Wishing Everyone a Peaceful & Relaxed Christmas &
A Healthy, Happy & Enjoyable 2025!
Some Light Reading Links:
1. Jetty Road Businesses
2. Moseley Street Businesses & People
4. Sands & McDougal Street Directory 1949
5. Sands & McDougal Street Directory 1950
The above are a selection of downloads to share especially for the serious researcher. If you're new to the case, these may be hard to understand but download them for later use as you learn more about the Somerton Man. The Adelaide Street Maps link has maps of many Adelaide suburbs as they were in 1948. Sand & McDougal Street Directory 1949 & 1950 are opened on the correct pages, P222 & 235 respectively of the now online street directory
You will note that the 1948 Directory does not show Freeman's Chemist being located at 24a Jetty Road and the book was said to have been found in November 1948. There's a logical reason for that which doesn't map to the Jetty Road Business locations with 1948 in the file name. The Jetty Road link with the map is correct, those are the businesses that were there in 1948 however, the time between a business taking on a premises and registering for the next version of the Directory means that Freeman's Chemist missed the cut-off time for getting an entry into the 1948 Directory and had to wait until the following year, 1949 before the details were updated.
Above, you can see a tie that looks almost RAF but is not, in fact. It's also close to the one that the Somerton Man was wearing when he was found on Somerton Beach. Note the colours and the right-to-left sweep of the pattern. It's difficult to know whether the stripe is white or gray, lighting can play tricks. The tie was apparently made in Australia.
The pants are the most interesting. They're 1940s-style. If you look closely at the inner pockets view on the right, you will be able to see a concealed/ secret or hidden pocket on the inside of the waistband. Compare it to the pocket on the left side, and it will become clear. If you look at the image on the left you do not see an opening on the outside of the pants
It was in a secret pocket like this one that the torn slip, rolled up tight and pushed down, was found.
These particular pants have a zip fly and not buttons.
These are just a couple of the items that you can find on this Adelaide website:
https://www.chaosbazaarvintage.com.au/product-category/1940s-vintage-clothing/mens-1940s-vintage-clothing/bottoms-mens-1940s-vintage-clothing/page/3/
Overseas followers will find the vintage clothing at the shop is extremely well priced.
Re the comment below, this image shows 5 passenger aircraft a week arriving from London into Sydney . Two were Constellaions into Mascot and 3 were Sunderland Flying Boats into Rose Bay,
Watching another blog, some guy suggesting that the SM was on a Pan Am flight. It doesn't add up, I think he was basing it on the style of clothing he had on. Fact is that everything the man had on or had in his pockets was available in Australia, the UK and wherever else. Includes the double breasted 'American' jacket and the aluminium combs. American gents clothes were in Australia in the 1920s and as for Aluminum
ReplyDeleteLinks, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/222739668?
searchTerm=American%20style%20%22mens%20double%20breasted%20sports%20coat%22
and this one https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/191260455?searchTerm=%22Aluminium%20combs%22
All you have to do is search on Trove, there's heaps of information and you can track down some catalogues.
Pete. There are 71 pairs of 1940s made pants on display in that online shop. About half of them had fob pockets but for the sake of the discussion let’s agree on 30. Of that number about half of those 30 fob pockets had buttons on them, about 15. I haven’t counted them. Here’s the important number. Of the 71 pairs of pants only one of them had a fob pocket on the inside of the waistband as described to me by Gerry zfeltus in one our numerous discussions. To be fair about it, there would have been hundreds of thousands of men’s pants made and sold in Australia in the 1940s. It would be reasonable to assume say 7000 pairs would have had fob pockets on the inside of the waistband.. so we have 7000 secret, hidden fob pockets.Not that common but a good few of them around. Why not check out the adverts on that pag? They refer to some of them as ‘hidden’ pockets. Merry Christmas !
ReplyDeleteJS, here’s a clip announcing that Mr. Freeman was the man who handed in the Rubaiyat:
ReplyDeleteI have established that the person who owned the car in which the relevant copy of the Rubaiyat was located and his wife are both deceased. Their next of kin have recently given me permission to release identities and details relevant to the ‘Unknown Man’ investigation. John Freeman, in December, 1948, was a Chemist, and resided with his wife in premises attached to their Chemist shop, at 24A Jetty Road, Glenelg. Their family car, a small Hillman Minx was more often than not parked in Jetty Road, outside their shop/residence.
It spells out that Mr Freeman and his wife lived in premises attached to their shop in December of 1948.
It was a quote from Gerry Feltus and it was published as part of a post by Nick Pelling made on 8th October 2018. That post had 130 comments and 4 of the first 5 were made by a John Sanders. Using your detective skills you should be able to work out that the statement I had made that the the map showing the variousness addresses and businesses in Jetty Road Glenelg was correct.
