Zimmermann like everyone knew? Did I miss some background on this? I’m trying to stay up to speed but that was a zinger!
His divorce from his wife in 1940 is SOMETHING ELSE!
Seriously, please point out what I missed about this. Could you link it for me?
I posted this a while ago and no one seemed interested, maybe because it was ‘old news’ or maybe because no one paid too much attention and I completely forgot about it.
‘Pat
on September 2, 2022 at 1:50 pm said:
Geelong Advertiser
6 August 1923 South Barwon Council
(…) The channel near Mr. Webb’s new bakery, Colac road, has been attended to temporarily.’
This is August 1923 and Richard August Webb’s bakery is in South Barwon Council, Colac rd, Grovedale… maybe that’s why Carl left Swinburne College, ie, the distance?
I have found these lovely pictures of the area and one interesting thing is that the Freemasons Hall was built around the same time:
•35 Hesse St. The red brick Freemasons Hall with leadlight window in gable built in 1924. It has a temple like appearance and Arts and Crafts details. Note the masons’ symbols in the cartouche above the window.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/82134796@N03/50944030533/in/photostream/
@misca
The photo of the grave of Thomas, Mary and Joyce Mary Carter Davies (of 63 Bromby st) is now available https://pt.findagrave.com/memorial/212619050/joyce-mary-carter/photo
I have been reviewing my notes and I found a son for Amelia Bailye and John Wilson Morris. John Morris, baptised in 2 May 1869, in Astbury, Cheshire, England. (England-EASy GS film 1647850 item 1 p. 180). Did he go with his parents to Australia? What happened to him?
If we’re so determined in obtaining a fitting resolution whereby justice can have a real chance of prevalence at long last then, in the words of Prosper Thomson “have I got a deal for you”. Nick Pelling must recall with lingering self doubts his inability to spot concerns of possible mischief by deception occasioned by his so called Dorothy D’Arcy debriefing of Bruce John Bennett, son of a Dr. J. B. Bennett who had given false witness at the 1949 mystery man death inquest. In that regard and so to bearing in mind that loyal son of the father is very likely to be in possession of dad’s involvent in more truthful detail there is a chance to strike while our iron is hot. We happen to have amongst us right now, a man proven to be most adept in his ability to access high levels of the judiciary with his pleadings. So here right now we can, by means of flow on effect, have good Prof. Behrooz, well learned in the field of subtle pursuasion, to champion our cause through auspices of the S.A. Attorney General’s office. A Supreme Court intervention could then invoke it’s unlimited powers to have the contemporary 1949/58 ‘Sine Die’ Coroners inquest hearings re convened in which, brother witnesses Bruce & Tony would be called upon to ‘tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth’ &c. That should put everything in proper perspective and for the better good whatsmore. Tamam Shud rules OK?
Peteb: a well thought out and synsinctly outlined synopsis of what might have been, if only we had a better overall understanding of what was going down at the time within the halls of power at Angas Street CIB. All the doubts will hopefully be put to the test and laid to rest if you persist in pointing out the serious prevailing investigative shortfalls in the whole sorry saga. Don’t let up and don’t forget the cheque for services rendered.
@ Behrooz: I appreciate your plea for “understanding” of Carl’s experience in this world, rather than focusing on identifying his psychiatric and medical diagnoses or labeling his personality.
I am writing in response to the discussion about Carl and Dorothy’s marriage and I would like to provide some input from my perspective as a licensed psychotherapist and as a researcher in the field of human behavior. I am also a part time professor at the Clinical Psychology Department, of a local private university.
Clearly, Dorothy’s affidavit is not an unbiased assessment of Carl. Some “embellishments” (perhaps, per her lawyer’s instruction) are to be expected. Having said that, the document reads as an account of a woman who indeed suffered domestic abuse and partner violence. Her account is detailed and specific, describing events that unfolded over several years and showing a cyclic yet escalating pattern. She identifies multiple witnesses, including police officers, which adds to the veracity of her claims. I have no reason to believe that she was intentionally untruthful. I do think that some things have been omitted, inevitably yet regretfully. Carl was almost certainly a complex human being, who wrote and read poetry, was intelligent and enjoyed solving puzzles.
In cases some cases of unexplained deaths, forensic psychologists conduct a procedure called “psychological autopsy”, which is an attempt to understand the experience and the intention of the deceased person retrospectively. I am not a forensic psychologist and haven’t been specifically trained to conduct “psychological autopsy”.
Below are just SOME questions that I would have re: Carl’s life:
1) An obvious question is about his behaviors outside the domestic arena. Was he similarly irritable and aggressive with his co-workers, siblings, acquaintances etc.?
2) With such a pattern of aggressive behaviors and mood instability, substance abuse is very common way of self-soothing. Alcohol abuse is strongly associated with partner violence and yet Dorothy does not mention Carl’s alcohol consumption. Was Carl completely sober or a moderate casual drinker? In my experience it is not uncommon that children of parents who suffered alcohol abuse choose sobriety to avoid becoming like their parents. Did Carl’s father or mother suffer from alcohol abuse? Did Carl use or abuse other substances to regulate his moods?
3) Family of origin issues. The level of partner violence described by Dorothy is often found in men who have witnessed, or experienced abuse and violence committed in their families of origin. My understanding is that Carl got married at 36 and that he stayed for quite some time with his parents and their family business, basically until his father’s death. Did Carl witness his father abusing his mother and did he stay for so long with them in order to protect her? Was Carl himself abused (physically, sexually, emotionally) by either of his parents or any of siblings?
4) Carl and Dorothy were married for 6 years and yet childless. Were there issues with fertility, or was it by choice? Were there other reasons?
5) Carl’s romantic and sexual history. Were there other long-term romantic relationships prior to Dorothy? Was Carl sexually attracted to Dorothy? If not, did Carl go to bed at 7pm among other reasons also to avoid intimacy with Dorothy?
I could write more but think it is probably already too much, especially since this is my first contribution.
Pat: seems further attemtps to pacify your negative comments of my many faults are destined to end in failure though I’ll persist with my cordiality in spite of the effect upon the damage to my bloated ego. Speaking of which my use of the word Strine was not intended to mean anything in archaic Porto or Espanol slang, in fact it is a brief description of coloquial Australian, the language as she is spoke. As for links as an accecepted tool for passing on information, it reminds me of chain mail and Na..Na..Na..Na. Na.. abuse, so I’ll get by posting in my own simple style, if you don’t mind, tedious and totally devoid of any useful information. You can also keep your Google translator, spell checks and the like if you must but, my mistakes be a key component of my persona ie. ‘humble but cunning’, so you’ll just have to bare with them…or not!
Jo,
This is a WOW reply from Penny from the State Library Victoria… (superb research!).
Our response to your request ask81119 is:
Hi David,
Thank you for contacting the State Library Victoria.
I believe you are referring to this series of posts on Cipher Mysteries responding to Somerton Man: the Webb vs Webb Divorce Files. Were you hoping for help in verifying a proposed connection between Helmut Newton and Carl Webb by way of 63 Bromby Street? Or, were you seeking a correction for the article, ‘Helmut Newton’s Australian Years’?
In reading through Jo’s posts regarding the shed and reviewing the attached photograph, I can see why it was proposed that this shed behind 63 Bromby Street is the “little hut”. It is compelling that Jo’s contact who confirmed 63 Bromby Street as the residence was a researcher involved in the Jewish Museum of Australia’s Helmut Newton exhibition.
While I am unable to verify this myself, here is what I have been able to found in the way of records of Helmut Newton’s address for the period and those two properties:
As you noted, NAA records confirm that Helmut Newton resided at 3 Bromby Street South Yarra (click to view NAA: B884, V377945 – p.9 ‘Proceedings for discharge’). I confirmed this address by checking his electoral roll entry for 1947 (scan attached), which reads:
12252 Newton, Helmut, 3 Bromby st., photographer, M
Regarding the description that Guy Featherstone used in his article, Helmut Newton’s Australian Years, that:
“[…] a small hut at the rear of an apartment house at 3 Bromby Street, South Yarra, became his residence.”
This appears to be based on Helmut Newton’s own description of his residence in his work, Autobiography (2003) – excerpt below:
“Toward the end of the war, I changed my room to a little hut at the back of a rooming house in Bromby Street, South Yarra, a suburb of Melbourne. When I say a “little hut”, it was truly a little hut, under a big old tree, with a kind of car port at the back of it where I later kept my car. It was about two meters wide and four meters long. As you came in, my cabin trunk, which I had brough all the way from Berlin, stood in the left-hand corner.
There were some little photographs and some framed collages that I had done as a young boy hanging on the walls. The walls were covered with faded floral wallpaper, and there was a very narrow single iron bedstead covered with a faded floral cotton bedspread. It also had a washstand with a mirror above it. And that was about it, because you couldn’t fit anything more in.
The only door was what the Australians call a “fly-wire door” – a screen door. To have a shower, I had to go into the main house, which meant going across a pretty backyard with flowers, into the house, along a corridor and into the only bathroom in the boarding house. […]” pp.126-127
Both numbers 3 and 63 were listed as apartments with no owner in the 1944-1945 Sands & McDougall’s directory. I consulted the Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works (MMBW) plans and used the Public Record Office Victoria’s Map Warper tool to try and find architectural plans for the houses in that area from 1946, or at least the 1940s. Although 3 Bromby Street was purchased by Melbourne Grammar, this purchase happened in 1957 (see entry in the Victorian Heritage Database). Unfortunately at most I’ve found plans from the 1890s of Bromby Street properties, so I cannot confirm whether 3 Bromby Street could have held a hut in the 1940s or when that structure behind 63 Bromby Street was established. For reference, here are the plans:
Includes 3 Bromby Street from 1896 – Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works detail plan, 896, 897, 898, City of Melbourne [cartographic material] (1896).
Includes 63 Bromby Street from 1896 – Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works detail plan, 896 & 897, City of Melbourne (1895).
If helpful here is a guide on How to read the MMBW 40ft to the inch detail plans and a blog on ‘Using maps for family history research’.
I’m sorry I could not offer more conclusive evidence either way, but I hope this information is of some interest. All the best with you and the Cipher Mysteries community’s continuing research into this and other matters!
If you have any further questions on this matter please contact me as below
Kind regards,
Penny
John S .. in the mail mate, just hold off banking it for 90 days.
So, no Helmut Newton at #63! Sorry everyone! It was the “apartment house” description that drew me in… I’d have kept away if they had written “boarding house”! There could well have been a hut behind #3 in the 40s, Melbourne Grammar built their music faculty building there in 1960…
I’d love to have Penny’s job – doing rigorous research and helping you all on a professional basis! As opposed to banging out maverick comments on my iPhone 7! I was a keen contributor to the SLV’s Collective Isolation Memory Bank project in 2020 and they have archived a few of my posts for posterity! I think my favourite was the recreation of when I was teaching an on line class & one of my children had to walk past to reach the washing line, she didn’t want to appear on camera, so she popped a rubber horse’s head on and shimmied past, anonymously, in the background. I was engrossed in my content and couldn’t work out why the students were all losing the plot, falling around laughing! Sorry, I’m digressing again!! On with the sleuth!
Some very insightful comments from @ Sophie here!
Pat –
Thanks for the update on the Joyce Mary Carter and family pictures. I wonder who added the “ENJOY THE TEA PARTY” bit? Have you managed to find out what happened to her American husband? I have been wondering if he was perhaps Constable Carter from Dorothy’s divorce papers…
Mary Poppins: your kind offer is much appreciated as I’ve not been able to extend on my initial observations re an address conveniet to Somerton beach and the first attender Const. Moss’ residence, plus of course the strange setting of 281 Broughton Rd. which came and went over the years. Prior to Mrs. J. W. Stratford’s occupancy from 1938 through 1950 or thereabouts, a greengrocer then a cobbler had their business premises there, it being right on the busy railway road crossing at Harrow Rd. Trying to ascertain her status and to whom she was related proved rather vexing hence my suspicion that she was from interstate. Search of S.A. geni and the Sands Mc. register was little help although a certain John William Stratford 1886/1965 shows up hitched to Ethel Maud Louisa in 1909 which doesn’t tick the right box for ID. A look back on the 1973 index reveals that she has moved further south to a 500 number and by unfortunately that’s all she wrote. Had I been able to connect the lady with my other Stratford family from Richmond ie. Edward and or his sister Alicia there might have fair cause to see possibility of a connection to elusive Dorothy in the area but, alas it wasn’t to be and looks more than ever like the usual coincidental non related deal that characterises our many frustrations.
David –
Thanks for sharing Penny’s response. The Helmut Newton info is a fantastic bi-product of all of this. Reviewing his files, it seems most likely that he had his shed at 3 (not 63) Bromby but that doesn’t take away from the history and energy of the time. His wife June (Browne) Brunell was an up-and-coming actress who was more well-known than he was when they first met. Her father (estranged) was a vaudevillian comedian who fits right in with the Keane family interests…
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/119888668?searchTerm=%22Thomas%20Francis%20Browne%22
@ Misca
Someone had pondered who the landlord might be, so I looked to see who the building was listed under in the 1945 edition of Sands and McDougall (the State library doesn’t have digital copies for 1946-1949) – that’s where I found Thomas Zimmermann and the flats being referred to as Murray and Yarram. (I’ve seen vacancy ads with the name Yarram). I posted on this on 17th.
It makes sense that Zimmermann would use the name Yarram, as he worked as a contractor in that area. There was a flood where he tried, sadly, unsuccessfully to save someone…
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/205193181?searchTerm=zimmerman%20bromby – Zimmerman tender
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/203998183?searchTerm=zimmerman%20bromby – Zimmerman tender
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/62678159?searchTerm=Thomas%20zimmermann – Zimmerman rescue
I didn’t find anything about a divorce!!
I assumed Zimmermann was Jewish, from his name, as Bromby Street is around the corner from the Melbourne Synagogue – build in the early 1930s. I also thought that might be why Helmut Newton had found his way there….Even today a lot of the apartment owners around this area are Jewish families, although many of the main Jewish communities are now further to the south.
I also posted a link to one of my favourite South Yarra stories – telling of a letter sent to “Uncle Borer” of the Borer and White Ant Extermination Company by a desperate Mr Glaser of Vienna… Luckily it was read at a dinner party around the corner from Charlie and Doff’s place…
https://www.smh.com.au/national/a-random-act-of-kindness-how-a-south-yarra-dinner-party-and-the-future-prime-minister-harold-holt-saved-a-jewish-boy-from-hitler-20161114-gsorw4.html
@ Pat and Misca – I’ve just noticed “Enjoy the Tea Party”! I assume that was a pre Ms Palin nod to Joyce’s Massachusetts days! I wonder what happened to Mr Carter? My husband had two great aunts who went over to the US from Brisbane with American service beaux…
Behrooz: first and foremost many thanks for the heads up and clarification of our minor misunderstanding on an earlier issue regarding the Stratford conundrum which I had missed through a host of diversions. But on to another matter which might pique your interest regarding Dorothy’s cousin Dr. Bennett. Were you aware that shortly after his rather casual death pronouncement John left his job as an intern at RAH and relocated to parts unknown, quite possibly to a small town in West Australia where he put up his shingle in partnership with another MD, it being later dissolved by mutual consent. He also had business in Melbourne and dealings with a British based Greek family requiring sponsorship for an Australian landing permit in the early fifties. When he belatedly presented at the 1949 inquest he excused himself and informed the coroner that he had been away for some time but had made some notes on the death cause for the inquest to deliberate upon. So why the frantic haste to leave Adelaide, a young doctor with a steady job and whose parents and inlaws stayed put, with Norman his dad still in practice locallly. Although I have made frequent reference to this unusual behavior in the past and more recently, it hasn’t prompted any desire for probing by our loyal lot. I’m of course wondering whether such information would be likely to advance or alter any pre conceived views on this aspect of the case thus far.
John Sanders
Many commiserations on your Strine debacle with Pat. Your spelling mistakes are always most amusing. You may not be aware that you asked Pat to “bare” – rather than bear – with your mistakes, thus asking her in a very ungentlemanly fashion to strip off every time you make a balls-up with your grammar or vocabulary.
Strewth cobber, you love coming the raw prawn especially with wowsers, show ponies, whingeing poms, drongos et al but perhaps you take it a little far when you hit the old turps. You’ve already gone troppo old son, no need to exacerbate the situation. Or do you have a thorn in your thongs, a spider in your strides, flies on your doodle or an itch in the clacker? Maybe you even swallowed a Bondi cigar, you old cockroach! Too right eh? Bloody oath!
Talking about going troppo are you being a good dinky-di, ridgy-didge Aussie when portraying yourself as an aficionado of the great Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski? Wonders never cease, although I have been previously been tempted to think of you as a Lord Jim type, or an Almayer or Peter Willems, or most likely a Brandofied Kurtz, living up there in the Mekong Delta. The horror! The horror! This is the end, beautiful friend, the end.
You’ll remember the ship in ‘The End of the Tether’ was called the “Sofala”, which in turn reminds me of Peter Weir’s (best?) film from 1974, ‘The Cars That Ate Paris’, filmed in Sofala, NSW ,which if you recall features a mad surgeon who carries out LOBOTOMIES with POWER TOOLS – hot topics here and elsewhere recently – on crash victims who are kept as “veggies” for his nefarious experiments.
As for the plot of ‘Tether’ I’ll take your Glenelg link on trust as I read that particular story 40+ years ago, probably around the same time you were knocking around the Alice. Have you been to Wyndham John? If not I’m one up on you for surviving the heat, dust and flies of a dying outback town. See ‘The Overlanders’ with your old mate Chips Rafferty. Indeed the place is where a giant goanna, (monitor lizard) tried to invade my tent, and the main “tourist attraction” was the blood drain at the meatworks where the crocs hung out. If you’re ever up there I recommend the mail plane trip from the local air strip round the north Kimberley if it’s still available – $50 for a five hour round trip back in 1982.
I can even link Conrad to Alfred Jarry – as mentioned by your new friend Matt Lewis – through the brilliant Cleveland, Ohio, band PERE UBU’s 1975 proto-punk single ”HEART OF DARKNESS”, B-side of the equally superb “30 Seconds Over Tokyo”, which has lyrics based on the famous Doolittle Raid with which I’m sure you are familiar. Pataphysics indeed! He mentions The Beatles but forgets Soft Machine’s “Pataphysical Introduction” Pts 1 and 2. Check ’em out.
Having taken the Stratfords back to 1050 in my own home patch in Blighty I’ll leave that line of enquiry to those more temperamentally suited to it.
@ misca
This is what I have on Henry C. Carter:
Born: 1912, Massachusetts
Residence: Essex, Massachusetts, USA
Enlistment 16 de mar de 1942 Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Nº 31036999
Alfa grade Pvt
Grade code Private
Alfa branch Bi
Agency code Branch Immaterial – Warrant Officers, Usa
Enlistment Term Enlistment For The Duration of The War or Other Emergency, Plus Six Months, Subject To The Discretion of The President or Otherwise According To Law
Army Component Selectees (Enlisted Men)
Race and Citizenship White, Citizen
Education 1 Year of High School
Civil Occupation Foremen, N.E.C.
Marital Status Single, Without Dependents
Source Enlisted Man, Regular Army, After 3 Months of Discharge
PO Box 0386
Roll number 3.107
Does it ring any bells? What’s the source for his marriage to Joyce Mary Davies?
@ Sophie
Welcome to the discussion! Very interesting points to think about, thanks!
https://www.cmaa.asn.au/ContentFiles/CMAA/Documents/Magazine/2016/CMA%20Magazine%20July%202016%20web.pdf
‘Suicide
In Australia, suicide is the leading cause of death for males and females aged between 15 and 44. In a typical year, around 2,500 people in Australia die by suicide.’
The ‘warning signs’ are consistent with Dorothy’s accounts regarding Carl’s behaviour, taking into consideration that her solicitors might have instructed her on what to say.
Regarding their sexual life, Dorothy said that the last sexual intercourse was around December 1945 “Sexual intercourse between the Respondent and me last took place shortly prior to January 1946”. I wonder if the end of WW2 was a motive for celebration…
Her account of his attempted suicide end of March 1946 mentions that he might have drunk “bottles” of ether along with forty phenobarbital tablets.
What in your professional opinion could have happened to change his behaviour from having sex with his wife to trying to kill himself 3 months later? One important fact is that he lost his mom in 24 Nov 1946.
The tragic life events of his dad’s passing and his brother being fighting a World War abroad haven’t prevented him from getting married, I wonder why, if he was clearly not the marrying type. Do you think he could have planned it, somehow? His dad wasn’t around any more to look after his mom, he was the only one left to look after her, because although his sisters were around, they were married and had their own families to look after. His brother Roy was fighting abroad and was also married. Could the marriage have been just a convenient arrangement so Dorothy could look after his mom and once she died, the arrangement was not convenient any more?
Excuse my poor English, I know I make mistakes, but I think I can deliver the message!
@ Steve H
I don’t give a toss to what is being said about me on a personal level by people who don’t know me, it only diverts our attention away from the case by polluting the blog with nonsense. I don’t read these sort of posts any more. I think this blog is quite democratic and multinational which is something I admire and respect, and yet some people think that because they have been posting here for many years they have the right to be judgmental and the owners of the truth. But maybe it’s just that they don’t have a social life (which they clearly think they need) and they think this blog is a good replacement for it. ‘Me, I’m just a lawnmower, you can tell me by the way I walk’
John Sanders
Oh dear, I’m having to reply to you again mate. If you keep putting out info in semi-mystic dribs and drabs and third rate gnomic utterances no wonder people ignore them.
No mystery as to John Barkly’s move to Wagin as the ’tiser noted on 7 April 1952:
“A happy telegram from Wagin, WA, announces the birth of a second son to Dr.
and Mrs. John Bennett. Before her marriage, Mrs. Bennett was Miss Nadine Sparrow, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Cyril Sparrow, of Glenelg.”
I’m sure I needn’t remind you that you were completely ignorant about Miss Sparrow until I lightened your darkness.
And from The Wagin Argus and Arthur, Dumbleyung, Lake Grace Express,17 September 1953:
“NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN that the partnership hitherto subsisting between DR.JOHN BARKLY BENNETT and DR. GERALD CLAYTON who carried on practice at Wagin in the State of Western Australia has been dissolved by mutual consent as from the close of business on the 15th day of August 1953. The said practice
will as from the close of business on the said date be carried on by the said DC. GERALD CLAYTON and the said partners will receive all monies payable to the partnership and discharge all liabilities due by it up to the said date in equal
shares. DATED this .Fifteenth day of August 1953.”
You asked me about Edward Charles Stratford. Presumably this is the one who was born “in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia on 12 Jan 1889 to Edward Alfred Stratford and Ellen Hollingsworth. Edward Charles Stratford married Christina Johann Cameron (b Kyneton ,Victoria 1899) and had 5 children. He passed away on 18 Nov 1974 in Pascoe Vale, Melbourne.” The kiddies were :
Norman Edward Stratford
1923 – 2005
Mavis Ellen Stratford
1921 – 2015
Dorothy Ethel Stratford
1926 – 2015
Douglas Herbert Stratford
1936 – 2011
Nellie Margaret Stratford
1924 – 1994
All born in Richmond, except Nellie born in Preston.
His siblings were:
George Henry Stratford
1891 – 1959
Ethel May Stratford
1887 – 1933
Ellen Florence Stratford
1896 – Unknown
Alicia Elizabeth Stratford
1886 – Unknown
William James Kyme Stratford
1877 – 1963
All born Richmond, except William born in St Kilda.
Don’t know nuffink about your Adelaide Stratfords – eg the Mrs J W at 281 Brighton Road – or this mythical W R Stratford fellow. That’s my FINAL word on the Stratfords – until next time! Where’s all this rubbish going?
Correcting my mistake…
‘I have been reviewing my notes and I found a son for Amelia Bailye and John Wilson Morris. John Morris, baptised in 2 May 1869, in Astbury, Cheshire, England. (England-EASy GS film 1647850 item 1 p. 180). Did he go with his parents to Australia? What happened to him?’
Different John Morris and Amelia Bailye (Bailey).
John Wilson Morris and Amelia Foden Bailey have arrived in Victoria, Australia on board of the Eagle coming from England, in 1856. Ship master Murphy M, 114/04.
The family trees on FamilySearch and MyHeritage (including Helen Cass’s) all state that they have married in Stanley, England in 1857, which is obviously impossible.
Jo –
Thomas Zimmerman and Ella Lavinia Hetherington were divorced in 1940. She accused him of adultery and he countered that she was the adulterous one and named who she had been with…a fellow she subsequently marries the year after their divorce is finalized. (Thomas and Lavinia were married in 1927 when she was 19 and he was 48.). Unbelievably, her sister Ima May marries a Webb who was originally from New Zealand.
Thomas shows up as living at 63 Bromby in a 1949 electoral roll.
It seems likely the solicitor conspired with Dorothy not to find Carl Webb in 1951. The last detail she might know about from newspapers would be the death of his mother in 1946 and possibly she would have seen it. The fact Dorothy didn’t list the mother shows she knew she was dead. Is it the first time in history a solicitor has written a private letter to a Mrs Keane without an address – knowing it would be returned? Did he also send a copy to Santa? If he looked them up in the phone book surely it would give their address?
