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Leanne Perry
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Leanne
Post Number: 1192
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, February 24, 2004 - 3:57 pm: |       |
G'day,
I've been searching a Victorian London Website for the POSTE house, with no luck.
There's a photo of the interior of THE POSTE HOUSE in my copy of the diary, and there's a sketch underneath that says: 'On the left can be seen the entrance to Cumberland Street, [Liverpool], where the Poste House still stands today.' What's the story about this?
LEANNE |
Caroline Anne Morris
Chief Inspector
Username: Caz
Post Number: 775
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 25, 2004 - 7:29 am: | |
Hi Leanne,
Everyone seems to have assumed, at one time or another, that the ‘Poste House’ referred to in the diary is the pub of that name in Cumberland Street, off Dale Street, in the centre of Liverpool.
In Victorian times, this particular pub did not bear that name, and was almost certainly never referred to by its regulars as a post house.
Many coaching inns of that era could still have been called post houses, although their official names would be something else. The tiny pub in Cumberland Street could not have been a coaching inn, and is known locally as ‘the smallest pub in Liverpool’. It was called the Muck Midden and acquired a neighbouring new post office in the 1900s, later pinching its new name – ‘The Poste House’ - as a result.
So did the diarist make a fatal error here?
Possibly, but then again possibly not.
In 1997, the landlord of an old coaching inn on Dale Street, now called Rigby’s, was asked, simply “Where is the post house?”
Cumberland Street, with its Poste House, is only a few blocks away from Rigby’s. Yet the landlord didn’t even consider this to be the post house in question, but immediately described a pub in School Lane called The Old Post Office.
The licencee of The Old Post Office pub was able to provide a bit of history about the place, and said the pub dated back to around 1840.
I have an A-Z of Liverpool (kindly lent to me by Keith Skinner) and the western end of School Lane joins the southern end of Whitechapel, and the pub is very close to Central Station where Maybrick would have boarded for Aigburth. It is also apparently very close to St. Peter’s Church, and where Maybrick grew up.
Coincidentally, The Old Post Office pub is right by Bluecoat Chambers, where Mike Barrett once claimed he bought the ink used in the diary. But, for what it’s worth, I don’t think Mike has ever mentioned this pub, or suggested this was the ‘Poste House’ mentioned in the diary.
Hope this helps.
Love,
Caz
|
Robert J Smith
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Thursday, July 29, 2004 - 2:28 pm: | |
A few more thoughts on the Poste House debate:
The diarist says on the first page: “I took refreshment at the Poste House it was there I finally decided London it shall be.”
If the diarist is a modern forger, then he certainly made an error in naming a small Victorian pub in a narrow side street as “the Poste House”. At the time of the Ripper murders, it was called The Muck Midden, and only got its current name in a 1960s make-over, reflecting its proximity to the General Post Office, which had moved to nearby Victoria Street in 1899. Given the pub wasn’t on a coaching route, it could never have been a post house, anyway.
Presumably a Liverpudlian forger would at least have taken the precaution of going to the pub to make sure that it was Victorian. If so, he would have read the history of the pub, framed prominently on the wall, describing how it was called The Muck Midden in the late nineteenth century.
We are often told on these boards, that all of the forger’s information came from a few books on Jack the Ripper and on the Maybrick case. He certainly should have read Liverpool’s own Richard Whittington-Egan’s book, Liverpool Colonnade, which gives a full account of the Maybrick affair and of Florence Maybrick’s later life in America. The book was published in 1955 and in a chapter on Liverpool’s old pubs, he refers to this pub only as The Muck Midden, as it had not yet acquired its later olde worlde name.
Let us look at an alternative scenario – James Maybrick in 1888 with murder on his mind sitting in a pub, which he refers to as “the Poste House”.
The diarist uses (and misspells) the word, post, three times: poste house (once), and poste-haste (twice). The word, post, refers to the staging posts along the route (usually at intervals of 20 miles), where fresh riders and post horses could be speedily obtained by travellers for the next stage of their journey. They also provided travellers with food, drink, and a bed for the night.
