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Chris Phillips
Inspector
Username: Cgp100
Post Number: 191
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, February 17, 2004 - 2:27 pm: |       |
Although personally I think the textual difficulties in the diary give ample evidence that it's a fake, perhaps it would be worth having a thread for people's opinions on the biggest single difficulty with the document - the handwriting.
Like the other problems, this problem demands some sort of explanation from diary believers. Equally, it requires those with an "open mind" to have some believable way out of the difficulty.
I'm grateful to those who have participated in the discussions of the textual difficulties - I now have a clearer idea of how they reconcile them in their own minds.
But on the question of the handwriting, I'm a bit in the dark. I know two ways out of the difficulty have been suggested:
(1) That the known samples of Maybrick's writing - principally his will - may not really be by him.
(2) That he may have suffered from multiple personality disorder, and that the different personalities had different handwriting.
On the evidence I've seen, I don't think either of these is a plausible explanation. But I'd be interested to hear others think - particularly the pro-diarists and the "open minded".
Chris Phillips
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Alan Sharp
Inspector
Username: Ash
Post Number: 447
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 18, 2004 - 5:56 am: | |
Chris
I have three very distinct styles of handwriting. I have a very formal and neat hand I use when I am writing for someone else, a rather blocky hand I use when I am writing notes for myself, and a very scruffy scrawled hand I use when I am taking notes at a lecture or meeting. It is possible that a graphologist would be able to tell that the three sets of handwriting belonged to the same person, but I doubt whether an layman would. I don't think I am unique in this, I think most people's handwriting changes depending on the circumstances.
Assuming that Maybrick did write the will himself, presumably he would have written this in his best hand. The diary, even though it purports to be written specifically to be found and read by others, would be in a quicker hand as he would have been writing for his own pleasure. |
John Hacker
Inspector
Username: Jhacker
Post Number: 223
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 18, 2004 - 7:50 am: | |
Chris,
Thanks for starting a handwriting thread. We definitely needed one. It is, as you pointed out, the single biggest problem with the diary in the eyes of most people.
The problems with the handwriting are considerable. To break it down a bit.
1) The letter formations are not consistent with the those taught at the time of James Maybrick's education.
2) It's been observed that in appears that some of the "curlicues" and "flourishes" to make it look "ye olde-ish" (As Nickell would have it.) were added after the initial writing of the letters.
3) As Rendell and team noted "The layout, pen pressure, and ink distribution all indicate many entries were written at one time; they are completely inconsistent with a diary but consistent with the forgery of a diary."
4) The handwriting does not match James Maybrick's on the will. This is the opinion of qualified forensic document examiners. (Rendell, Owens, Iremonger)
5) The handwriting does not match that of the Dear Boss letter which the diary author claims to have written. This is also the opinion of qualified forensic document examiners. (Rendell, Owens, Iremonger)
The two arguments that you cited might mitigate point 4, but doesn't address the rest of them. The MPD argument falls completely flat when the Dear Boss letter is taken into account. Clearly the two writers are channeling the same "personality" but have completely different handwriting.
I too would be interested to hear from those who have more ideas regarding the handwriting.
Alan,
This goes beyond different styles of writing. We have basically different letter formations here, as well as the testimony of several qualified forensic document examiners. (Please note that this is a far cry from "graphology" which is more akin to astrology than anything factual.) It's unlikely in the extreme that your writing styles are so different that they would fool one of them, much less several.
Regards,
John |
Caroline Anne Morris
Chief Inspector
Username: Caz
Post Number: 745
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 18, 2004 - 8:29 am: | |
Hi Chris,
Just to clarify – my ‘open mind’ is more in regard to when ink went on paper than who could, or couldn’t, have used that ink to pen the diary. If we knew the ‘when’, we could reliably start eliminating the 'who'.
Since I don’t recognise the handwriting, I am less open-minded when it comes to believing that anyone named so far – including Maybrick – actually penned the 63 existing pages. I need more expert help and guidance before I can open my mind any further at this point in time.
Any more than that would be speculation on my part, not supported by any personal knowledge or experience of forensic handwriting analysis, or how reliable it is in detecting when the same, or a different person’s hand has been used to pen two or more different documents.
Love,
Caz
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Christopher T George
Chief Inspector
Username: Chrisg
Post Number: 607
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 18, 2004 - 10:05 am: | |
Hi, all
I have always thought that the place in the Diary where the document looks the most artificial and concocted is the last page. Here the writer scribbles in a large flourish,
Yours truly
Jack the Ripper
-- as if they were saying to themselves "This has to look good." See the diary photographs here on the Casebook.