It is a shame the maintenance order will remain elusive until 2023. It will then likely be the bare essentials for a fee with no details of Dorothy’s address. Perhaps it needs a law student to request the full details for their PHD.
@Pat
But it’s such good fun winding the Colonel up!
“There’s always been Ethel
‘Jacob, wake up, you’ve got to tidy your room now!’
And then Mister Lewis
‘ Isn’t it time that he was out on his own?'”
@ misca
I have found Henry C. Carter’s records in the US from his birth in 1912 in Newburyport, Essex, Mass, 1920 as a student, 1930 in Southold, Suffolk, NY, 1940 as a WPA (Work Progress Administration), living at 2 Beacon Av, Newburyport with Sarah L. Carter (60) and Olive R. Carter (27) and in 1950 as a roofer, married, but no wife at the same address in Newburyport. I thought they could be his mother and sister, but I have found Sarah L. married wit George W. Carter with only Olive R. and Willam H. listed as offspring, but in one of the documents they are identified as ‘niece’ and ‘nephew’, so it’s a tad confusing. The only explanation I can think of for his Australian marriage in 1944 is that he married while still a soldier and then went back to the US without his wife? Or he is an entirely different person, although I haven’t found any other that could fit the bill.
@ Steve H
‘I know what I like and I like what I know’… and that does not include… you know, but be my guest and good luck with it. I’d rather sip a lemonade. 36C, I’m self combusting.
When I find new evidence (and I will find it), I’ll let the senior contributors figure it out, they deserve the laurels after decades of blind search.
@ Pat and Misca
It sounds as though Joyce Davies went over to Massachusetts briefly, as I think she was there when her father died in 1949, but she is back at Bromby Street by 1953.
The vaudeville sounds good fun – I wonder what kind of jokes you had to tell to be described as a “quaint comedian” (perhaps my next calling?). Meanwhile I nominate Steve H (who has a staggering wealth of material and seldom fails to entertain) to revive the Roth Brothers “local gags and quips” (dare I say it, I also nominate the Colonel here!). I also love the language of these times – “the Management desire to state that no pictures will be screened at their usual Saturday entertainments …” etc… ‘Strine is certainly a fast moving “variety of English”.
@Jo
Completely off topic, but as a proud Prestonian are you aware of the hidden history of Aboriginal football (soccer) players in the North West of England. For example Charlie Perkins, Australia’s first indigenous university graduate and leader of the 1965 Freedom Ride. From Wikipedia:
“In 1957 he was invited to trial with English first division team Liverpool F.C. Perkins ended up trialling and training with Liverpool’s city rival Everton FC. While at Everton Perkins had a physical confrontation with the Everton reserve grade manager after being called a “kangaroo bastard”. After this incident, Perkins left Everton FC to move to Wigan where he worked as a coal miner at the Mosley Common Colliery alongside Great Britain rugby league player Terry O’Grady. Perkins played two seasons for leading English amateur team Bishop Auckland F.C. between 1957 and 1959. Perkins in mid-1959 decided to return to Australia after trialling with Manchester United.
On returning to Australia Perkins was appointed captain/coach of Adelaide Croatia. At Croatia he played alongside notable Aboriginal figures Gordon Briscoe* and John Moriarty.”
If you read his autobiography ‘A Bastard Like Me’ he says that the women in the North West of England were much “warmer” than Australian women!
*”Briscoe moved to England in 1958 with the hope of playing professional football. He had stints at Barnet and Preston North End (although he did not make a first team appearance), before returning to Australia at the suggestion of his former schoolmate and teammate Perkins.”
I was due to interview Perkins in Canberra in 1983 but he was unable to make it and I spoke to his colleague Joe Croft instead – seen here with Charlie:
https://stfrancishouse.com.au/pdf/Joe_Croft_Article.pdf
Croft’s daughter Brenda became an artist and Professor of Indigenous Art History & Curatorship at ANU and Perkins’ daughter Hetti (sister of filmmaker Rachel) became an art curator and writer, fronting the three part ‘art = soul’ ABC documentary on Aboriginal art and culture.
Unfortunately Perkins’ wife Eileen was one of only two people who refused to be interviewed when I was doing my bit of research into the Aboriginal art market in the early ’80s – she sold art from their home. The other one was well known Melbourne socialite Gabrielle Pizzi, who was a nobody back then!
There were three formidable (white) women who did more to promote Aboriginal art at that time than anyone else. I interviewed Dorothy Bennett in Darwin and Daphne Williams in Alice Springs (who was travestied by the odious Bruce Chatwin in ‘The Songlines’ as a monstrous harridan). Most formidable of the lot was Mary Macha who I worked with as a “menial” in the Perth gallery she managed. Macha was one of the first people to sell and promote the Papunya “dot” paintings (Pizzi was a latecomer). If only I’d bought a few canvasses back then! Ace “Christian The Lion” Bourke, who I interviewed in 1983 in The Rocks, Sydney, where he managed the prestige govt sponsored outlet for the higher end Aboriginal items told me that anything done with acrylics wasn’t “traditional” and he refused to stock it. See this brief video: https://youtu.be/xmpHJ38_uYg
@pat , I am theorising that Carl might have been homosexual and the marriage to Doff might have been for convenience…. if he was working for the army even more so….
Pat/Jo –
Joyce did go the US and lived there for a few years with Henry Chester. I have found two residence listings for them in 1949 and 1951. (She was, in fact, in the US when her father died.). By 1954 she was back at 63 Bromby. I haven’t found records of their divorce but I’m quite sure that she didn’t go back after that as he went on to marry a Lillian Dorothy Sylvia in New Hampshire on July 10, 1954. She was 27 and he was 42. She had already been married twice!
That marriage didn’t last and in March of 1964 he married Margaret Eleanor Moylon (who had also been previously married). Again, this marriage occurred in New Hampshire. He was 52, she was 33. I’m not sure what happened exactly, but they formally married again in 1968! (Maybe he wasn’t properly divorced from Lillian the first time he married Margaret?). Henry Chester died in 1983.
Margaret died in 2012 and left behind three children, one of whom she seems to have had with Henry; William Carter.
So, I think that Joyce dodged a bullet and did the right thing coming back home to her family.
I forgot!
There is a travel manifest for one of Joyce’s trips. It lists her as being 4′ 4 1/2″ tall!
There have been so much discussed overnight that it is difficult for me to comment on everything specifically. I will try below to address some issues, but apologies if other things are left out.
@ Sophie, welcome to the discussion and I appreciate a lot all the good thoughts you contributed in just one post! A general comments, I would say, is that the second part of your post somewhat answers and complicates what you wished to say in the first part, regarding what transpired between Carl and Dorothy, and how to judge her report (only) on what happened. In other words, in the first part you acknowledge that despite any omissions or embellishments in her report, her narrative and witnesses offered are sufficiently credible to conclude she was abused by him, and presumably not also him by her. Yet, in the second part, specifically in your clause 3 (and to some extent clauses 4 and 5), you point to the background of his life and possible other contributing factors to his behavior. I can still understand your overall point though. You would say, the second half factors are only contextual and contributing factors, and they by no means should lead us to justify what she reports he did to her.
In response, let me begin with an example from our own conversations in this site. Let us say I have said something about preferring to pursue the path of understanding rather than blame, therefore not saying yet whether one or another are to be judged and thus blamed until further studies are made. Now, someone not contributing here liked that position, and posted something elsewhere, unbeknownst to me at all, trying to understand in his own way what I was trying to say. So, another poster here sees that and finds it helpful to report on that outside post here, calling the other poster a “moron” and his “rant misogynistic” and using the term “recruit” to convey the notion, I guess by association, that since that person is qualified as such and has “recruited” me or my words to say something in favor of my approach, then there must be something wrong with my position, if not my person as qualified for the other person, given the adjective used for that person and views.
So, what he posted of the outsider’s views is presumably portrayed as how I would put things, and also presumably what he quoted was intended to exemplify what is wrong with the outsider, and my views. I am a newcomer to the Somerton Man case and have not read every little thing everyone has said everywhere on all sites over the past 70+ years of course, beyond some general knowledge of what one or another consider to be their contributions. But when I read the passages quoted from the ‘outsider,’ I find that he is basically saying we should avoid assuming that abuse always takes place by men against women, in general, with which I actually agree, not denying that Carl may have been reasonable at times also, with which I agree (actually Dorothy would also agree, as she did in the report on some instances), as he may have also abused her as she has reported, with which I also agree. These are general notions, and possibilities, I stress “possibilities,” that can actually happen in real life, what specifically having happened between Carl and Dorothy being still subject to further consideration in favor of not quick judgments but deeper understanding.
So, why is this a good example. I do not really see the specific passages our poster has cited from the outsider, as is, to make the outsider deserving of being so publicly called “moron” and “misogynistic” and “ranting.” He may find other things the outsider said elsewhere to make him deserving of it, but in this post, the passages quoted are not deserving such a harsh characterization done so publicly, again pointing to the purpose of his post being something beyond its apparent reporting. I do not know the outsider personally, nor can I say I have read everything he has said or written. But I do now that he has been repeatedly, and I mean repeatedly, by many subjected to ridicule, sarcasm, and humiliation, simply because he has a theory of the Somerton Man code that does not sound reasonable. Having in my own study understood exactly what the code means and Carl Webb findings actually prove it, as I will show, has not in any way, shape or form, let me feel I can privately or publicly humiliate another person for a microwriting explanation of the code that really does not make sense to me, either. The oursider may have said other things relating the Somerton Man that may seem unreasonable. However, I actually believe a particular line of his work regarding Tibor Kaldor is very important, just in terms of finding background information about Kaldor and not in terms of how he uses the info in support of this code theory. This is actually true for nearly everyone on this site and elsewhere; they have said things that seem nonsensical, but also contributed importantly otherwise elsewhere.
But, whether or not he even the outsider made any reasonable contribution, I see him as just another human being, trying to make a point and insist on his views, and busying himself in this, rather than perhaps other unhelpful pursuits in his life. I will never ever give myself the right to use, so publicly, so persistently, such terms and swears on another person, simply because I find the other person’s work not up to par with others’ standards. And if someone would do so in a post, I would expect at least he would offer sufficiently strong passages that even prove the other person deserving of such verbal characterizations.
So, to continue with explaining why the above is an example for our discussion, Sophie, especially you are so well trained and understanding of what happens when abuse takes place, I wish to say that given the matter of abuse is proving to be central to understanding the Somerton man case, we need to clarify for ourselves what we mean by abuse, and how we know it happens when we see it, or not, to others, and even to ourselves, collectively, and even intrapersonally.
In my own work as a sociologist I have tried to offer alternative conceptual frameworks in the sociological imagination when oppressive behaviors take place. There are so many on my site that I’d say everything is about it, but here is one try https://www.okcir.com/freire-meets-gurdjieff-and-rumi-toward-the-pedagogy-of-the-oppressed-and-oppressive-selves/ or other writing and another drawing on the work of the Chicana Lesbian poet and social theorist, Gloria Anzaldua, about whom I helped organize a conference at UMass Boston in 2007 (https://www.okcir.com/product/re-membering-gloria-anzaldua-proceedings-of-the-third-annual-social-theory-forum-april-5-6-2006-umass-boston/) and offered this contribution https://www.okcir.com/product/journal-article-anzalduas-sociological-imagination-comparative-applied-insights-into-utopystic-and-quantal-sociology-by-mohammad-h-tamdgidi/
Since there is so much I can say, the basic point is this.
I see society not as an interaction of “persons” like billiard balls in a Newtonian worldview but of many selves intrapersonal and interpersonal in unpredictable quantum ways, amid broader social contexts. Abuse does can take place only by men to women, but men to women, men to men, women to women, men to themselves, women to themselves, across all racial, ethnic, linguistic, religious, ability, and other borderlands. The old can abuse the young, young can abuse the old. Old can abuse the old, young can abuse the young. Even one person can abuse another and be abused by that another, sometime in the very same act. We can champion being in favor of those abused, but in our very language and acts be abusing another, consciously or not, and in doing so, actually be abusing ourselves in that very act. To explain this, l have to draw on my sociological training, but in the way I have learned it.
We as humans can relate to each other because we have selves, and we have selves because we use language as a symbolic system. As the sociologist Mead said, self and society are twin-born. You cannot have one without the other. What does this mean in the context of understanding abuse? It means, the very person we imagine to be an other, against whom we hurl this or that swear, is actually a self in ourselves that represent that other. So, even that swearing is a twin-born act. The effect it has on the other has simultaneously an effect on ourselves. By abusing others, we abuse ourselves, not in merely a sentimental way, but in a very real way, including all the chemical reactions that abuse created in our body, emotions, and mind.
And abuse can take many different forms. It can be physical and verbal, but it can be very subtle, even silent, emotional, without even saying a word. Just a gesture would do, or even lack thereof, when expected but not done. Emotional abuse is very real and as painful and consequential, even for physical health of the person. Just because knives are shown or sugar basins are thrown at each other, and reported, does not mean other abuses did not take place, let alone reported. To be fair to both parties, we really need to be there to see these things happen, and if we cannot, we can at least be open to their possibilities.
For example, Dorothy at one point is bothered by Carl simply throwing his hands on the table and leaving for his room without his saying a word. She feels hurt by that. She doesn’t tell us why he did that, except from her own interpretation. If Carl was here, he probably would point to a reason he emotionally did not feel comfortable expressing. So, where there other things she did, as simple as that may sound, that also hurt Carl emotionally? She says in January 1946 that Carl, “perfectly reasonably” (her words), expressed to her that they are not suited to each other. Then she says she tried to discuss it again with him and he was angered, etc. I see it possible that he was bothered by the pressure, if there was precedence to his hurt feelings. He made his point clear, but she was pursuing it. In my view, this can be a form of emotional abuse. We have “just say no,” for a reason. We don’t know exactly why she wanted to discuss the matter again, but we have only her side of the story. These things happen a lot in relationships, but at some point, if someone perfectly reasonably says let’s end it, pursuing it more can be emotionally troubling for that person, especially if he is already a very sensitive person and has emotional scars from the past, and is mourning loved ones in a family Dorothy has little to say about in her report, except for when it suits her story. He offers 60 pounds to end it. Later she wants 50 plus some furniture. He does not see that fair. So, she ends up coming back and says fine 60 will do, and by then he has made up his mind otherwise. But this is how she reported it, and we don’t know if this back and forth to know if it happened as she says it did.
My purpose in the above is just to use one or another example and conceptual framework offered to say that things are really not as they seem when only one side’s report is read and not another’s as well, especially since, as you rightly point out, these problems do not happen overnight but in a process of escalation. We cannot adequately judge a behavior at the end of a process (such as how his coworkers would judge his personality, when they have no idea what has happened to him at home, or in life), without understanding how it evolved from a simple gesture or silence. We need to be patient, and seek understanding before any judgements can pass. But one thing we do know, Sophie, is this.
With all thing said and done, reported by Dorothy or not, given his physical powers he could have done and things thrown at each other, threats made or not, it is Carl Webb who was killed (in my view by himself, but due to reasons we should understand that can also include his feelings in reaction to his marital troubles) on Nov. 30, 1948, while she went on living to late 1990s, to parts still unknown. She was to some extent medically trained, as a pharmacist and chiropodist, and even just as a person, though still young. Her report is a reporting about a man who was obviously mentally suffering and suicidal, she herself having witnessed and helped him recover from one suicide attempt. Yes, he threatened her for helping him, but it was a threat of a suicidal man who was, for reasons we need to understand, angry for not being let go, fed up and wishing to die. I am not sure how we can expect her maintenance summons against him a year later not hurt him, whether justified or not as far as ending her marriage is concerned. I think his leaving his job and residence in April 1947 was a direct result, in terms of his planning his next suicide attempt, of the trigger of the summons arriving at his job. He just gave up his job and residence soon and went on to plotting his departure in his own way.
Can we say Carl was not emotionally abused by Dorothy in that marriage? Frankly, I cannot deny such a possibility. She left out a LOT in that report. There is nothing there that calls his ailment an illness, but she finds herself deserving of being called that during care for his mother. Nothing about Carl’s brother and nephew passing in 1943. Nothing about the illnesses his mother was suffering from, except to use it to support her narrative. By 1951, in fact by March 1947, she knew Carl’s mother had also died in 1946, but nothing about that. By 1951 she may have known he lost his older brother too. In Dorothy’s report Carl Webb as a person who has a family and troubles of his own does not exist, only to the extent (his mother’s caring by her) that suits her claims. I am sorry, but I cannot in good conscience jump into a conclusion in judging this case without further understanding. For me, the absence of anything about Carl’s family losses in her report is telling of a Dorothy not sensitive to her husband’s own troubles. He is not alive to tell his story, but you and I are, and he deserves a saying in the court of public opinion as well.
What I would like to end this with is the notion that what happened 70+ years ago is not really a matter of past, but of the present in each of our private and public lives, and can reproduce itself in the very way we are going about understanding what happened. For me, what has happened in the past 70+ years is Carl Webb trying to tell his side of the story, in his own poetic way, as sad as the whole story is.
We can be abusing others and ourselves at the very same time we are judging Carl or Dorothy or an outsider for their trying to share in the story. Khayyam actually was subject to lots of ridicule by his foes in his time, and there are good indications from the attributed Robaiyat (I prefer this spelling to signify his poetry is much more than what was ‘freely translated’ by a FitzGerald) that his poetry was a way of dealing with them and healing from them. Writing, and especially poetry for Carl was a savior trying to understand why he was subjected to this or that abuse as German migrant during two world wars, for no fault of his own as far as the war was concerned.
Sociologist Charles H. Cooley has a very helpful and insightful concept in the “looking glass self.” It basically means we imagine how others view us, we imagine how others then judge us, and then we end up with a feeling of joy or fear or mortification. The key here is the word “imagine.” Note how careful and insightful the concept is. Others may not even do anything harmful to us, but we may imagine them doing so, imagine being judged by them, and feel good or bad as a result. Japanese interned in the US during WWII must have felt the same, for no reason being interned simply because they were Japanese. We each, even in this forum, may feel the same, just by way of imagining how others view and judge us, whether or not they actually do mean what they do and say, and we end up feeling this or that. Swearing at others, we swear at ourselves. And conversely, by being more civil to others in our conversations, we help ourselves also to heal. The Somerton Man is not someone who died in 1948. He is now living, as a self, in each and every one of us. How we understand him is an exercise in our own self-understanding, and vice versa. His poetry is not one written on a paper (though I believe we have that as well), but in the everyday lives of all those trying to know who he was. I think we have a very bright, though troubled, poet here, one who was a poet without leaving any written poetry (excepting for one), but made his passing a long living poetry drawing all of us from across all borders into his poetry. What else do you want from a poetic success. Perhaps he may be judged as the best poet Australia has produced, despite his personal failing. Just think about, seventy plus years later, we have all become a part of his poetry. This is not a man with a defective brain.
There is a very insightful quatrain attributed to Khayyam that I am sure is his, one I provide below in my own translation (hopefully the Persian goes through ok, included for those who can read the original). So, I end this with it. Sorry if I didn’t get a chance to respond to others’ points or questions. I am exhausted for now, and hopefully will gain some of the energy Pat is sharing with all of us.
بدخواه كسان هيچ بمقصد نرسد
يك بد نكند تا بخودش صد نرسد
من نيك تو خواهم و تو خواهى بد من
تو نيك نه بينى و بمن بد نرسد
He who is an ill-wisher will not reach his goal.
One ill deed begets him a hundred ills on roll.
I’m wishing you well, and you wish me ill instead?
Your ill-wish doesn’t hurt me, but you hurt your own soul.
— Omar Khayyam (Tamdgidi translation)
@ misca
‘Could the other name be Miss E J Oates? Elizabeth Jane Oates 1858 – 1940 was Nurse Oates.’
Yes, thanks!
Now all we need to know is why Alice Stratford was born in Fitzroy. Apart from the obvious Fitzroy, are there others? I have found a couple of Alice’s born at Fitzroy, and a dozen without a listed father born at Carlton Women’s Hospital. What would that region be called around 1896, for registration purposes? Could Carlton and Fitzroy be interchangeable? Sorry if this a stupid question!
Henry has a file as follows:
U.S., Department of Veterans Affairs BIRLS Death File, 1850-2010
Name Henry C Carter
Gender Male
Birth Date 15 Jan 1912
Death Date 30 Oct 1983
SSN 018122702
Enlistment Branch ARMY
Enlistment Date 16 Mar 1940
Discharge Date 24 Oct 1945
Page number 1
@Misca, “4′ 4 1/2″ tall”, my goodness, less than 147 centimetres (4 ft 10 in) is defined as Dwarfism. The Joyce Davies in the ballet pic was pretty tall.
@JohnSanders, good on ya, I’ll put the Where’s Wally to rest then, good to bring things to their logical conclusion though …. this is sweet, the cornet playing Wally Stratford from Port Pirrie.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/100824211?searchTerm=wally%20stratford
I find it odd that Dorothy names Carl’s sisters as Mrs Freda Keane, Mrs Doris Martin but when it comes to Gladys it’s Mrs Leslie Scott (using her husband’s name as they did back in the day), bugs me a bit, why not Mrs Gladys Scott to conform with the others she’s listed. It’s also obvious that Dorothy didn’t stay connected with his family or sisters, no bond there, which is a bit interesting.
Steve H: well done that man on all fronts ie., re Doc. Bennett and his little sparrow whom I found living at 105 Moseley St. across from the Thomsons which still gives me a hoot, much to your eternal envy and chagrin. I’m needlesd to say beholding to you on your Stratford input with it’s more detailed disclosures of the Richmond thannI could hope to muster. The Bennetts are also Keane to get in on the act no doubt in order to spread disinformation as is their familial duty and further stir the opposum. I may yet beat them to the punch on a particular pount of reference I’m working due to your input. On a point of order; some contempory wanker insists that I’ve mixed Dorothy with her mum Alicia Elizabeth? due perhaps to my well intended casual mention of her as Dorothy Stratford one time. Offspring of both married and unwed parents are known to take on their maternal identities later in life for a host of reasons, one in particular I happened to mention on the seemingly ‘Sine die’ Carl Webb thread recently to Furphy relates to Prosper Thomson cousin named Von Stieglitz who took over his mother’s nee Thomson handle in 1917 due to it’s mistaken German origins….As for Wyndam W.A. you seem to have come up trumps on that score and whilst I’ve never been near borough (burrow) I’ve got some displaced Vietnamese mates who used to work at the meatworks pre 1985 and they may still use it’s discreet boat docking facilities; Wyndam to the lads is Nguyen Dam, in keeping with their allegence to the mother tongue which I support most emphatically.
Some overlooked matters that may be relevant. Dr Colleen Fitzgerald previously mentioned that Dorothy may have been a “black widow” and she later went to live in some sort of alphabet person commune. And that her father had disowned her and that her family were not close. I note that the SM affair seems to include a significantly higher incidence (compared with the general population at the time) of pharmacists, drugs and potential poisonings.
Dorothy claimed to be a pharmacist. Jessica had a life-long interest in pharmacology (private communication). Jessica’s uncle was a pharmacist, a pharmacologist (a rare beast even now), an expert witness on poisons and a pharmaceutical manufacturer at one stage. The ROK was found by a pharmacist and apparently had been discarded outside his pharmacy.
The medical experts believe that Carl died from some sort of poisoning. Carl was said to be a heavy user of pain killers and this use affected his emotional state. Dorothy claimed that Carl tried to kill himself with an overdose of barbiturates and drinking a bottle of ether. Who, even in 1945 would have a bottle of ether lying around the house? And who in 1945 would know that you could drink ether?And remember that DA’s team found abnormally high levels of lead in Carl’s hair that suggest possible lead poisoning.
I suspect that DA and Colleen have access to one of Dorothy’s relatives who has not surfaced on this site thus far.
So Joyce was a “tiny dancer”! And she made it back to Bromby Street!
@ Behrooz – thank you for your quatrain – I think this is something that transcends times – ours to Charlie’s, each others’ across the international date line, it is something we should all take on board. Thank you!
Because Dorothy does not mention Carl’s family doesn’t mean that she wasn’t aware of family events – she has probably been instructed to be quite transactional in her approach to her divorce – ie Why do you want to get divorced? What are your grounds? Its quite a short document, so a brief and partial reflection on complex lives…
@ Steve
Some fascinating history here! One of my old neighbours and a good friend’s dad – Bert Turner, has just died at the age of 99, he was the oldest former PNE player until then! A very good bloke. My mum’s step father also played for PNE – the euphonium that is! A band would play before matches and unfortunately he used to drink quite heavily beforehand and stumble onto the field, playing to the crowd! My dad’s family only came to Preston in WWII – progeny of Irish Catholics and Russian Jews. I think that particular hybrid suited me well to settling around St Kilda! Your Australian years sound fascinating! At a very interesting time! Rachel Perkins is on the charge at the moment – The Australian Wars on the ABC. I’m yet to catch it but loved her previous work – The First Australians. My only downtime from work and family these days is SM and Ciphermysteries! My family can’t understand what I see in SM, his teeth were even worse than theirs; I keep sighing about the amount of work I need to do to pay for all the dental bills!
@ Punters anon
I think a major part or our work is to penetrate the period of November 1947-48 which is quite mysterious… Where did Carl go? Where did Dorothy go?