There was a daily coach service from London to Liverpool called The Expedition, which left the Saracen’s Head, Snow Hill, Holborn, at 5.00pm and arrived at the Angel Hotel in Dale Street, Liverpool three days later at 1.00pm. The route went through Henley on Thames, Oxford, Stratford on Avon, Birmingham, Newcastle under Lyme, and Warrington, to its final destination at the Cotton Exhange.
Anyone standing outside the Exchange, could have looked across Dale Street and watched The Expedition enter the Angel Hotel, which was conveniently situated next to Liverpool’s coaching office, where passengers bought their tickets. I have a large-scale colour plan of Dale Street, dated 1850, in which every building is detailed. It actually illustrates a mail coach with passengers leaving or passing the Angel.
The Angel stayed fully intact, until the Second World War. By 1955, Richard Whittington-Egan was expressing his regret that this magnificent coaching inn had shrunk in size, and that most of the area it had occupied, had been converted into shops and offices.
Maybrick, from his early thirties (around 1870) was working at the Cotton Exchange. If he wrote the diary, it is probable that he would have been referring to the Angel, but there is another possibility – an even older pub called the Old Post Office. It was built about 1800 and was so-named, because it was next to Liverpool’s first post office, in School Lane.
The appeal of this pub as a candidate is that, as well as being a coaching inn in Maybrick’s lifetime, with direct access for the coaches to the main thoroughfare, Hanover Street, it was also only a few yards from his boyhood home. His father (and his grandfather before him) was Parish Clerk of St Peter’s Church, which was demolished in 1922, but in the 1880s was the Parish Church of Liverpool. The young Maybrick would have watched the coaches arriving and departing from the Old Post Office. Significantly, School Lane leads directly into Whitechapel, which the diarist mentions in the same paragraph as “the Poste House”.
But, of course, if the diary was forged after 1987, it wasn’t Maybrick referring to The Angel or the Old Post Office, but a very careless forger who had made an elementary error on the first page of the diary.
All best,
Robert
|
John V. Omlor
Inspector
Username: Omlor
Post Number: 480
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, July 29, 2004 - 10:12 pm: | |
Hee hee,
You've got to love a reading so thoroughly driven in its details not by the words or by the current reality, but exclusively by desire.
These were very lucky forgers indeed, to have found such an audience, so desperate to believe that they would go to such lengths to find possible excuses for the text's many anachronisms.
The Poste House.... Hmmmmm.
Of course! Maybrick must have really meant The Angel or maybe the Old Post Office.
Sure, the diary doesn't actually say either of these things -- but maybe, I hope, possibly, perhaps, that's what the writer really meant, and he wasn't just a forger screwing up and naming a local pub that wasn't there at the time but was, and is, with that exact name, a century later.
Surely, no forger could have been so, oh I don't know, what's the word? "Careless."
Could they?
No. That would be like, oh, getting the details of the Kelly murder wrong, or copying a line from a police list the murderer could not have seen, or writing the whole book in a handwriting that looked nothing at all like the supposed author's.
And no forgers would ever do those silly things, would they?
Would they?
Just loving this latest burst of desire,
--John |
Caroline Anne Morris
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Caz
Post Number: 1149
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, July 31, 2004 - 12:21 pm: | |
I see it as simply and effectively chucking a couple of buckets of ice-cold water (containing razor-sharp facts) all over other people's desperate desire to cling on to the Cumberland Street establishment as the only possible place of refreshment the diarist could have had on his tiny mind.
Live a little: explore Liverpool and its pubs, enjoy considering or discovering other options and expanding your mental horizons instead of settling, like a fly on the largest and smelliest cowpat, for the option that gives you instant gratification - the one that makes Jack a dull forger.
Delayed gratification, I am led to believe, can be infinitely sweeter.
Love,
Caz
X
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Chris Phillips
Inspector
Username: Cgp100
Post Number: 389
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, July 31, 2004 - 3:19 pm: | |
Caz
I see it as simply and effectively chucking a couple of buckets of ice-cold water (containing razor-sharp facts) all over other people's desperate desire to cling on to the Cumberland Street establishment as the only possible place of refreshment the diarist could have had on his tiny mind.
I think it's not so much a question of this being the only possible place of refreshment (after all, it's possible he could have been sharing a pint with Mrs Hammersmith in downtown Chicago), as that interpreting the "Poste House" as the "Poste House" is just the most straightforward and probable interpretation.