There are a number of things to be said about the signature:
1) The signature does not match James Maybrick's writing, and here I am thinking more about the photographs of the Norfolk memoranda in Feldman's book than the contested will.
2) Neither does the signature match the signature on the Dear Boss letters, nor, as far as I can see, any of the other alleged "Jack the Ripper" letters received 1888 onward.
3) It is the one and only place in the Diary where the name "Jack the Ripper" is used as if, again, the writer wanted to impress us with use of the name.
I am sure there are other aspects of the signature that could be discussed but I did just want to make the point that to me this is one place in the Diary that screams to me "fake".
All the best
Chris |
John Hacker
Inspector
Username: Jhacker
Post Number: 227
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, February 19, 2004 - 3:10 pm: | |
Tiddley Boyar,
You made this claim on another thread, and I wanted to respond specifically to it.
"The writing of the Dear Boss letter, in my opinion, would appear to be heavily disguised/contrived, though this is to be expected."
From Rendell's report, the opinion of Maureen Owens, a professional forensic document examiner with "two and a half decades of experience in detecting situations where a person is attempting to write in a manner to cover up his own handwriting. She is definitive in her opinion that this is not the case with the 'Dear Boss' letter."
Maureen Owens, and Sue Iremonger agree that the Dear Boss letter and the Diary were NOT written by the same person. They are both qualified experts with experience in detecting cases where a person is attempting to cover us their writing style. While it may appear contrived, the experts apparently do not agree.
Regards,
John
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Caroline Anne Morris
Chief Inspector
Username: Caz
Post Number: 818
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Friday, March 05, 2004 - 6:51 am: | |
Don’t groan – here we go:
Hubby picked up a second hand book last week - A Manual of Graphology, by Eric Singer.
I groaned out loud and told him none of this stuff is science. Even the sections in the book that deal with how to distinguish between one person’s handwriting and another’s, normal and disguised writing, traced writing, writing by someone pretending to be someone else, and so on. You name it, it’s probably more art than science, I told him. In fact, there’s a quiz section at the end of the book where it gives the reader a chance to ‘do it yourself’ and see how easy or hard this detective work can be.
Anyway, please banish all thoughts of MPD theories from your mind – this post is not about this rare and misunderstood condition which may, as far as I know, exist more in the wishful thinking of defendants and their defence lawyers than in the minds of the ‘sufferers’ themselves.
Neither has this post got anything to do with claims that handwriting can indicate personality traits. Again, I have no idea if this is really possible, let alone how reliable such claims could ever be. Paul Feldman was impressed by a certain graphologist’s claims, which appeared to support his own theory. But as the modern hoax theorists pointed out, even if there was a grain of truth in them, they could equally be used to support their own theory that Mike Barrett penned the diary!
No, what I want to quote from hubby’s book, simply as food for thought and nothing more for now, is the following passage, on page 15:
In fact, the changing elements in handwriting only represent a small proportion of the whole. The basic features always remain the same, and change only when the character of the individual undergoes a real change. Interesting experiments in hypnosis have confirmed this statement. In the cases where the hypnotized person is asked to assume another character, the characteristics of his handwriting also change immediately. If he is asked to be an emperor, he will write with all the pomp and majesty , which he thinks is typical of the handwriting of a ruler. If asked to be a child, he will write with all the unskilled effort of an infant scribe. [my emphasis added]
So would it be possible for a person with strong enough secret fantasies, to adopt a matching secret personality, that he can pick up and control when he wants to, either to write about those fantasies, or to act some of them out, and then drop it again at will, in order to retain the necessary secrecy?
Isn’t this what the recent cannibal killer and victim case was all about?
Love,
Caz
PS Goodness knows how it happened, but the terrible slowness of my computer’s responses on this site, that has made reading and posting anything at all extremely difficult, time-consuming and wearing since before Christmas, suddenly lifted yesterday afternoon, and I’m flying now – by the seat of me pants. 
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John Hacker
Inspector
Username: Jhacker
Post Number: 270
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, March 08, 2004 - 12:25 pm: | |
Caz,
That's still graphology, and has absolutely no scientific validity. In any case, it's clear that the Dear Boss letter and the diary are desperately trying to channel the same personality so that argument goes right out the window.
Here's some information I dug up regarding handwriting analysis as practised by forensic professionals.
