Was Dr Palmer-Benbow a Crank?
When degree student Richard Evans wrote his MA on the Pyjama Girl case in 2001 he wrote about Dr Palmer-Benbow’s theories:
“These were of great value as a contemporary and independent analysis of the case.”
Yet in 2022 writing his book W.J. MacKay and the NSW Police, 1910–1948: A Dangerous Man, he said:
“Benbow quickly revealed himself to be a crank and his “scientific” evidence to be worthless.”
It has to be questioned why a lecturer in criminology had changed his opinion of the scientific evidence of Dr Palmer-Benbow in 20 years and felt such strong opinions about a person he had never met and to be frank without whom he would not have an MA if the inquest had not taken place in 1944 providing him with sources.
But first, it would be useful to understand the history of Dr Palmer-Benbow before deciding whether he was a crank or a prescient armchair detective.
- In June 1914 he graduated with a degree in medicine from the Jefferson Medical College of Philadelphia with a £75 prize for being the most worthy graduate. The prize in 1914 would have been the equivalent of two years' wages for a manual worker, source:
https://jdc.jefferson.edu/skmccommencement/53/
The college may have found Palmer-Benbow a little intense when they wrote in the 1914 Benefactor Yearbook:
“Benbow is the first Australian pioneer to forge his way through the wilds of Jefferson. He has brought with him many valuable suggestions, which he has ungrudgingly offered to the teaching staff. As a result of these suggestions there will probably be many radical changes for the better, in the methods used at Jefferson. As a token of our appreciation of your efforts towards the uplift of the standards of Jefferson we present you with this, the fastest boat yet built, and wish you Godspeed on your journey back to Australia.” Perhaps they presented him with a model boat — potentially the Kitty Hawk VI.
- https://scontent-lcy1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t31.18172-8/1404854_10151745117038494_924882187_o.jpg?_nc_cat=103&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=9267fe&_nc_ohc=HOFamyO3CxcAX9H-3op&_nc_ht=scontent-lcy1-1.xx&oh=00_AfAwztt-J64gnEKpWUxexAso64lhmdnhwD1E3knt_BO5TA&oe=64DB285D
- From 1914 to 1915 he was a British Red Cross volunteer in Serbia treating war wounded patients in Skopje and those with typhus. Source: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/242361723?searchTerm=%22palmer-benbow%22
- From 1915 he was in a hospital in the UK with typhus. His address on 15/06/1915 was 83 Pall Mall, London classed as a surgeon. Though it was the offices for the wounded and missing department, source: Missing and wounded service during the First World War | WW1 Volunteers (redcross.org.uk)
- From 1916 to 1917 he served in France with the British army, likely as a doctor or surgeon
- In 1918 he was a medical corps reserve in Australia, source: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/232462288?searchTerm=%22palmer-benbow%22
- In 1921 he was awarded various medals in the UK mercantile marines — we might refer to this as the merchant navy. He may have been the ship’s doctor. Source:
https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/D8077447 - In 1924 he bought a Packard car while working at the Sydney Quarantine Station, source: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/234428424?searchTerm=%22palmer-benbow%22
- In 1925 Dr Palmer-Benbow retired as an honorary military captain, source: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/234428424?searchTerm=%22palmer-benbow%22
- In 1941 six Sydney doctors and dentists analysed the evidence of Dr Palmer-Benbow of Potts Point in the Pyjama Girl case and signed a document requesting an immediate inquiry into the case to determine who the Pyjama Girl was and whether as Palmer-Benbow believed it was Anna Philomena Morgan, source: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/248710118?searchTerm=%22palmer-benbow%22
- But the police disputed his findings and believed Anna Philomena was either alive or dead as Jean Morris, source:
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/38326481?searchTerm=%22palmer-benbow%22
Richard Evans himself in his 2001 MA disputed that Linda Agostini was the body known as the Pyjama Girl. But he would not confirm the theory of Palmer-Benbow. He went on to describe:
“In June 1943 Palmer-Benbow and Routledge appealed to the NSW State Full Court for a new inquest into the death. This too was unsuccessful.”
Furthermore, in his 2001 MA Richard Evans tells us:
“The Pyjama Girl also gets a mention in Morton’s 1994 book. The Who’s Who of Unsolved Murders. Morton’s article suggests that: There are good grounds for thinking that the body [of the Pyjama Girl] was that of Philomena Morgan, killed by the son of a Sydney detective, something that would account for the enthusiasm the police had for proving the corpse to be that of Linda Agostini.”
But Evans also mentions in his MA about a fictional Dr Benbow in another author’s book:
“Unlike the real man, he is patient and calm: a good guy”
Richard Evans the criminology lecturer appears to have developed an extreme dislike for Dr Palmer-Benbow when writing his MA on journalism. He may have based his personal opinions too much on biased newspaper reports and not the inquest. Yet he also says:
“The police had not noticed the laundry mark on the towel, until Palmer-Benbow pointed it out”
Evans also acknowledges when the police made a film for cinemas about the case they introduced false evidence by showing the audience the wrong pyjamas for the Pyjama Girl:
“Palmer-Benbow discovered this deception in 1940”
and further, he wrote:
“Read and the police witnesses went to great lengths to discredit Palmer-Benbow and his theories.”
Criminology lecturer Richard Evans in his 2001 MA writing on the Pyjama Girl appears to lead us to the conclusion that he believed the body was neither Linda Agostini nor Philomena Morgan. But does not offer a third solution.
But it leads to the question of why in 2022 Criminology lecturer Richard Evans believed Dr Palmer-Benbow was a crank when he was proved right about the police deception of the design of the pyjamas and he observed the laundry marks which the investigating police had not. The theory that Ginger Quinn [the later assumed illegitimate son of the police chief Mackay] was the real killer has also never been disproved.
I myself (an amateur investigator perhaps in the spirit of Benbow) proved in 2023 that the teeth of the Pyjama Girl were not those of Linda Agostini’s. My account was tweeted by the Public Record Office of Victoria (PROV).
Halliday Sutherland describes in his 1947 book Southward Journey:
“In 1939 Dr. Palmer Benbow … a system devised by himself had begun to compare facial measurements from photographs of missing girls with those of the Pyjama Girl”
Effectively Dr Palmer-Benbow was the first person to compare not only facial measurements but also angles of facial landmarks and therefore had unknowingly invented “Facial ID”.
It is difficult to assess what made criminology lecturer Richard Evans change his opinion from 2001 to believe war-time surgeon Dr Palmer-Benbow was a crank in 2022.
I wrote this with the intention that Dr Palmer-Benbow should be credited with being the originator of facial ID.
This is an attempt to recreate his average image experiment in the Inquest (see image on the far right). He used a lightbox for X-rays using transparencies of photographs.
It is fairly obvious even the average of all the police sketches and mask (excluding photographs) points to Philomena Morgan. Notice the upper lip and prominent central incisors.
