SOMERTON MAN: A TALE OF TWO WATCHES

A COINCIDENCE?

Two male bodies, both poisoned and two lost watches...

On December 18th, 1948, Prosper placed an ad in the Adelaide Advertiser apparently searching for a lost Tudor Gold Watch. He wasn't specific about just where the watch had been lost, his wording was "CITY and suburbs...", no idea why he chose to use caps for the word CITY.

Clive has put together a list of reported lost gold watches from the Adelaide Advertiser between October 1948 and January 1949:

14-10-48  Page 8

14-10-48  Page 8

15-10-48  Page 11

08-12-48  Page 12

10-12-48  Page 2

10-12-48 Page 6

14-12-48 Page 9

27-12-48 Page 4

01-01-49 Page 7

Five Lost Gold watches in December alone not counting the ones from Prosper and Mr. Jeffery

TWO LOST WATCHES

This first Gold watch had been apparently lost prior to the 7th December 1948, the ad starts in caps, the word being GENT's, just why that is we don't know although it seems to have been a fairly common practice for advertisers to capitalise important words:

Interesting, thus far we know that the person who placed the ad was from Glenelg and in fact, he, name of 'Jeffery', had placed other ads mostly for Real Estate/properties for sale in the area. There was another ad from earlier years where a ladies marcasite wrist watch had also been lost. But it was the Gold watch that first caught Clive's eye.

So, we have a man found dead, poisoned in fact, at Somerton on December 1st, the first ad for a lost gold watch appears in the Advertiser on December 7th, one week after the discovery of the Somerton Man.

1940s Map of Glenelg

Osmond Street Glenelg

As you should be able to see, Osmond Street was the extension of Tapley's Hill Road that runs into Anzac Highway and then Jetty Road in the centre of Glenelg.

For those interested, you can get the complete set of 1940s 

maps of Adelaide from this location

This event is followed by another discovery of yet another man, Tibor Kaldor, who had also been poisoned this time on the 14th December; and on the 18th December, Prosper places an ad for another Gold watch, a Tudor Gold watch, an expensive item by any measure:

The current task is to find out exactly who placed the first ad for the 'Glenelg' gold watch, we will be sure to let you know when we find out just who 'Jeffery' was. (See Clive's comment below)

Final thought for this post, telephone numbers can be strange things, we can find a telephone number quite readily but finding a name to go with it can be challenging. Sometimes people rent rooms in a house and share the telephone or perhaps they have moved since the last published directory and someone else now has that number. We have another post on telephone numbers very shortly.