"Handwriting experts study the variations in writing samples to try to determine if two (or more) different documents were written by the same person and thereby to identify the known author of one sample with the known author of a similar one. The same odd characteristics—ways of spelling a word, the particular slant or spacing, or manner of forming certain letters—are expected to show up across samples by the same person, and they're evident even when the person may be trying to conceal his or her identity."
And the criteria they use:
"1. Form – refers to the elements that comprise the shape of the letters, proportion, slant, angles, lines, retracing, connections, and curves
2. Line Quality – refers to the results from the type of writing instrument used, and the pressure exerted, along with the flow and continuity of the script
3. Arrangement – involves the spacing, alignment, formatting, and distinctive punctuation
4. Content – this is the spelling, phrasing, punctuation, and grammar"
Here's a link to the page:
http://www.crimelibrary.com/criminal_mind/forensics/literary/2.html?sect=21
Regards,
John |
Caroline Anne Morris
Chief Inspector
Username: Caz
Post Number: 833
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 09, 2004 - 10:44 am: | |
Hi John,
Yeah, but would you say that a serial killer, living the fantasy, would not, or could not adopt different handwriting styles according to how the mood takes him, any of which could appear quite unlike his usual hand?
I’ve noticed a tendency lately to talk about arguments going ‘right out the window’, based on another argument that isn’t necessarily any more valid or supportable.
Didn’t the killer Peter Kurten adopt handwriting that his wife didn’t believe was his?
If it can be done once, why not twice, or even three times?
The Dear Boss letter would indeed have been written by someone who didn’t want the writing to be recognisable as his own. But if we imagine the killer could have kept a written record of his thoughts and fantasies, who’s to say he couldn’t have wished he had thought of sending such a witty and clever letter, and fantasised about actually having done so?
In a secret diary, the author wouldn’t necessarily be trying to ‘conceal’ his normal handwriting so much as using a style he fancied was in keeping with the murderous part of his double life, which there is little doubt the real ripper attempted to lead - and succeeded.
I believe that someone leading such a double life would be able to write ‘in character’, in just the same way fiction writers do, except that he would know his own ‘dark side’ character inside out!  Naturally, I don’t believe basics like spelling, grammar or punctuation could ever change for the better ‘under the influence’, so to speak, but they could presumably change for the worse, and I have always had the impression that the diary author was dumbing down in any case.
Do you believe that no professional handwriting analyst could ever be fooled by a person deliberately writing in at least two completely different styles, according to which 'life' they are leading at any given moment - the acceptable public face or the unacceptable hidden face - no matter how rarely the analyst may have come across similar examples (and probably not a single arsenic addict) involving handwritten evidence?
And wouldn’t such a belief depend on your complete acceptance of the validity of this type of examination as an exact science, when many people believe there is some way to go before it stops being more art than science?
Love,
Caz
|
Caroline Anne Morris
Chief Inspector
Username: Caz
Post Number: 834
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 09, 2004 - 10:59 am: | |
Hi John,
I wrote that last post before checking out your link.
From the same page:
Problems can occur when the writing has been deliberately disguised, such as in threatening or taunting letters. However, the form may change, but the type of words used and the sources that have influenced phrasing remain the same.
Writing habits that are altered with drugs, alcohol, or other factors may also make identification troublesome.
There are no clear-cut rules or formulas to follow, so expertise develops from years of exposure.
Love,
Caz
(Message edited by Caz on March 09, 2004) |
John Hacker
Inspector
Username: Jhacker
Post Number: 275
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 09, 2004 - 11:16 am: | |
Caz,
"Yeah, but would you say that a serial killer, living the fantasy, would not, or could not adopt different handwriting styles according to how the mood takes him, any of which could appear quite unlike his usual hand?
Didn’t the killer Peter Kurten adopt handwriting that his wife didn’t believe was his?"
There is a difference between casual appearance, and fundamental differences that would fool a professional document examiner like Sue Iremonger or Maureen Owens who have years of experience in detecting that sort of thing.
I am sure I could fool my wife by simply writing neatly, however a professional would spot it in a second. Likewise, if Paul Kurten's writing were subjected to professional analysis I doubt it would stand up to scrutiny.
"The Dear Boss letter would indeed have been written by someone who didn’t want the writing to be recognisable as his own."
Actually according Rendell's report, Maureen Owens (who had 25 years of experience) was very definite that the writer of the Dear Boss letter was NOT attempting to disguise their handwriting.