For me the ending looks like a suicide. I think the ROK is tossed into the car after a trip to the chemist and then sadly, it’s Tamam Shud and Charlie has left us on a wild history mystery chase!
If only he had met Max Harris on that train ride to Adelaide!
https://www.ernmalley.net/max-harris
One of the fascinating things for me is that people like Charlie are hardly ever the conduit for how we read and explore history, wildly, collectively and eclectically in real time, through the archive, Trove, genealogy, random asides, cross border collaboration in cyber space…Thank you @ Nick! There’s something about all of this that I’d like to bottle and keep thinking about… My own starting point for joining in with all of this was a school history class quite a few years ago – when I thought the students might like to get out from behind their desks and go for a walk on the park, exploring the history and neighbourhood around their school as part of their twentieth century American history subject! There is a softball shelter on the park, gifted by an American ex service man in 1980, there’s also a plaque, commemorating where the women’s signal training camp was. It mentions a commemorative drinking fountain, which is now gone. One of the boys filled his mouths from his drink bottle, his mate pressed his nose and he ejected the water spectacularly – voila – the drinking fountain… (There’s probably still a DVD somewhere on a staff room shelf… our anarchistic addition to HBO’s “The Pacific”!). When Bromby Street cropped as part of the Somerton Man news reports I was off! (Probably with the fairies at times…. but it’s good to let the imagination fly!).
Behrooz
You are a pompous ass and if you want to criticise my contributions at least have the decency to name me. I gave you the benefit of the doubt on your return here but yet again you have proved yourself unworthy of my time. From now on we will avoid each other completely.
Gordon “The Moron” is a reference to a “punk” song ‘Jilted John’ by Jilted John and a humorous intervention. It may have escaped your attention that many contributors here use a robust “Aussie” style terminology at times but if you choose to be priggish about it that is your prerogative.
I do have something against Mr Cramer because he dedicated a page on his site to try and humiliate me by misrepresenting something I posted here. When I politely replied he at first heavily modified my comment and then deleted my posts completely. I admitted that I was misled about a small factual point made in a video by the nephew of the chap who embalmed the SM’s body but Mr Cramer refused to post my apology on that point in order to deliberately make me look bad.
On 20 August on the ‘First Photo of Carl Webb’ thread’ I wrote:
“If nothing else I certainly rattled Gordon’s cage over at tamam.blogspot. He has written a whole page about me. I am even accused of being you (Sanders). Is there a worse insult? Only joking John. He replied to the contributor who made that accusation “Couldn’t tell you, lost count of the number of alter egos he uses. Troll, stalker and the odd genuine person, you’d never know who you were talking with on that blog.” I replied to him this morning but said that he wouldn’t have the cojones to publish my comment. He can’t even get the name Elliott right. He can’t tell August from December. He also completely misquoted me saying that I said “as we all know” instead of “that we all know” which completely changes the meaning of what I said. He also accused me of being a troll when I have nothing but contempt for trolls. I only made my comment over there because he had mentioned Pat’s and my names. He then pretended to be civil saying “Thanks for that Steve, appreciate your comment…Thanks again Steve, a good discussion to be had” before waiting to pounce on me like a weasel. Who cares?”
I don’t believe in the mealy-mouthed circumlocutions and faux politeness you consistently employ Behrooz.
Mr Cramer has also claimed that Jo is a troll and David Morgan is a plagiarist amongst other rants. It is very telling that he approves of your ramblings.
I quoted his remark about you to alert you to what I thought was a misuse of your argument but I can see now it was not a misuse at all. Unfortunately when discussing domestic abuse you cannot sit on the fence as you have plainly done. Sophie did an admirable job of demolishing your arguments and I applaud her for that. I have noticed that almost all the male (or presumably male given their handles) contributors here seem to have an issue with accepting Dorothy’s affidavit as less than fanciful, but as others (all female) have pointed out the specificity of the details she gives would very much point to a kernel of truth in what she says. By not standing on the side of victims (and I can accept the remote possibility Doff is telling a pack of lies) and instead prevaricating I put you in the same category as Mr Cramer, who I repeat, indulged himself in a misogynistic rant. To quote him again “Social conditioning is a real issue, media, and various interest groups consistently and actively try to influence the public mind. We see it every day. Notably, this occurs in the Domestic Violence arena where women are always painted as the victim …” If you agree with this you are either extremely naive or a malign, toxic force.
Your prolixity and self-importance is so unbounded that I only made it about half way through your latest comment before falling asleep so forgive me if I have misrepresented you. Sociologist? I studied social anthropology. You’re having a laugh with your fairytales about the ROK.
Excellent and most intelligent input on to-day’s heavy off subject work schedule by punters one & all, especially Pat and my old nemisis misca. Also by my chameleon pal Steve H. whose own off thread mischief making is by my best estimate akin to both a breath of stale air by it’s bewildering array of repetitiveness, suddenly offset by some really brilliant if somewhat self serving research data input which leaves me both humbled and brimming with incompetence….just on a minor point of order in re. the Webb breakdown controversy vis a vis fault finding in Dorothy’s one sided grounds for divorce petition. I concur that it be a womans prerogative and right of passage as the better half in any relationship ordeal to stop biting the and bolt As such and, with the benefit of some hindsight I’d like to offer a simple explanation based on my own experience that some may find confronting but, to which I most sincerely offer up as a fair motive for Carl’s obvious displeasure with his wife…in light of what we think but don’t know jack shit in essence, could it be that our Dorothy was, simply put in Oz stryne jargon ie., ‘A Dud Fuck’…no offence intended lovely ladies.
Poppins –
Thanks for posting this picture:
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/243999762?searchTerm=ballet%20joyce%20davies
If this is Joyce, I think that perhaps Gracie Emmcrson and Joyce Davies may have been switched up in the listings. Based on one of her travel manifests, Joyce was only 4′- 4 1/2″ tall.
Name Joyce M Carter
Gender Female
Nationality English
Marital Status Married
Age 31
Birth Date 1915
Birth Place Bictoria, Australia
Port of Departure Sydney, Australia
Arrival Date 28 Apr 1946
Port of Arrival San Francisco, California
Ship Name David C Shanks
Citizenship Y
Complexion Fair
Eye Color Gray
Hair Color Fair
Height 4 Feet 4 1/2 Inches
Destination Newburyport, Massachusetts, USA
What information do we have about the Campbells of 69 Murphy Street Elsternwick?
Where was Alice Robertson whilst JCR was in Darwin?
I’m wondering how old Jessica Campbell was and whether it is possible that she was a friend of Dorothy’s vs the Campbells simply advertising for someone. The only ad I can find for rooms to let at this address is one from a young man, seeking to move to Kensington (on the other side of town) in 1940.
Dorothy is listed on the electoral roll in 1949 at this address as a chiropodist, suggesting that she was boarding with the Campbells and working. Could this also be the case from 1947 – 1949?
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/205233416?searchTerm=69%20murphy%20st%20elsternwick
I don’t know. I don’t think it’s possible that she (Joyce) was only 4′ 41/2″. I think it’s more likely an error. I have looked for other manifests and unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find any.
John Comber Robertson’s grave photo https://pt.findagrave.com/memorial/212391819/john-comber-robertson
Alice Robertson’s grave photo
https://pt.findagrave.com/memorial/212176647/alice-robertson
It’s odd that Dorothy provides Doris’ and Freda’s first names but not Gladys’. She refers to Gladys as Mrs. Leslie Scott. Yet she knows her address.
@Pat
Re: Specific Risk factors for suicide:
1) Strongest: Prior suicide attempt
2) Presence of mental illness (90% or more have diagnosable mental illness at time of death)
3) Psychological (outside of mental illness diagnosis)
• Subjective: Impulsiveness, aggressiveness, hopelessness, anhedonia
• Executive: Decision-making, problem-solving, cognitive control, verbal fluency
• Interaction (Elevated distress in response to negative situation; Reduced ability to problem-solve, seek help, or otherwise adapt)
4) Family history of suicide
5) Adverse childhood experiences, like domestic violence, child abuse or neglect
6) Stressful life events
• Acute stressors like relationship breakup, loss of employment, financial losses
• Chronic stressors like chronic pain, physical illness
• Traumatic events, especially sexual and interpersonal violence
• Traumatic brain injury
Re: Ether use: Ether is an addictive substance and in previous centuries was consumed as a recreational drug. It could be drunk but is quite volatile and needs to be taken with something. If she said he had 40 phenobarbital pills plus bottles of ether, I believe this amount and this combo would induce vomiting. I think it is more likely that ether was inhaled, thus strongly felt smell in the room. BTW, people also use ether to commit suicide, typically with a plastic bag.
Re: Having sex and fighting: this is counterintuitive but not uncommon; highly conflicted couples may continue to have sex, and often have good sex (people say due to increased testosterone in both partners);
Per Dorothy, Carl’s mood were unstable, cycling from positive or neutral moods to extreme irritability, and at times almost to catatonic depression. So yes, I can imagine in one moment someone seems to be okay and is interested in life and in sex, and then in a mater of weeks or even days slips into a very dark place.
I think in 1947 he started to spiral down, in his marriage, work and perhaps physical health and finances. His support systems were collapsing. I am not sure what he did in 1948 and if he managed to recover somehow.
Re: Marriage of convenience. I am not sure if he got married for the sake of finding a caretaker for his mom, but it is possible, she was his primary attachment and perhaps the closest person in his life. This especially if his dad was abusive to her. Mom’s death led to grief and could have been a trigger for the breakup of his marriage and the undoing of his life. Of course, this is just a speculation.
Pat: re your querie on likely birth place of your Alice Stratford it does seem most likely that she was delivered at Womans Hospital Carlton which had moved there in the 80s from an older ‘lying in establisment serving mostly to the needs of those in low economicic circumstances (not be confused with nearby Royal women’s Hosital) serving inner city suberbs like Fitzroy which could exppain your dilemma. My Alice Stratford, on the other hand may also have started life there, albeit 10 years earlier, her own roots being in nearby Richmond hence our need to tread lightly lest we be judged unjustly. I had cautioned on this very subject at the very outset, being mindful that something was awry in context of identifying Dorothy’s parents which remains uncertain by my reckoning. Such suspicion be bolstered by certain contributing factors and perhaps a better than average understanding of family secrets, those devised to keep certain indiscretions from public scrutiny for fear of being shamed. Should you be in need of elaboration don’t hesitate to come over and hear me out and I’ll reciprocate more cordially, sans spell check!
I’ve just driven home from Prahran. I keep meaning to mention that the Red Point Tool Company at 66 St John Street, Prahran, is a two minute walk from St Matthew’s Church, on High Street, where Charlie and Doff married. Did they meet in this area?
St Michael’s school is about 20 minutes walk away… (Steve H – the teachers would never have let us sit together – it would be anarchy, with lots of off beat cultural references and wise cracks!)
Chapel Street is one of Melbourne’s most iconic shopping strips. Its got a lot of character, lots of coffee shops and restaurants now and eclectic fashion. Lots of randos too (rando = random, often dodgy, type).
Maybe Charlie and Doff are in this 1940s crowd, watching the Royal Automobile Clubs’s cavalcade do a few blocks…
https://viewer.slv.vic.gov.au/?entity=IE819374&mode=browse
A little more additional detail on John Robertson taken from his WW1 service record might give some additional food for thought. We know that he signed up soon after Australia declared and sailed off to the middle east on the first draft, a proud trooper in the 4th Light horse to which he remained for the duration and rising to rank of Troop Sgt. Major. Known as Jack Robbo to his digger mates from Gallipolli all of whom were operating in teams dismounted as stretcher bearers, they eventually got there nags back and rode off to glory in places like Bersheba, Jerusalem, Damascus to name a few. Four days after the post Somme Armastice in France on 11th Nov., battle of which he did not participate, our man had a RTA pre embarkation leave, which is what we must unfortunately hone in on. Jack caught the clap in Moascar and rather than sail off home with his cobbers, poor bastard spent the ensuing 56 days under close medical supervision for Syphilis, the most dominant VD strane faced by soldiers in Egypt, it being of a such type that it was not in essence fully curable. After responding to sulphur drugs (no penicillin) but still infected Jack sailed for Aust., landing on 15th Feb., 1919 and following further medical evaluation was deemed fit for discharge, the date being 16th April, 1919. Where he lived after being demobbed is somewhat unclear, but what we do know is that within two months he had teamed up with a woman of uncertain age and credentials in far distant rural Mildura. It appears in most anals of familial events that a girl child named Dorothy arrived in July of 1920 and another Phyllis in 1923…My question is, know what we do, how could that ultimate chain of events have been consumated by decent considerate people in all seriousness. Sorry to be a pest but, I’m thinking blatant rejection of instilled Victorian values, morality and disregard for the sancity of marriage, not to mention respect for the health of women, offspring and family values generally. Surely a fine chap of Jack’s style and a virtuous woman like Alice would know better. If they had been lusting than a quick poke in the mallee scrub would have served the purpose for both.
@behrooz,
Usually, men thumping the table when they returned home in that era was about the lack of a meal being prepared. He was probably used to having a mother who cooked a meal for him every day. His shirts and trousers were ironed ready for work the next day. Possibly Dorothy was more hit-and-miss and didn’t understand the role she was expected to play. When it got to 1946 and she was offering to do those things he didn’t want her to.
The dynamic of a 40-year-old man and a 20-year-old woman would always be problematic. More like a parent and child relationship.
John Saunders – is this really necessary? This man was a very popular school caretaker who worked into his 80s. Many people who are still around remember him fondly.
Steve H (an aside)
I have a funny story from an interview in Bolton. I said to the interviewer – trying to score brownie points My mother was from Accrington and the surrounding area. She always said she was an ozzel twizzel girl which was said by her as ozzey twistle or ozzey. At interview when I said that the interviewer corrected ‘you mean Oswald Twistle’. Never assume the interviewer knows or uses local terms for a place.
@John sanders
Lucky Dorothy wasn’t a boy otherwise it might have been Si-mon then Phyllis.
Steve H. sure hope you haven’t put the kybosh on my new initiative apropose having Prof. Barooz get started on proposal for a re convened Coronial Inquest that should have legs bearing in mind what has been revealed of late on a victim having been identified. Only man for the task and you’ll have to admit the guy has a proven track record with high falutin wigs of the colonial judiciary cow towing to his every whim.
Jo: firstland foremost in anseere to your question, yes it is necessary. I’m telling it the way history records it, nothing more nothing less with regards, John Robertson. More’s the pity our AWM choses to put more emphesis on the glory attached to exploits than the fact that our heros who performed them were only human after all. War in those heady times of nation building, was in essence a rite of passage, a big adventure for young lads and they were right to get their rocks off if and when opportunies came their way. Such a pity we don’t seem to take that for granted and that they had their weeknesses just like those who took the easy way out, like some of a lesser stamp who sat it out back home. In John’s case I’ve no doubt he proved himself in battle and was a true patriot. This is of course shown by his post war career of service to the country once more in WW2 and to the community at large. Don’t try that oh so innocence shit with me, my respect for the man shows no bounds. I spent a total of three years and nine months overseas on active service too and am no less proud than John Robertson who did his five years on the front Iine. I also got the clap though i was more fortunate having been given no opportunity to spread it around..thank Heavens.
Jo: you may be interested in I just saw in a pre Anzac Day story written by Kath Evens of the Canberra Times entitled ‘Secret WW1 history of Australian Soldiers With Venereal Disease’…Might set you straight on what I was on about apertaining to J. C. R. the man, not the soldier perse.
Steve H. Back in the day, before your your time here? ‘Flash Gorgon’ Cramer had the audacity to refer to us all, amongst other more vitriolic terms, as a bunch of muppets. So for my part you can say whatever you like about the old phony and charlatan with my blessing. Thankfully for him, Behrooz didn’t get to experience the thrill we can all still recall so well.
Has anyone seen the wedding certificate for Roy and Ruby? I wanted to know what their signatures looked like to test whether Roy’s signature was identical with Carl’s in 1941.
Identity swap would explain:
– Dorothy saying Carl was born in Yarraville
– Carl’s tanned legs if he was in the jungle getting beri beri wearing clothing on the top half of his body
– Carl’s spleen being enlarged after being a POW with beri beri and the tools in his suitcase like a POW
– How no-one can identify him in Melbourne because the body on the beach was Carl not Roy – who had been pretending to be him in Melbourne for 6 years.
– Why Carl was poor at cards with Dorothy’s friends when he was some card-playing genius in the 1930s.
– Why he got angry by 1946 because he was sick of the ruse of being someone else, hiding away and the life insurance money was gone – or perhaps Carl was back and he had to disappear after taking the life insurance money.
– Why Brenda said her dad was Roy
Roy seemed to be mixed up with criminal Gavey. So he may have been involved in some insurance scam.
It is just a theory to test to see how many facts can be explained by Roy being Carl until 1946.
@David Morgan,
Roy and Ruby’s marriage certificate has been uploaded by Angela on FamilySearch.
Here’s a snapshot of his signature (and Ruby’s), doesn’t look like Carl’s.
https://i.imgur.com/6TGyZo3.png
Pat –
Can you link to the document itself? I have found a tree but there is no certificate uploaded on it.
Last week I posted here regarding why I believed Dorothy’s allegations in the divorce petition—for the most part, and allowing for a bit of exaggeration. I said many things that ‘Sophie’ later said. While not a psychologist or anything like it, I have experience with someone who was similarly abusive and who committed suicide. Later learned he was bi-polar (undiagnosed). I think there is a chance Carl was similarly affected. I do think he was abusive toward Dorothy, and that her allegations are substantially true as I stated a week ago or so. Some of them could certainly have been validated by witnesses at that time. My comments were not responded to by anyone, and that’s fine. Just my 2 cents from personal experience. I could definitely see signs in Carl as being a suicide risk, and suffering from any number of psychological conditions, including possibly bi-polar disorder. I also was the first here to suggest that there COULD be records somewhere of Carl having trouble at work, or lost a job due to aggressive/erratic/hostile behavior. I also said there COULD be records somewhere of his having been treated for conditions such as that, medication prescribed, etc. Also, although his contemporaries are dead, there COULD be others in the family living, who heard from parents, etc., that “uncle Carl” was “abusive, angry”, etc., and maybe that some of those now deceased people had deliberately distanced themselves from him. IF Carl was indeed that abusive, I don’t believe that it could be hidden from everyone except Dorothy. I have seen that to be the case.
@sophie, why would someone take their tools if they were contemplating suicide? makes no sense
I respectfully disagree with Behrooz on a few points. I don’t see anything at all wrong with Dorothy asking Carl to elaborate on the “we are not suited to each other ” comment, let alone her questions as “emotional abuse of him” on her part! In fact, I think it was quite passive-aggressive (emotional abuse) on Carl’s part. They were MARRIED, and for 6 years or so. I think it is perfectly normal that she would not just accept a “we’re not suited to each other. I won’t say more, I am leaving.” Most normal people who have invested years of their lives in a relationship, especially a marriage I think would want a bit more of an explanation, or the opportunity to discuss how they felt. I think it was not only emotionally abusive, but disrespectful of Carl to refuse to elaborate and give his own wife definitive reasons for his feelings and to listen to hers.
I don’t care how many losses someone has, it is no excuse for abusing your partner. IF he were suffering the losses to the detriment of himself or his marriage, he could have attempted to SAY that, and to get help. He was an adult. I do think that those things and his health issues, and perhaps employment issues, as well as a failing personal relationship contributed to his escalating anger and depression, and probable suicide, but still these are not an EXCUSE for abusing anyone.
I do not at all think it odd that Dorothy is formal in her references to Carl’s sisters or family members under the circumstances, and no, I do not think that Dorothy, or most people want to continue to have a relationship with their EX spouse’s family members at all (unless they have to)!
She didn’t include his mother in the list of names. Therefore Dorothy knew she was dead. But how? She was in Bute in 1951. It implies she did know all the addresses of the sisters and either had contact with them or saw the advert in the newspaper in 1946. How did she send them Christmas/Birthday cards for children? Most people had address books in that era.
It is strange in her affidavit she hadn’t had her maintenance payments that had been missed for 4+ years. She didn’t mention that Carl owed her about £400 to £500 in arrears by 1952.
@ misca
https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/memories/LR91-GLZ
@DavidMorgan….. notice the witnesses though….
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/163317703?searchTerm=charles%20edward%20alsopp
@DavidMorgan, Roy and Carl, their heights are totally different, out by three or four inches, Carl was 5’11.
https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ListingReports/ItemsListing.aspx?page=4
John Sanders (and all)
Dr Tamdgidi has been milking his success with the divorce papers for long enough. His prime motive in posting the details here it seems to me is to get the applause and fawning admiration he so desperately craves. He also keeps trying to flog his dead horse ideas here by posting links to his ponderous meanderings. If some suckers have fallen for these grubby tactics and Dr Tamdgidi’s fake flattery then so be it. In my book he is no better or worse than Mr Cramer. After accusing me of all sorts of nonsense – and remember I was the first person here to speculate that if the jottings in the ROK were Carl’s they could have been to do with newspaper puzzles* – when I responded he threw his toys out the pram and skulked off with his tail between his legs. He styles himself a sociologist but seems to not be acquainted with the concept of empirical research, preferring to concentrate on his solipsistic and risible fantasies about the ROK.
*On 19 August I posted:
“A sleuther with more time than me might trawl through the November ’48 SA and Victoria newspapers for puzzles and crosswords to see if the letters can be matched to anything – you might even get your mugshot on the front page of the ‘Tiser if you solve the mystery.”
Dr Tamdgidi (as Behrooz) replied (19 August):
“…you think your what seems to be just an implausible hunch is more superior (sic) than others simply because of receiving an affirming “news” from a professor who claims to be dispassionate about his old theories but simply can’t let go of his loyalty to his old, horse-racing, implausible and yet-to-be-explained hunches in the past in favor of considering other possibilities, because they may show how he blundered in his classroom study, framed in a glaring and obvious eurocentric bias.”
When I protested he replied (20 August):
“You said: “About Prof Abbott’s “Eurocentric bias” I cannot comment, not knowing him, but don’t associate me with that accusation.” I was not accusing you of that bias, but since you do not care about deciphering the code, you would not care about whether any Eurocentric biases were involved in how he went about deciphering it in the past. And since he did not succeed in the effort and he is now falling back on more mundane explanations such as horse-racing notes, you seem to be agreeing with him about such explanations, and actually not caring about non-Eurocentric ways of going about decoding the letters.”
I regard this as a libellous slur on my character and reputation. Dr Tamdgidi would have been unaware that I studied social anthropology with a special interest in Australian Aboriginal art and culture but he should be more careful before throwing wild allegations like this around.
Quotes from his recent comment:
“…I see him [Cramer] as just another human being, trying to make a point and insist on his views, and busying himself in this, rather than perhaps other unhelpful pursuits in his life. I will never ever give myself the right to use, so publicly, so persistently, such terms and swears on another person, simply because I find the other person’s work not up to par with others’ standards.”
Cant.
“Swearing at others, we swear at ourselves. And conversely, by being more civil to others in our conversations, we help ourselves also to heal. The Somerton Man is not someone who died in 1948. He is now living, as a self, in each and every one of us. ”
Pseuds corner! Sanctimonious, pious, glib and totally phony.
“Can we say Carl was not emotionally abused by Dorothy in that marriage? Frankly, I cannot deny such a possibility. She left out a LOT in that report. There is nothing there that calls his ailment an illness, but she finds herself deserving of being called that during care for his mother. ”
I don’t need to comment. But I will. Victim blaming.
You will note he patronised Sophie while pretending to praise her. This is his usual style. Example:
“A general comments (sic), I would say, is that the second part of your post somewhat answers and complicates what you wished to say in the first part, regarding what transpired between Carl and Dorothy, and how to judge her report (only) on what happened.”
“I see society not as an interaction of “persons” like billiard balls in a Newtonian worldview but of many selves intrapersonal and interpersonal in unpredictable quantum ways, amid broader social contexts. ”
This is gobbledygook of the ripest variety. Sociology has nothing to do with quantum physics. Or Newtonian physics. It is a social science. It can be aspire to be mathematical in some hands, with poor results, but most take an interpretive, anti-positivist, phenomenological or existential approach. Dr Tamdgidi seems to prefer ancient American sociologists like Charles Cooley and George Herbert Mead, blissfully unaware of the great strides the discipline has taken in the last hundred years.
“Having in my own study understood exactly what the code means and Carl Webb findings actually prove it, as I will show, has not in any way, shape or form, let me feel I can privately or publicly humiliate another person for a microwriting explanation of the code that really does not make sense to me, either.”
Enlighten us oh mighty one! We poor mortals will grovel at your feet forever. Well, some of us anyway. ps Carl Webb was an Melbourne electrical fitter and instrument maker, No evidence he was a Persian or Arabic scholar, unless Dr Tamdgidi knows otherwise and is hiding it from all of us.
Just a word John. If you are aiming to alienate all the female contributors here you sure are going the right way about it.
@Jo
I had completely forgotten about the hoax perpetrated on Max Harris by characters using a pseudonym. “Ern Malley” indeed. Actually my (shameful) knowledge of Australian literature is pretty much restricted to the novels of Patrick White, who at one time I greatly admired but who seems to be somewhat unfashionable these days. ‘Voss’ is a great read and I loved the acid humour of novels such as ‘The Solid Mandala’, ‘The Vivisector’, and ‘The Eye of the Storm’.