But of course, you don't believe in probability theory.
Chris Phillips
|
Shelley Wiltshire
Sergeant
Username: Shelley
Post Number: 25
Registered: 7-2004
| | Posted on Saturday, July 31, 2004 - 4:27 pm: | |
Hi John,
You just took the words right out of my mouth....Is there any point in voicing much else!...It's a classic... pipped me to the poste (ha, ha).
Regards
Shelley
Criminology Student |
John V. Omlor
Inspector
Username: Omlor
Post Number: 489
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, July 31, 2004 - 5:25 pm: | |
Hi Chris and Shelley,
Yup. Desire often overcomes sense around here. But logic and even casual reason can be stubborn things and this line, like so much else in the diary, points neatly to a final inductive conclusion.
The thing's a fake.
And, incidentally, there is no real evidence anywhere that points even remotely in the other direction.
That should tell reasonable people something.
Of course, I'm still not sure anyone here is actually arguing that the thing is not a fake.
Are they?
Just checking, to be sure,
--John |
Caroline Anne Morris
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Caz
Post Number: 1154
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, August 01, 2004 - 5:45 am: | |
I do find it funny that, whenever another 'impossible' argument bites the dust, instead of conceding this with a bit of good grace and a thank-you for new information that adds to our overall knowledge, we get something along the lines: "well it's still the most straightforward and probable interpretation, so there".
At least that shows a bit more thought than the feeble last resort of a comeback: "well it's a fake anyway, so there", after having entered into a discussion about which post house the diarist had in mind.
Why bother discussing any of these issues in detail at all, never mind writing a million words on each one, if they all boil down to the same nine words in the end?
Why not just say:
"I still believe the diary is a modern fake", and be done with it?
I'm sure we'd have worked out from this exactly what your beliefs must be regarding the faker's mental processes and research while creating the document.
Tut tut, I'm sure you could do better than this if you really put your minds to it.
Or perhaps not.
Love,
Caz
X
(Message edited by Caz on August 01, 2004) |
Chris Phillips
Inspector
Username: Cgp100
Post Number: 390
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, August 01, 2004 - 6:29 am: | |
Caz
Let me try to help you - it's because most human beings get through their lives by being able to distinguish between likely explanations and wildly improbable explanations.
In a way it's a sort of self-preservation instinct - it's what saves us from getting conned out of our money at every street corner, and from responding to all those emails from African politicians and organisers of free lotteries.
People who lack this faculty must find life a very hazardous business. I suspect that, despite your protestations, you are actually capable seeing how intrinsically unlikely many of these Maybrickite explanations are.
I suspect you even have an inkling of the fact that when you combine together a dozen or so very unlikely explanations, you get something approaching impossibility.
Chris Phillips
|
John V. Omlor
Inspector
Username: Omlor
Post Number: 493
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, August 01, 2004 - 7:03 am: | |
Hi all,
1. No argument that was ever actually offered by anyone about the Poste House line has "bitten the dust" here or indeed has even been logically or directly challenged.
2. There are two ways of reading.
a.) The diarist writes, "the Poste Houste." But he actually meant The Angel or The old Post Office or, I don't know, something that was really there at the time.... Surely he must have.
b.) The diarist writes, "the Poste House." He probably meant "the Poste House."
One of these methods of reading makes a certain logical sense. It's even, shall we say, obvious.
The other is simply pure desire. The desperate reach to find anything, any excuse to overcome the inconvenient fact that the Poste House didn't exist at the time, although it does now, and is therefore a textual anachronism.
I know which method of reading the forgers must be the most thankful for.
I know which method of reading I would like to see my own name associated with.
And, yes, I know the thing's a fake.
Further upriver than ever before,
-- John
(Message edited by omlor on August 01, 2004) |
Caroline Anne Morris
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Caz
Post Number: 1161
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, August 02, 2004 - 5:27 am: | |
It's really quite simple.
If the diarist wasn't writing in modern times, he couldn't have meant the pub in Cumberland Street.
If the diarist was writing in modern times, and chose the pub in Cumberland Street (despite its history as The Muck Midden being displayed prominently in the pub itself, and the fact that it could never have been a post house or known as such in Victorian times), rather than The Angel or The Old Post Office (either of which were and could), it would at least tell us something about their research skills and knowledge of the inside and outside of Liverpool pubs.