"Do you believe that no professional handwriting analyst could ever be fooled by a person deliberately writing in at least two completely different styles, according to which 'life' they are leading at any given moment - the acceptable public face or the unacceptable hidden face - no matter how rarely the analyst may have come across similar examples (and probably not a single arsenic addict) involving handwritten evidence?"
First off, I don't believe think that what "life" they are leading has anything to do with it. They are either disguising their writing, or they are not.
Could an expert be fooled? Sure, especially an inexperienced one. But we have several highly experienced professionals comparing the handwriting of Maybrick to the diary, the handwriting of the Dear Boss letter to the diary, and the Dear Boss letter to Maybrick. Could they all have been fooled in all of these cases? Not in my opinion. It's simply beyond the realm of realistic possibility.
"And wouldn’t such a belief depend on your complete acceptance of the validity of this type of examination as an exact science, when many people believe there is some way to go before it stops being more art than science?"
There is certainly an element of art to it, but it is a peer reviewed specialty. The testimony of document examiners is accepted in court as evidence. Many document examiners in have backgrounds in physics. It has a high degree of reliability, and in this case it's been independently confirmed by multiple experts with a great deal of experience.
As far as those people who feel it's more art than science. I suggest they do some more research into the matter. It might change their mind.
Best Regards,
John |
Chris Phillips
Inspector
Username: Cgp100
Post Number: 238
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 09, 2004 - 5:05 pm: | |
Caroline Anne Morris wrote:
The Dear Boss letter would indeed have been written by someone who didn’t want the writing to be recognisable as his own. But if we imagine the killer could have kept a written record of his thoughts and fantasies, who’s to say he couldn’t have wished he had thought of sending such a witty and clever letter, and fantasised about actually having done so?
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding, but is the suggestion now that the diarist fantasised that he had written the "Dear Boss" letters, and for this reason copied the language of these letters, along with the pseudonym itself, even though he knew these were merely the work of a hoaxer?
Chris Phillips
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John Hacker
Inspector
Username: Jhacker
Post Number: 281
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 09, 2004 - 6:48 pm: | |
Caz,
Sorry, I missed your second post while replying to your first.
"Problems can occur when the writing has been deliberately disguised, such as in threatening or taunting letters. However, the form may change, but the type of words used and the sources that have influenced phrasing remain the same."
Maureen Owens believed the Dear Boss letter to be in undisguised writing. The will can be assumed to be in undisguised writing. That leaves only the diary... Why disguise THAT writing?
"Writing habits that are altered with drugs, alcohol, or other factors may also make identification troublesome."
Maybrick was an arsenic addict. Any changes to his writing would be apparent in all of his writing. Unless you're proposing he was on different drugs when writing the will, the diary, and the letters.
Additionally the changes in handwriting while the writer is under the influence is because their "impaired" and clearly the Dear Boss letter exhibits much better handwriting than the diary.
"There are no clear-cut rules or formulas to follow, so expertise develops from years of exposure."
Maureen Owens was the former president of the American Society of Questioned Document Examiners, and for 25 years she was the Chicago Police Department's expert in document examination. (Lot's of years there.)
Kenneth Rendell has been an antiquities dealer since 1959, and has been instrumental in exposing the Mussolini Diaries, the Hitler Diaries, the Mormon forgeries, etc.
Sue Iremonger was trained in the UK and Chicago, and is a member of the World Association of Document Examiners.
We'll ignore Audrey Giles for the moment due to the briefness of her examination, but there's plenty of experience behind that cursory look as well.
Regards,
John
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Caroline Anne Morris
Chief Inspector
Username: Caz
Post Number: 863
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, March 15, 2004 - 10:15 am: | |
Hi John,
But do all those years of experience in detecting ‘that sort of thing’ include many – or in fact any – known examples of the secret thoughts of arsenic-addicted serial killers, as written down while they were ‘playing the part’ so to speak? And have they compared any such known examples with equal numbers of knowingly faked examples? If not, I’m not sure how anyone can call it ‘science’ yet, which is defined as ‘knowledge ascertained by observation and experiment, critically tested, systematised and brought under general principles’.
You doubt Peter Kurten’s disguised writing would not have been recognised as his under professional scrutiny, but do you know if it was ever analysed in this way?
You wrote:
Actually according Rendell's report, Maureen Owens (who had 25 years of experience) was very definite that the writer of the Dear Boss letter was NOT attempting to disguise their handwriting.