Could Max Harris be involved in the SM case? From the link you posted I notice that he attended St Peter’s College in Adelaide.
Dr John Barkly Bennett (Doff’s second cousin) married Nan Sparrow (a nurse) in 1950. She lived with her parents before their marriage dead opposite Jo and Prosper Thomson on Moseley Street. Her brother John went to St Peter’s College. From their father Cyril Sparrow’s biography on WikiTree: “They [the Sparrows] moved back to Adelaide [in 1932] and lived at Glenelg. At first they lived in part of a house near the beach, to the delight of the children. A year or so later they were able to purchase a house in Moseley Street and employ a housekeeper Marjorie. There was a horse paddock over the lane behind the house and a bakery at the back of the house opposite. After a year at the local State School Nan went to Woodlands in Partridge Street, just a short walk up Pier Street. She could also walk to the beach nearby and down to a little kiosk. Sometimes they rode bikes as far as Brighton to swim, but beyond that there were cliffs not beach. Johnny had to take a bus to town and then a tram to St. Peters School. Don Dunstan [future premier of SA whose uncle and aunt, a former Mayoress of Adelaide, also lived on Moseley Street] came or Nan visited him. He was always skating around.”
There is also a link between Cyril Sparrow and the Tivoli, Adelaide (where The Listeners opened on 30 November 1948): “Cyril’s friends were all actors, and he was an actor also and formed his own concert company and almost monthly put on a show. They called themselves the Saint Peiros. Mostly they followed Cyril from St.Peters College. They were very popular and used no published material He wrote and used many plays of his own. He used only university trained singers; only the best from the conservatory. He would go to say the Tivoli, buy a few drinks and talk them into performing for him. He did this right through his university days, often putting on shows at the conservatory. These were good charity shows, musicals and some dance, and had large audiences.”
By the way Sparrow “organized a defense corps for South Australian beaches in WWII and, despite many hinderances, obtained weapons and equipment unknown in the army. He borrowed other camp rifles for target practice, he did a guerilla warfare course and, being an intelligence officer and having studied law, was well suited to captain this defence corps.”
And then, as a solicitor “Cyril was in partnership with a solicitor and another barrister who did not do the court cases in the Bowman Buildings, King William Street near the corner of Pirie Street…Cyril earned a reputation as a top divorce lawyer. In those days it was a very difficult and costly process to obtain a divorce, with one party required to be at fault to satisfy the courts. In cases of amicable agreement between the parties it became a common practice amongst barristers for one person to represent both parties in court, to spare them great conflict and to save in costs.”
Max Harris also hooked up with Von (Yvonne) Hutton, “who was furthering her ballet training at the Borovansky School” before they married. Hmmm, we have mentioned Borovansky here before too.
Also; “Max decided to remain in Adelaide with his little family and joined his old friend Mary Martin in a bookshop business. Mary Martin’s Bookshop began as a small arty bookshop in Alma Chambers, Exchange Place, Adelaide.” Could Carl have bought the ROK there?
Perhaps not!
We all seem to have missed that prior to his marriage and the move to Domain Road Charlie was living with the Keanes at 226 Glenlyon Road, East Brunswick.
@ Pat discovered that this was Charlie’s address in 1940 back on 5 October. I found quite a few ads detailing rooms to let in the late 1930s and 1940s. Were the Webbs tenants or lead tenants? This indicates that Charlie lived at the same address as Jack Keane for a while. This might fit with the roadster that was sold possibly being Jack’s car and also how he ended up with some of Jack’s clothes.
@ Nick wrote that the Keane’s lived at 226 Glenlyon Road before moving to Stewart Street Brunswick in his piece on Jack Keane.
I’ve just had a quick look at Roy’s probate document, which someone has uploaded to FamilySearch (thank you!).
The Webbs were aware of Roy’s death back in early 1945. His probate went through in March 1945 – so a good year before Carl and Dorothy’s marriage disintegrates. It is also well before Brenda’s birth in December 1946.
They were also aware that he was a prisoner of war back in 1942.
Freda and Gerald Keane are the witnesses to Roy’s will on Boxing Day, 26 December 1940. This sounds like a family gathering? Their addresses are given as 226 Glenlyon Road, the same address as Charlie.
I do wonder how Roy and Ruby met. On his marriage certificate Roy is described as a bread carter, living at the bakery, Springvale Road, Springvale. Ruby is living at 1A Mackay Street Prahran (this must be a bungalow or similar at the back of 1 Mackay Street – a very nice Edwardian house – today there doesn’t seem to be a 1a). Springvale and Prahran some distance away from each other… The witnesses are also associates of Joseph Garvey.
@ Steve
I don’t think the Angry Penguins were caught up in the SM case directly. I thought this might be a story that would appeal to you and would add to the texture of our understanding of the times. It seems that the Webb web is capable of capturing all kinds of social history, things connect and get caught into it quite easily…Australia’s still a bit like that, hence I found people who knew at least one of the characters we have been researching. But then, I probably know people who moshed with you at the Hacienda…. I do wish Charlie had pursued poetry though, rather than death, although I suspect his offerings would be a bit morbid and wouldn’t reflect his changing times.
I also like the that a man who was basically an contrivance of bored intelligence geeks became one of Australia’s best know poets!
Steve H: can’t help my wrongly perceived bias against the ladies which has served my purpose well from my formative years when I was inclined to chuck rocks at our cute bush girls to attract their attention. Greatest come on being for those with the right stuff to sling em back in kind at twice at a greater rate and twice as hard not caring what part of the male anatomy they got. That experience of long ago gave me over to a total reappraisal on the need for maximum caution when dealing with absurities like the sanctity of women and their unfair demands to a larger slice of the pie. A system of even and equitable distribution that has been existing in both camps since Adam finally put his foot down on his evil tart’s gross excesses back in the day. Hope our fine lasses can come to terms with my own excesses and not judge me too harshly, after all I deserve due respect under the fall back of being damaged goods. Love all you’se old sheilas to pieces no sweat!
In the final pages of John Russell Keane’s service record
https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=5250313
we can see that he had been employed as an electrical fitters assistant and had worked in “Radio Service” for three years, prior to becoming a mechanic at Lanes Motors, 18 months before his enlistment in 1940.
He also has a reference from someone at Amalgamated Wireless Australasia, who has known him since childhood. Here is a link to AWA’s history:
https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=5250313
I wonder, with his close links to the Keane’s whether Charlie had also worked for Amalgamated Wireless Australasia? It appears that Charlie was living with the Keanes at 226 Glenlyon Road, probably from the time that the bakery winds up in 1938/9 up until 1940, when the Keanes move to Stewart Street, as per Jack Keane’s service record and Charlie begins work at the Red Point Tool Company, which was established in 1940.
I believe there is a hint of evidence towards Charlie being involved in making or modifying intelligence services equipment. There are also people who may have been involved in similar activities at the Society of Illumination Engineers conference in Adelaide in November 1948. I don’t think they had anything to do with his death. Charlie may have hoped to see old contacts, or to sell his credentials and secure work and then succumbed to thoughts that his situation was hopeless. If there were people in his work related circles who thought that SM might be Charlie the war-light aspect might make them wary of stepping forward to identify him, hoping that it wasn’t Charlie and that the story might move on.
Family members may not have stepped forward because for them, Charlie may have already been off the radar, avoiding his maintenance payments, hence he was already missing.
Dorothy? The Thomsons? Who knows…
I think there is a both a personal and a warlight aspect to this saga…
Thanks Pat!
https://worldradiohistory.com/AUSTRALIA/Various/AWA-1936-37-Radiogram.pdf
1930s staff magazine from Amalgamated Wireless Australia – Jack Keane’s referee, Chief Foreman, Charles Williams (who has known Jack since his childhood days) is in here, dancing at a ball… I haven’t been able to find any other editions…
Lots of staff activities, radio receivers being set up in Rabaul, Fiji and other places….
Behrooz, good show. When things get interpersonal, I’m inclined to get very interested. (eye waggle)The infamous “he said she said…but the mine owner said” argument. I like it.
Mary Spencer, I am guessing this thing, barring any major revelations, will be percolating for years. I am guessing SM was a spy of some sort. Even possibly an American, as strange as that sounds. Spies have safe houses and what not, and support teams (if you watch those famous movies by whatshisname) . There is a very good video on youtube about how spies operate in other countries,(don’t mention the war!) that I can find and provide if there is interest. It talks about the infamous cyanide pill, which is very real apparently. Seeing it (serendipitously I’m sure) actually lead me to this conclusion, though far from absolute. Probably not good to piss off your support team, huh? Whatever he actually was, the SM to me, and I’m sure many others will always be a *boss* He sooo died like one, down to the half burned cigarette.
Poppins,
Very interesting. So how did their *feet* compare, hmmm?
Steve H. A nice little piece and one I can well recommend to our lady canteen staff. I seem to recall from my early research into the life and times of Nadine’s dad Cyril Keith Starling, whom you perloined after a respectful hiatus, that he also did good service in the AIF post WW1 tidying up the mess in France and Belgium after the big bash. He had had the good sense to stay put upon arrival in London forvthe Armastice ensuring that the I’s and T’s were dealt with before heading into town for mid noon tifffin and a berlesque show or two. No need adding to your ‘free-on-line’ run down of his selfless role as the protector of Adelaide beaches circa 1942, then under dire threat of nip invasion. No doubting that his appointee for South Glenelg & Somerton Beaches, 12th Ambulance medic John Baines Lyons, a name which still pops up in connection with the initial beach body sighting gave service to the cause with no thought of the risks involved. I can’t imagine counsellor Cyril Seagull’s temprimental brother-in-law Dr. Norm Bennett taking any chances with getting wacked in the cranium like last time besides he had been rendered a war invalid with ongoing problems of having a deep soft spot in the old noggin arrising therefrom….
@ Steve H
The worlds of the Sparrows of Adelaide and those of the Webbs of Springvale and Prahran sound as far apart as the strains of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra vis a vis those of the Ted Mulry Gang… (Penguins, and cars again…). In terms of the Sparrows, I just can’t picture a Bennett fit for involvement with the sad demise of Carl.
@Mary Spencer
Dear Mary, I am so sorry that I didn’t see your comments earlier. You made some really good points before me, and I regret not reading them before I wrote. I am still figuring out how this works … Thank you for your understanding.
@em
I am not sure if Carl died from suicide or from natural causes. Based on recently released documents I believe he had multiple risk factors for suicide. That however does not mean that’s how he had died. I Imagine his tools were used for jobs that he performed, like cooks carry their knives with them. He disposed his tools together with the rest of his possessions in a suitcase, rather than throwing them away.
@ Behrooz
Thank you for taking time to respond to my posting and thank you for many interesting points, references, and ideas. At this moment I am not able to fully address them. I do want to respond to your general remark about what you see as a contradiction in my write up.
I would like to clarify that in my line of work I don’t get to choose sides or judge people. I couldn’t do my job without being able to provide empathy and a non-judgmental stance to all my patients, including those who committed violent acts.
So it is not “either/or” but “yes … and”. Yes, Dorothy most likely suffered from Car’s violent behavior and mood swings and yes Carl suffered tremendously too, due to his mental illness, losses of loved ones, unsuitable marriage, etc. This endeavor is not about finding/picking a villain in a murder mystery but trying to uncover a chain of sufferings and pain that led to Carl’s tragic death.
And indeed it is mostly through Dorothy’s writing that I became aware of how much suffering Carl must had endured, probably since his childhood. He likely suffered from a severe mood disorder. He lived through the Great Depression, wars, and lost multiple family members. All those experiences had shaped how he responded to others, including Dorothy. He certainly deserves my empathy and understanding and so dies Dorothy.
I have nothing to say about Carl being abused by Dorothy. There is no evidence whatsoever to suggest so and being unhappy and unsatisfied in his marriage, does not mean he was abused.
Dorothy’s affidavit is a sworn statement, a court document signed under the penalty of perjury. It has some evidentiary significance I believe, but I understand why some people cannot accept it, and I am not interested in trying to change their minds.
@Pat and others who are curious and good in information searching:
Some of you suggested that Carl might have suffered from bipolar disorder. If that was the case, there wouldn’t have been viable treatment options for him (except lobotomy and electroconvulsive therapy).
Interestingly, the first mood stabilizer, Lithium, was discovered by Australian psychiatrist Dr. John Cade in 1948. Dr. Cade worked first at Bundoora Repatriation Mental Hospital and then in Royal Park Psychiatric Hospital, both in Melbourne. Dr. Cade experimented initially on animals and subsequently on men as well, mainly on veterans who were returning from the war with ample mental health problems. Those experiments were quite lethal because Lithium is extremely toxic and at that time, they didn’t have good methods to measure lithium blood concentration, so often overdosing. (There should be a documentary about that). I don’t believe Carl was his patient, b/c he was not a veteran, but maybe worth of lifting that stone as well.
Em: if said someone was, by the time of intended departure undecided on the best method & means to happy Tamam Shud style resolution to an otherwise [unhappy] existence, than all cards were still on the table. Em, as you’ll be no doubt be aware by now, the said someone in question would not ultimately be given the rather draconian option of selecting sharp instruments for the gruesome task at hand. Ultimate decision as to methodology having been determined by others of a more practical and self serving cum self preserving bent. They being a vengeful spouse a a Keane relative and a complient MD, tasked cover any hint of duplicity after the fact; Thereby the desired ‘all’s well that ends well’ outcome…til now that is Mr. B.
@John Sanders
https://www.geni.com/people/Edward-Stratford/6000000188183065824
Looking for WR Stratford. Have you got any more information?
I haven’t found any direct link to our Alice Stratford Robertson in this family so far.
When I inadvertently pressed the go button in July with some interesting shit on Em Webb the SM service Salvo his housemate Ted Keane and the baby Webb, a fellow denizen at Plan 3 West End cemetery, something had to happen fast even if prematurely over at Derrek Abbott’s ville and without delay, this in order to take the long planned initiative away from interloping riff raff like Cipher Mysteries Inc.
Carl Webb happened that’s what, so timely and engrosing so that my very own initiatives were neutralised. Turned out to be other stuff for consideration which until then I had only mentioned briefly, intending to dig deeper when I got around to it. Of course I found Webbs aplenty in and about Glenelg including a grocer who had offed himself at the beach earlier and a baker who had been also a chaufer. Then of course we had the original suspect E. C. Johnston, yet another Sally who had been a baker in the war, plus the Norseman Carl Tomsen a claim staker from up near Bute fuck or Burra somewhere and who may also have had an interest in an underground bread oven for the heck of it. Having all that talent about when our tall internally emaciated stranger road into town would have made for a great smokescreen, had only half of it been known to the perps I’d venture…what perps?
Peter Davidson: WR was in the army, a soldier a member of ordinance as in big guns and blankets. He only gets a mention in the Canberra Times circa. 2002 for the AWM Vietnam Memorial dedication. Doubt that your Geni generated Alice Stratford Robertson would have been kin to him. Thanks anyhow.
Jo: if I recall correctly the Angry Penguins were a band of fake intellectual of an uncertain class of misfit artists urgers and the like who had no rightful place in mainstream poetical influence of any substance and not Carl’s bag. Whereas also in good old Adelaide where it took hold in the early thirties, Jindiworobak bacame the accepted norm for both alternate form and poetry of a past era but jazzed up for inclusiveness, its subjects including indiginous culture, environmental issues (you betcha) and even death wish themes for those looking for cheap thrill kills. Queenslander Rex Ingamells was the main man and his followers included our Alf Boxall and his mate Alfred Xavier Herbert who both used to get a mention in SM discussions pre Webb. Can’t remember the question Jo but the answer could be yes..no, or maybe.
Sophie,
There can be a form of abuse of Carl by Dorothy if she was spending her days and nights with friends and at the cinema while he was slogging away for the war effort making 100s of drills. Possibly returning home to an empty flat with a sick cat making a mess on the floor with no food in the house to eat. Dorothy didn’t work for the first 12 months of their marriage during WW2 she said. You have to remember even her mother was making bullets and bombs. Either Dorothy was immune to what was going on due to her immaturity or she didn’t care to help the war effort. In Domain road where she first lived other residents organised At Home events to help the war effort. Her name never comes up for those events.
I don’t think we should take the affidavit as a literal truth. Otherwise, she never lived in Domain Road – which we know can’t be true. She is withholding some facts. We know she can’t have lived in all of Bute so she is withholding her specific address in Bute. We can guess she did know the addresses of the Webb sisters but chose to be selective with the truth. To prevent a response from a hostile Webb family member. You wouldn’t want a sister laying out an alternative truth of what went on with her and Carl.
Carl seems to be strongly linked to the Keane family. They would have been the people who would have known where Carl was or had gone. If she really wanted to track him for a divorce and the owed maintenance payments they would be the people to ask. She would know that.
Behrooz: I’m reminded that in your Tamam Shud celebration dance theme suicide synopsis, published prior to the current chain of events which offerd a totally contrary view including a victim not at all akin to your own in essence. In your own paper you confidently predictated that the dead man was likely to have been of a Russian or Caucasan origin, transposited into Australian society but nonetheless familiar with it’s language diversity including a sound knowledge of written Arabic. My question being, do you still hold fast to that original theory or are you open to the current home grown proposition.
@Poppins,
It is just a theory to explore. I doubt they ever measured him again. He could say the boots made him look taller. I doubt anyone knew his height.
It is a way of explaining why no one knew him if Roy was acting as Carl in Melbourne and then the body that turned up was Carl with beri beri who had been hidden away in some hospital setting.
Carl getting married in 1941 says Yarraville and Dorothy in her divorce documents says Yarraville. But Carl would remember Footscray (from his birth certificate) which would have been appropriate for a chiropodist to remember. Roy would remember Yarraville for himself.
Like I say just a theory to see where the boxes are ticked/unticked.
@Jo
Although I don’t believe in a massive conspiracy and/or cover up I am not so certain as you about the massive gulf between the Sparrows’ and Webbs’/Keanes’ lives. Gerald Keane worked with the Ballets Russes via JC Williamson. Carl liked poetry and bridge puzzles. We really know nothing about his life after Swinburne prior to his job at Red Point, or what he was like as a person (except through Dorothy’s affidavit). Of course there was a difference in class and certainly economic security there. But Doff WAS a second cousin of Dr Bennett, for what that is worth. I was joking about Max Harris by the way! I don’t take myself or my contributions nearly as seriously as some here seem to believe.
Where does the info about Carl’s residence at Glenlyon Road come from?
I did stroll down Chapel Street (and Toorak Road) in 1985 looking for outlets that sold Aboriginal art/craft items, but can’t remember now what I found. Chapel Street was “trendy” even back then, unlike Toorak! I suspect that Melbourne, like most other big cities – certainly Manchester – is full of bobos and hipsters now, for better or worse. I put up in a small hotel in North Melbourne and the area was dead with a capital D, but very interesting architecturally. There was a well known art dealer who lived in Ivanhoe and I took a train ride out there to interview him. I also went on a jolly to Frankie and Mornington, but didn’t get as far as the beach where Harold Holt disappeared. When I was travelling in the outback Melburnians outnumbered Sydneysiders by at least ten to one. Perhaps the latter think they live in paradise and needn’t travel interstate?
Ah, the good ol’ Penguin Cafe Orchestra. Remember ‘In a Sydney Motel’ off the first (and best) album? That was about yet another suicide Down Under (perhaps partly inspired by the death of Tony Hancock?)
“From our complete outfit
For a double suicide
I choose the palm
That crosses the smart Tahitian shirt”.
@ Jo
‘We all seem to have missed that prior to his marriage and the move to Domain Road Charlie was living with the Keanes at 226 Glenlyon Road, East Brunswick’
Great find! Joining the dots is what I’m trying to do now, there’s a lot of information out there and it needs to be organised somehow.
Do we have a place for Carl and his parents between 1925 and 1930? Angela has posted that in the 1925 electoral rolls Richard August Webb was at 50 Kangaroo rd, Oakleigh, but I haven’t found any ads or notices regarding that period. I have found a Webb mentioned in a Ball at Oakleigh Hall, St. Kilda in 1925 (he would be 20, right age for balls?) and a Webb advertising in 12 December 1925 at 15 Acland st, St Kilda a Harley-Goulding outfit, 1924, electric, no reasonable offer refused, Win … (can’t read the numbers).
The flat (double and single vacancies, superior boards, grounds, gentlemen, room for share, etc) had been adverstised for renting a since April that year.
I think we sort of assumed that Carl was living with his parents all the time until his marriage, but now that we know he lived with the Keanes for a while in 1940, maybe he wasn’t always the bakery boy and had a good time in his 20s?
A while back I speculated that possibly Carl wasn’t publicly identified by his family for one of four reasons – he had simply fallen out with one and all of them, he had been placed in a “lunatic asylum”, he was a criminal (inc potentially a traitor), or he was a homosexual.
I have speculated about three of these possibilities but haven’t looked at the gay angle before now. I have absolutely no evidence that Carl was gay but the legal, social and cultural circumstances for homosexual men at the time were pretty horrible and worth a brief resume.
If Carl was gay he certainly had good reason for leaving Victoria. Buggery could be punished there by the death penalty until 1949. Yes, 1949 (the UK abolished that penalty for this “offence” in 1861). The death sentence may have been there as a “scare tactic” rather than a realistic threat, but nevertheless it was there.
The papers of the period were full of arrests for “gross indecency”. This was a euphemism for sexual acts between men where there was no proof of sodomy.
For example from the Adelaide News, 21 October 1948 (I have removed the names of those involved):
“X, 42 laborer, of Davenport terrace, Wayville, and Y, ’31, battery charger, of Osmond terrace, St Leonards, had pleaded guilty to having committed an act of gross indecency with each other at St. Leonards on September 12. Each was released on a £15 bond with a similar surety to be of good behaviour for two years, a condition of the bonds being that they were not to be in each other’s presence. A condition of X’s bond was that he live at Kuitpo Colony* for 12 months.”
*Opened in 1930 “Kuitpo Industrial Colony [was a place} where men could work for their board and lodging, ‘thereby retaining their self-respect, and a sane outlook on life until they could find a job’. It was run on good-humoured, non-militaristic lines.”
As reported in an article in the Adelaide Mail of 3 July 1947 which referred to gay men as “sex offenders”, one judge said “”GAOL terms frequently do no good at all to offenders in homosexual cases” . He went on “Under the present system, a man was sent to gaol for a certain time, and was then let loose on the community again, often worse than before he was imprisoned. It was farcical that a State which had doctors to say why men went wrong, should make no further effort to see if it could eliminate the unnatural traits that had landed the offenders in court. There should be a half-way house, between the court and the gaol — a place where offenders could be studied and treated for real or suspected abnormality. If thorough investigation proved that an offender was beyond redemption, he should never be allowed to menace the community again. ‘It is useless to expect a man with inherited tendencies or weaknesses to overcome them in prison,’ the lawyer added. ‘On the other hand there should be no mercy for a man for whom no excuse can be found.'”
See; https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/55892458?searchTerm=homosexual
Other posters have claimed that Glenelg and Somerton Beach were “gay beats” but I have found no evidence of this.
See the following from QNews for a fascinating history of “LGBTIQ” history in 20th century Australia:
https://qnews.com.au/australian-lgbtiq-history-timeline-the-20th-century/
This includes details of newspaper articles such as, from 1931, ‘The Kamp Kult’ – “Organised Male Depravity in Sydney —PERVERSION BECOMING RAMPANT — Sodom and Gomorrah Revels Shock Community.” And from 1932 ‘Brisbane’s Same Sex Weddings’ – “Ghastly horrifying spectacles of painted men and primping lads united in a sacrilegious blasphemy that they call the ‘bonds of matrimony.”
Under the circumstances one can only admire the chutzpah of the writer for QNews who states regarding the Sydney report “Reading the article, one almost feels sympathy for the author. Paragraph after paragraph, he gushes with praise for the beauty and refinement he witnesses, but then comes to his senses, and remembers that the scene is supposed to disgust him.”
Homosexuals were frequently referred to as “offenders” or “perverts”. But there were other types of “pervert” around Adelaide at the time. I have previously posted the following passage from the Adelaide News, 26 February 1949:
“Most of the prowlers [there were four arrested on successive nights] are sex perverts. On warmer nights they are attracted to Adelaide beaches. In the Glenelg district police have had frequent complaints.” One of the victims was a nine and a half year old girl.
Perverts were clearly a problem in Adelaide at the time. From the Adelaide News, 31 December 1948:
“Perverts have taken up many hours of police inquiries and hundreds of miles in travel. Seldom a night passes without detectives being called to nurses’ quarters
at hospitals, or private homes to investigate peeping tom complaints. Last night a woman at Torrens House, on South terrace, City, was in the bathroom at 10.40 when she saw a man looking at her through a window. When police arrived he had escaped. Poorly lit public conveniences were also the cause of many complaints about activities of perverts.”
Somerton Park was certainly a location for some “odd” people to hang around. From the Sydney Sun 15 June 1950:
“ADELAIDE…Another case was an attack by a naked man on a young married woman walking along Somerton Beach last Saturday night. The man ran off when the woman fought him.”