But you first have to prove when the diarist was writing by other means before you can know, or guess on the balance of probability, which pub was meant, otherwise your argument is circular.
I am not arguing for any particular pub here because I don't yet know when the diarist was writing, and therefore it would be premature of me to try to weigh up my pub probabilities.
First things first.
Oh and by the by, I hope you are 100% certain that the diary is modern, and therefore won't have to feel even the tiniest bit worried that Mike Barrett may have done something approaching the impossible from your own point of view - and conned you rotten with his 'confession' tales.
While I remain uncertain and cynical about absolutely everything concerning Mike, I won't be worried on that score.
Love,
Caz
X
|
Chris Phillips
Inspector
Username: Cgp100
Post Number: 393
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, August 02, 2004 - 5:59 am: | |
Caz
But you first have to prove when the diarist was writing by other means before you can know, or guess on the balance of probability, which pub was meant
What nonsense! Clearly you could say much the same thing about every word written in the diary, so we would be unable to evaluate the text at all until the diary was dated by other means.
Chris Phillips
|
John V. Omlor
Chief Inspector
Username: Omlor
Post Number: 501
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, August 02, 2004 - 7:37 am: | |
Question: Could a modern forger have meant "The Poste House" when he wrote "The Post House."
Answer: Yes.
Question: Would that have been a textual anachronism?
Answer: Yes.
Question: Are there any other signs that the forgers might have made similarly simple mistakes?
Answer: Yes -- they wrote the book in the wrong handwriting, they have James citing a line from a police document he could not have possibly seen, they failed to provide any believable provenance at all for the document, they repeated mistakes about the murders found in modern books, they even got the source of James's own famous brother's success wrong (as did another modern book).
Question: Why does this document have all these obvious problems?
Answer: Because it's a fake.
Question: Then why are we still talking about it?
Answer: Because of the desire of some readers to excuse every problem away with desperate reaching for other possibilities -- such as "well, maybe he wrote the Poste House, which is a pub in Liverpool, but he really meant a pub with a different name, like The Angel. Yes, that would explain it."
Once again -- you can either read the words and admit what they say or you can read the words or hope they say something else.
But only one of those choices makes any real sense.
--John
|
John V. Omlor
Chief Inspector
Username: Omlor
Post Number: 503
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, August 02, 2004 - 8:00 am: | |
Oh wait,
Lest anyone get confused by the typo into thinking I was desperately reaching for an improbable interpretation in order to keep hope alive, that first question of mine should have read:
Question: Could a modern forger have meant "The Poste House" when he wrote "The Poste House?"
I feel sort of silly even asking it, but that's what it's come to around here, that's what has become necessary when dealing with this book and some of its readers.
--John
PS: And, at the end, that last "or" should be an "and," of course. It's early in the morning and I went past my fifteen minute editing allotment. I guess you could say I wasn't successful in proofreading that post (or perhaps you could say I wasn't a success when it came to proofreading that post -- no, that would be completely different wouldn't it -- well, now I'm not sure -- I just get so confused sometimes).
(Message edited by omlor on August 02, 2004) |
Jennifer D. Pegg
Chief Inspector
Username: Jdpegg
Post Number: 627
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, August 02, 2004 - 9:11 am: | |
Hi everybody,
John you asked Question: Could a modern forger have meant "The Poste House" when he wrote "The Poste House?"
Answer yes he could and that would be both the easiest and most obvious interpretation.
Caz,
why couldn't he have meant the pub in Cumberland Street, I am lost was this pub the Poste House or another pub?
At the end of the day does it matter what pub he is talking about. As long as there was a pub which the diarist could have been talking about as the poste house in 1888/9 then isn't that all that matters.
Just because several errors exist doesn't mean everything is is an error does it?
Cheers
Jennifer
"Think things, not words." - O.W. Holmes jr |
Chris Phillips
Inspector
Username: Cgp100
Post Number: 396
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, August 02, 2004 - 10:22 am: | |
At the end of the day does it matter what pub he is talking about. As long as there was a pub which the diarist could have been talking about as the poste house in 1888/9 then isn't that all that matters.
