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How to pronounce fizgig in English?

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On April 17, 1935, Coogee Aquarium owner Bert Hobson thought he struck gold when he and
his son Ron caught a 14-foot-long (4 meters), 1 ton tiger shark.
With his profits dwindling thanks to the Great Depression, Hobson thought this deadly sea
creature would turn the tide for the struggling aquarium, especially in the midst of a spate
of shark attacks in Australia, so he put the shark on display.
Eight days later, as families wandered around the shark tank around 5 PM, the tiger shark
started to convulse.
In front of a huge audience, it vomited a rat, a bird, and eventually - (pause) - a
human arm.
The shark was killed and the rest of its stomach searched, but no other human remains or parts
were found.
The arm would eventually be identified as belonging to former boxer and current saloon
keeper Jim Smith.
But was this a shark attack?
Or had Smith been brutally murdered and thrown in the ocean, where the shark had found his
severed arm and mistaken it for lunch?
If so, by who?
Born in England, Jimmy Smith had moved to the Balmain suburb of Sydney, where he lived
for many years with his wife and child.
At the time of his disappearance, he was 40 years old.
Smith managed a billiards saloon that attracted a shady cast of characters.
It’s perhaps here where he met a man that would change the course of his life - a criminal
boss named Reginald Holmes.
To all outward appearances, Holmes appeared to be a respectable member of the community.
He was happily married, a member of his local Presbyterian Church and the Royal Sydney Yacht
Club, and father to two children.
In his professional life, Holmes followed in his family’s footsteps by running his
own boat-building business.
However, at some point he realized he could use his boats to make more, and less legal
money.
Holmes hired men to take speed boats out into the water and collect packages of smuggled
illegal goods he arranged to have thrown overboard from incoming ships.
A man of many criminal skills, Holmes also dabbled in other shady ventures, like insurance
scams and check forgery.
Jim Smith began working as a builder for Holmes in the early 1930s, where he initially helped
Holmes with small crimes, like scamming other builders out of supplies.
Eventually, he moved into Holmes’ smuggling operations, and was even put in charge of
Holmes’ prize boat, “The Pathfinder”.
Because crime apparently requires a good division of labor, Smith brought in one of his old
pals, Patrick Brady, to help out with some check forgery scams.
Brady would forge checks from Holmes’ rich clients to steal their money.
Things were going well, until an incident with “The Pathfinder” boat.
Holmes over-insured the boat and sent Smith out to sink it, but accidentally reported
the sinking as suspicious to police.
The insurance fell through, and led to Smith blackmailing Holmes.
On April 7, Smith and Brady met up for a night of drinking at the Cecil Hotel.
This was the last time Smith would be seen alive out in public.
Brady then took Smith to a small nearby cottage he owned on the beach community of Cronulla.
A cab driver remembers encountering Brady later that night.
He says he drove a terrified Brady from his cabin near Cronulla to Holmes’ house that
night.
The driver also noted that Brady was hiding something under his jacket, although he probably
didn’t guess it was someone else’s arm.
Smith’s wife Gladys became concerned after her husband failed to re-appear from the fishing
trip he told her he was on, and reported him missing.
A mysterious man called her some time later and told her that Jim would return in three
days’ time.
Since Jim’s arm was coughed up by a shark a few days later, this turned out to be a
lie.
When the arm was found, it was easily identifiable as Jim’s because it had a large tattoo of
two boxers fighting inside the forearm, a unique tattoo of Smith’s.
Fingerprint analysis confirmed that the arm belonged to Smith.
When the authorities determined that the arm had been cut off rather than chewed, they
realized this was not a “Jaws” prequel, but murder.
Additionally, the arm had some rope attached to its wrist.
As sharks are not known to tie up their victims before killing them, this made police reasonably
sure they were looking at a homicide.
While looking for a possible killer, authorities uncovered Smith’s connection to both crime
boss Holmes and forger Brady.
They arrested Brady and took him in for questioning, but after six hours of interrogation, Brady
still refused to admit any involvement in Smith’s death.
Eventually, Brady agreed to speak to the police and immediately pointed the finger towards
Holmes, stating that he ordered Smith’s murder.
Holmes was questioned about this, but denied even knowing Brady.
A few days later, with police still trying to determine what had happened to Smith based
off a shark-saliva covered arm, things took an even stranger turn.
Holmes took one of his speed boats out on a ride on Sydney Harbor.
With him, he had a bottle of brandy and a pistol.
Unsurprisingly, he got drunk.
