The Maybrick Hoax: The Roots File
Melvin Harris

Readers might like to add the following to my earlier posting: In 1986 John Morrison began to claim that the Ripper was named JAMES AND CAME FROM LIVERPOOL. He further claimed that the Ripper had posted the Liverpool letters at Liverpool's Whitechapel General Post Office, in that way creating a taunting link with Whitechapel, London. (a similar link is featured in the Diary)

Morrison further stated that he had seen A DIARY kept by Mrs Belloc-Lowndes with entries confirming that the killer was "James Kelly from Liverpool". But this diary has never been seen by anyone else. Morrison's views were put in to pamphlet form and then featured in Peter Underwood's book of 1987. (This is the main Ripper book used by the hoaxers. See my detailed breakdown in my review of Feldman's book)

In 1992 Edmund McCoy's "Blood of the Fathers" involved the present-day discovery of an 1888 diary which revealed the truth behind the killing of Kelly.

In 1988 'Sphere Books' published "THE MORMON MURDERS: A TRUE STORY OF GREED, FORGERY, DECEIT AND DEATH". This popular paperback gave details of the simple techniques used to artificially-age iron-gall inks. Just heating would suffice. (If a document went too brown through heating it could soon be whitened up with a domestic sun-ray lamp!) Sphere Books, it should be remembered, were the very publishers who issued the 'History of Literature' owned by Barrett and from which the Diary line "Oh costly intercourse of death" was lifted.

Does that mean that Mike was the faker? Not at all, but he was party to inside information, and that comes out when you sum up everything he said. But did the clique of proletarian fakers really have the intelligence to cook up the text? Certainly. Never underestimate the cunning and resourcefulness of people who seem to lack a good education. I spent some years conducting evening classes for trade union members and I can vouch for the fact that, given the right motivation, people with minimum schooling can work wonders.

But were the fakers capable of arriving at the idea that the killer left his mark at the murder sites? Of course they were. That very idea is rammed home in the popular Dibdin book; while Underwood's text directs attention to the Ripper markings said to have been seen on Kelly's wall. Apart from that you have Fido's text which speaks of the Ripper "putting his personal mark on his victim's face". The victim, of course, was Eddowes and the only person to speak of these marks as forming an M was Mike Barrett. This does not mean that it was his personal discovery; it might have been Devereux's for all we know, but it was Mike, and Mike alone, who made the idea public. THIS IS ACKNOWLEDGED BY Mrs HARRISON IN HER HARDBACK (page 170). In writing of the alleged clues at the murder sites she says that an M "...was carved on the cheeks of the fourth woman to die, Catharine Eddowes- a fact that Mike Barrett was the first person ever to notice."

Melvin Harris