Merry Christmas
John. What is it that you have done in your past that has made you so ashamed that you had to develop this persona/mask which you now use to hide the real you? I see you for who and what you are John.
ReplyDeletehot,warm, cold. It’s Boy Scout stuff.
ReplyDeleteSands and McDougall cut off dates. For those wondering why Freeman’s Chemist didn’t appear in the 1948 directory. From the research I have done, the cot off date for an advert insertion for the 1948 directory was October 1947.which enabled the printers to get their work done ready for delivery in January 1948. The cut off date for 1949 is ‘I think’ October 1948. From this we can deduce that Mr. Freeman opened his Chemist shop sometime between October 1947 and October 1948 ahead of the finding of the book in November 1948. There are two questions the answer to either of which might nail down a precise date. There are earlier records that talk of interim sheets being issued containing new business details, need to dig a little deeper for that information. The second possibility is whether MrFreeman publicly announced the opening of his shop in which case there may be a Trove listing of the event, either that or perhaps something will turn up in the Glenelg library. Merry Christmas Everyone!
ReplyDeleteFor those who have anterest in the history of street directories in South Australia, there’s a link that you might find useful, it’s from the State library of South Australia. They have worked wonders with their website and a digitisation project. When the Adelaide University pages went up in 2009 the work of garnering solid information was labours intensive to say the least, you could call the library of course and they did their best, but the best way to get results was a visit and the information I was given by a colleague came from their visit back in 2012. Anyhow here’s the link: https://guides.slsa.sa.gov.au/c.php?g=410329&p=6988777 I hope it’s of interest.
ReplyDeleteThe three switches. It’s no biggie. You only need to walk in once to know which switch turns the light on.
ReplyDeleteOk, I give in, how’s it done?
ReplyDeleteYou have 3 switches and 1 lightbulb. The lightbulb has 3 possible states, hot, warm or cold. So, turn switch one and two on, and leave them on for say 2 minutes or so. Now switch off number two and then 45 seconds later switch off number 1. All 3 switches are now off and the lightbulb bulb will either be hot, warm or cold. If the bulb is hot then number 1 is the right switch. If the bulb is warm then number 2 is the correct switch. If the bulb is cold then the correct switch can only be number 3.
ReplyDeleteSomeone who shall remain anonymous, wrote on his blog that he thought the light switch question was a simple one and that my answer was way too complex, I must add that they were not the exact words he used nor would I.
ReplyDeleteFar from being simple, the light switch question was a very smart question, whoever wrote it was looking for a specific answer and for a very specific reason. For the purpose of this comparison, I will set the times to match that of the comparison exercise from the other blog i.e. Both number 1 and 2 switches were turned on at the same time, the number one switch stays on for 2 minutes and the number 2 switch was turned off after 1 minute and 15 seconds. Feel free to use the exact times I quoted in this blogs example if you prefer it will add 1 minute 15 seconds seconds to the timing for this example
The number 2 switch having been turned off after 1 minute 15 seconds, turn off the number 1 switch, walk in to the room and feel the globe to find out if it is hot, warm or cold. It the bulb is hot, then switch 1 is the correct switch. The time taken to walk in and out of the room is, say, 30 seconds.
If the bulb is hot the answer is the number 1 switch is correct. If the bulb is just warm because it had been switched off for 45 seconds, then the number 2 switch is correct. If the bulb is cold then neither the number one of number two switch is correct but by default the number 3 switch is correct.
The total all up time taken is the initial 2 minutes plus 30 seconds for walking in and out of the room = 2 minutes and 30 seconds.
The answer provided on the other person's blog was as follows:
'Im presuming you can’t see light from under the door, flick first switch on, leave for two minutes, flick off and open door, if the bulb is warm its the first switch that turns on the light, if not repeat for the second switch etc'
Let's go though the process:
Turn on switch number 1 and leave it on for 2 minutes. Now switch it off and walk into the room and feel if the bulb was warm, add another 30 seconds for the walk element of the exercise. Total time taken for this option is therefore 2 minutes and 30 seconds.
Now repeat the exercise once more to test the number 2 switch and thus add a further 2 minutes and 30 seconds. By this stage you will know if either switch one or two was correct and if both are cold then Switch number 3 is the right answer by default. The total all up time taken in this comparison example is 5 minutes.
As you can clearly see, there is a time difference of 2 minutes and 30 seconds between the two examples.
The same question was asked but two different answers were given both of s]which were correct but the first example given on this blog saved 2 minutes and 30 seconds.
For those who preferred to use the initial timings in my example, i.e. 3 minutes and 15 seconds to complete the exercise, then the time saving will be 1 minute and 15 seconds.
Please stay with me for a few moments while I relate the important nature of the time difference between the two examples.