This is very interesting – because if Owens got it right it means that the Dear Boss author – whoever it was - took a rather pointless risk, by choosing to write in their natural hand, in the days when all written correspondence was done in this way.
The problem with the various diary (and watch) ‘experts’ is that there is a long tradition of trusting or not trusting expertise according to our own far from expert opinions. We also know that experts in both the diary and ripper cases are fallible, malleable and expendable, a perfect example being Rod McNeil, who sat with his ion migration test results in no-man’s-land, palatable to no one, and of no use to man nor beast. He was nudged forwards, in the direction Rendell and the rest of his team had been expected to go, yet still McNeil was made to sit in the dunce’s corner with his final ‘prior to 1970’ conclusion hanging round his neck.
It would take an extremely gutsy professional to buck a trend, consisting of a naturally sceptical and almost universally-held expectation that such a ‘confession’, emerging in Liverpool in 1992 and with such a lousy provenance, will inevitably turn out to be nothing but a hoax - especially if that professional is commissioned by one of those who, like himself (or herself), is expecting to see a fake.
I would not have expected anything different if the handwriting of ‘Sir Jim’ had closely resembled that of James Maybrick’s will, as referred to by Bernard Ryan, an alleged main source for the alleged hoaxer. As it is, the diary author made things too bloomin’ easy for the likes of Audrey Giles (who shouldn’t be ignored, as she demonstrates the trend perfectly) or the other professional examiners who lingered a bit longer over his work, by using a style so obviously different from available examples of JM’s handwriting. Yet none of them expressed the slightest curiosity over why this might be, and when I have been curious in the past, I have been told to put it down to the obvious ineptitude of the hoaxer. A hoaxer too stupid to realise that failing to get hold of that will and at least making a stab at copying the handwriting would be the first and only stick anyone would ever need to beat all his other efforts to death with.
Curiosity may kill the cat, but lack of curiosity leaves it believing the earth is flat.
And could we forget Dear Boss for the moment? It isn’t relevant since we are dealing with the diary, which a fantasist clearly wrote - whether it was a hoaxer, passing his own fantasy off as the ripper’s work, or Maybrick himself, writing about his fantasies and possibly going on to act some of them out. And if he did the latter, we are simply not in a position to know when he was fantasising and when he was recording real details.
Why disguise the diary writing? I thought I’d already explained why someone leading a secret fantasy life might choose to adopt a new handwriting style that he fancied would be in keeping with his secret murderous side. I gave examples where someone under hypnosis, asked to imagine themselves as an emperor or a child and produce a piece of writing, will choose what they believe to be an appropriate style for that piece. I wouldn’t mind betting that if, while still under, they were asked to write as themselves, their writing would appear perfectly normal again. The subject apparently retains the free will to choose the writing style, while the hypnotist provides the external stimulus plus character choice.
Swap hypnosis for another sufficiently powerful external stimulus – large and regular amounts of arsenic, for example - and you might have a broadly similar situation (has anyone ever tried?), except that the external stimulus would be more or less constant, and the subject would choose within this apparently little understood medium exactly which character he wants to be, when he wants to act and/or write in character, and for how long. It would simply never work if a serial killer couldn’t step out of the role he created for himself the moment he heard approaching footsteps at the scene of crime, for instance. So the same would apply while at home fantasising about his crimes or feeding off the publicity.
Which brings me neatly to my next point.
Yes, Chris, I do believe the killer could have begun to believe in his own publicity and thrive on it, including the publicity thrust on him by others. Why not? ‘Jack the Ripper’ was getting all the public attention after the double event, so a quick change from Sir Jim to Sir Jack might actually have made a lot of sense to ordinary old Joe Bloggs. And if he wanted to change back for a while, to be his own man again, he could have done so by upping the game and sending a letter of his own - perhaps to that interfering Mishter Lusk, along with a piece of kidney to say, “This is really me you’re dealing with now”.
Who knows? It’s a scary thought, but could the terrible state MJK was left in have had anything to do with the killer doing his best to live up to the reputation built up for him in the papers, and not wanting to ‘disappoint’ the audience waiting for Saucy Jacky to strike again?
Over the weekend, I happened to pick up David Canter’s Mapping Murder and read about Barry George, who was convicted of shooting and killing the glamorous tv presenter, Jill Dando, on her doorstep in 1999. There are several disturbing parallels between this killer’s personality and apparent motivation, and the ‘Sir Jim’ created by our diarist.
