LEN BROWN

Mr Leonard Douglas "Len" Brown - 28/12/1917—20/05/2019

28.12.1917 - 20.5.2019
In his 102nd year.

Died peacefully.

Loved husband of Melba (deceased).

Loving father of Richard and Anthony (both deceased).

Loved by Judith.

Funeral Arrangements to be advised at a later date.

Service: 28 May - 2:00pm 
Location: St Bartholomew's Anglican Church - 77 Beulah Road, Norwood

Family and Friends of Len are invited to attend his Funeral Service, which will be held on Tuesday, May 28, 2019 at 2:00 pm. Entirely in St Bartholomew's Anglican Church, 77 Beulah Road, Norwood.

No flowers by request

SOMERTON MAN: VERSE 70 & ALF BOXALL HANDWRITING COMPARISON

ALF BOXALL HANDWRITING COMPARISON
VERSE 70

The letter 'd' Verse 70 

 The Letter 'd' in Alf's Letter

The letter 'd' in Alf's questionnaire

Alf's Signature

This is an exercise first done about 10 years ago by the Adelaide Uni's Facebook page participants. You can see from this comparison at least that there is no similarity between the letter 'd' found in verse 70 and the letter 'd' as written by Alf Boxall.

'and' Symbol

Thanks to a very sharp-eyed commenter, see comments below, we have a further point of difference which is, though small, quite striking:

The comparison clearly shows the difference spelled out by our commenter, the symbol in Alf's letter sample appears to be up and loop left whilst the same symbol in verse 70 is clearly down and loop left.

In my view, that seals it, Alf did not write verse 70 in the book. He did, however, write the number 70 beneath the verse or at least we can say the number 70 was written after the Littlemore interview when the book was in his possession. These are facts based on physical evidence, not assumptions.

 The image below is known as a 'Carolingian minuscule' conjunction. A form of an ampersand.

Many thanks to our anonymous commenter! Extremely well spotted!

Summation

I will first repeat that handwriting analysis is a specialised field and some would say that it is not a precise science. However, having looked at these examples and others over the years and recently, my vote is firmly against Alf Boxall having written verse 70 or any part of it aside from the number '70' written at the base of the transcription.

Below full documents from which Alf's writing samples have been taken and of course the Verse 70:

SOMERTON MAN: JESS HANDWRITING COMPARISON TO VERSE 70

HANDWRITING COMPARISON

Above we have verse 70, note, in particular, the nature of the letter 'T', there are nine of them,  two in line 1, one in line 2, two in line 3 and three in line 4 with one in the JESTYN signature. Some of these 'T's are not crossed, the first two in line 1, the single 'T' in line 2 and one of the three in line 4.

In fact, if you look carefully, none of the 9 letters 'T' are actually crossed right through.

And now to the Jess letter:

Let's do a count of the 'T's in this letter, 

1. Line 1 has 3 letters T, one is not crossed and two of them are crossed right through. 

2. Line 2 has one T and it is crossed right through.

3. Line 3 has one T and it is crossed right through

4. Line 4 has one T and it is not crossed

5. Line 5, explanation needed here, the first word I think is actually 'Twould' old English,. the letter T is capital in this word. The other T at the end of the line is crossed right through.

6. Line 6 has one 'T'  and on close up is crossed right through

7. Line 7 has three Ts, two are not crossed and one is crossed right through

8. Line has two letters T, one is not crossed and the other appears to have a floating crossbar

In this first comparison, we can see the likeness of the letter b as in the word 'but'found in both examples. The letter 's' is also similar in both. The letter 'D' is not similar in these examples, see the word 'and' as well as the 'd' in withered'

The T in Jess's letter is markedly different.

Here's another letter from Jess:

Thanks to Pete Bowes for the loan of this particular letter!

Again we see examples of the T being crossed right through as well as uncrossed versions. The 'd's do not match those in verse 70. I will leave the rest of this comparison exercise to you the reader, what do you see?

I'll close of this brief post with my take on this comparison exercise, what I see is a significant difference with the letter T, I also see a significant difference with the letter 'd'.

I raise a question about the use of the word 'Twould', you may or may not agree with me but it does seem clear to me that it is the word used and not 'I would' as has been suggested elsewhere. I think  the sentence reads correctly as 'Twould be worse I suppose..' It would not make grammatical sense if it were to read 'I would be worse I suppose..'

