The Somerton Man: The Coroner Could Not Say Who He Was

On the first of December 1948 a man was found dead on the sand at Somerton Park, Adelaide. Every label that could have named him had been cut out of his clothes. Sewn into the waistband of his trousers was a fob pocket, and rolled inside it a scrap of paper carrying two printed words: Tamam Shud. A coroner called seventeen witnesses. Four experts examined the body and gave four different answers. The book the scrap had been torn from arrived at a police station a month after the hearing had already been adjourned, and was never put before the coroner. Nine years later the coroner signed a finding three sentences long: he could not say who the deceased was, and he could not say how he died. In 2022 two researchers outside the police named him from hair set in a plaster bust. The file still does not. This is what a case looks like when the paper cannot answer the two questions it exists to answer. CHAPTERS 0:00 Seventeen Witnesses 1:18 Half Past Six in the Morning 4:00 The Spleen 5:24 Four Experts 8:08 The Cloakroom 10:26 The Fob Pocket 11:40 Inquest Seventy-One 13:04 The Book Comes a Month Late 14:23 Pressed Into the Cover 15:40 The Number 17:11 March, Nineteen Fifty-Eight 18:47 Hair Set in Plaster 20:38 What the File Can Finally Say SOURCES Inquest into the death of a body located at Somerton on 1.12.48 — Coroner's Court, Adelaide, hearing of 17 and 21 June 1949, transcript of depositions (102 pages). Deposition of Paul Francis Lawson, taxidermist, p. 7; John Matthew Dwyer, post-mortem, p. 11; John Burton Cleland, p. 33; Robert James Cowan, deputy government analyst, p. 35; Harold Rolfe North, senior porter, cloak room, p. 20; Patrick James Durham, police photographer, p. 25; exhibit list including the paper marked Exhibit C.46, the slip naming two drugs, p. 42. Remarks of the City Coroner at adjournment of inquest, 21 June 1949 — the evidence is too inconclusive to warrant a finding; there is no evidence as to who the deceased was. Inquisition taken for our Sovereign Lady the Queen, Coroner's Court, Adelaide — hearing of 17 and 21 June 1949 and 14 March 1958, before Thomas Erskine Cleland, J.P., Coroner. Signed and sealed the fourteenth day of March 1958, p. 7. Commonwealth Police, Attorney-General's Department — file of papers, 1949. Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages, South Australia — death certificate, entered April 1958. Archive photographs are in the public domain in Australia and were published by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Wikimedia Commons. The generated images and reconstructions in this film are marked as synthetic content.