Canter writes about this murder:
How could the police have realised early on in their investigation that the cold-blooded act, so like a textbook assassination, was perpetrated by a man who was acting as his own hitman?
George also craved links with celebrity, adopting the names of several famous people or characters at one time or another, including Paul Gadd (aka Gary Glitter), Steve Majors (a mixture of Lee Majors and Steve Austin, aka the Six Million Dollar Man), Tony Palmer, the SAS man who abseiled into the Iranian embassy in 1980 and, more famously, he changed his name by deed poll to Barry Bulsara, taking Freddie Mercury’s real surname.
Barry George was arrested one night in the grounds of Kensington Palace with a poem for Prince Charles.
No doubt he would have recognised himself in ‘Sir Jim’ only too well, with the poems and the desire to be ‘a few feet away’ from Maybrick’s own Prince of Wales, at the Grand National, and imagining the royal reaction to knowing that ‘the name all England was talking about’ had come within spitting distance.
I suppose we ought to have Barry George’s handwriting checked out, because he seems to be in a better position than all the experts to have produced the diary.
Love,
Caz
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Paul Butler
Sergeant
Username: Paul
Post Number: 17
Registered: 3-2004
| | Posted on Monday, March 15, 2004 - 2:48 pm: | |
Hi Caz and all.
“Who knows? It’s a scary thought, but could the terrible state MJK was left in have had anything to do with the killer doing his best to live up to the reputation built up for him in the papers, and not wanting to ‘disappoint’ the audience waiting for Saucy Jacky to strike again?”
Isn’t this exactly what the diarist tells us he’s doing? “They wanted a slaughterman so I stripped what I could, laughed while I was doing so.”
He is telling us precisely why he did what he did to Kelly. The Maybrick of the diary is constantly trying to live up to not only his feelings of inferiority to his brother Michael, but also to the persona of JTR as portrayed by the press.
“The wait to read about my triumph seemed long, although it was not. I am not disappointed, they have all written well. The next time they will have a great deal more to write, of that fact I have no doubt ha ha”
“ I had to laugh, they have me down as left handed, a doctor, a slaughterman and a Jew. Very well, if they are to insist that I am a Jew then a Jew I shall be.”
Its all over the diary. Clever Sir Jim, getting cleverer. Having to live up to the image of JTR he sees portrayed in the press.
Isn’t it about time to stop looking for rational explanations for the behaviour of an irrational, drug addicted, insanely jealous psychopath, and start seriously considering the Maybrick that the diary actually portrays? It might even lead us to discover who the author is or was, and why and how it came to be written.
As for the effects of long term and excessive arsenic addiction. Does anyone really know what the effects would be to someone like the Maybrick of the diary? I shouldn’t think so for one moment. Our diarist has something to say about it. “I have taken too much my thoughts are not where they should be. I recall little of the events of yesterday.”
Clearly 24 hours worth of amnesia indicates that it was having a rather greater effect on him than just as a “pick me up.”
But I think I might preaching to the converted here Caz!...
Regards
Paul
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Caroline Anne Morris
Chief Inspector
Username: Caz
Post Number: 873
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 17, 2004 - 6:49 am: | |
Hi Paul,
I don't convert easily to anything.
But you make some splendid observations here, reminding me just what Sir Jim was up to in his diary.
It almost beggars belief that a hoaxer could go to the trouble of painting such vivid pictures and then blow it all by missing the crucial bit in Ryan that tells him/her that Maybrick's will was written 'in James's rather shaky hand' on blue paper. Or not missing it at all, but deciding to go it alone and not bother with the silly detail of making the writing look like Maybrick's.
But of course, if this diary were genuine, it would not have been written by James Maybrick - it would have to have been written by Sir Jim, and finally signed Jack the Ripper, to acknowledge the eponymous hero invented and given to him by the author of Dear Boss. Just as plain old Barry George could never have got near a celebrity like Jill Dando unless he believed he too was a celebrity hero like Freddie or Steve Austin.
Did you get the Middlesex Street joke? In Sir Jim's day, it was also known locally as the Jews' Market. A little later on in the diary Sir Jim laughs at the speculation that he is a Jew and admits that he has never taken to them and thinks there are far too many of them on the Exchange for my liking.
After recording his thoughts about the double event, Sir Jim wonders if they enjoyed my funny Jewish joke?