@steve all the reasons you mentioned above just indicates why Carl might indeed have been a homosexual albeit a closeted one. it would explain his frequent disappearance. Dorothy would have been a way to provide a cover or appearance of heterosexuality. I read somewhere – most possibly on Derek Abbotts face book page that Carl was a well-known punter in the Melbourne scene…. just something to look into.
Steve H: ah yes, remember it’s so well from my Police College days when law the knowledge of law states were more important to a new constable’s passage of right as a fully blown CFC Plod. Britiish law makers in 1553 didn’t mince their words by referring to indecent acts between men, consenting or otherwise as ‘The Disgusting and Abominable Acte of Buggerie, whatsmore Henry X111, a dyed in the wool conservitve prude made sure any like transgressions on the part of his more open minded constituents ‘up ended’ (true) at Tybern Middle Sex (as you like it). If our Carl had himself been that way inclined, I sincerely hope not as I would hate to see such a charge go onto his otherwise (to date) fine unblemished record of a much higher standing in the general community; In that had he been tainted with the Queer as Queensbury or Bum Bandit label. We should by rights have at disposal a plathora of contrary evidence based on a certain missing detail (missing) eminating from examination of the body and pathology tests &c. that would likely reject any such notions. Alas some thieving poofter prick up and off with the PM report which leaves in our dark hole and up shit creek literally.
@Pat here’s a couples of ads for 226 Glenlyon with phone number FW5649:
“Wallet containing notes and travelling certificate, working man.”
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/204402393?searchTerm=FW5649
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/244581504?searchTerm=FW5649
@Matt, no, I don’t know Roy’s shoe size, do you know Roy’s shoe size?
@DavidMorgan, good on ya, anything’s possible and everything’s worth looking into.
@ Pat – please could you provide a link for Webb at 15 Acland St, St Kilda. it appears that in the 1930s this was a large boarding house, Cheyne, run by a Mrs Lord. Lots of applications for naturalisation from this address. Also a self described “Ex digger” (WW 1 serviceman) called Johnny Marks who can fix any type of radio… The Oakleigh years are a bit of a blank. We’ve been very lucky that Springvale was a small community with an active local newspaper…
@ Steve – this is one that will probably stay on the speculative table. I’ve been told by older gay friends that the Domain area was historically a gay area, arty, lots of apartments, a smaller and safer, inner city community. Neighbouring Prahran is a Queer culture hub, especially for gay men and had been for decades. We’ve been told that Doff went to live in an LGBQTI type community, who knows how Constable Carter knew Carl… as you note 1948 wouldn’t be Queer friendly or easy for anyone deviating from bacon and eggs, white bread and missionary position type cultural milieu… from a distance SM, his suitcase and his archival trail all look fairly straight, we don’t have much else to go on, but who knows..,
@ John Sanders, I found Rowan Holmes’ SM piece in the Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society – a great late night read: far right groups, radio operators, the Jindyworobak poets etc. It’s funny how I’d homed in on some similar trends – Amalgamated Australasian Wireless Co, poetry trends of the 1940s etc. but from different starting points…I like how Rowan Holmes just puts lots of interesting historical context out there and leaves it at that. I prefer his writing & approach to some of the other commentators out there who leap to wild conclusions and then growl if you have doubts or ask for evidence…
What will I do with all of this historical hotchpotch cluttering my tiny mind? Do I still care about making sense of Carl Webb’s rather sad life and death? At what point are we crossing the line for family who may be still out there?
Has anyone managed to track down Ruby and John Ivor’s mother? Annie Elizabeth Allen? After the divorce and the shooting, she disappears. She may have remarried?
Can’t find her.
Sophie: sincere apologies for my having to disagree with you. Whilst I have the utmost respect for your opinions and the right to speak forthrightly on a subject presently under discussion vis a vis Webb v Webb affidavit, I think you’re way off target in your assessment. This black hearted woman is quite simply guilding the lily, aim being to inflict maximum damage to poor Carl’s character both in life and death, of which she’s of course well aware by 1951. No memories of endearment or the good times they shared in their courting or harmonious first four years of wedded bliss is a dead giveaway to her own selfish, heartless and wicked ways. In her affidavit she’s at the man’s throat from the get go and with no let up in degree of insinuitive hate filled rancor. You may have glossed over the fact that there is not slightest mention of self recriminations for any perceived misgivings on her own part in the strife. Self and pelf seem to be always at the forefront of her diatribal abuse. Seems to me that Doff’s own monetary concerns form the largest part of her disatisfaction, with domestic income falling way short of her initial expectations to having a healthy share of Carl’s potential earnings & winnings at Moonie Valley.
Jo: appropos to John Robertson’s having contracted Sypilis or a similarly serious ‘self inflicted’ (ARO designation) wound during his war service. After some soul searching as to a subsequent laxity when considering the potential for infecting his partner, I’ve hit upon something with potential for a total reassessment of his subsequent married life and fatherhood. In essence, apart from the more dire medical consequences of syphilis of which we’re well familiar, a lesser known side effect evidenced particularly in demobilised light horse troopers was infertility. Initially this was attributed to long periods in the saddle which put immense strain on testes but, although temporary disfunction was well noted, later re evaluation revealed that many cured AIF syphilis cases were still,infertile years later hence incapable of impregnation. So had it been the situation with your Jack Robo then, whence Dorothy and sister Phyllis; Seems to me like some existing related birth registration paperwork detail needs amending!
Poppins: Roy was most likely a normal fit size 8 if the online height for shoe size table is anything to go by. Somerton man’s stated height of 5′ 11″ along with his own size eights and 8 slippers doesn’t sound right but we’re only going by contemporary info of the period.
@behrooz
Sorry, perhaps I was too flippant for my own good. I strive to keep things light as possible, though I think I have erred here. I am aware of the “interpersonal” through a relatives association with Harry Stack Sullivan, and. he had an interpersonal theory. Thank you so much for your work at not only getting us the file, but advising us not to jump to conclusions, as John Sanders and others are encoraging us not to do.
@Poppins Not I, I was trying to be amusing. I thought you referenced “footie” pictures earlier or some such. You gave me a laugh. His foot size might be a known quantity. The autopsy files were lost yes?
@all I would be interested in a new timeline of events, as its somewhat difficult to keep up with from your great posts. Perhaps even a flow chart. I remain disillusioned with this case though. Dont knock yourself out. When in doubt, throw it out. Or let someone else step in it.
John S .. may I say that through extensive personal experience in sitting astride a surfboard for hours on end in frigid winter water can result in a kind of physical resistance when it comes to expecting certain parts of the male anatomy to rise to the occasion when expected … if you know what I mean … nevertheless I am in accordance with your own experiences with regard to the meetings of like beings with regard to shared erotic instances and only wish you the very best in your attempts to convince others of your many and varied successes in this particular field.
@misca…. i think she married a James Francis Cherry
@misca ….although there is an entry as Annie Elizabeth Watts on family search by Angela so i am guessing that is the correct one
@ Jo
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/2172945?browse=ndp%3Abrowse%2Ftitle%2FA%2Ftitle%2F13%2F1925%2F12%2F12%2Fpage%2F444398%2Farticle%2F2172945
Harley-Goulding outfit, 1924, electric, no reasonable offer refused. Webb, 15 Acland st, St. Kilda, Win *** (can’t read)
The search machine on Trove doesn’t show it if you type the main words. I just found it by looking at all entries… I know, I need a life, but I think it’s better to keep my brain busy with these sort of things, instead of dwelling on the thoughts that my neighbours are poisoning the stray cats I feed every night for years…
John Sanders
As a woman hater I had you down as “gay friendly” in more ways than one. Seems you just hate everybody.
On the ‘LGBTQTI type community’ revealed by Colleen Fitzpatrick… I find it strange that Doff’s nephew vaguely remembers where and when she was buried/cremated, but knows that she lived in a ‘colony’ of this type.
In any case, if Carl and Doff had homosexual tendencies and the marriage was a cover-up, we probably won’t find a Kevin D’Arcy or any other man in her official records… it’s pretty contradictory, unless Doff was insisting on a cover-up, which is possible, given the sociopolitical view of homosexuality in those times. But if that’s the case, my earlier thought that she might not have had an official marriage doesn’t fit the theory, so we can still find a second marriage record for her.
I am not one to bandy labels around lightly. The term “misogynist” is well overused when the term “sexist” would be much more applicable. But I have been shocked by the level of genuine misogyny on this site and frankly, as I have stated before, I have been surprised that Orlando M. Pilchard (aka Mr Frak!) has allowed some comments through. But, it is his site and I am not the censorious type in general, unless attacks are personal and threatening.
But I have to comment here. On the misogynists’ side you have the snake oil salesman Behrooz (who has mysteriously been silent for a couple of days), David Morgan, the Colonel (at least he has the excuse of shrapnel on the brain) and Gordon “The Moron” Cramer over on his site.
A few brave souls have spoken out but too many have remained silent, including some who should have been braver. If good people don’t speak out then we are all doomed.
Chronologically the following have challenged the orthodoxy on this thread.
On 12 October I wrote:
“Having said that I have personally been surprised at some of the “defence” arguments to justify Carl (supposing the allegations are true). Regardless of any traumatic experiences or mental instability he suffered from, wife beating is wife beating and totally inexcusable in my opinion. And why are men given more credit than women when it comes to telling the “truth”?”
On 14 October Mary Spencer wrote:
” I agree with Behrooz that there are 2 sides to a story. I only personally feel that there is truth to some things Dorothy said in these sad documents. I think all of us still want to know the whole story; the whole truth.”
On 19 October Sophie wrote:
“Clearly, Dorothy’s affidavit is not an unbiased assessment of Carl. Some “embellishments” (perhaps, per her lawyer’s instruction) are to be expected. Having said that, the document reads as an account of a woman who indeed suffered domestic abuse and partner violence. Her account is detailed and specific, describing events that unfolded over several years and showing a cyclic yet escalating pattern. She identifies multiple witnesses, including police officers, which adds to the veracity of her claims. I have no reason to believe that she was intentionally untruthful.”
To his great credit the usually flaky Peter Bowes wrote on his site on 13 October:
“Dorothy Webb’s Affidavit makes for some ugly reading in that it describes in detail the atrocious behaviour of her husband, a man once known as The Somerton Man now identified as being Carl Webb. A violent and suicidal wife beater.”
I regard the silence of the rest of the contributors (and the moderator) on this site as moral cowardice. The grovelling at Behrooz’s feet has been sickening. If you don’t come out against the woman haters (and that includes some of the female contributors) then I regard you as on the Devil’s side on this issue.
@ Poppins
Thanks! Nick had already posted those ads, but I know it’s hard to keep up with all the comments!
It’s interesting that only Carl was posting from that address, if that was an apartment building I would expect more people advertising from there, but it can also mean that Carl was an avid newspaper reader posting ads of cars besides contributing to bridge and puzzles. It seems that he was the only one in his family since none of them had seen his photo in the newspapers as an unidentified dead man!
Addendum to my comment above re misogyny.
On 13 October Mary Spencer wrote:
“Thank you, Behrooz for your stellar work on this. Quite an achievement, and all of here (sic) appreciate you sharing these important documents.
I saw them yesterday but waited to comment…They are really sad. I now do believe Dorothy’s allegations—She obviously had witnesses and there must be documentation of the police calls. Whatever Carl’s trials were with regard to his family losses, it is not a reason for his treatment of her.”
@ misca
Death record of Annie Elizabeth Watts, known as Mary Watts (???)
Angela’s page on FS… https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/memories/GN4Z-N4K
Steve H: “moral cowardice”, ha! Taketh thou the pill that doth chill, methinks.
@ Jo
Webb’s ad for a Harley
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/2172945?browse=ndp%3Abrowse%2Ftitle%2FA%2Ftitle%2F13%2F1925%2F12%2F12%2Fpage%2F444398%2Farticle%2F2172945
This was not easy to find…
So sorry for the double post, Nick!
It’s interesting that the 1924 electoral roll shows Richard August Webb at 50 Kangaroo rd, Oakleigh as a COOK.
I also noticed that Eliza Amelia Webb’s address listed in Richard August’s Probate ( 1939) was 28 Grey st, East Melbourne.
Nick
I’m already on the “happy pills”!
@Jo
My alter ego Ann O had already posted on August 24:
“As a newcomer to this site – recommended to me by a former contributor – I would like to ask the old lags a couple of questions. I have been reading an article by Rowan Holmes, “an ageing amateur recluse who hides, as far as possible, in the Blue Mountains outside of Sydney, Australia”. from Global Histories: A Student Journal, ‘Microhistory Interrogates a Mystery: On Some Possible New Relations in the ʽSomerton Manʼ or ʽTamám Shudʼ Case”, from 2017. Quite interesting stuff even if a lot of it is irrelevant now we know SM’s identity. But he makes two claims that I would like to confirm.
He mentions Jessica Harkness/Thomson who he says “had been born and trained in Sydney and now worked at the Home for Crippled Children in front of which the body had been found.” Did she work at that home?
Our friend the recluse also states in connection with the “code” found in the Rubaiyat: “The tracings were derived from inscription marks made on the back page of the book as the original code passage was written above it on a page which was then torn out of the book and has never been recovered.” Is this correct?
Holmes quotes from the French writer Louis-Ferdinand Celine so perhaps I might be allowed the same indulgence:
“You can lose your way groping among the shadows of the past. It’s frightening how many people and things there are in a man’s past that have stopped moving. The living people we’ve lost in the crypts of time sleep so soundly side by side with the dead that the same darkness envelops them all.”
From Journey to the End of the Night.”
I never had replies to my questions. It seems pointless bothering to comment here sometimes as it is so easy for contributions to be lost or ignored given the differing time zones we inhabit etc.
At least the Colonel will have another reason to moan about my repetitions, but, hey, that’s a bonus. As Mark E Smith once said: “We dig repetition”:
“This is the three Rs
The three Rs:
Repetition, Repetition, Repetition
Oh mental hospitals
Oh mental hospitals
They put electrodes in your brain
And you’re never the same
You don’t dig repetition
You don’t love repetition”
I saw Smith on the street once and he gave me a proper “death stare”. Brix just gave me a ‘Smile’ (another Fall song of course).
Regarding the possibility that Carl was a homosexual… maybe the ‘QC’ on his ‘code’ is for Queer Carl… just joking. I don’t even know the slang for gay men in 1940’s Australia. Anyone? I looked on the internet and found this funny one:
Friend Of Dorothy
Meaning:
(Noun) Dorothy refers to the main character of ‘The Wizard of Oz’, portrayed by Judy Garland, who most consider a gay icon. Because of that, gay people are referred to as friends of Dorothy in Australia.
Charlie Webb, Dance at Rosny, in Mercer rd, Malvern (29 April1926)
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/146593967?browse=ndp%3Abrowse%2Ftitle%2FT%2Ftitle%2F713%2F1926%2F04%2F29%2Fpage%2F17653949%2Farticle%2F146593967
Pat –
Thanks for sharing the death record for Annie Elizabeth Allen. It’s very odd. The are two records for marriage for Richard Isaac Watts. The first in 1912 with Henrietta Mary Davey. She died in 1918. He then remarried a Marie Carlisle in 1919. So she (Annie Elizabeth) had remarried a Carlisle before him or just changed both her first and last name. That’s quite something! She shows up on trees and no one has any information on her.
Richard had three daughters with his first wife. Two of them died as infants. One of them seems to have survived and I wonder if she is the one that filled out the death certificate for Annie Elizabeth? Annie Elizabeth’s ages former marriage to Joseph Gavey is incorrect. She was born in 1879 and was 26 when she married him in 1905. The ages for Ivor and Ruby are slightly off as well.
It’s all very odd. I wonder if Ruby and Ivor knew where she was?
As I have mentioned before, the divorce proceedings between them and detailed in their divorce filings are quite something and both accuse each other of adultery. Joseph is given custody of the two children which he claims she took back briefly in August of 2013 when she apparently wanted to place them at Miss Sutherland’s Home for Neglected Children.
Underground for Collins St
Charles W. “Webb” (Malvern, 15 Dec 1927)
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/243976026?searchTerm=underground%20for%20collins%20st
@Nick,
Sometimes you have posted items referring to Ancestry so it may be safe to assume you have/had a subscription.
When the image of Carl (assumed to be about 18 at his sister’s wedding) is used with Pimeyes it provides links to several versions on Pimeyes.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HxiYBHT2iYtFHJyQZA7IHzn8yyyWn0vv/view?usp=sharing
It implies that image is stored on about 3 ancestry (mediasvc.ancestry) accounts. One might be the original full image if it hasn’t been removed.
Pimeyes only gives a section of the image and without a subscription it is hard to know who owns that account. To see the full image via Pimeyes would require 2 subscriptions. But since we know there are only certain people interested in the family tree it should be locatable searching with Richard August Webb on ancestry.
I wondered whether you have located it on 3 ancestry accounts with the later teen Carl image aged about 18?
I know that the genealogical element of this story is boring to some but when I find things that are related to the family structure, I feel compelled to share. Amelia Bailey/Morris/Grace had 3 maybe 4 (if Eliza Amelia is included) children with Robert Grace. They are as follows:
Eliza Amelia (1870–1946)
Robert Henry (1874–1943)
Alice Eleanor (1877–1878)
Annie Elizabeth (1877–1929)
On both Eliza Amelia’s Victoria and Australian death index, her father is listed as Robert Grace. As an aside, if on the maternal side, Charles was linked through a Morris sibling; then this would effectively tell us that Eliza was, in fact, a Morris. I’m guessing that we will eventually find out if this is the case; so far, it’s looking like it is.
Alice Eleanor was born at Redbank and died in 1878 as an infant. She is buried there as you can see here:
https://www.ancestry.com/discoveryui-content/view/201583846:60528?ssrc=pt&tid=184683222&pid=262430150277
Annie Elizabeth was a little tricky to track until I discovered that she basically lived with the Webbs the entire time; she moved whenever they moved. She just wasn’t showing up when I was trying to find the Webb addresses because she was listed as a Grace. From the earliest of their addresses that I could find 1903, she was with them. She doesn’t seem to have married. She is always listed as “hd” or “house duties”. I wonder if that was a norm then? For an unmarried sibling to live with the one that marries? Or perhaps, there were other issues that can’t be seen from electoral listings? These are the rolls I have found for her so far:
1903 – Yarraville, Melbourne Ports – 24 Ovens Road
1914 – Orrong, Balaclava – 62 Murray Street
1915 – There are two listings so they must have moved this year; 62 Murray Street and Manifold Street
Incidentally, I think the Webbs encountered the Keanes when they moved to Manifold Street as this is where Emma Ann Keane lived for a large part of her life. It’s also where Julia Kathleen lived after her mother died. (Specifically 19 Manifold Street.)
1918 – Camperdown, Carangamite – Manifold Street
1919 – Manifold Street
1922 – Malvern, Faulkner – 64 Glenferrie Road
1924 – Oakleigh, Henty – 50 Kangaroo Road
1926 – 50 Kangaroo Road
1927 – 50 Kangaroo Road
Annie Elizabeth died in 1927 and her siblings posted the following:
GBACE.-Oa the 3rd, April, at private hospital, Spring Vale., Annie beloved sister of Mrs. Webb (Spring Vale), Robert (Werribee) and Mrs. Stephens (Kew). St. Arnaud papers please copy.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/204221546?searchTerm=%22Annie%20beloved%20sister%20of%20Mrs.%20Webb%22
Robert Henry was born in Moonambel Victoria, he married Maud Alice Evans/Bryant. They moved to Werribee where he and his family ran a store. He had four children; on of whom died in infancy. You can read about him here:
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/75201795?searchTerm=%22Robert%20Henry%20Grace%22
On the Victorian Death Index for Annie Elizabeth, Robert Henry and Mary Jane Stephens – the mother is listed as Foden, Amelia Foden and Foden respectively. I’m not sure what to make of that yet. Was that her actual maiden name before Bailey/Bailye or did she remarry after Robert Grace?
Also, on Robert Henry Grace, the index lists his father as Henry Grace so, I suspect he was possibly also Roberty Henry Grace.
So… considering the fact the Carl had been working as a drill maker at Red Point Tool Co Pty Ltd, would this line of work explain his high levels of lead?
Steve H… yep I agree 100% with your concerns re gender inequality and your own misgiviings on the sanctity of motherhood. Seems you’re right on the cusp of a non life threatening self inflicted implosion event to which we are by now well used. Time for your purple moggies, a nice strong infusion of durian leaf mould and a good lie down. There’s a good nut case!
The electric drill in Australia
Australia once played a significant role in producing the portable electric drill.
Ken Bowes & Co. Ltd, known as KBC, was a South Australian manufacturing company founded in 1936. Although it produced domestic appliances such as the bean slicer, die casting of military components such as ammunition parts (shell and bomb noses) and tank attack guns kept the company busy during World War II.
It appears that KBC entered the hardware market in 1948 with its first portable electric drill, designed for the cabinet maker and general handyman. The body of the drill was made from die-cast zinc alloy and it had a unique removable front plate on the handle to allow the user easy access to the connection terminals.
https://theconversation.com/powerful-and-ignored-the-history-of-the-electric-drill-in-australia-81473
http://powertoolstudy.blogspot.com/p/other.html
Could Carl be looking for the same type of work in SA? More specifically… KBC was located in Woodlands Park, 6.2 Km from Somerton Park Beach.
Just wondering…Why Jessie Ellen Harkness’ birth certificate is still nowhere to be found. We’re over the 100-year mark for her birth. Shouldn’t that now be publicly available?
@ Steve H
The Celine quote is a bit too close to the bone – every time I leave my front door I can see echoes of these people and their world – infected by nostalgia for times I’ve experienced barely vicariously! And yet weeks go by without getting amongst it with cherished friends! We did a lot of lockdowns here in Melbourne… (As a social anthropologist you’ve probably discovered Arjun Appadurai and his ideas of armchair nostalgia, Svetlana Boym is even better on The Future of Nostalgia…).
Back to those August questions – yes, my understanding is that the original codes page was ripped out, leaving only indentations on the inside of the back cover – which makes me now think short hand or mnemonic for a melancholy poem (back in August I was still rooted in the war time signals intelligence world, thinking the letters related the names of people working in the various local mansions of espionage…).
I don’t know where Jess Harkness worked…. She’s also been the target of misogyny on here… Even Colleen Fitzpatrick, who seems to have read the damning affidavit, went on a wild ramble hypothesising about Dorothy being a “black widow” rather than a survivor of domestic violence and abuse… I think people don’t want to sully the knock about bloke image of poor Carl and leap to blaming the women around him… I’ve even attributed his bad form to feelings of inadequacy, jealousy and feelings of powerlessness within a world suddenly populated by good looking, articulate and urbane young Americans. I drew here on the story of my children’s Australian great grandparents (great grandfather also a Charlie!). But no excuses and I believe Dorothy’s story.
I think you are a very good researcher and often very witty writer, with a wild repertoire of eclectic knowledge – have you thought of doing something long form on all of this? I’m sure you could match that Rowan bloke… Maybe submitting to somewhere like Kill Your Darlings (founded by author Hannah Kent, who was born in Adelaide around the time of your visit down under…). I’d be up for a read! Pilchard aka Nick?
Sometimes I think the answer to Colonel Sanders when he’s on a spray on might be none at all, so that he can shoot his missives into empty cyber space and see how lonely it is.
@ Pat
I was trying to work out what a Harley Goulding outfit was! I thought it might be some kind of radio equipment. I realise it was a motorbike with/or side car! I’ve been so fixated on cars that I’ve missed all the beautiful motorbikes of that era! The address, 15 Acland Street, is a very interesting one – a boarding house with an interesting array of characters. I’m actually wondering if this is Roy? I keep wondering how his world and Ruby’s came together…
I’m really curious about Carl’s workplaces. The only definite ones are Red Point Tool Company from 1940 and some stints at the bakery in the 1930s. I’m still in favour of Kelly and Lewis during the Springvale years (especially after reading that this could be very on again, off again during the depression years) and suspect there was some thing radio related in the mix (as per Jack Keane) – probably Amalgamated Wireless Australasia. I did write to the Freemasons and might try again!
@ Punters Anon
The period between November 1947, when Eliza Webb dies and November 1948 when Carl turns up in Adelaide is the one that feel we need more focus on. Where was Carl? Where was Dorothy ? (Dorothy – maybe simply at Murphy Street, Elsternwick)?
Has anyone tried Port Pirie? https://www.pirie.sa.gov.au/what-do-councils-do/libraries/family-history-group
I tried the Freemason’s to see if there Charlie was a member and if there were any old member index cards (after the Glenlyon Road ad about a missing travelling certificate) but didn’t get a response: https://www.freemasonsvic.net.au/history-and-heritage/
Their library and museum may still be closed…. Maybe someone else could try – eg a bloke.
We know that RA Webb was a Freemason (Malvern Lodge and Malvern Mark).
The Prahran Masonic Centre is very close to Red Point Tool Co – on St Edmonds Road.
Pat –
I’m not ignoring your questions about the Keane’s…There’s just so much information that it will take a while to compile in a readable and understandable format.
I’m not sure if this has been posted but Gerald Thomas/Thomas Gerald’s father was institutionalized in the Kew Asylum in December 1905. He was committed for delusional drunkeness and was discharged in April 1907. His wife, sister Catherine Low and mother Margaret are all witnesses to his mental state on the accounts of his admission. (That’s a long time to be in.). He died 1911.
