SOMERTON MAN: IN THE WORDS OF THE PROFESSOR

LIEUTENANT COMMANDER
G A ROBSON

This document is from NAA files and it is for the Graeme Alvin Robson, he was the brother in law to Dr. Douglas Buxton Hendrickson. You may remember him as the man first identified by Professor Abbott at the showing of the 'Missing Pieces' film recently in Glenelg.

So, you may well ask, what are we doing looking at this man when another man, a chemist has more recently been identified as the fabled Mr. Francis?

Before I go any further, I must share with you that, as you will read,  it is believed that G A Robson spent some time at North Shore Hospital in the early 1940s. That should peak some interest as perhaps some of the entries in this particular file may do.

So, back to the point, or rather points. Like Nick Pelling, I have also received an email from Professor Abbott, and I found it most interesting.

Rather than selectively choose which parts I would publish, I have opted to share the email almost in it's original form. There are certain aspects that would be best left unpublished and they have been removed. I hasten to add that these aspects do not have any real impact on the main content of the email:

Hi Gordon

The identity that was announced at the Glenelg screening wasn't revealed, as far as I am aware. It was something the producer of the movie came up with and my understanding is that it is only a possibility:  it isn't the same as XXXX "Ronald Francis", and the producer is no longer sure about it anymore anyway.  So I think we better let that one go! False alarm I think.

The fact is that more than one Rubaiyat was handed in to the Police back in 1949. We can't assume it was only the ones mentioned in the newspapers.  Undoubtedly there would be more. 

And the question is: is even XXXX own "Ronald Francis" the correct one?  

What due diligence has XXXX done to double and triple check he got the right guy?   XXXXX hasn't given out any information on that so hard to confirm "Ronald's"  story.

Also Gerry once told me that when he interviewed "Ronald" it appeared that he had onset of dementia, and so it was difficult getting information out of him.  So questions like "are you sure you handed in Whitcombe and Tombs edition?" were probably not going to go anywhere.   

 Thus I question Ronald Francis on the grounds that the story is totally unverifiable.

If you look at the Reddit thread you will see how I described the lengths I went through to double and triple check that Jo Thomson was in fact "Jestyn".     When I first deduced her name I wasn't 100% sure that I had got the right one.   I've publicly laid out the exact process of how I became 100% certain.

Regarding Hendrickson he was a possibility that XXXXXXXX came up with back in 2011 and I dismissed it back then.

Back in 2011, XXXXX made a complete list of doctors that lived near J.

I've been working my way through these and a "Dr D. B. Hendrickson" that XXXX found does look a bit interesting.

We probably dismissed him before because he was born 1911 and died in 1979 and we thought 1979 was too long ago for Gerry to have met him alive....as Gerry did not really get active until after 2000.

However, if we now make an assumption that Gerry got the wrong guy, then Dr D. B. Hendrickson begins to have a whiff of looking interesting.

This is what I found out about him:

a) Full name: Douglas Buxton Hendrickson

b) He's in Sands & McDougall at 13 Pier St and 51 Moseley St. Presumably one address is his practice and the other is his residence. Both are 5 min walk from J.

c) He was a child polio specialist so almost certainly worked closely with the Crippled Children's Home outside which SM was found dead (but any link to the children's home is yet to be established).

d) He did drive a car.

e) When the Beaumont children disappeared he took it upon himself to spend a whole month digging sand dunes in an attempt to find bodies! 

f) His brother in law was also a doctor (Graeme Alvin Robson) and worked at the Royal North Shore Hospital in the early 1940s.

g) He's a man with motivation to hide his identity:  he was a womaniser and also was being done for medical malpractice in the 1940s.  So if he handed in the book he might not want his name in the papers if the car was parked on a street where his wife busted him for womanising him (for example).

Yes, all these connections could be meaningless coincidences, but there is something tantalizing about them that builds a picture.

Could he be our man?  Dunno.   But it is as good as any other guess that has been proposed so far.

A huge problem is he has been dead since 1979, so even if he is the man there is the issue of verifiability.  If his family have retained essential knowledge that links him to the real poetry book, this would be the only way to verify.  But it is a very long shot.

Best,
Derek.

IN SUMMATION

Having read this through it is clear to me that both candidates are as likely as each other to be the 'Mr. Francis'. As Professor Abbott says, there is insufficient evidence to make the call.

This also means that the first Post that we put on here regarding Dr. Hendrickson remains valid, probably better to say as valid as Mr. Freeman.

I sincerely hope that this information from the Professor will be of interest and of some use to the serious researchers including JS and Milongal, that's on the assumption that you weren't aware of the email contents.

Clive and I will be digging deeper on this topic and others which are based around areas of London, Hampstead to be more precise. Who knows what we will turn up next.