A Mystery?

Here is a potential mystery from a 1928 convention report. The Messenger for July 31, 1928, in a spread across pages 4 and 5 has a photograph of the Bethel family at meal time. If you click on the picture to enlarge it you can see more detail, including W E Van Amburgh and J F Rutherford at the head of tables on the far right of the original photograph. Below the center pillar is a young Nathan Knorr.

Two figures directly below Knorr on the table nearest the camera is a figure that doesn’t look right. It may be the photographic process has had an off day, but to my unprofessional eyes, it looks like someone has drawn this figure in. If so, who was in the seat originally? The cameraman perhaps? Or was it just an empty space that someone decided to fill in with a bit of art work – and bad art work at that? Did this character really have no real shoulders so to speak of?

A closer look at the photograph (if you enlarge it) may reveal other anomalies, as well as allowing you the opportunity of playing “guess who.”

I will grant readers that this is not the most important research question in the world…