Also, Emma’s son William Thomas Keane suffered some sort of an accident as a child and she cared for him until his death in 1947. His obituary is here:
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/65242510?searchTerm=%22William%20Thomas%20Keane%22
I haven’t been able to find any records of an accident for him. He may have been charged for driving without a license though; so he may have been out and about despite his injuries. (That can be found on trove.)
Gerald/Thomas Keane married Freda in 1915. Their son Leo was born December 5, 1915…
From what I have found, they don’t appear on electoral rolls as living together until 1920. Before that, Gerald was either living with his mother or alone on Whitehall Street. Freda Webb was alone on Ferguson Street.
Peter Bowes: hear what your saying old salt, you can rest assured my only goal going forward hence is to unify our team to my own high standards of professional conduct and etiquette, abandonment of which will spell doom. Gentleman of our mark will not abide nor condone the anti gay rhetoric currently being tauted by cranks and knaves to create division, a man of your stature will surely agree. Re. the butt end of the spectrum, namely scurrilous vile accusations aimed unerringly at we upholders of every gal’s right to her say; be it by casual intercourse or in the wider ladies own media arena eg., Australian Woman’s Monthly. As us fair dinkum blokes, defined by the idiom ‘a few good men’ we’re ready to get behind our gals when and wherever it be their pleasure….as for ‘misogynistic’ Mr. BOB, I’d never heard of the word til Ms. Julia Gillard PM., had the affrontery to bring it onto the floor of the House, in the hallowed halls of the Australian Parliament; what a doxy she is Gawd bless her little heart.
@David Morgan and @John Sanders
Thank you for taking time to respond to my writing.
As I mentioned previously, Dorothy’s account of events is not an objective and unbiased assessment of Carl. On advice of her attorney, in her petition, Dorothy would (I imagine) attempt to explain why she needed to be divorced from Carl. She was not supposed to make a case for why she should stay married to Carl. Certainly, her attorney would have discouraged her from doing so. There was no expectation for Dorothy to provide a balanced view and she didn’t. That does not mean she told outright lies, or that she was a “blackhearted woman”. If you have evidence to the contrary, please share with us.
Going to movies with friends and expecting your husband to share his earnings with you does not constitute abuse. Not cooking delicious meals and not supporting war efforts is not abuse. Wanting to buy nice clothes and wanting to work less is not abuse. Beating and threatening your spouse do constitute abuse.
I can understand if you want to reserve your judgement about whether Dorothy’s affidavit is truthful or not until more evidence is available. What I don’t understand is on what basis you already (and a priori!) have decided not to trust her and to turn her into a villain.
@Steve H.
Thank you for your empathy and for being supportive of diverse perspectives on this forum.
I agree that being gay is not a “taint” on someone’s reputation, it is not something we should be ashamed of, HOMOPHOBIA is…
I don’t know if Carl was gay based on evidence gathered so far. I do see though why this assumption would make sense, considering what we know about Carl:
– Carl got married at much older age than what was expected at that period (24 for men)
– Likely/possibly Carl avoided intimacy with Dorothy by going to bed very early and asking Dorothy to move to a different room
– Carl and Dorothy didn’t have children/pregnancies in their five years of marriage
– Carl told Dorothy that they are not suited to be together
– Carl’s dysphoria about his marriage and life in general
Clearly NONE OF THE ABOVE points directly to Carl being gay. All these things may have perfectly valid alternative explanations. For example, going to bed at 7pm may be due to his old habit from the time he was a baker. Taken together these ideas are only consistent with him being gay, not suggestive of it. But this is definitely an interesting venue to explore.
@ Pat – I don’t think Charlie @ Rosny is our Charles, St Catherine’s is a posh girls’ school. I did a quick check, to see if any of the other boys were from Swinburne but couldn’t find them in my photos of the school results… I think that Charlie Webb is most likely to be from a Webb family who went to Melbourne Grammar School (which was built by a Charles Webb!). I think Charles W Webb is the pianist…
Pat: Harley-Goulding outfit: Windsor 891
Steve H: Unfortunately, no information/confirmation that Jessie worked at the CCH, Somerton Park. I’ve tried to get access, Ft Knox would be easier to enter.
Electric Light Tournaments “The Age” 3 Mar 1926 Page 16
TROVE: https://Trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/155792002?searchTerm=Webb
Same newspaper 13 Mar 26 Page 24, 16 Mar 26 Page 14, 31 May 26 Page 15 & 3 Jun 26 Page 7 + others.
Peter Bowes: you could well be right, both in that Jo Thomson was seeking escape from something that she feared having to face by prolonging her temporary stay in Melbourne. I personally doubt that the move to Adelaide was for romance as such although affairs of the heart were obviously not new to her but the idea of having multiple partners was not her style. Of course the question of her little known aboriginality, may also have played a part, Adelaide having always been viewed as more tolerant towards them; whereas in other cities like Sydney and Melbourne where cultural inclusiveness had no place, women of colour had no chance of real assimilation. That Jessie was able to successfully re organise her life from near ruin and start anew with nothing in staid post war Adelaide bears credit to her strong will and self determination. Had she been aquainted with the likes of Carl Webb, I doubt that she could ever be tempted to cause him harm. I think that her dark side mostly concerned issues of a spiritual nature in which she was made to reject her proud Cadigal woman origins for the right to be deemed Jewish.
@ All
I will speak up.
I visit these comments for the genuine discoveries being made through Trove and the insights of commentators. I believe free speech, unhindered by a censor, will speed this process. It is the moderator’s job to limit spam and base violence, but NP cannot be expected to play nanny to deliberate personal rudeness.
Please consider your fellows’ opinions and insights with the same courtesy you’d expect for your own. Their outlandish or contemptible theory just might be the missing part of your own puzzle. This isn’t Twitter, after all! Thank you
Comes to my attention, amongst other things of substance, that Dr. Bennett, in his later years did some travelling alone between 1959 and 1964 to exotic desinations of Singapore, Nandi and Numea which is certainly no crime though not a house call either. Some might not be cognizant of the fact that Dr. John had also had some dealings with a Cypriot businessman of British residency named Michael Diomedes Kythreotis between 1946 (his first arrival in Aust.) and 1951 when John garnered his landing permit application. Lord knows what that was all about, though as I say not evidence of further criminal potential that springs to mind .
@ Misca – brilliant research!
@ Jamie found the Keanes & Webbs meeting in Camperdown in 1915 when the Webbs were new in town, at a musical event run by the Camperdown Entertainers! Russell met Amy and Freda met Gerald! The Webb sisters sang and I think Roy played a violin?
It’s interesting that Annie Grace was part of the family up until the Springvale years!
I also wonder whether Eliza was actually at Roy Webb’s wedding in 1933 as she is named on the register as “Elizabeth”, which seems to be the only time this name is used. None of the Webbs are listed as witnesses… What is the last year that Roy is listed as being with the rest of the family?
@ Sophie my be able to offer insights, it seems that the family may not have been as close after the deaths of Richard Augustus and then Eliza. And of course the deaths of two of the next generations, Roy Webb and Jack Keane. I get the impression that Richard Augustus was a bit of a patriarch… he certainly seems to have been very resourceful, steering the family’s many moves and business ventures (and not letting a year in jail slow his progress down). Others have commented that this was a very mobile family for these times…
I also wondered who helped to raise Russell Webb’s children, as his wife Amy died when they were quite young. One of the sons lived fairly close to Carl & Dorothy, on Punt Road, but isn’t mentioned in Dorothy’s affidavit.
@ John Sanders – I’m not sure what you are trying to achieve with vile pile ons aimed at other contributors.
Sophie,
I am curious. On whose behalf did you decide to come forward to offer your psychological assessment on this? Why are you maintaining anonymity? I guess theoretically if Carl sought out some sort of psychological counseling his sessions might still have some government protections on them. In the U.S. we have very stringent rules in this regard. It honestly seems a little bizarre that you are doing this at all to me, unless you were in fact asked. Were you?
I have no problem with anyone doing a psychological study here, however you are doing it under the auspices of being a professional. Given the nature of the case and the mercurial nature of its travel through history, you’ll have to understand my (and perhaps others) looking on it with askance.
It is quite an old case to. Wouldn’t you be better off helping modern patients, rather than dithering with this? There is quite a shortage of medical professionals in this field as you are probably well aware.
What part of this is not a whitewash?
Ferguson CJ is an incompetent ignoramus of a judge who torpedoed Pell’s appeal through her malice and was smacked firmly on the bottom by the High Court of Australia. She should not have released this information to anyone let alone a foreign National.
Is it beyond belief to suggest that Signals could have released this information in order to muddy the waters?
Further to Dr Tamagotchi, I support his claim that there is a direct DNA link between Somerton Man and Robin’s in Canberra. I’m sorry but Robin and Somerton are more than the spitting image of each other. And why did Robin die so young? Shady car dealing connections.
By the way, I invented the Colonel Sanders moniker for our homophobic friend.
So here we have two verily identified blow in Webbs from Melbourne, neither with any recent history apart from both having been in close (one ongoing) residential cohabitation with families named Keane and, both now found to be attending the same funeral service in Adelaide. One known only by his initials E. J. (Em) Webb is a tall middle aged SAO, t’other also tall, be permanently middlle aged and not so recently departed. Originally known but to God, accirding to the eulogy but, now known to be the other’s part namesake Carl Webb…No need for any reappraisals, this is all just coincidence working it’s magic we can rest assured.
Ayuverdica: well did you now. That’s finger lick’n good of you sir and it sure goes down well with the houmos probis [sick] dip.
Where is the adult picture of Carl Webb? I need to see if it matched the original body/brain. Can someone please upload it and post a link?
@sophie,
I have no doubt Carl became aggressive to Dorothy. But equally some actions described don’t make sense. Like taking the locks off the doors. I didn’t understand the motive for a suicide – unless he wanted to be found. Also, Dorothy not mentioning Domain Road. A judge or solicitor who saw their wedding certificate would see she lied. She should have been advised by her solicitor against skipping that section out. She could have said my dad was the janitor and I lived there with him. It would look like she was an immoral girl to a 1950s judge living in the same house with a man before marriage. Also then counting the duration would be something a judge would do. How long were they married and together Oct 1941 to Sept 1946. But she keeps saying 4 years. I would say nearly 5 years which would sound better to a judge. It would show she tried for long enough.
Then as a judge, you’d likely calculate how many years she worked in those ‘nearly 5 years’ and it would be 6 months. Not 6 months in 18 months. It would show she was being deceitful about how long she worked. The fact she resorts to these deceits makes me suspicious of her behaviour.
If your husband watches you lift a heavy object in the garden without offering to help would you think that would be acceptable? In Carl’s case he had a heavy emotional load – mother sick, family dying, hard war work but she was walking away to the cinema for a good time with her friends. You could imagine her friends asking “is Carl coming to the cinema?” and she might respond “No, the old misery guts wants to read a poetry book about death and go to bed at 7”. Eventually, they would hope Carl wasn’t coming. He would be the subject of their jokes.
Jo: I just the a long over due visit from my favourite nephew, a rare thrill to his cheerful smiling countenance as always. I had been there to assist his his passage into this sick and sorry world imbued with self doubt, hypocracy and lurid hate fueled rancor. No matter that the lad be gay as a goose, for in essence he also be dead straight in his honesty, fearless direction, with a spirit of fairness to friend or foe alike. His being a man’s man for all of at that in spite of his alternate pathway to happiness, leaves me shamed for my weakness and my love for him is without equal. So call me out for what I represnt in your jaundiced view, for in the words of the dieing marine, it “Don’t mean nuthin Man”
Jo –
I posted about Russell a little while back but everything quickly gets lost on here. I’ll repost a portion of it in case it was missed:
Russell married Amy Sarah H Tomkinson in 1917. They had four children. (Charles, Doris, Norman and Ethel). Amy died on 2 June, 1929. He was 36, Amy was 34. The children were all 12 and under with the possible exception of Ethel for whom no birth date is available. So, who helped him raise the children? His mother or a sibling?
It’s odd that despite being the only child to have worked with his father in the bakery, he did not take over the business. Richard sold it to Mr. Patterson of East Malvern (someone outside of the family) about two weeks before he died on 2 April, 1939.
Richard re-married in 1944.. He switched up trades too; from pastry chef to “bus proprietor”. His children were all in their 20’s by then. He married Josephine Margaret Rigg (born Josephine Margaret McKeown). . She had been previously married to Thomas Henry Rigg (who died very young in 1941). She and Thomas Rigg seem to have had at least two children together who were not raised by her. One of these children died not knowing who his biological parents were.
Russell’s children did an odd thing when he died in July 1949. Each of his them posted separate notices with references to their own families and none of them mentioned Josephine. It doesn’t sound like the children liked or accepted her.
In August 1949 Josephine posted:
“WEBB – Mrs. J Webb wishes to THANK all kind friends and relatives for cards, telegrams, floral tributes, and all expressions of sympathy in her recent sad bereavement. Special thanks to Dr. A I Chapman, Mr. and Mrs. T Johnson and N Tomkinson.”
She does not mention Russell’s children or the Webb family at all.
On 2 September 1949 she is mentioned in a notification posted stating that she is the sole executrix of his will.
Josephine Margaret Webb died in 1955.
@Clive J Turner
Thanks for your reply concerning the CCH. I have seen that claim about Jo T a few times. Also that she may have worked at Parkside etc. Have to keep digging!
@Jo
I am probably as cynical as Celine but (thank God) don’t share his later racist and anti-Semitic views. Can you be a cynic and a leftie?
My first proper comment here on 10 August contained a plea for people to stop making misogynistic comments about Jessica. I did make a joke somewhere that Doff was more likely to be a funnel-webb than a black widow. Boom! Boom! I’ve made my views clear on the “domestic” situation between the Webbs and don’t intend to lecture people any more. But if Doff did “nag” Carl etc etc then the answer for him would be to have left her, not hit her. I have been a single man all my life and it’s not that bad!
There are many good researchers here, yourself included, but I’m far too lazy to write anything long-form, although one of the reasons I enjoy contributing on this site is brushing up on my writing “skills”. I imagined at one time that I would become a famous novelist, but if there is one thing I do possess it is a vivid imagination! My latest idea is to write some horror stories. Unfortunately procrastination is my middle name. To be honest I’m a bit rusty on the old anthropology front although I do read the occasional thing or two.
Nick informed me ages ago that “I’ll be forever happy to be referenced as a Pilchard man.” Look up his page on Wikipedia for more details including links to his ruminations on the likes of Pierre Bourdieu (his guru who he sadly lost faith in) and Manuel Castells, the Spanish sociologist.
The Colonel, whose brain has obviously been Kentucky Fried, does seem to have been even more prone to bilious outbursts lately, but following Nick’s lead I’ll be forever happy to be referenced as a nutcase. If people successfully rip my arguments apart or spot some minor factual error in my comments I will always be mortified, but all and any abuse directed my way is welcomed and will unfailingly give me good reason to chuckle when I sip my preprandial glass of wine or whisky.
@ misca
Thanks for all the excellent genealogical research. It’s a pity Angela is not posting on here any more. She might be extremely busy!
Dorothy is not mentioned on Eliza Amelia’s death notice, which corroborates that the marriage was over by November 1946.
Regarding Amelia Foden-Bailey… oh dear, I have been looking into it since the very beginning of this saga and I have my theories but I prefer to stick to the facts.
Angela’s info is that her mother, Elizabeth Foden, married Thomas Bailey. I have my doubts, but Angela is very good at this genealogy stuff, so I oblige.
I have a photo of the 1851 census showing Elizabeth Foden (50), Joseph Bailey (37), Elizabeth Bailey (44), Abraham Bailey (11), George Bailey (7) living side by side at 182 and 183 Mill st, St Peters, North Ward, Congleton, Cheshire, all of them are Silk Winders, except little George.
In the 1851(?) census, Elizabeth Bailey (44) is listed as the head with siblings M (d22), M (d20), S (d17), E (d15), A (d12), J (s10), H (d6), T (d4), G (s2) at Moore st, St Stephens, North Ward, Congleton, A. Bailey listed as a Silk Piecer at the age of 12. Both Elizabeth the mother and her daughter A. and all the others were born in Biddulph, Staffordshire, except for the 3 younger ones (H, T, G) born in Cheshire.
In the 1851 Elizabeth Bailey was living in King Edward st MacClesfield, Cheshire with father John Bailey, mother Elizabeth Bailey, sisters Ann Davies (born Bailey), Sarah, Martha, Harriet, Mary and brother John
Elizabeth Bailey (nee Bayley) (YAY!) b. 1802 in Buglawton, Cheshire, living with husband Samuel Bailey and son William Bailey in Kerminchan, Cheshire in1861. She is also shown as being born in 22 March 1802 in Newton st, Macclesfield, Cheshire and baptised in 18 April 1802 in Prestbury, to father Samuel Bayley and mother Elizabeth, brothers Benjamin, Samuel and Thomas and sister Hannah. She is listed as having these children: Mary, Eliza, William, Emma and Sarah. Angela once said that she thinks Emma is Amelia!
There’s Elizabeth Bailey, b. 1807, Congleton, Cheshire to Mr. and Mrs. Bailey (great…) , husband Joseph Bailey and offspring Mary, Abraham, Ann and George.
There’s Elizabeth Foden who died in 1886 in MacClesfield, Cheshire, born around 1809.
There’s James Foden b. around 1807 and 1811 in Cheshire living in Bramley Lane, Congleton in 1841 with his father John Foden (60-64), mother Ann Foden (60-64), siblings George (20-24) and Hannah (30-34) and …. William Bayley (3)!
No wonder the mother name and maiden name is stated as UNKNOWN on Eliza Amelia’s death record!
@ Sophie
It’s pure speculation that Carl was gay, bisexual etc, but I like to explore all possibilities. As you list there are reasons to at least consider the chance that he was. Two further points of interest:
1) At the coronial inquest in 1949, Paul Lawson, who made the plaster cast of the SM’s upper body said : “His feet were rather striking features, suggesting, this is my own assumption, that he had been in the habit of wearing high-heeled and pointed shoes; I base that on the fact that the calf muscle was high and well developed, such as found in women.” Could he have been a cross-dresser? But there is no reference to this in Dorothy’s affidavit.
2) Colleen Fitzpatrick stated on a podcast that Dorothy ended up living in a hippie or LGBTQ “colony”, which would be interesting if the latter were true. Possibly she was a lesbian/bisexual.
I did comment in an earlier post that I wondered how Dorothy had turned into the Wicked Witch of the West in the Land of Oz. I’m surprised that so many have questioned her statement given the specificity of the details, as you and Mary Spencer pointed out.
You may have noticed that I take a robust position when dealing with certain individuals. Both Behrooz and Gordon Cramer have attacked me in the past for no good reason, Behrooz twice. I enjoy fighting back even if my direct approach isn’t to everyone’s taste.
I notice that now Matt Lewis has questioned your right to express an opinion here, My response would be to tell him to bugger off, but yours my be more considered. David Morgan seems to think that Dorothy should have written a full autobiography in her affidavit. He can’t get his head around the idea that Carl took the locks off doors to make her feel even more insecure. His ideas are certainly most “queer”!
In her divorce response to Joseph Gavey, Annie Elizabeth claims that he has been having an affair with “Clara Gorman also known as Clara Everett”. Clara’s decree nisi from James Gorman came through in 1900 and there is, in fact, a record for a Clara Alexander marrying a John Everett in 1902 as follows:
Name: Clara Alexander
Gender: Female
Marriage Registration Year: 1902
Marriage Registration Place: Victoria, Australia
Spouse: Jno Everett
Reference Number: 3860
I also found the following article on Trove…It’s interesting and speaks to the attitudes and response of the court regarding abuse and divorce at the time:
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/144521417?searchTerm=%22Clara%20Everett%22
We have been given a fair bit of cod sociology lately by “another poster here”, as he so discourteously referred to me, so I thought it might be time for some proper sociology, courtesy of the “founding father” of the discipline, Emile Durkheim. one of whose most famous works is ‘Suicide’. I’m still tending towards the idea that Carl killed himself, although I am open to all other possibilities.
Durkheim came up with the concept of “social facts”, which were independent of the acts and behaviour of individuals, and indeed determined those individuals’ lives.
The easiest thing for me is to quote from good ol’ Wikipedia:
“In Suicide (1897), Durkheim explores the differing suicide rates among Protestants and Catholics, arguing that stronger social control among Catholics results in lower suicide rates. According to Durkheim, Catholic society has normal levels of integration while Protestant society has low levels. Overall, Durkheim treated suicide as a social fact, explaining variations in its rate on a macro level, considering society-scale phenomena such as lack of connections between people (group attachment) and lack of regulations of behavior, rather than individuals’ feelings and motivations.
Durkheim believed there was more to suicide than extremely personal individual life circumstances: for example, a loss of a job, divorce, or bankruptcy. Instead, he took suicide and explained it as a social fact instead of a result of one’s circumstances. Durkheim believed that suicide was an instance of social deviance. Social deviance being any transgression of socially established norms.
He created a normative theory of suicide focusing on the conditions of group life. Proposing four different types of suicide, which include egoistic, altruistic, anomic, and fatalistic, Durkheim began his theory by plotting social regulation on the x-axis of his chart, and social integration on the y-axis:
Egoistic suicide corresponds to a low level of social integration. When one is not well integrated into a social group it can lead to a feeling that they have not made a difference in anyone’s lives.
Altruistic suicide corresponds to too much social integration. This occurs when a group dominates the life of an individual to a degree where they feel meaningless to society.
Anomic suicide occurs when one has an insufficient amount of social regulation. This stems from the sociological term anomie, meaning a sense of aimlessness or despair that arises from the inability to reasonably expect life to be predictable.
Fatalistic suicide results from too much social regulation. An example of this would be when one follows the same routine day after day. This leads to a belief that there is nothing good to look forward to. Durkheim suggested this was the most popular form of suicide for prisoners.”
I am personally more familiar with Durkheim’s 1912 tome ‘The Elementary Forms of Religious Life’, which is partly based on Spencer and Gillen’s pioneering studies of Australian Aboriginal culture, and in which he argues that in religion a society basically worships itself.
Any ideas which “type” of suicide Carl’s might have been, if indeed his decease was “self-administered”?
@ Nick
Feel free to delete the post if you think this is going to breach any rules!
Gerald Thomas Keane is listed in the US 1950 Census as the step-son of William and Evelyn Moore at Waterbury, New Haven, Connecticut. He is 18 and his brother John Keane (also listed as a step-son) is 22.
If Gerald T Keane was born in 1932, he is probably the father of Gerald Thomas Keane II, graduated at UConn, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences as a Bachelor of Arts in 1981.
He’s mentioned in a 2012 archive:
WATERBURY
JAN 3, 3 p.m.: Insolvent estate of Gerald T. Keane Sr., aka Gerald Thomas Keane, aka Gerald T. Keane, hearing to determine whether estate is insolvent, as represented in documentation on file.
Could he or his brother John or one of their sons be the ‘Jack’ of Colleen Fitzpatrick’s research? I had the impression that he was an American the first time I listened to the podcast.
Sorry, apparently this is the wrong Gerald T. Keane, although the biography of his real mother and step-father has some inconsistencies.
https://pt.findagrave.com/memorial/141359701/evelyn-r-moore
Regarding my post on KBC (Ken Bowes & Co) factory in Woodlands Park, SA (which no one is interested to discuss, haha). The factory used to be at Ken’s garage at Forestville, Unley. Is there any remote possibility that Carl might have asked for a train ticket to Unley, not knowing exactly where it was (too close), and the booking clerk thought it was Henley?
Steve H,
I don’t think Carl was a catholic. I don’t think Carl was afraid of the rate of change of society. He had gone from baking bread to technical college to drill factory. If anything it would be fatalistic suicide in that everyone he cared about died or left him – even the cat. But as he had such poor underlying health it may be that he was killed by his health cure given to him by Dorothy.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/245111565?searchTerm=%22foxgloves%22
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/216062082?searchTerm=mrs.%20webb%20springvale
The Dandenong Journal (Vic. : 1927 – 1954) Qua 10 jul 1940 Page 9 Advertising
Brooder, out-door, 150 Chicks, Hot
water Copper Tank; sell cheap.—
Webb, Spring Vale Road South.
Eliza, Carl or Russell?
Pat: that’s almost certainly the other Carl Webb who was living in Spring Vale, if I remember correctly.
Pat: Doug Townsend, the booking clerk and Adelaide/SA Uni. Med school grad. ala John Bennett, sold tickets from his double star booth for the Port Pirie express line and the Henley Beach motor rail service (apparently), not Unley. During his shift on the day, he sold only three single tickets to for the latter including one he identified (struck) as being one in possessession of SM. Like his medical practising colleague, Doug didn’t hang around long in Adelaide, opting instead for better bright light and specialist opportunities available in London. Presumably the lads bumped heads at the June 17/21 1949 inquest, though they might not have discussed their intended respective evidentiary offerings, which of coure would not have been acceptable by law.
Nick Pelling: I’d like to think it was our Carl with the day old chicks for sale (to a good home?) The oft times misjudged fellow was all heart and known to have a soft spot for all creatures great and small. This apart from his facination with AC technology advances, locomotive engineering and uncertainties of the daily grind such as what to cook for his supper and vagaries in the Melbourne weather…Carl loved little baby ducks, old pick-up trucks slow moving trains and rain. In a nut shell the poor underestimated fellow admired everything and everybody in God’s universe but, he never let on, so nobody ever know’d it sadly.
