SOMERTON MAN: STATISTICALLY SPEAKING...

SOUTH AUSTRALIA  CITY CORONER'S DISTRICT
INQUEST RECORDS BY CATEGORY 1949

These records include brief details of each death, some of which required an inquest and others that did not as you will see:

You can see from these statistics, that during 1949, the City Coroner's Office dealt with 500 deaths. Of that number, 124 deaths required an inquest and 90 of those were males.

Suicides

Of the total of 90 male deaths dealt with by the Coroners Court, only 2 were cases of suicide by poisoning and one of those was carbon monoxide poisoning. 7 other deaths were male suicides but did not require an inquest.

There was 1 accidental poisoning case, male, that required an inquest.

There was 1 accidental Carbon Monoxide poisoning case, male, in the report

Somerton Man Case

Interestingly the Somerton Man is listed separately as a 'Probable Poisoning'.

No deaths requiring an inquest were categorised as murder.

The 1948 Year

In 1948, the City Coroner's Court dealt with 79 male deaths that required an inquest, 2 of which were poisoning. 1 female was murdered by poisoning in 1948.

Conclusion

1. Suicides by poisoning were very uncommon, only 1 recorded instance of poisoning by substance was dealt with by the City Coroners Court in 1949. In 1948 there were 2 male poisonings that required an inquest.

2. The fact that the Somerton Mans case was listed in a category of its own underlines the uncertainty of the cause of death.