Police mugshots of Sydney's criminals - 1920s and 1930s

I always find galleries of mugshots of criminals of yesteryear fascinating. Today's Daily Mail has this lot from Sydney in the 1920s and 1930s:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...minals-taken-Central-Sydney-police-cells.html

Seeing that first shot, the guy with his eyes closed, I almost fell off my chair because he looks SO like Taman Shud or the Somerton Man. The mouth is almost identical, but it isn't him - unfortunately.

The females in the 3rd and 7th pic look like such nice ladies.The women in the 5th look rough.

MelmothTheLost said:

Seeing that first shot, the guy with his eyes closed, I almost fell off my chair because he looks SO like Taman Shud or the Somerton Man. The mouth is almost identical, but it isn't him - unfortunately.

Click to expand...

I went back to comparing the photos of T Bede and the Somerton Man. It's clearly not the same man but I wonder if they could have been brothers as, apart from their general appearance, there are several features in common:

- The shape of the mouth
- The hairline
- The left eyebrow: in both men there's a dark section, downward sloping, at the nose end, but much lighter or fainter on the ear-ward side
- They both have very unusual ear shapes. They don't have the same peculiarity, but both are peculiar in an unusual manner.

Somerton Man was estimated to be in his mid 40s when he died in 1948, so was probably born in the early years of the 20th century. T Bede, photographed in 1928, looks as though he might be anywhere between 30 and 45 (though people of that era did seem to age much earlier than we do now), so was probably born 10-15 years earlier than Somerton Man.

Am I imaginging things or are there real similarities between these two men?

Right, I've finally plucked up courage to make a fool of myself by emailing details of Thomas Bede to South Australia police and setting out why I think he and Somerton Man might have been related.

Let's see what they say (when they stop laughing).