Pat: Seeing that our Gerald Thomas Keane, Carl’s not so loving brother-in–law was as Ozzie as grannie smith apples, to coin a phrase, what inference can be derived from an connection to a ‘Connecticut Yankee of like nom. To add proof to the pud, Jerry (well known) Keane of JCW fame met his maker in 1960, consequence of a freek Melbourne industrial incident
Steve H.,
On the contrary, I would say to comments and commenters here, the more the merrier. If you look back, I agitated for something, *anything*, to be released after the exhumation. I don’t have any real arguments with any of the good doctors opinions, as such, except they fall into the region of insinuation rather than unbiased medical opinion in the way they were brought forth. I could take a better look at them, but naw. I think I’ve seen enough thanks. I you spend your life living on the whims of questionable authority, you get what you deserve. Rock on, though people, whether you are a boss, or a pleb.
misca: in re your recent piece on Russell Keane, pastry cook cum Bus proprietor. I seem to recall covering this on an earlier thread whereas I perceived anomalies of which you point out but choose not to consider relevant. Namely the inconsiststent messages from certain condolence nominees and obvious difference in disclosed faith affiliations. I came to the conclusion that two different Keane entities were likely involved but, I’ll give you the final say, having utmost confidence in your professional research capacity
@ Pat and Nick – farmer Charles E Webb of Springvale
David –
I’m not sure any of them were practicing religious people but both Russell and Freda (the only two of the family that have find-a-grave records) were buried in the Roman Catholic section of the cemetery.
@ Pat – I think the idea that Charlie was seeking work – hence the tools in the suitcase, is highly probable. Henley and Unley could easily get mangled together using ‘Strine English! It would have been so good to have that second ROK phone number!
@ Punters all
Increasingly I think that Charlie headed West after selling everything at Bromby Street – somewhere like Whyalla or Port Pirie. He may have said something along these lines to his family and may even have been in touch with them at some stage – hence the stationery in his case. I wonder whether Dorothy had been in Bute and Kadina en route to Melbourne after trying to find Carl – the divorce would certainly have been a lot less expensive for her if she had found where he was to serve notice… This scenario plus Charlie’s avoidance of maintenance payments also means that the family would be less alert to his disappearance.
Maybe Charlie’s anonymity was of his own making as his family had suffered enough loss…
Dorothy’s interactions with her lawyers basically avoid contact with Ruby Webb and the Keanes, does this show some attempt to leave them alone (unless she simply wasn’t in contact with Ruby)? Was this because she was very aware of their losses?
It’s quite easy to go missing in Australia… my aunt’s first husband jumped from his merchant navy ship in Perth in 1963, leaving a wife and three children (plus a fourth he wouldn’t have known about) back in the North of England. There was a post card from the Swan River area in the early 1970s and that was it. There were rumours he had died. When my cousin migrated to Australia back in the early 2000s his daughter found her dad’s half brother, via a Facebook search and reference to “may have brothers called… back in England”. Her grandfather was alive and well in Coffs Harbour, with another family. My aunt said, “Tell the bugger he owes me forty years’ worth of maintenance!”
I met Jimmy, he had been my dad’s training partner, for boxing – my dad was a Merchant Navy middle weight boxing champion. I used the occasion to try and corroborate some of my dad’s wild tales. The Mississippi alligator, reared in a heated bath tub in the back yard of my grandparents’ terraced house before being taken to a Manchester zoo in a vacuum cleaner box was all true…. only it had become Jimmy’s alligator. There were additional details about being thrown off the bus by a tough West Indian bus conductor when she asked what was in the hissing vacuum cleaner box, and a quick improvised performance…
@ John Sanders
I’m happy that there are good and bright people in your world. I’m also going to take on Warwick Dunbar’s good advice.
@ Warwick – are you still doing the interesting geolocation stuff with SLV resources? I note there has been quite a bit of interaction with SLV material here on ciphermysteries – it could be an interesting case study… I also think that your serendipitous spotting of a Dorothy Webb in Hawthorn on the 1980 electoral roll may have been our Dorothy!
@ Clive Turner – I’d also seen the “electric light games” – I think this means night games in our contemporary parlance. I read somewhere that the Springvale township only got electricity in the 1920s! The Society of Illumination Engineers, who met in Adelaide in November 1948 were campaigning for street lighting as a social issue!
@ Steve
I have Carl in the Egoistic/Anomic corner. The egoistic element resonates with his loner, melancholia, depression, death poetry tendencies. In terms of Anomie I think a lot of his moral integration came from Richard Augustus, the patriarch. I also think that Carl was potentially very controlling – not wanting Dorothy to have an independent social life, controlling her finances, expecting her to become a carer for his mother… I think some of his brutality may have stemmed from not having the control he expected. I only did psychology 201 though! (And worked in a psychiatric hospital run by an order of Irish nuns…).
I’ve had the seeds of a novel for a while, “Whatever, eventuality”. Its actually largely set in Charlie’s South Yarra neighbourhood (and a bit in Detroit, I quite like Motown and contemplating post Fordism). It takes in many of our SM themes: WWII signals intelligence, the rise and decline of the Australian car industry, theatre in the 1940s, contemporary DNA testing, plus other stuff, such as Indian independence… I had all of this churning away in my tiny brain for a while before SM turned up on location! I might even put a few passing sights of Charlie and Dorothy in there now. I don’t have the time and resources to work on it, so it’ll be about a decade before any kind of fruition! If it ever happens there will be acknowledgements and free copies to anyone on here, if anyone’s still around and not completely sick of my posts by then…
Pat –
I’m sorry but I found your facts around the possible Foden connections very difficult to follow. Are your references various family leads that you chased or all one family???
What’s your theory? I would be interested in that.
Mine is that she married again after Robert Grace and there are listings for Amelia Foden’s in Victoria after his potential death.
The Bailey/Baieye/Morris/Grace business is quite complicated and difficult to follow and given the commonality of all the names, it is also very difficult to pinpoint with any certainty. I really haven’t taken a particular interest in the rest of this tree apart from how it relates to Eliza Amelia and the possibility of her being either a Morris or a Grace. The tangible part of the potential Grace “output” is more clear (apart from Eliza) and that is what prompted me to post about the Foden name on their death certificates.
It’s very odd that none of the Webbs express any sympathy for William Murray William’s death. It seems as though Elizabeth Sharples and her son are kind of calling them out on this with their memorandum posts. Something feels off that the Webbs don’t ever mention him. Did they blame him in some way for what happened? Or did they feel guilt? The complete lack of acknowledgement of what was most likely a family friendship is perplexing.
misca: looks like a SNAFU born of some inadvertant rush to judge or means to an end not wise whereas…seems your Josephine Webb, bn. 1920 wife of Russell the bus prop. passed in 1963 (not ’55) aged 43, is insitu alongside her man at Fawker cemetery in the Catholic section U/15218. Whereas her near namesake Josie Margaret Webb born 1900? who impo is more likely (unverified) to have been the second wife of our very own Russell Webb the bread man, passed on 26/9/55 and can be found nearby at U/7102. As for his first wife Amy Sarah Harriet Webb nee Tomkinson who died on 2/6/29 aged 34, she is in Springwood botanical cemetery within the Church of England section and I have a feeling that her Russell Richard, whilst unlisted may not be too far adrift. I do concede as to having put this most necessary alternate case scenario together in a rush so as to catch the afternoon dead line, so the possibility of yet another SNAFU is ever present. You’ll no doubt be aware of certain discrepencies in the press and on Vic. PROV re there being no fewer than four different given residential locations for the bus prop’s place of death vis Malvern and Canterbury, roughly five miles apart and none within cooey of ye olde Webb stamping grounds.
Although Roy Webb confirmed for C of E as his preferred faith disclosure on entry into the Army, this was almost certainly accommodated for lip service and a desire to stear well clear of his then not so popular Lutheran roots. In a similar light, older brother Russell would not have countenanced conversion to Catholisism and more especially in that he was also a member of the Masonic Lodge which prohibited such satanistic ministrations. So yet another nail in the coffin for the bus man on his way to pergatory or worse.
I mentioned in passing some time ago that Dorothy was advertising in the Kadina & Wallaroo in 1951 under the name Miss E. or A. Elizabeth as in Alice Elizabeth at some small town of the region. Just a neat white framed and highlighted insert promoting her chiropody business that’s all. I think any Keane newpaper scanner would have no trouble pulling it up; I only sighted the one but if there be more then perhaps there’s additional detail to be gleaned.
I’m not sure that Dorothy wanted economic independence because she worked only 6 months in 5 years. During WW2 anyone could get a factory job making bullets and bombs – like her mother did. She also wanted a maintenance payment so Carl would still be on the hook for her finances. Normally they were applied for by women with children. You couldn’t live on the £2 they usually got. If you wanted to get away from someone making them pay you a maintenance payment was a sure way to create friction with that person and permanent contact.
i am surprised people keep referring to the broken knife and scissors as engineers’ tools. We can see he worked at the drill company. He didn’t have a set of screwdrivers, spanners or a soldering iron. He would also need cable strippers to wire the plug.
We can see from the image of the drill to take it apart he would need some spanners if he had decided to freelance fixing drills in Adelaide. He couldn’t open the drill with a knife.
https://scontent-lcy1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/311325501_10162038632647926_475823230966606441_n.jpg?_nc_cat=107&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=5cd70e&_nc_ohc=kmlSkIc6-Q0AX_8776m&_nc_ht=scontent-lcy1-1.xx&oh=00_AT8VR62R-sdb5Wr_sJXuyNtZfqzu86YUypKs5jxCMJWAMg&oe=635AE9C9
I have always viewed the tools in the suitcase as those of a POW.
Pat found the KBC drill company in Adelaide. If Carl was seeking work or working in Adelaide this might be the logical place for him to look.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gFTPPju2mJYwuAli3W4dFVaiRdjis646/view?usp=sharing
Perhaps someone with knowledge of the Adelaide buses could determine whether the bus he caught from North Terrace would take him within walking distance of KBC if he got off at say, Plympton. He could have been planning to lodge in Glenelg. Perhaps the other phone number on the Rubaiyat was KBC.
Where is the picture of Carl Webb at the wedding?
Sanders, given your strange predilection for historical fantasy espoused on this site I’d lay off the homeaux. Orders of magnitude and all that. Not saying you’re a nutter but, well, what do those adults think when you accuse them of being the Beaumont children?
WHERE is the picture of Carl at the wedding?
Jo: We’re on the hunt for Dorothy @ Miss Elizabeth chiropodist and expect to track her down sooner rather than later, with help or nay from her trade add or adds in the K & W spreadsheet, somewhere around the first atomic test town of Minlaton. I have no problem with your idea that Carl may have headed west which of course is consistant with most pre naming theory contentions from 1948. So In that light it might be worth mentioning that the above rag ran adds for precision scissors and knife? sharpening by electric grinding to a feather edge, just like those found in the Keane suitcase.
The image of Richard August Webb shows that his business was bread production and delivery from a factory. He was RA Webb bread factory. This implies mechanization of the bread production system.
https://live-production.wcms.abc-cdn.net.au/2c6a78e4759acb9794ab4825a3da4466?impolicy=wcms_crop_resize&cropH=579&cropW=869&xPos=0&yPos=0&width=862&height=575
For example there were bread factories in Northcote and Somerton. The bread factory in Northcote was owned by Leopold Hauger.
“Born in Moravia (Austria), he came to Australia and soon won success as a master baker. For some years he was Consul-General for Austria
in Australia.”
He was also linked to the freemasons.
Any contrary minded punters on board still having their doubts that Carl is/was indeed the ogre he’s portrayed as according to our ruling panel; those who would judge him guilty on all counts for his wanton acts, to satisfy their blood lust and adherence to their self designated principles of justice. Take note if you will that the cautionary word ALLEGED gets not a mention by the milling lynch crowd, nor do we hear anything on the Common Law statute proclamation of innocence until proven. Well certainly not on this place where might is right and the spirit of foul play wins by a country mile.
Russell Richard Webb and his second wife are buried together at Faulkner Memorial park.
Russell:
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/212504935/russell-richard-webb?_gl=1*1wrn0l2*_ga*NjM2OTk3NzM0LjE2NjE3MTM4OTI.*_ga_4QT8FMEX30*MTY2NjYwNjc1MS4yNTUuMS4xNjY2NjA4MjY4LjEwLjAuMA..
Josephine:
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/212400424/josie-margaret-webb
misca: Freda was only Catholic by default in that she married the Papist Keane. As for her brother Russell you’ll have to find him first, though you won’t likely succeed by confusing him with Russell the bus man.
Josephine (nee Rush) is buried with her husband Lyle Ronald Webb (father John William Webb, mother Bessie Bucknell) I’m quite sure that they would prefer to be left alone as they are unlikely to have anything to do with our Webb family but for the sake of clarity:
Josephine:
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/212399797/josephine-webb?_gl=1*14gi7z9*_ga*NjM2OTk3NzM0LjE2NjE3MTM4OTI.*_ga_4QT8FMEX30*MTY2NjYwNjc1MS4yNTUuMS4xNjY2NjA2OTk4LjE1LjAuMA..
Lyle Ronald Webb:
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/212434176/lyle-ronald-webb
Fortunately no body picked up on my careless Webb/Keane misidentification gaff of 11.43pm. even date for which I humbly stand corrected.
John Sanders
I checked out your story about Miss E Elizabeth at the time and found that it lived down to your usual shoddy standards of research – or perhaps it was another slither of misinformation designed to allure less alert contributors down the yellow brick road, a la your Nurse McIntyre curve ball which I had to step in to correct with the name of Nan Sparrow, nurse, of Moseley Street, which you then piggy-backed to come up with the magic number 105 which led absolutely nowhere.
Presumably you were struggling to remember a “MISS E. EDWARDS, F.V.C.GH.,
CHIROPODIST, practicing at Centenary Avenue,
MAITLAND, will treat your foot Troubles. For appointment, RING MAITLAND 163.”
From The Kadina and Wallaroo Times, 28 February 1952.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/110396522?searchTerm=chiropodist%20kadina
You will notice on the same page a large advertisement for J A Robertson – “Specials in Menswear’ with Swim Trunks at 10/6 – at Graves Street, Kadina.
In 1950 Miss Edwards posted the following:
“LOOK. LOOK. LOOK. Miss E. Edwards. Chiropodist, will visit Minlaton on the first Monday of each month, commencing November 6th at the Lovette Beauty
Saloon. Phone 147 for your appointment.”
From the Pioneer (Yorketown), 13 October 1950.
She was still consulting from Maitland in 1954.
Always happy to be called a nutcase, although I prefer something stronger than a nice strong infusion of durian leaf mould, but you Colonel must be suffering from PTSD – Perplexed Tamam Shud Debility.
Re comment on Miss E Edwards above.
Lovette not a saloon as Miss Edwards advertised it, but a salon!
Shame, I imagined Dodge City style gunfights with Doff Starr aka Miss Edwards slugging it out with “Doc” Bennett and the Keane Gang, and Constable Colleen Fitzpatrick being hit over the head with a fire shovel by Ned Kelly’s old mum Ellen.
“VANITY Salon
MINLATON
Mrs. lima Muilins assures you of her Personal Attention
For Appointments ring
MINLATON 147”
From The Pioneer (Yorketown), 5 November 1948.
“LADIES’ HAIRDRESSING
Mrs. Vic Linke, of Maitland, has
purchased the Vanity Beauty Salon,
at Minlaton, from Mrs Mullins. The
Salon will be opened early in the
New Year, and run under the name
of Lovette Beauty Salon, and will
be under the management of Miss
Beverley Coombs, late of Clare. She
will be specialising in Marigny Cold
Wave, Onduluxe Steam Sachet, Oil
Machineless Perms and Vita-Glory.
For appointments ring Minlaton 147.”
From The Pioneer (Yorketown), 17 December 1948.
Miss Edwards was still visiting Minlaton in 1954.
Steve H: saves me some of my valuable research time..so what’s the beef Miss E. Elizabeth is still doing her thing in 1954 What’s pleasing to know is it puts my DW suspect in Minlaton circa. ’52, thereby consistant with said matrimonial cause allegations and beyond. Now your mission should you chose to except on the terms specified, you’ll be tasked with finding anyone bearing similar nominal particulars anywhere in Sth. Aust. birth, marriage, death or residential indices at your pleasure. Far as I can recall no such person existed which gives my theory all the more scope for consideration. As for J. A. Robertson(s), it was the general merchandise emporium in Kadina of long standing and which had you been attentive you might have given it a pass of non relevance. Many interim thanks for insight, you are much underated and more useful to this case than most punters give you credit for. Well done that man!
misca: two additional problems for me re Russell that be open to question are in that he appears to be both father and father-in-law to Norman and father to Mrs. Dorie (Doris) Tomkinson, with same maiden name as poor first wife Amy which seems implausable. By all accounts Russell, son of Richard was an unrefined nere do well. It would be a huge leap forward for a bread carter cum pastry cook? to end his days running a metropolitan bus company in my estimation of his like capavity. Likewise the perceived switch from Lutheran to Catholisism seems to be incongruous.
@Jo
I look forward to receiving a gratis copy of your masterwork in the unlikely event that I am still breathing when you finally get it published.
I will especially be interested to read the scenes set in the Motor City. I too like Motown, but also The Stooges, MC5, and possibly best of all George Clinton’s Funkadelic/Parliament aggregations, with their clarion call ‘Free Your Mind And Your Ass Will Follow’:
https://youtu.be/9zZfbkUkodY
Whilst I’m in the mood for sharing links to old songs from the ’70s, perhaps Colonel Sanders would appreciate the following, ‘Kentucky Skank’, a homage to his Fried Chicken, which steals a Funkadelic riff:
https://youtu.be/VQgCeHdTwxw
Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry was the first act I saw at the Hacienda, in 1984. Maybe 60 or 70 there, just like when I saw Joy Division down in Canterbury two weeks to the day before my graduation ceremony. Funnily enough I spotted Bernard Sumner of JD/NO in the bogs that night at the Hac, and the Reid Brothers of the godawful Jesus and Mary Chain were also there – I saw them perform at the same venue two years later and they were A-bysmal – even worse than Sonic Youth! At least the Cramps and the Beastie Boys, who I saw (separately) at the Apollo were good fun (I love both bands).
With regards to Warwick Dunbar’s recent comment I had been under the misapprehension that I WAS posting on Twitter – I’d wondered how I managed to get so many characters into my rants!
In support of my switched identity theory (Carl and Roy) notice that Dorothy has changed her signature to look like Roy’s not Carl’s. Roy’s is flat on the deck with b’s with little loops at the top the same as Dorothy’s. Whereas Carls signature raises up with optimism as experts would say.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kFRvp6MylPnMLCUQKZ_zWs67sNXQyEIn/view?usp=sharing
Why would Dorothy be influenced to sign Webb like Roy in 1951 when he was dead in 1943 but not like Carl whose signature of Webb she would have seen in 1946 or later?
She didn’t write her b’s before like that in her signature as Robertson.
rt of my switched identity theory (Carl and Roy) notice that Dorothy has changed her signature to look like Roy’s not Carl’s. Roy’s is flat on the deck with b’s with little loops at the top the same as Dorothy’s. Whereas Carls signature raises up with optimism as experts would say.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kFRvp6MylPnMLCUQKZ_zWs67sNXQyEIn/view?usp=sharing
Why would Dorothy be influenced to sign Webb like Roy in 1951 when he was dead in 1943 but not like Carl whose signature of Webb she would have seen in 1946 or later?
She didn’t write her b’s before like that in her signature as Robertson.
Steve H: Federation of Victorian Chiropodry Guild Hall…how’s about them apples matey or can you do better. Sure sounds to me like Miss. E. Elizabeth got her credentials from a Melbourne based institution of that order.
Pat –
You asked a while back:
“Does anybody know where Phyllis and Jim Crick were living after their marriage?”
They married in 1946 and I have two electoral rolls for them in 1949 and 1954 showing them as living at 18 Windsor Avenue, Essendon North.
Steve H. Odds are shortening rapidly with 22 Webbs and two Webbers at Maitland S.A. (Pop. 1000) cemetery, with a Doris Ann Stratford plus a James Henry and Olive Merle Robertson. Time waits for no man as the saying goes so we best get a cracking what?
Ayuverdicka: you were right first time, they think I’m a nutter. Perhaps they’re on the money though they’re no longer in denial so I can’t complain. There’s a good shot of Carl though not in his drag queen attire. It’s posted on Gordon’s BS/TS and authorised for public release by Geni guru Peter Davidson.
@ misca
Thanks!
Regarding Amelia Foden-Bailey… yes, it’s confusing and all I have done so far is to search for her mother Elizabeth Foden in the Staffordshire -Cheshire area in England, hence all those potential candidates.
As for Amelia marrying a Foden in Australia, I don’t think so.
Her mother was Elizabeth Foden and her father was listed as Foden Bailey (I think it can be one or two persons, Elizabeth married Foden and as a widow married Bailey as I haven’t found anyone with first name Foden and surname Bailey so far) and Amelia was born in Staffordshire (according to her death record).
As for Eliza’s biological father, I suppose anything is possible, but according to Fitzpatrick’s DNA tests, she is the daughter of John Wilson Morris, who married Amelia in London (as stated in Amelia’s death record), probably around 1854 and they went to Australia on board of the Eagle in 1856. Eliza was born in 1872 but conceived in 1871 while Amelia was still married to John, who died that year. Eliza Amelia is stated in the death record as being the daughter of Robert Grace, but what is being said is that she didn’t know her biological father was John Wilson Morris.
Has anyone else tried to locate “Les Verdina” best man at Russell’s wedding and old schoolmate? It’s such an unusual name, I would have thought he would be relatively easy to find. Not so.
Sorry, Eliza Amelia was born in 19 Nov 1871, not 1872, and John Wilson Morris died in 23 July 187, so it makes sense he was Eliza’s biological father.
And Amelia’s death record also states her second marriage was in Avoca, but nobody has found marriage certificate/record yet.
Sorry again, John Wilson Morris died in 23 July, 1871.
@ misca
John Comber and Alice were living at the same address in 1954, 18 Windsor Avenue, only the electoral district is Strathmore.
Have either of Brenda’s birth certificate or death certificates been posted? If so, could someone kindly share a direct link?
@JohnSanders, I think she might be from England, Eileen Edwards, foot specialist, h’mm, need to look into it a bit more but I don’t think that’s Dorothy. – conditions apply, lol
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/199218042?searchTerm=CHIROPODIST%20EILEEN%20EDWARDS
@Pat thanks, I thought it sounded familiar, lol
@Matt – lol 🙂
@Misca, yes, I was looking for him a while back too, but couldn’t find. Was thinking maybe he went interstate. Found a few Verdina’s in the archives, could be related to them. The Les may be a shortened version of a longer Italian name.
https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ListingReports/ItemsListing.aspx
Pat –
You’re right! It was driving me nuts; I knew I had seen that address before! Claude and Phyllis were there first in 1949. Her parents do not appear on that electoral roll at that address…They show up later in 1954.
Poppins: Miss Elizabeth Edwards sounds right and same Vic. Diploma credentials as my first hit on Miss E. Elizabeth? circa. ’51 or ’52 (as I recall). You say she’s English, how so?
misca: any chance your best man Les Verdina might have been L. Verdini of 2 Krithia St. Coberg early fifties. You don’t say if that was the marriage of 1917 or 1944.
I don’t think we have found Dorothy working as a chiropodist in Kadina – there is the English lass:
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/50215121?searchTerm=chiropodist%20kadina – English chirpodist just arrived in Kadina, 1950
And Muriel Morrison, who seems to cover a wide territory – Kadina, Mount Gambier: eg
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/110173417?searchTerm=chiropodist%20kadina
Interestingly, one of Melbourne’s most widely advertised chiropodists was:
Thomas Robertson, Chiropodist, 225 Collins street. F1204
He seems to be ex AIF and to have been in business for a long time (post WWI until the 1950s) he worked with the Essendon Football Club and was also on their committee. He also advertised his services to widely to ex soldiers (ANZACs – lots of ads under this tag). I don’t think he’s cropped up in the branches of the family tree though…
@ John Sanders – you seem to have discovered that Russell Webb was also a Freemason. I wonder whether you would be up for contacting Freemasons Victoria to see if they have a member index card for Carl Webb? It might include other occupational information. I contacted them via the contact form on their website a few weeks ago, with no reply. They might be more likely to respond to someone of your ilk… Derek Abbott said he had checked and that only Richard Augustus was a member and advised verifying this independently.
https://www.freemasonsvic.net.au/contact/
It could simply be that they are still working from home (as per advice on their website).
I have family in Whyalla, who also have friends in Port Pirie, so will see what I can do there…
Peter Bowes: In Feltus’ book he talks first about finding a number on a scrap of file paper or some such, then matching it to the ’47 directory which is a crockashit imo.