Considering his views about too many Jews for his liking on the Exchange, Sir Jim would have found it quite ironic that he had found a small room in, of all places, the Jews' Market. Literally surrounding himself with 'em was in itself a joke, even before it was brought home to him that every single one of them was more likely to come under suspicion than he was! Talk about lost in plain sight – a veritable rose among thorns. Oh what a joke.
Love,
Caz
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John V. Omlor
Inspector
Username: Omlor
Post Number: 219
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, March 22, 2004 - 6:27 pm: | |
Of course, Caz and Paul are absolutely right about all of this.
Of course the handwriting in the diary looks nothing at all like the real James Maybrick's handwriting.
Of course the handwriting in the Dear Boss letter that the diarist claims to have written also looks nothing at all like the real James Maybrick's handwriting.
In fact, it must be clear by now that this is even further evidence that the real James Maybrick wrote this book!
Because if it was a forger, it would have looked like the real James's writing. They would have made it that way.
So if it doesn't look like the real James's , it must be the real James's.
It's only logic and common sense.
(Just ask Johnnie Cochran.)
No, wait.
I know.
It doesn't look like the real James's handwriting because the real James didn't write this book. It was scary James! And we all know that scary James would have completely different handwriting than real James, what with taking arsenic and all.
Well, OK, real James was taking arsenic too, and his handwriting didn't look anything like that, but sometimes, see, scary James disguised his handwriting.
Now of course, there's not much point to disguising your handwriting if you are going to make it perfectly clear who you are in your book anyway and then sign it "Jack the Ripper" and all, but still, maybe he did it for practice. You know, for all those letters he was writing from allegedly other people in other places.
Or wait, maybe it wasn't scary James at all. Maybe it was Sybil James!
Maybe one of James's "other personalities" wrote the book. Yes! That would explain it! And just because we have no actual record anywhere of the real James having multiple personalities, just because it's never even once mentioned at his wife's murder trial or anywhere else, doesn't mean he couldn't have really just had this whole set of secret personalities that they all had completely different handwritings and that they all wrote ripper letters and a diary and all the rest all in different ways.
Yes, that's much more likely and logical than the silly and impossibly complicated idea that someone else actually wrote the book.
In fact, the handwriting problems are telling us just how messed up and evil real James was. No forger could have possibly faked such different handwriting. It's so different, in fact, that it must be real. Just like no forger could have possibly thought to have an arsenic eating serial killer be mentally disturbed (who would have been that clever?).
Besides, since none of us have taken arsenic, how do we know that the real James wouldn't have said stuff exactly like this anyway? There, that's evidence of authenticity, isn't it? How can we know? You know?
In the end, the handwriting may not match, the history may be wrong, the melodrama may sound phony, the clever bits may not really be all that clever, and the book may have no provenance whatsoever.
But as my good friend Paul says, summing up the whole debate in a single line:
"Isn’t it about time to stop looking for rational explanations..."
Hear, hear!
--John (glad that rational stuff is finally over with)
(Message edited by omlor on March 22, 2004) |
Caroline Anne Morris
Chief Inspector
Username: Caz
Post Number: 903
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 23, 2004 - 4:43 am: | |
Blimey, someone was bored last night - desperately. 
Love,
Caz |
John V. Omlor
Inspector
Username: Omlor
Post Number: 224
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 23, 2004 - 6:50 am: | |
Not bored, Caz.
Inspired. Inspired by the truth. Inspired by the clarity of it all. By the simplicity of the vision and the purity of the arguments. Inspired by how little effort it takes to make the case once you realize that you don't need to measure the diary against history or the record or anything else, since there's always a way to argue that the diary could be right and we just didn't know the truth until now.
It's all so perfectly clear once that happens.
There's no way this book could be a modern fake. How could it have gotten so many details right that we didn't even know were right? I certainly didn't know all this secret stuff about Maybrick which, among other things, explains his many totally different handwritings. But now that I see the obvious explanations, I can only conclude that this book is far too sophisticated and breaks far too much new historical ground for it possibly to be a forgery by someone who just didn't write like Maybrick.
It's certainly a good thing it wasn't written in Maybrick's hand. After all, then we'd know we had a fake.
Blinded but now convinced by the simple logic of it all,
--John (happy to be finally on the side of open-mindedness and fair play) |
R.J. Palmer
Inspector
Username: Rjpalmer
Post Number: 354
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, March 27, 2004 - 11:14 am: | |
O.K. Here goes. There's been considerable discussion over the past two or three years about the so-called "Kane Relics"., ie., a sample of handwriting of an acquaintance of Tony Devereux that allegedly resembles the writing in the Maybrick Diary. As everyone will recall, it was Mike Barrett's original claim that he was given the diary by his friend Devereux. Barrett has (of course) changed his story on numerous occasions. There is no known connection between Kane & Barrett.
