BARBOUR'S LINEN WAX THREADS
THE NEEDLE...
Here's a decent and quite clear image of the card of Barbour's linen waxed threads that was found in a suitcase that was thought to belong to the Somerton Man.
You'll notice that in this image you get a much clearer view of the writing/advertising that is printed behind the wound threads.
In recent times one blogger made the announcement that amongst the items found in the suitcase, there was no needle to be found. The images below show the position of the needle and the thread running through the eye:
The arrow marked '1.' points to the thread passing through the eye of the needle, and the arrow marked '2.' shows the body of the needle which is noticeably thicker.
The moral of the story is to always dig deeper, examine things as closely as possible. When examining images, what you are looking for are signs of abnormalities, variations in colour, or shade that might give away the presence of something that had been overlooked. This is a lesson I learned as a young probationary constable during training on how to search a suspect. Several scenarios were set up, and one I recall in particular was when we were called to an incident when a man's wristwatch had been stolen and the suspected thief had been detained. My job was to look for the wristwatch. I looked everywhere, pockets, a patdown of the man's jacket and pants revealed nothing, I even looked in his shoes but no watch was to be found. The supervising sergeant said, 'If all else fails, try the obvious' you've probably guessed it, the watch was on the suspect's wrist. Thankfully I wasn't the only one to miss that on that day :)
In this case of the missing needle, all I did was to ask the question, where do I put a needle when I've finished a repair? The answer was to put it back with the reel that it came from.
Who knows even though we have uncovered the presence of the needle in this image, this and the larger image that it came from may hold even more secrets. But that's for another time.
JS, I did not see your earlier comment re the needle, had I see it I would have acknowledged it.
ReplyDeleteRe the absence of soap, soap was still rationed at the time, right through to 1950 I believe as were a few other items. My view on the suitcase was that the contents were 'littler' placed there to deceive, whoever did it did it well.
ReplyDeleteDon't know whether anyone mentioned the pencil sharpener? There was one in the case but interestingly, none of the pencils looked to particularly sharp? Then again, when the photos were taken was many years later and the darkened ends of the pencils would happen with age, but sharp?
ReplyDelete