THE JESTYN AND ALF STORY
There's a lot more to this story than at first it might appear. My involvement goes back to 1011 and the days of the Adelaide Unic=veristy Facebook page run by Professor Abbott. This blog started off in early 2013 and some t of the earliest posts were on the subject of Jess and Alf.
Firstly and most importantly, let me make it very clear that I have nothing but respect for Jess and Alf, the work that they did in the 1940s and after was extraordinarily valuable and would have taken great courage.
The image at the top of the page goes back a few years and if we are going to give a pictorial intro to his ost then it should also include the Somerton Man code page, the torn slip of paper, and so much more but those things will be included in the book which is well underway.
The purpose for this post is to provide you with links to the numerous posts that I have put on this blog since 2013. As you would imagine, some things have changed as more information became available and far better techniques of code recovery were developed.
Their story is one of intrigue, of the activities of the Communist Party in Australia in those early days. Woven into their story by default are posts about the Dunera Boys and the other man found poisoned in Adelaide just two weeks after the finding of the Somerton Man's body, a man called Tibor Kaldor. The death of Tibor lead us on to the Internment camps in Australia, the production of amazingly detailed Internment Camp banknotes, and their sudden withdrawal from the Hay Internment camp and the designer of those banknotes, George Adams Teltscher. Far too much to put into this short post but the story will be told in due course.
For now, here is a list of posts that relate directly to 'Jestyn' and Alf Boxall, again let me preface these posts with a note that some of the content has been superceded and you will notice that as you progress through the information. One example would be the relatively recent discovery I made regarding the signature on verse 7o, J Estyn, the word Estyn is Welsh (and possibly Cornish) for EXTENSION. So the signature actually is J EXTENSION. This doesn't mean much except to the medical profession, a J Extension is a surgical instrument believed to have been invented in the 1920s but not positive about the actual date. It could be that the word was put together by Jess in humour. We may never know though.
POST LIST:
Code page, torn slip and Verse 70 Boxall Rubaiyat post with images shown here:
Or maybe that J. Estyn was another person, such as Estyn Dick Jones, who was living in Henley Beach around that time... check him on Trove and the Australian National Archives, lots of information.
ReplyDeleteHello, thanks for your comment. If I can clarify a few things. The book with the inscription signed by J Estyn was given to Alf Boxall at an after hours social gathering in the Clifton Gardens Hotel in August 1945. That was way before Jess had met Prosper and way before she moved to Adelaide.. There are some great resources that you can read up on, here are some lionks which I hope you will find interesting, they're the script and other details from the Stuart Littlemore 1977 documentary, 2 parts:
ReplyDeletePart 1. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cFmX9Y2Tdu36zeQtznJn-7dpTauqpU7Q/view?usp=sharing
Part 2. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ddOPGIjD6LhkGfsgVn_lgdSNwqjWCHSe/view?usp=sharing
Quite a few posts on here about the book. Although I am an Irish citizen, I was brought up in North Wales not far from Mold, less than an hours drive in the early days and just about 35 minutes on todays much faster highways. So, I speak Welsh and have posted on the meaning of J Estyn. It's a very rare Christian name but its English translation is' Extend' or 'Extension'. The Welsh language is very close to the Cornish language and Jess had very close ties to Cornwall. Therefore we have J Extension, which sounds a bit odd but when you consider that a J Extension is a surgical instrument used in C Section deliveries it might be a little nurses humour showing itself.
I had read the NAA files, what an enormous waste of time for those concerned, a battle of administrators.
Please don't hesitate to ask if there's anything you need, If I have the answer I will glalky share it with you otherwise I may be able to point you in the right direction.
PAT, and others just to reaffirm, ESTYN is not a common Christian name, it's quite rare. One 'name origin site shows just 6 occurrences over a period of 20 years which I find to be on the light side. Neither is there or has there been a borough of ESTYN. Estyn is a Government Department, its the Inspectorate of education and training in Wales and you will find that most shires in Wales has such a department.
ReplyDelete