Surprisingly, he shot himself in the head.
Even more surprisingly, he survived a direct gunshot wound (spoken with emphasis) to his
head and kept driving the boat!
As you can imagine, navigating a boat with a hole in his head proved to be difficult
for Holmes.
His boat driving was so risky and erratic that he almost hit another boat out on the
harbor.
The driver of the second boat called the police and told them to be on the lookout for Holmes.
When asked how they would identify Holmes and his boat, the witness reportedly told
police “you won’t mistake him.
He has a bullet hole in his forehead”.
Since relatively few captains speed around Sydney Harbor with air whooshing through their
skulls, police found Holmes fairly quickly.
However, the crime boss appeared to have little intention of surrendering.
After shooting himself in the head and surviving, maybe Holmes imagined himself to be completely
invincible.
It’s also possible his decision-making skills weren’t great after his blood loss and the
still-open bullet hole in his brain.
Police had to chase him for four hours before catching up to him.
Holmes, now either completely delusional or just lying, said that someone else had shot
him, and that he hadn’t stopped for the police because he thought they were the people
that had tried to kill him.
Holmes went on to make a weird semi-confession to police, reportedly saying “Jimmy Smith
is dead and there is only another left.
If you leave me until tonight, I will finish him.”
Since the police weren’t keen on letting a bleeding man wander around Sydney until
he found another victim to murder, they arrested him.
After a few weeks in the hospital where they patched up his head, Holmes pointed the finger
for Smith’s murder back at Brady.
He told authorities that Brady had murdered Smith and blackmailed Holmes for 500 Australian
pounds, showing up to Holmes’ house with a severed arm and threatening to pin Smith’s
murder on him.
Holmes went on to say that Brady cut up Smith’s body, put the pieces in a trunk, and threw
the trunk into Gunnamatta Bay.
Even though this may seem like an excessively cruel and brutal way of disposing of a body,
it was quite a common practice in Sydney in the 1920s and 30s.
It was so common, in fact, that it had a nickname: the “Sydney send-off”.
Which goes to show you that the good ol’ days were rarely that good; people just look
at the past through rose-colored glasses and forget about all the body dismemberment that
happened.
Holmes told police he paid Brady off, after which Brady, naturally, left the arm with
him, and Holmes decided to throw it into the ocean.
Authorities pressured Holmes to testify against Brady at the inquest on June 12.
This was made difficult by the fact that on the morning of June 12, Holmes was discovered
in his Nash sedan with three bullet holes in the chest.
As Holmes’ chest was apparently had less internal Kevlar than his head, he was now
officially dead.
Though Brady’s trial continued, without Holmes’ testimony there was no solid evidence
to pin him as the murderer.
Brady’s lawyer also pointed out that with no body and just an arm, no one could even
be certain that Smith was dead.
Brady was eventually released, though most of Sydney believed him to be guilty anyway,
making him the O.J. Simpson of Sydney.
Which leaves us with a few interesting, and contradicting theories, as to what could have
happened to Smith.
The most likely and obvious theory is that Holmes, who was running a huge criminal enterprise
and was supposedly being blackmailed by Smith, ordered Brady to kill him to get him out of
the way.
However, there are a few problems with this concept.
If the killing was done at Holmes’ request, and Brady was just a hired hand and underling,
who killed Holmes while Brady was in prison awaiting trial?
Why did Holmes withdraw 500 Australian pounds right before he drove out of his house and
was killed?
Did he lie about paying off Brady and was going to pay him off then?
Or was he paying off someone else?
If Brady had someone else murder Holmes, a feared criminal, under his orders, perhaps
he occupied a higher position in the criminal food chain than the authorities thought.
This made it possible that Brady was the one who orchestrated Smith’s murder as well.
However, there is an alternate theory about Holmes’ death that lets Brady off the hook.
Before he was shot, Holmes had taken out a generous life insurance policy that would
benefit his wife and children.
As his name was being dragged through the mud during Smith’s murder investigation
and Brady’s criminal trial, it’s possible that Holmes, keen on saving his family further
embarassment, ensuring their future, and not seeing a clear way out of his troubles, arranged
for his own death.
Professor Alex Castles, who has extensively studied the case, believes that Holmes hired
a hitman to kill himself.
So what if Brady killed Smith without being ordered to by Holmes?
There are a few problems with this theory as well.
First of all, Brady was only 5 foot 4 inches tall.
It would have been hard for him to take down Smith, unless of course Smith was really drunk
and unable to fight.
Also, why was Brady so scared in the cab ride leaving his cabin?