Now had it been your average suit in 1949 what wanted a local phone subcriber’s details (Brown knew already), by rights he would then submit an application in triplicate to PMG and wait a month or so for it. However a more apt means was fortunately at hand in the form of a squad phone on Errol Canney’s desk, whereas all he had to do was dial up the number and ring the cunt…brp-brp-brp-brp..”hello whose there?”. “Who’s that?”. “Who’s that say’s who’s that when I ask who’s
there?”. “Sister J. E. Thomson statue ?” (Errol knows too). “You’re darn toot’n. When you’se taking me to see the bust, Len Brown said this arvo?”….ob-la-di-obla-da…get the picture now?..and that’s how it all went down, you can bank on it!
It doesn’t sound like Ruby ever raised Brenda. Did she? Is there any evidence that Brenda was with her until she died and that she then gave custody to the Parry’s? Or was she with the Parry’s as an infant? Has this already been discussed?
In support of the switched identity theory (Carl and Roy):
In Feb 1942 Roy’s war record shows him in an evacuation hospital, but then stamped POW. The family had it officially confirmed to them in 1945 that he was buried in Thanby (uzayat) and had died of beri beri.
https://www.cwgc.org/find-records/find-war-dead/casualty-details/2091636/roy-webb/
The question is could he have been evacuated in 1942? Who confirmed Roy was buried there?
In the case of some soldiers buried with a later guerilla fighter Tanya Bunke in 1967 their DNA was used to confirm their identity before being moved to a mausoleum. Though the Bunke family didn’t request such DNA confirmation and didn’t want to repatriate the body to Germany.
Steve H: you’re a bloody Jonah and that’s no joke; with your doubting Thomas put down of my latest initiative. I had a pretty good feeling about Miss E. Elizabeth this time yesterday til you and sister Poppins put the mockers on my suspect calling her by another name and refering to her limey roots. To tidy up the mess I’ve just done a quick squiz over the S. & Mc. cheat sheet for Maitland ’52 and come up with Misses R.E. & E.R. Edwards. So bringing to a sad end to our Dorothy Webb’s podiatric ambitions on the York Peninsular.
@misca,
re Brenda
register with familysearch (free) find Richard August tree and ask Angela via msg for details.
Poppins: well now, that’s not quite how I expected things to play out, in that there seems to have been a host of so called ‘foot butchers’ plying their trade in Kadina district circa. early 50s. We can assume that Dorothy was in the district between say mid ’47 to at least late ’51, the time of her affidavit and therfore that she put her skills to work for self support. Fact that her name is missing from local indices is only to be expected in light of her desire for discretion and so flying under the radar be a no brainer. Trouble is all the likely aliases based on names we’re well familiar with won’t wash and we’re therefore left with only a clear trail of deception to go on.
David Morgan: not much joy using Roy’s service record as a guide to anything as there be too many ifs and unknowns in it’s make up to be helpful. Even though I can fill in some gaps with my own knowledge 2/29 battalion’s deployments against the nips on the Malay peninsular late ’41 through 2/42 before it’s capture, the subsequent POW element being open to much conjecture. Seems almost certain that Roy was somehow wounded in heavy fighting around Gemas in February ’42 and was later sent north by train to work on the T/B railway where he succumbed. I can’t see his death, along with many others in similar circumstances having been contrived or his identity substituted as no obvious reason stands out.
Chiropodist required for chemist shop December 1949 – 56 Puckle St, Moonee Ponds.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/search/category/newspapers?keyword=%22chiropodist%20required%20for%20chemist%22
Jo: not guilty by an stretch re any definitive knowledge of Russell Webb’s Free Mason Lodge membership credentials; That was sourced from earlier thread material as I recollect. Does stand to reason though that if dad had been a member of the secret sign, than escendant son would naturally show a like allegance. I doubt that any “ilk” of my standing would be likely to hold sway with the Victorian Master Mason Grand Poobah or any such Eminence but, guess no harm in trying my charm right?
David Morgan: depends on what hospital he was evacuated to and what Roy was ailing from just before the fall of Malaya and Singapore, it could involve any one of a number of scenarios. Roy could have escaped to Java as did many of his unit, he may have taken to the jungle and joined with irregulars to disrupt japanese supply lines or, and most likely he was taken prisoner by the Nips and sent north. As to whom it may have been who found Roy’s grave assuming there was one to be found then recovered his remains for re interrment by the CWG is anyone’s guess; But it sure doesn’t exclude his loving, caring young brother Carl.
Johnno, mate, settle petal or you’ll frighten the horses.
I will leave other punters to follow alliterative chiropodists such as Eileen Edwards, E Elizabeth and Muriel Morrison. The real puzzle to me from that search is why outback women in the ’40s were so keen to have Marigny Cold Waves and Oil Machineless Perms.
One post that has been ignored here was misca’s observation on this thread on 12 October that “Dorothy got very lucky or knew the right people when she filed her affidavit. The lawyer (notary public) who had the authority and administered her oath in Kadina was James Cremeen Ellery McCarthy. He was born in Auburn and lived for a time in Adelaide before moving to Kadina where he also became mayor! His wife was a lawyer too [Gwendolen Helen McCarthy (née Ure)].”
misca also quotes from the Australia Academy of Science website:
” The law was a major influence in the McCarthy household, with both parents involved in the firm of J. C. E. and G. H. McCarthy at Kadina, South Australia. [James] was an outstanding barrister with a reputation for never having lost a case in the State Supreme Court. [Gwendoline] was an early woman Law graduate of the University of Adelaide, and her outstanding undergraduate career included being awarded the Stow medal in 1923. [Two of their sons] followed their parents in the law.” Another son, educated at St Peter’s College, became a famous theoretical physicist.
Now putting my tin foil hat on once again I started to ponder whether J C E McCarthy in Kadina might have been acquainted or even friendly with Doff’s second cousin’s father-in-law Cyril Sparrow, solicitor in Port Pirie and later barrister in Adelaide specialising in divorce cases. Of course through my investigations, with a tiny input from the Colonel, we know that Cyril and his family including Dr John Barkly Bennett’s wife-to-be Nadine aka Nan, nurse, lived dead opposite Jo & Prosper Thomson on Moseley Street. Two nurses living opposite each other were surely aware of each other’s existence.
Dr Bennett’s son Bruce provides a fascinating biography of Cyril on WikiTree. He was a very interesting character. Born in 1899, champion under 16 (junior) eloquotionist of South Australia at five years old, pupil at St Peter’s College, WW1 veteran, actor, playwright, Jolly Joker and more. As Bennett writes “He was in country practice from 1922 to 1933, a solicitor at Ellen Street, Port Pirie. They lived well there and had a large home with tennis court and garden where many social gatherings took place. Cyril was a club player and golfer. The tennis court was used twice a week, once by Cyril and once by Irene [nee Gross] and her lady friends. Cyril golfed on weekends. He travelled a lot in the country for cases.” Also “Cyril put on comedy shows at Port Pirie including Round The Map in 1930. Cyril had a company The Jolly Jokers performing reviews at Port Pirie Town Hall in 1933, mostly for the benefit of the unemployed, and a variety show in Adelaide in 1934 for the Port Pirie Relief Fund.”
Back in Adelaide “Cyril was on Adelaide radio for many years as an actor and often did many parts in one play” and “was A grade at golf, bowls and tennis, which he played at night after radio rehearsals, etc.. He was a well educated gentleman of excellent taste, always a public figure and had no quiet private life.” He had been a habitue of the Tivoli Theatre before WW2, where later the ballet ‘The Listeners’ was debuted on 30 November 1948 with decor and costumes by Melbourne artist and dancer Kenneth Rowell. I speculated on 13 October on this thread that “one might wonder whether Gerald [Keane] knew Kenneth Rowell and so did indeed go to the Tivoli in Adelaide on that fateful day in November 1948” as the Colonel has suggested.
There were certainly possible links between the two through Rowell’s work for Edouard Borovansky’s Melbourne Academy of Russian Ballet, and J. C. Williamson, for which organisation Gerald worked. Borovansky in “July 1942…presented a five-night season at the shabbily grandiose Princess Theatre [Melbourne]. The programme, mixing classics with lightweight, new creations, filled the house, and proved to the management of J. C. Williiamson Theatres Ltd that ballet was potentially big business. On this basis, ‘the Firm’ allied itself to Borovansky, so that he gained access to its theatres throughout Australia…”
I will do a little searching on Trove to see if I can come up with anything interesting to potentially link McCarthy to Sparrow, If so it could be a strong indication that Doff DID know her second cousin Dr Bennett, his wife Nan and his in-laws, the Sparrows.
Where has the good Dr T gone? I note on Wikipedia some words about George Gurdjieff that could equally apply to his elusive admirer: “some critics assert he was a charlatan with a large ego and a constant need for self-glorification.”
@ misca
Regarding Jessica Ellen Harnkness…
Furphy
on September 22, 2022 at 1:53 am said:
I thought this registration was established to be herself, but maybe I’ve missed something.
HARKNESS JESSIE E
Registration number
2727/1921
Father’s Given name(s)
THOMAS L
Mother’s Given name(s)
ELLEN
District
MARRICKVILLE
Further to my post above concerning lawyers McCarthy and Sparrow.
Both J C E McCarthy and C K Sparrow appear in a list of 252 lawyers in South Australia from the Adelaide News 6 March 1928:
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/129338433?searchTerm=%22j%20c%20e%20mccarthy%22%20port%20pirie
Sparrow and McCarthy are both mentioned in this article from The Kadina and Wallaroo Times, 23 Nov 1927:
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/110144648?searchTerm=%22c%20k%20sparrow%22%20mccarthy
McCarthy and Sparrow are both mentioned in the The Advertiser, 14 May 1948 as representing clients at the Supreme Court that day:
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/43766909?searchTerm=%22j%20c%20e%20mccarthy%22%20c%20k%20sparrow
J C E McCarthy certainly played golf, like Sparrow. There are multiple newspaper references to him representing Kadina in golf competitions, just as Sparrow represented Port Pirie. Their wives both played too.
Mrs McCarthy loved tennis, like Cyril:
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/53488238?searchTerm=%22j%20c%20e%20mccarthy%22%20tennis
From The Register News-Pictorial (Adelaide) 26 Aug 1929 (Lady Kitty again).
In Kadina J C E McCarthy and J A Robertson (and their wives) certainly knew each other well. The men were both invited guests at a “most enjoyable bridge party organized by Mrs. E. H. White, and in connection with the Queen of Wheat (Kadina masked carnival) took place at the Masonic Hall, Kadina, on Saturday evening, March 6” according to The Observer (Adelaide), 19 Mar 1927.
J A Robertson also played golf for Kadina, and was into his tennis:
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/110149158?searchTerm=%22j%20a%20robertson%22%20kadina%20tennis
From The Kadina and Wallaroo Times, 5 Aug 1933.
In 1951, according to The Kadina and Wallaroo Times, 12 January 1951:
“To welcome home Mr and Mrs J. À. Robertson, Mr and Mrs H. L. Noblett entertained a number of friends at their home, Lipson avenue, Kadina,
on December 30. Music and the informal chatting of Mr and Mrs Robertson on their recent overseas tour, made the evening most’ interesting, and, as a special request, Mrs Noblett delighted her guests with a vocal solo. Coinciding with Mr and Mrs Noblett’s silver wedding anniversary, their friends took the opportunity to offer their congratulations to their host and hostess, and, on behalf of those present, Mr J. C. E. McCarthy presented them with a very fine silver salver.”
I’ll take my tin foil hat off now!
Where is Behrooz and his Uto-piss-takes? He owes me and several others here an apology but he has gone AWOL. This is totally unprofessional. You will note his tactic of answering and praising those who he deigns to take seriously and ignoring others. Not acceptable if he wishes to be taken seriously himself. He also constantly refers to Abbott and Fitzpatrick as the “unofficial team”, a puerile slur if ever I heard one.
He comes out with garbage like this, from his online essay ‘Tamam Shud’:
“If you wish to learn something from the Somerton Man case, it is that the world is not limited to Australia or the West, but it encompasses, well, the world. If you find yourself still reluctant to even consider that the code is written in an Arabic transliteration environment, while knowing that ‘Tamam Shud’ was in fact a transliteration from Persian using Arabic alphabet, you may actually observe in yourself Eurocentricism in progress. if you have eyes for it.”
He has accused Prof Abbott and me of this, but he would actually include every single reader of/contributor to this site except himself. He goes on to accuse us of “Arabophobia”, “Iranophobia”, Islamophobia”, “Russophobia”, “Xenophobia” and “Orientalism” (back to our old friend Edward Said), “even if TSM is found to be neither ethnically Arab nor religiously Muslim, nor broadly Russian.”
Well, I’m not standing for that. Perhaps Behrooz may grow the balls to come back and challenge me. He certainly, I observe, doesn’t seem aware of Derek Abbott’s own ethnic background (not that that has ANY relevance).
Talking of “balls” our friend simply doesn’t understand Newtonian or Quantum physics. You ran off before, Dr Tamdgidi, because you didn’t have any cogent or coherent arguments to put up against me. It seems you have chickened out once again.
@John Sanders,
The date of burial and reburial were undocumented. But the next of kin (Ruby) was told 5/8/1949 of the reburial. Therefore Carl was dead before the family were aware that Roy had been reburied in Thanby.
I was told POWs kept precise records of burial in POW camps. On the next page in the NAA records they say he died 6/10/1943 in SWPA (any ideas?) and the next of kin were told 1/2/1945.
Steve H –
Thanks! Lots of new information to go through. I have a few in my files and one little one has bothered me for a while. It’s interesting because it is similar to Dorothy Jean’s divorce. The plaintiff is in Adelaide and the husband is in Victoria.
“Judgment was reserved on an undefended action by Dorothy Clair Steele, of
Melton, Somerton, against Vernon John Steele, of Alma road. St. Kilda, Victoria,
alleging his adultery with Stasha Sweesdona, of Heidelberg, Victoria.
Mr. C. K. Sparrow for Mrs. Steele.”
The divorce goes through. There are three articles that can be found on trove.
Dorothy Clair Steele was Dorothy Clair McCarthy. I cannot find her on any James McCarthy trees (which doesn’t mean she shouldn’t be on one)…But, worse, I can only find her on one electoral roll with her name spelt “Clare” as follows:
Name: Dorothy Clare Steele
Gender: Female
Electoral Date: 1949
Electoral Place: Camberwell, Chisholm, Victoria, Australia
Vernon John Steele appears in an naa military file in his marriage to Dorothy. Then boom! Gone! And the lovely Stasha/Sasha Sweesdona (sounds like a ballerina name?) – she appears only in the three trove articles on the divorce!
Here is the marriage record:
Name: Vernon John Steele
Gender: Male
Marriage Registration Year: 1949
Marriage Registration Place: Victoria, Australia
Spouse: Dor’y Clair McCarthy
Reference Number: 3318
I suppose both Dorothy and John could be difficult to find if they dropped their middle names (you can usually chase those down too and they’re rare) but Sasha/Stasha?
Where did these three people go?
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/48267961?searchTerm=%22Mrs.%20C%20K%20Sparrow%22
Peter Bowes: frighten the horses be buggered. This bunch of old mares ain’t afeared of nuthin I’m apt to throw at em. They start on hoeing into the wild oats no settle petal moderation gonna hold em back.
Pat –
Thanks. I have seen that before. It’s not available on ancestry. (Not sure why it wouldn’t be?). Does it have an exact birth date? Has someone actually seen the document?
Steve H: had you been at all cognizant of my initial cursory report on the Nadine Wagtail or, more to the point her dad’s law career which started in the prefectures of Port Augusta and Port Pirie circa. 1922 from memory. It’s possible, though me thinks not that Dorothy Webb’s pro bono? lawyer J.C.E. Mcarthy stalwart of Kadina &c. got a jersey. However someone both more affluential and influential to Cyril’s future career on the Adelaide legal stage did and, well deserved too (deleted sadly). With his fear invoking nom de guerre KKK the toothless old would be warrior was a law unto himself, becoming a stalwart of swanky King William St. jurisprudence also a princeps of South Australian national security during the war years and beyond..I guess I’ll go back into my old Cyril Crow eater notes and see if Dorothy’s interaction with him gives us any more to go on though I think not.
This article here talks about the family history of the Robertsons in Kadina if anyone is interesting in trying to find out if they’re related to John Comber’s tree. A lot of the members of this Robertson tree also lived/died in Adelaide.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/74217836?searchTerm=%22James%20a%20robertson%22%20kadina
Behrooz: your newfound nemesis and my fellow disturbing element is unrelenting in his scathing, vitriolic, shit canning rants against you; Seems he’s also envious your academic and quasi legal credentials, offset by a clear sense of purpose and spirit of fairness to others having contrary views to yours…ps. Mate have you given thought to my serious proposal to push for reconvening of the Sine Die adjourned 49/59 Coroner’s Inquests. Whether we’re instrumental in achieving such objective or not, I’m confident nonetheless that our oft demonised victim will get his chance for redemption one way or another.
Such a blog jam of information out there on just about everything but what I need to know at the moment; Is Dorothy Jean Robertson’s (remember her) best bet DOB 18th July 1920 or 28th June 1920, as my own generally shunted aside and or rejected research reveals. Thanks in advance.
How can we find out if Dorothy changed her name by Deed Poll? There’s loads of stories in Trove about it, seems to have been positively rife!
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/224033197?searchTerm=name%20change%20divorce%20deed%20poll
Just to save people an email:
Thank you very much for your recent e mail, concerning Private Roy Webb, A.I.F. 2/29, Australian Infantry.
With regard to your query, I would explain that we as the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, based in the UK, do not have detailed information in our limited records, on the identification process and exhumation of his remains from a POW camp, into his final resting place in Thanbyuzayat War Cemetery. I give below therefore a link to the Australian Government’s ‘Anzac Portal’ page. (You can use their ‘Get in touch’ link to contact them)
https://anzacportal.dva.gov.au/research-education/find-an-australian-veteran
this is next on my list…
…best to jump in first before someone spots my blue and jumps down my throat. Seems the Bennett/Sparrow/mullins family made it clear on wikitree that their paternal father figure Cyril Keith Sparrow made it through to 1981 afterall, bowing out at Bermagui NSW and not in 1954 at Adelaide as Myheritage would have us all believe.
….still doesn’t excuse Bruce Bennett, keeper of family secrets in coming clean about the My Heritage gaff, nor that the cunning young legal beagle blatantly falsified his non active war record to short curcuit unqualified entry into the Sth. Australian bar.
Any chance this is a relative of Dorothy’s?
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/264340031?searchTerm=chiropodists%20association%20of%20victoria
Interestingly the above article mentions N.F. Wellington who is mentioned in
this article with L.W. Scott, Glady’s husband.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/11236621?searchTerm=WELLINGTON%20ESSENDON%20SCOTT%20TOWN%20CLERK
David Morgan: South West Pacific Area (SWPA of ops.) would fit the bill for military abbreviations.
….beats me how the relevant allied authority could have known with any certainty by 1st february 1945 that Roy was confirmed dead, bearing in mind the war still had still had six months to run and the Japs weren’t exactly on speaking terms with the allied war department.
@ misca
Regarding Jessica’s birth record, the BDM NSW website says it’s unavailable, “don’t ask me why, don’t know. It’s not for lack of bread, like the Grateful Dead.Darlin'”
@ Steve H @ misca
J.A. Robertson’s daughter, Pat, graduated in the work of massage and has taken up duties at the Adelaide Hospital in 1937. She has been appointed to the staff of the Melbourne Children’s Hospital leaving for Melbourne in 11 Dec 1937. In 1938 she was working as a masseuse at The Forest Hill Free Kindergarten Holiday Home. She was living at Hawthorn in 15 April 1939. She visited her parents in 28 July 1944. She married in South Africa to G. E. Demasius, where she was living in 1951. She returned to Kadina in October 1953, with her husband and baby daughter.
@ Poppins
I’ve wondered about chiropodist Thomas Robertson too – he lived in Ascot Vale and had rooms at 225 Collins Street. He was very involved with Essendon Football Club. He advertised widely between 1919 and the 1950s and travelled quite widely to tend to feet! He advertised to WWI soldiers – a lot of his early ads are under the title “ANZACs!” He also served in WWI.
I can’t find any references for Dorothy and have looked in various editions of Sands and Mac under Chiropodists… (There are a couple of DJ Webbs in the general alphabetical sections – but not in the Miss or Mrs subsections – which are listed separately each alphabetical listing, through to the 1970s!)
Poppins –
He advertised A LOT…You can find him if you search “Thos Robertson” on Trove and click on Advertising. I have found him on a couple of electoral rolls. A 1936 on with a Jean Isobel Robertson at 343 Ascot Vale Road (Moonee Ponds). I think Jean Isobel is likely to be a daughter. (There is a William John Robertson who married an Isabella Beecrof Pollard who had an infant daughter die with the same name.)
He also shows up on 1942 roll at the same address this time with a Colina Mordina Robertson. He’s listed as a chiropodist, she as a hd. I have found a record of marriage for them as follows:
Name: Colana Mordina Downie
[Colina Mordina Downie]
Gender: Female
Marriage Registration Year: 1913
Marriage Registration Place: Victoria, Australia
Spouse: Thos Robertson
Reference Number: 4818
There are four trees for her with her maiden name and not a shred of info on him apart from the marriage.
Pat – re the birth certificate – I didn’t think it had been released/made public. It’s odd that it hasn’t at this point.
I just did an NAA search for Colina Robertson and a file comes up for Thomas. Won’t have time to take a look but thought others might be able to do so. I had found him on the electoral rolls but he was listed as a blacksmith. Turns out he was one before he made a turn toward chiropody. Lol.
https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/ViewImage.aspx?B=8036093
@Pat
It is interesting that Pat Robertson was a masseuse for children with paralysis which was a good fit for the Somerton Beach children’s home for polio victims.
Also that she doesn’t seem to stay anywhere for very long. Adelaide 1937, Melbourne 1937 back to Kadina. Then South Africa and back to Kadina.
Her son?/relative by marriage seems to be living in Germany.
Thanks @Misca and @Jo and @Pat, you all find some amazing and fabulously interesting stuff, will have a good look through it all re the Robertsons. Ah, he was from Scotland and had Bonnie Scotland tattoos on his arms, how lovely 🙂
@JohnSanders, whoopsie, our Eileen probably not from England, that was wild speculation and conjecture …. probably is from Victoria, lol – so, this cipher genius is still trying to work out the Eileen’s the chiropodist’s mysterious qualification code – F.V.C.Ch ? maybe Fellow of the Victorian College of Chiropodists? M.A.I.O ? maybe Member of the Australian Institute of Orthopaedics ? And the I.S.P. that’s super tricky …. my research continues.
Good on ya @DavidMorgan.
@Behrooz, Mary Poppins likes you and enjoys reading your posts and hopes you return soon.
@ Misca et al
I think I’ve found Jean Isobel Robertson previously – as a pharmacist (will check later and correct if I’m wrong).
Blacksmith to chiropodist – nice move!
Re name changes by deed poll – I think Behrooz checked this some time ago.
@john Sanders
Could the war graves in Thanby be a bit of a scam with just a few bodies of soldiers they found towards the end of the war and the others are empty plots? The NAA file shows they sent Ruby a generic photo of a grave without a name in 1949. It could have been anywhere.
It’s like the scene from the Good, the Bad and the Ugly with a grave with no name.
Our chiropodist Thomas Robertson doesn’t appear to be a relative of the JCR mob. Thomas was born in Glasgow and served with the field ambulance at both Gallipoli and Lemnos – he probably rode Simpson’s donkey!
He would have been very distinctive – he had tatoos on his forearms – of Britannia and Bonnie Scotland! Having probably dealt with horses hooves in his blacksmithing days I imagine he. was a very interesting character and chiropodist! I bet Essendon Football Club would have him back in a flash if they could!
misca/Poppins/Pat/Jo: The most basic genealogical backgrounding search of J. C. Robertson’s forebears will confirm that there be no links to the well documented Sth Australian 1st fleet merchant family of like name who settled in Kadina, apart from the Robertson clan’s Forth of Firth (Ile de Bute) ancestral home perhaps. By conveniently fitting a R.A.H. masseuse into the J. A. Robertson familiaal mix and once again with the unrelated chiropodist Robertson into Collins St. Melbourne near Dorothy’s attorney’s, you’re taking a convenient means to an end pathway which won’t wash with discerning punters alert to such cute chicanery
Duncan Robertson, Dorothy’s paternal great grandfather was born in 1825 (abt 1826) at Scotsburn, Nova Scotia, Canada to Peter Robertson and Elizabeth ‘Betsy’ McGregor. He died in 1874 at Melbourne (VIC BDM #11648).
All Robertsons seem to have a foot in Scotland, but ‘our’ Robertsons had the other foot in beautiful Nova Scotia.
Of course, it could be Scotsburn, Vic, but one of the death records say Scotland and another says Scotsburn, NS. Pick your choice!
David Morgan: R.A.H. had a dedicated infantile paralysis unit instigated by polio massage treatment pioneered by Queensland nursing ‘sister’ Mary McKillop in the late 30s. They in turn had links to Alvington House crippled children’s home on Somerton Beach, most of whose patients were well on the path to full recovery…
On the subject of the Arch Stanton grave conotations. One could well imagine that retrievable remains from hastily convened (by necessity) Thai/Burma death camp burials would likely have been lost to the encroaching jungle within a few weeks. As a consequence any identifiable body parts of those so interred would have been scant, but for a few teeth and scraps of leather ala Somerton Man’s own remains after 70 odd years of weathering.