The Day Before...

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Read by Gordon Cramer. The full text is below.

Adelaide Railway Station, train departures and arrivals board, 17 September 1940. State Government Photographer. History Trust of South Australia, GN10743 (public domain, CC0).

By Gordon Cramer

Above the windows, in bold letters: Ask The Man In Blue. Below them, every service, every route and every platform. Henley Beach trains left from Platform 8.

On Tuesday, 30 November 1948, a railway ticket to Henley Beach was sold at this station. It was never used. The next morning it was in the pocket of a man found on Somerton Beach.

Most accounts of the case begin on the sand on 1 December. Very few spend long on the day before, and on the station, the tickets and the suitcase that tie it together. Yet that is where some of the most telling details sit, in the sworn evidence of the people who sold the tickets and took in the luggage.

For some time now I have been working on a new way of setting out this case: one step at a time, from the original records, with every claim tied to a source you can check for yourself, and with the line between record and assumption clearly drawn.

It begins with the day before.

More very soon.

Gordon Cramer

References & Archival Citations

1. Coronial Inquest into the death of an unknown man, Adelaide, June 1949. Deposition of Douglas George Townsend, booking clerk, p. 31 (Henley Beach tickets issued from the double-star box).
2. Coronial Inquest, 1949. Deposition of Harold Rolfe North, senior porter, cloak room, Adelaide Railway Station, pp. 20–21 (left luggage ticket and suitcase).
3. Coronial Inquest, 1949. Deposition of Edmund Leslie Hall, Municipal Tramways Trust, p. 5 (St Leonards bus ticket).
4. State Government Photographer, Adelaide Railway Station showing train departures and arrivals board, 17 September 1940. Glass negative. History Trust of South Australia, accession no. GN10743. CC0 1.0 Public Domain Dedication.

Have information? If you hold documents, photographs or family knowledge relating to 30 November 1948 at Adelaide Railway Station or Somerton Beach, please get in touch through the contact form on this blog. Submissions are read by me and kept confidential unless you agree otherwise.