The Somerton Man, 1948: "Tamam Shud" and a Name at Last

Early on 1 December 1948 a man was found dead, propped against the seawall on Somerton beach in Adelaide. He was well dressed, had no identification, and every label had been cut from his clothes. A post-mortem found signs consistent with poisoning but no poison.

The code

Months later, police found a tiny rolled paper in a fob pocket, printed “Tamam Shud” (“ended” or “finished”), torn from a copy of Omar Khayyám’s Rubáiyát. The book itself turned up in a car, with a phone number and a few lines of letters that look like a code. Nobody has convincingly cracked it. The case became Australia’s most famous mystery.

A name

In 2021 South Australia’s attorney-general authorized exhumation. In July 2022 University of Adelaide professor Derek Abbott and US genealogist Colleen Fitzpatrick announced that DNA from his hair matched relatives of Carl “Charles” Webb, a Melbourne electrical engineer born in 1905. Police have said they are reviewing the result. Why he died, and why on that beach, is still unknown.

Ledger status

Marked disputed. The identification is strong but not formally confirmed. Map position is suburb level; his grave is not pinned.

Sources

• Wikipedia, “Tamam Shud case” — en.wikipedia.org
• Trove, National Library of Australia, 1948–49 coverage — trove.nla.gov.au

Part of the World Ledger, batch 1. Original text; no images are used.