Why is that important,very honestly I haven't seen an example of it being used in any other letters I have read from someone of an Australian education. I do know I used it school in Wales and it was fairly common practice. Is this a clue to where Jessica received her primary education?

SOMERTON MAN: THE NURSE, HANDWRITING SAMPLE

Jessica:

HANDWRITING EXAMPLE

Thanks to an old friend, here's an example of Jess's handwriting, it is only a small sample and the image you see here is quite low resolution, there is another on the way which will be of better quality.

However, there are still some interesting aspects to this image in relation to some of the letters and to an unusual mark which seems quite out of place.

There will be a follow-up post that will more clearly show the comparison between Verse 70 words and letters and the examples above within a few days.

SOMERTON MAN; OF SPIES, LIES AND VIDEO CLIPS.... HARRY GOLD IN FOCUS

HARRY GOLD ATOM SPY

& COURIER FOR PAVEL FEDOSIMOV

Way back when, on this blog, we posted about the meeting between Harry Gold and Pavel Fedosimov, our number 1 candidate for the Somerton man. 

Followers will recall that Gold met Fedosimov in the Earl Theatre in the Bronx in December 1946. In his interview with the FBI and mentioned in other publications, Gold thought that Fedosimov was very tall about 6 feet 4 inches. The astute amongst us quickly pointed out that the Somerton Man was 5' 11 " in height.

My response was that Gold was not a tall man, in the image below taken following his arrest for being an atom spy, in fact, he was the cut out for Fedosimov in meetings with Klaus Fuchs, you can see that he was quite short, around 5'6" maybe a little more.

Now place yourself in Harry's shoes, standing in the foyer at the Earl Theatre and watching a big man, wearing a hat and walking 'on his toes' towards him, how tall would Fedosimov have appeared to you? I maintain that Gold saw many people as being taller than they were the question is by how much?

The next point I made was that the body of the Somerton Man would have been measured at 5' 11" on the mortuary slab, he was deceased and as such his muscles would have been relaxed and his measured height, therefore, would have been less than he would have been in life. Now imagine SM in real life, stretched up he would have been a shade over 6' tall but that was without shoes. Add another 1.5  inches for shoe height and you would have him at 6' 2" approximately. Next, give him a hat and have him walk on his toes. Not at all difficult for him to be seen as being quite a bit taller than he was when lying on the mortuary slab.

Here's Harry being escorted to a waiting car:

Here's Harry near the car with his head slightly bowed:

Harry was a short man.

Gold had been an experienced 'spy' before his involvement with the Atom spies, he had been involved in stealing industrial secrets. but it was his involvement with the Rosenbergs and their relative, David Greenglass that led Harry to pursue a more serious and dangerous espionage career.

Not without interest is the use of two matching pieces of a Jello box to establish their credentials, a technique thought to have been used by both Fedosimov with a torn handwritten note that gave the meeting location for Gold and himself and later the Somerton Man with his torn out piece from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

SPY TRIALS

In recent searches, I found a very interesting video on youtube. It dates back to 2002 and it covered aspects of the Atom Spy story. 

There were a number of fascinating aspects to the video including an excellent description of just how the Russians constructed and encoded their Venona cables using a one time pad. Another interesting clandestine communication method was used by the spy Theodore Hall, he used milk as invisible ink to write on the blank edge of pages of books or newspapers.

Perhaps the most enlightening comment in the clip was that we should remember that many of the actions taken and the judgments handed down were taken without any reference to the existence of the Venona cables because of course, their existence at the time was absolutely top secret, indeed the Wife of Julius Rosenberg, Ethel Rosenberg, went to the electric chair for a crime that she did not commit it would seem. From an investigation perspective, it illustrates, if not so nicely, the lengths that Governments would go to in order to preserve their secrets. Would Australian officials be any different? Commander Long, head of Australian Intelligence in WW2 and NSW head of 'The Association' in the mid to late 40s, burnt piles of records according to a relative, because he did not think the Australian Public would have been impressed by some of the tactics employed by Intelligence services. 

GENERAL UPDATE

Whilst posts have been few in recent weeks, activity hasn't been at a standstill, there has been much to review and assemble as well as some new information that has come to light. The intention is that in the next two weeks we will have further posts to make.