Monday 3 September 2018

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 



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.




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15 comments:

  1. To begin with, if I had lost a watch and was checking the classifieds I would look under W .....

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  2. S.Jeffery, 110 Osmond Street, Glenelg, Real Estate agent. Can't find that street on Google Maps so it may have had a name change?

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    Replies
    1. S&M has an SB Jeffery moving from Tusmore to Glenelg North (Shannon St, just a couple over from Osmond) in the late 40s...But struggling to find anything further North than 92 Osmond St St Leonards (it looks like it should continue into 'North Glenelg', but isn't listed there).

      Irrelevant side: there's a lot of Adelaide named after Osmond Giles (there's Osmond St/Tce everywhere as well as a couple of Giles Sts, suburbs Giles Plains and Glen Osmond and AFAIK even O.G. Road is named for him

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    2. I assume the OP is saying that EVERY ad ALWAYS has the first word capitalised. There is nothing special about CITY or GENTS. These days they're probably bold rather than capitalised - but it serves as a way to definitively delimit the ads.

      There's also a stolen watch reported on Page 5 (News Brevities) 13/10 from Birkenhead. That's a couple of suburbs South from Mangnoson (inland from Semaphore)

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  3. Clive, I remember an ad for a live-in at Moseley Street after the event ....

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  4. 1940s Map of Glenelg showing Osmond Street now included in this post.

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  5. 1st word of every add capitalised in most newspapers....dig around on trove and you'll soon notice it.

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    Replies
    1. Yes, it's actually mentioned in the post under the sub heading 'Two Lost Watches'. The question I posed was really aimed at what other reasons could there be for doing that? I should have made it clearer, my apologies. dead end ads were commonly used as a communication method, for example with this ad, how many responses do you think you would get?

      As an aside, Clive also found an article from SA dated 17th December which spoke of a gold watch having been stolen from the Victoria Hotel in Hindley Street and the police were investigating it. That hotel is the same one where Tibor Kaldor was found dead on the 14th December. Interesting isn't it? Did Prosper know that and that's why he placed his ad on 18th December? The article did not apparently mention the make of the watch.

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  6. When you are examining and/or investigating facts, it pays to use a structured approach. In this case what Clive and i have been doing is to form an effective matrix of all of the adverts to see what 'fell out' from the cut.

    Bit first a question, if you wanted to hide a particular item let's say a piece of fruit, an orange but one that could be recognised provided you knew how, where would be the best place to hide it?

    Answering my own question, you would hide it amongst other oranges. You would hide it in plain sight.

    In the case of the gold watch ads, it would, I feel you would agree, be a good idea to put your 'special' ad amongst other similar ads, yours would be one of 11 in this case.

    Next question, how would you make your watch ad different but still appear the same to the odd casual though interested viewer?

    The 'Tudor' gold watch ad was in fact the only ad to contain the makers name, one ad in 11 and hidden in plain sight.

    As always, there's another question, why choose that word in particular? Maybe no reason or just maybe there was a specific reason.

    This needs further thought.

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  7. JS, seems like your latest comment regarding our post conflicts with an earlier comment of yours in July. Hmmm. Not terribly consistent JS, then again it is your wont. I guess Nicks list of ads, being incomplete, may have confused you somewhat, you see what we did here with this post was a true analysis of a specific ad, one which did not appear on Nicks list along with the Nanny ad, more to follow on that. Have a nice day :)

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  8. Peter, your comment on 2 Sept about a 'ive-in' etc. There was an advert in "The Advertiser" 29-11-48 Page 9. Ring McTaggart on X1863. However, another advert in the same newspaper 7-2-49 Page 13 gives name as an Archie McTaggart X1863. Clive

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  9. An interesting coincidence, Another ad appeared for a lost gold watch 'In or near Adelaide' but this time for a Ladies Gold Watch, the ad appeared on the Friday 3rd December, a bit non-specific wouldn't you say. Just like Prospers (Or Jestyn's) ad, but that appeared on 18th December, a few days after the discovery of Tibor Kaldor's body:

    https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/43793945?searchTerm=X1992

    The telephone number being X1992, another Glenelg number I believe.

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  10. Found this old film on British Pathe:
    https://www.britishpathe.com/asset/86560/

    All about Cold War spy techniques. Worth watching.

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