Introduction
Victims
Suspects
Witnesses
Ripper Letters
Police Officials
Official Documents
Press Reports
Victorian London
Message Boards
Ripper Media
Authors
Dissertations
Timelines
Games & Diversions
Photo Archive
Ripper Wiki
Casebook Examiner
Ripper Podcast
About the Casebook


Most Recent Posts:
General Discussion: Liz Stride - Facts - by Lewis C 14 minutes ago.
Ripperologist: Ripperologist #172 - by jmenges 1 hour ago.
Witnesses: A Thick, Dark Moustache and Six Men? - by Abby Normal 3 hours ago.
Witnesses: A Thick, Dark Moustache and Six Men? - by Herlock Sholmes 5 hours ago.
Ripperologist: Ripperologist #172 - by Ally 7 hours ago.
Maybrick, James: The One Where James Maybrick was Jack the Ripper - by Iconoclast 7 hours ago.
Scene of the Crimes: Broad Shoulders, Elizabeth's Killer ? - by The Rookie Detective 9 hours ago.
Maybrick, James: The One Where James Maybrick was Jack the Ripper - by FISHY1118 11 hours ago.

Most Popular Threads:
Witnesses: Packer Again - (16 posts)
Maybrick, James: The One Where James Maybrick was Jack the Ripper - (9 posts)
General Suspect Discussion: Favoured Suspect... - (8 posts)
Other Mysteries: Any DB Cooper case news. - (5 posts)
Ripperologist: Ripperologist #172 - (3 posts)
Maybrick, James: The Diary—Old Hoax or New? - (2 posts)


Platt Diary Report

Report on the work carried out on the “Maybrick Diary” at Staffordshire University between November 2004 and February 2005.


In this report we present the findings of the examination of inks from dated documents in the form of entries in a visitors book, and the comparison of their characteristics with those of the ink on the Maybrick diary.

The inks from the visitors book were chosen for examination as their entries were made at the same period as the diary was purported to have been written.

Visual examination

To the naked eye the ink distribution on the diary appears to be non uniform.  This is consistent with the document being written using an ink pot and nib rather than with a fountain pen.  Since the first patent for a fountain pen in the UK was granted in the 1880’s it is unlikely that they would have been in common use at the time the diary is supposed to have been written.

Optical examination

The VSC instrument utilises a variety of illumination conditions and camera filter settings to analyse the light reflected from a document.  The inks in the visitors book exhibited two distinct types of behaviour.  The first gave no distinctive response under any combination of illumination and camera filters, whilst some of the inks displayed a weak, but distinct, infrared luminescence as shown below in Figure 1

Figure 1 Infrared fluorescence in an ink dated in the 1880s

This shows a page from a guest book with entries dated in the 1880s.  The signature of Mary Robinson fluoresces under the lighting conditions used, namely an illumination with visible light in the wavelength band 630 – 740 nm with a high pass filter set at 850nm to exclude all the reflected light at wavelengths below 850nm.   Light above this wavelength falls in the infrared region of the spectrum and is thus not visible to the naked eye.  With these filter settings the writing from the adjacent entries in the book are not visible.

The ink that the diary is written with showed no significant features, showing no fluorescence at any settings.  By applying higher wavelength filters to the reflected light it was observed that some of the lettering faded at different wavelengths.  An example of this is shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2 The different responses of the ink due to varying application density. The page is viewed upside down due to physical constraints of fitting the diary into the instrument.

We attribute this to the higher density of ink deposited on the page, as a result of the nib being replenished by dipping into an ink pot, as discussed under visual examination.

During the examination of the ink numerous fluorescent marks were observed throughout the diary.  At present we are unable to explain their nature or origin.  Two examples of theses are shown in Figure 3 below

  

Figure 3 Fluorescent marks observed in the diary itself (left) and on the inside front cover (right)

The optical examination reveals no characteristics that are inconsistent with the diary being written in the 1880s.

Examination by infrared microscopy

The infrared spectra of the ink lines from the visitors book and diary were obtained using an infrared microscope operating in ATR mode. This requires physical contact between the instrument and the object under study.  The spectra obtained show the same general characteristics irrespective of the part of the ink line studied or the page sampled.  The spectra from the dated entries in the visitors book show essentially identical features.  These characteristics are entirely due to the spectrum from the paper itself, and we can find no characteristic peaks that can be attributed to the ink.  A typical set of spectra are shown in Figure 4

Figure 4 Comparative infrared spectra of the ink line (upper two traces) and paper

(lower trace) from the Maybrick Diary

This probably arises from the ink applied being absorbed into the body of the paper leaving a very low effective concentration at the surface. Thus any spectrum from the inked area is essentially masked by the strong response from the paper itself.  We have observed similar effects with modern fountain pen inks the spectra of which are again typical of the paper that they are applied to.

Raman Microscopy

Raman microscopy is a non invasive non contact method of analysis where light scattered from a low powered laser focussed on the ink line is analysed to give a spectrum.  Using a red laser at 685nm we were unable to observe any significant features from the diary ink or from other inks used in the visitors book.  The spectra of the ink lines and the paper itself are largely featureless and add no information on the age of the ink.

Conclusion

In summary the examination of the optical, infrared and Raman spectroscopic properties of the ink on the diary have yielded no significant data on the ink itself and are consistent with it having being written either at the purported date or at a more recent date.

Catherine Kneale,

Andrew Platt

 Staffordshire University   March 2005


Related pages:
  Maybrick Diary
       Dissertations: 5th Int. Investigative Psychology Conf. 
       Dissertations: A Final Response to Mr. Harris 
       Dissertations: A Guide through the Labyrinth 
       Dissertations: A Nest of Forgers 
       Dissertations: An Article by Richard Scheib 
       Dissertations: An Article by Steven Fern 
       Dissertations: Bravo for Maybrick 
       Dissertations: Bristol University Surface Analysis of Maybrick Watch - 3... 
       Dissertations: Dear Diary 
       Dissertations: Facts Please, Not Fallacies! 
       Dissertations: Maybrick Hoax: Donald McCormick's Legacy 
       Dissertations: Maybrick Hoax: More Futile Floundering 
       Dissertations: Maybrick Hoax: Some Extra Guidance 
       Dissertations: Maybrick Hoax: The Roots File 
       Dissertations: Maybrick Hoax: Yet More Unacceptable Ploys 
       Dissertations: Maybrick Watch - Scientific Analysis 
       Dissertations: Reflections on the Ripperologist Interview 
       Dissertations: The Caution was Given 
       Dissertations: The Maybrick Diary Analysis 
       Dissertations: The Maybrick Diary Ink 
       Dissertations: The Maybrick Diary Paper 
       Dissertations: The Maybrick Hoax: A Fact File 
       Dissertations: The Maybrick Hoax: Evasions are Valueless 
       Dissertations: The Ripperologist Interview 
       Dissertations: Turgoose Report on the Maybrick Watch - 23 August 1993 
       Dissertations: Where was the Caution? 
       Ripper Media: Jack the Ripper: The Final Chapter 
       Ripper Media: The Diary of Jack the Ripper 
       Suspects: James Maybrick - Index 
       Suspects: Michael Barretts Confessions 
       Suspects: Michael Barretts Confessions - January 25 1995 
       Suspects: Michael Barretts Confessions - January 5 1995 
       Suspects: Photographs of the Maybrick Diary