And why did he go straight to Holmes’ house after the murder to blackmail his dangerous
crime boss?
The most unusual, but not so far-fetched theory, is that Jim Smith wasn’t even dead.
The only part of Smith that was found, after all, was his severed arm from the elbow down.
It’s a strange coincidence that the only limb found was one that featured a unique,
identifying tattoo, which would immediately tie the arm to Smith.
Perhaps Smith had realized he was in too deep with Holmes’ criminal activity, and wanted
a way out.
Either by himself, or with help from his wife, he could have severed his arm at the elbow
and thrown it into the ocean.
That way, when it was discovered, he would be presumed dead by Holmes’ criminal ring,
who would then leave him alone.
Even though the arm was also confirmed to be Smith’s via fingerprinting technology,
so in theory Smith could have just cut off a finger or two and still been ID’d, this
technology was relatively new at the time and not commonly known.
Since there weren’t seven versions of “CSI” floating around making everyone an amateur
forensic specialist, Smith may not have known he could even be identified via fingerprints,
and thus wanted to make sure his whole forearm, tattoo included, was found.
However, this theory has a couple of holes too.
First and foremost, if Holmes wanted the arm found so he could be presumed dead, why would
he throw it into the ocean?
It would make more sense to leave the arm somewhere conspicuous, where it would be found
almost immediately, rather than hoping a shark would get hungry, find it, and chew it up.
Then again, perhaps Smith had left his arm somewhere more conspicuous and it was then
thrown into the ocean, either accidentally or by a passerby who found it and didn’t
want to report it or deal with it.
Years later, it was discovered that Smith had been working as a “fizgig”.
This was not a failed soda brand, but Australian slang of the time for a police informant.
Strangely, this information could still support multiple theories of Smith’s death.
If Holmes or Brady discovered that Smith was leaking information about their illegal activity
to the police, it gave both men more reason to want Smith dead.
However, if Smith saw himself working as a double agent and was dealing with increased
stress from two-timing his friend and boss while also collaborating with the police,
he may have thought disappearing by faking his own death was the only way out.
Being called a “fizgig” could only add to that stress.
However, this new evidence of Smith’s role as an informant also added another suspect
in Smith’s possible murder: Eddie Weyman.
At the time, Weyman was one of the most dangerous and infamous bank robbers in Australia.
Smith had leaked some information to the police that led to them catching Weyman and his partner
in a bank robbery in progress.
So did Weyman break into Brady’s cabin that night and kill Smith?
If Brady was truly the amateur criminal it appeared he was, Weyman could have threatened
him into silence, and told him to bring Smith’s arm to Holmes’ house to show the crime boss
that Weyman meant business.
After all, if Weyman knew Smith had ratted him out, he could have easily believed it
was done on Holmes’ orders.
That would also make Weyman a good suspect for Holmes’ later murder as well, and could
explain both why Brady seemed so terrified after leaving the murder scene, and why Holmes
tried to run away and kill himself.
To his dying day, Brady continued to deny that he had any involvement in his old friend
Smith’s murder.
Whatever may have really happened to Jimmy Smith, the most interesting thing to note
is that in this mystery, a shark probably ended up saving lives.
If the tiger shark in Coogee Aquarium hadn’t thrown up Smith’s arm, it’s unlikely that
Holmes’ criminal empire would have come crumbling down so soon.
That means it’s possible many others would have been murdered thanks to Holmes’ scams
and smuggling if it wasn’t for one shark’s upset stomach.
What we can all agree on is that no matter what, that tiger shark did not deserve to
die.
a shark getting food poisoning from a nasty human arm and then being killed after it throws
the arm up is a horrible way to go.
We here at Infographics demand justice for the Coogee tiger shark.
why not keep the watch party going?!
Go ahead and click on this video over here which is funny and informative, or this video
here which is informative and - you guessed it - funny!

On April 17, 1935, Coogee Aquarium owner Bert Hobson thought he struck gold when he and

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fizgig::noun | Spocien Dictionary

fizgig

noun

/'fɪz,ɡɪɡ/

an implement with a shaft and barbed point used for catching fish

Type	Words
Synonyms	fishgig, gig, lance, spear
Type of	implement
Has types	leister, harpoon

fizgig::noun | Spocien Dictionary

fizgig

noun

/'fɪz,ɡɪɡ/

a firework that fizzes as it moves

Type	Words
Type of	firework, pyrotechnic

How to pronounce fizgig in English?

fizgig::noun | Spocien Dictionary

abandonment

Related words

fizgig::noun | Spocien Dictionary

abandonment

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