Given that this was initially a question put by MI6, consider how critical it was for their recruits to not only think quickly but also deeply, the time difference be it 2 minutes 30 seconds or 1 minute 15 seconds, even 10 seconds could literally save lives.
The lesson here for us all is that it does not pay to skim over information.
Whoever created that question was looking for people who had that level of critical thinking ability. It was not a simple question, it was a very clever one.
I wasn’t going to share this link here but given the level of interest and the current troll behaviours , here’s a link to a current MI6 test:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.psychometrictests.org/sign-up?package=mi6
It’s from a company that appears to have links to MI6 and I think most will find it interesting.
Psychometric tests vary from role to role. They attempt to translate a job description into a series of measurables. In the MI6 example test it was more about personal qualities and less about reasoning so one assumes that personal qualities may be indicators of capabilities in other areas such as spatial reasoning, critical thinking and so on. Being an extrovert may not be the best attribute for an MI6 officer although being able to portray one might be depending on the role to be filled. For that reason you find not a few actors were once involved in intelligence roles in WW2. Such a range of personality types among the ranks of successful field agents from timid booksellers to Opera singers, watch makers, mapmakers, humble cipher clerks, scientists and university professors would you believe. Those quoted have one thing in common, the eye for detail and finely honed skills. I suppose as such they would be readily categorised as ‘potential’ enemy spies and would likely soon be the focus of attention for the catchers. They each had a specific skill to learn from day one. Gathering information is one thing knowing how to pass it on is quite another. Messages were routinely passed in newspaper ads but these were mostly advising the reader to collect information from a dead drop . Either that or telling of an event. A lost gold watch or a missing pet but which ads were real? Best to keep them all and then? But what of the grey men? A totally different breed, the factory worker, the postman or driver by day and who knows what by night?
ReplyDeleteKeep up the good work Mr.Cramer.
‘No1’ your suggestion whilst interesting was incorrect. The electronic technology you describe was not available in 1945. There certainly was a vacuum tube operated system that would lock doors amongst other things but that extra step of enabling power to a lighting circuit only began to appear in the late 1940s and in specific industrial or military applications. The instance quote in the post clearly states 1945. Thus in your example you need to ask the question, and what would happen when you switched a switch on after you opened the door? It would close and lock the door. A good effort though. One last thought, contrary to popular belief, LED light globes do emit heat, up to 185 F. Quite warm to the touch, most have heat sinks built in to dissipate the heat. Much depends on the design. You are correct to the extent that LED lamps are much cooler than filament globes. Leave you to it. Busy weeks ahead. Best Wishes for 2025!
ReplyDeleteHello Gordon, re the light switches - the problem I have is with the word used (opened). If the riddle said the door can only be (open) with the 3 switches off the all the submitted answers may apply. However, using (opened) you just need 3 switches off then open the door and do whatever tests you want to with the door remaining open.
ReplyDeleteHi Allan, time for some truth telling I think. When you get a post on a blog like this one: https://tomsbytwo.com/2024/12/22/so-you-want-to-join-mi6-do-you/ ,
ReplyDeletegiven the reputation it has, the first thing you do is to check the voracity or otherwise of the question it poses. In this case the claim is that a ‘confidential source’ had sent Pete Bowes a copy of an MI6 questionnaire from 1945 no less. So I did a quick search of the web specifically looking for the origins of that ‘3 light switch’ question and of course you’ll find it’s all over the internet, my what a surprise. The next step was to seek out when it first appeared, the earliest example I found was on Riddles.com, November 30th 1999. My, here was another surprise! So, what are you to do?
This is my 15th year researching this case and I think Bowes is a couple of years behind me, I’ve known him for a long time and indeed we were once friends. For sometime he’s been less than friendly often resorting to abusive comments and attempts to discredit myself and the blog. The fact is that whilst this blog continues to move ahead, Pete’s blog appears to have fallen off a cliff. I had three options, one I could ignore him and the post it being none of my business, two I could tear into him for publishing yet more garbage or three, I could humour him and provide him with something to occupy his mind and amuse him. I chose option three.
Pete’s an old guy and it is Christmas so why not give him a break and that's what I did. What he had posted was untrue, no MI6 questionnaire and no ‘confidential source’, it appears he faked the lot and all the comments made on his post about it were also apparently fake. I guess he was trying to get some attention which I found to be a sad situation for him, so I gave him some.attention. In hindsight I should have just left it and I will the next time he starts attention seeking. At least now people will know how that blog operates. Apologies to you Allan.
So was Bowes being devious, dishonest and deceitful or was he taken in? Whichever it doesn’t look good. That’s a Gotcha moment.
ReplyDeleteWhat’s the betting he takes it down?
ReplyDelete