Monday, January 07, 2013

Update on Chess Championship Photo

Back in August 2009, I published this photo on this blog, and a few days later attempted to interpret my father's scrawl on the back of the photo in order to give some idea who these various chess players were.  (My father was Frank Crowl.) That was as far as things went until late last year when a chess player and musician from Australia called Nigel Nettheim picked up on the photo and said he would attempt to let me know who the various men were.  However, he was short of time, and passed a copy of the photo onto Bob Meadley, who is an Australian chess historian (he may be an actual historian as well; I'm not sure about this).

Bob has written to me twice since then, and has filled in some details about my father that he had to hand, and that I hadn't heard before. He's also sent me a letter with information about the men in the photo.  He's concentrated on getting the names right; the additional and almost illegible information my father put on the back of the photo is in the earlier blog post.

Here is what Bob has told me:
Here are the names from the left as I see it:
Front row: Vladimir Bagirov, Yuri Averbakh, Brian Harkin, Karlis Lidums, ?McAuliffe.
2nd row: Cecil Purdy (arms folded), Garry Koshnitsky, A. Cuntala.
3rd row: (3 at left and 2 at right) Lucius Endzelins, Karlis Ozols, Ortvin Sarapu, P. Purkalitis and Phil Viner.
4th row: (2 only) W[olfgang]. Leonhardt, John Hanks.
5th row: John Purdy, Frank Crowl, Emmanuel Basta, A[rthur]. Teters, Vas Lapin, L. Cohen.
6th row: R. Stalley, A.L. Miller, (and over on the right) W.J. Goss.

Bob writes that he is awaiting confirmation of these names, and he adds: I may have some wrong.  There are 24 people and 23 played in the tourney.  There are 3 officials - Harkin, Lidums, and McAuliffe, so 2 players are not in the photo.  One [of those] is Dr P. Kalinovsky, and the other is Peter Wren. 
My father had written about the 'pin-up boy' and the 'conveyor of Crowl from Griffith to Adelaide and back'.  Bob writes: The pin up boy would be John Purdy.  [He was Cecil Purdy's son and became a Family Court Judge.]  The player who gave your dad a lift is Phil Viner.