What I wish to do here is to test the claim made by Melvin Harris in his last comment on the Maybrick Diary, published in Ripper Notes, January 2004. Harris had previously suggested (privately, I believe) that there was certain similarities between the Kane writing and that in the Maybrick Diary. He mentioned specifically an 'idiosyncratic' forming of the lower-case letter 'k.' The authors of the recent book, Ripper Diary, seem to dispute that claim and reprinted a page from the Maybrick Diary as an illustration. (see pg. 232, Ripper Diary). Harris responded thus:
"But the verdict of the handwriting still stands. * * * the "K" he points to is not a joined-up written "K", but a printed capital. Yet in the body of the Diary pages are many examples of the odd written formation that first raised eyebrows; there are twenty such examples in the first twenty-one pages alone!" (Harris, Ripper notes, p. 45)
I don't have a scanner at the moment (apologies) and, at any rate, I'm uncertain about the copy-right restrictions. So, if anyone wants to check this out, it will take a certain amount of work on their part. Here, however, are references to what I believe Melvin Harris is talking about.
The first thing you will need to note is the 'K' in Kane's handwriting. An example can be found on the CD of the old message boards, which reproduces a copy of Tony Devereux's will. There are also reproductions of the "Kane relics" on pgs. 230 and 231 of Ripper Diary: The Inside Story which show what Harris meant by the 'idiosyncratic K".
The following examples of what I think Melvin meant can be found in the Maybrick Diary. All references are to the page numbers of the original hard-bound edition of Shirley Harrison's The Diary of Jack the Ripper, which has a facsimile reproduction of the diary.
This is probably one of the better examples:
1. the word "taken" in the line "I have taken a small room in Middlesex Street", p. 216, second paragraph, first line.
other examples:
2. "take" pg. 208
3. "back" pg. 209 (paragraph two)
4. "kill" and "killed" p. 214
5. "like" p. 215, line 8.
6. "take" pg. 215, line 11.
7. "walked" p. 216, 2nd paragraph, 4th line.
8. "knew" pg. 218, line 10.
two other good examples:
9. "took" p. 223, line 12.
10. "knows" pg. 225, 2nd paragraph, line 7.
That should suffice. It should be noted that there are other 'k's' in the text that look to be formed differently.
Personally, I think Harris has a point. I do see enough similarity that I'd want a professional opinion. I'm not entirely decided. Some of the capital "T's" and "I's" also share some similarity. Comments welcome. RP
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Ally
Inspector
Username: Ally
Post Number: 449
Registered: 4-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, March 28, 2004 - 6:24 am: | |
Hi RJ,
I just wanted to bump this before it went off the grid and say that I am actually thinking before replying...a wonder in itself. 
 |
Christopher T George
Chief Inspector
Username: Chrisg
Post Number: 692
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, March 28, 2004 - 9:23 am: | |
This is the sample of Gerard Kane's writing that appeared in Linder et al.'s Ripper Diary: The Inside Story p. 231 and that was obtained by private detective Alan Gray in February 1999.
 |
Ally
Inspector
Username: Ally
Post Number: 455
Registered: 4-2003
| | Posted on Monday, March 29, 2004 - 7:03 am: | |
This is the first sample of Kane's writing. The top says taken by A.R. Gray on 4-2-99 (February 4, 1999).
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Ally
Inspector
Username: Ally
Post Number: 456
Registered: 4-2003
| | Posted on Monday, March 29, 2004 - 7:07 am: | |
First, I don't see so much an attempt to disguise as an attempt to make it such an unimaginable scrawl that it would be worthless as a sample. But I do some deliberate attempts at changing letter formations particularly when he writes the "G" and the "K" in his first name at the top. The K has loopy swirls that aren't in his signature at other times. I wonder if there are also Ks like this in the diary? The rest of it is just a scrawling mess and I can't believe that he would have presented that as a handwriting sample.
My opinion for what it is worth, is that he was trying to change his handwriting in the first sample.
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M.Mc.
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Saturday, March 27, 2004 - 12:52 pm: | |
Even though the diary is a fake I think Maybrick is still a very good suspect anyway. I give him a "8" on a scale to one to ten. He's not my pick for the best one but he's in there nonetheless. |
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