In the sense that there are enough other things wrong with the diary, I agree this point doesn't matter a great deal.
But I do think it's a good example of a statement in the diary having a clear and obvious interpretation that's fatal to the diary's authenticity - and so the Maybrickites ask us to believe a convoluted and far-from-obvious interpretation, just so that they can keep their faith in the diary alive.
The diary refers to taking refreshment at the "Poste House", with that spelling, and with those capital letters. The obvious interpretation is that he was referring to the pub of that name in Cumberland Street. (To confirm that that's a reasonable interpretation, if you put simply "Poste House" as a phrase into Google's worldwide search engine, the first two hits are pages in online pub guides related to the Poste House, Cumberland Street, Liverpool.)
As that pub wasn't there in 1888, the Maybrickites have to come up with another interpretation. They allege that "post house" would have been a very common way of referring to a coaching inn, and that therefore the diarist could have meant another pub. (I am a bit doubtful about this claim, as the "Post House" is not a very common name for a pub these days, which the claim suggests it should be - I can't remember ever drinking in a pub of that name, and Google confirms that's not just alcohol-induced amnesia.)
The Maybrickite claim ignores the spelling and the capitalisation for a start. And as far as I know, the Maybrickites have failed to come up with a single example (from newspapers, published local history, archive material, or whatever) of any other pub in Liverpool ever being known as the "post house".
To be honest, I think that's the least they can be expected to do, if they're pushing this as an alternative explanation of the statement in the diary. And then they could go on to explain the spelling and the capitalisation.
(It's fair to add that the Maybrickites invariably raise the phrase "poste haste" in the diary as an indication that the spelling - or misspelling - of "Poste" isn't significant. To my mind, that's a rather double-edged argument. It seems we are being asked to believe in a Victorian businessman who couldn't spell the word "post". Either that, or a rather illiterate forger who might have misspelled "post haste" on the model of the "Poste House" pub.
Chris Phillips
|
Chris Phillips
Inspector
Username: Cgp100
Post Number: 397
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, August 02, 2004 - 10:27 am: | |
(To confirm that that's a reasonable interpretation, if you put simply "Poste House" as a phrase into Google's worldwide search engine, the first two hits are pages in online pub guides related to the Poste House, Cumberland Street, Liverpool.)
Perhaps it's worth emphasising that point.
Of the top 10 hits on Google, 7 are pub listings relating to the Poste House in Liverpool, 1 relates to a pub called the "Olde Poste House" in the Irish Republic, 1 links to this thread on the casebook, and another links to a concise explanation of why Maybrick was not the Ripper, on another site!
Chris Phillips
|
Jennifer D. Pegg
Chief Inspector
Username: Jdpegg
Post Number: 634
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, August 02, 2004 - 10:58 am: | |
Hi Chris,
Ok I get your point.
I'm lost and I missed the point. Sorry. So the Poste House is a pub that does exist (but not then) I was under the (wrong impression) that it did not exist nor had it ever.
Cheers
Jennifer
"Think things, not words." - O.W. Holmes jr |
Christopher T George
Chief Inspector
Username: Chrisg
Post Number: 828
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, August 02, 2004 - 2:23 pm: | |
Hi, Jennifer
The Poste House pub in Liverpool certainly does exist, although it was recently under threat of demolition but was saved. Andy Aliffe and I had a half pint each there at the time of the August 2003 Ripper convention in Liverpool. Whether a certain Diarist ever drank there is another question. 
All my best
Chris
Christopher T. George
North American Editor
Ripperologist
http://www.ripperologist.info
|
Howard Brown
Sergeant
Username: Howard
Post Number: 25
Registered: 7-2004
| | Posted on Monday, August 02, 2004 - 9:57 pm: | |
Caz knows I think she is "the goods",but.....
There is no way in the world an educated businessman/cum Ripper,would not know how to spell "Poste House" as opposed to "Post House". Ain't we giving the dog too much leash here ?
Side note for C.P....Here I thought Tim Mosley and I were the only ones getting the African potentate messages.....phew ! |
John V. Omlor
Chief Inspector
Username: Omlor
Post Number: 510
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 03, 2004 - 8:58 am: | |
Hi Howard,
This all started because someone showed up to argue that in 1888 there were other pubs in Liverpool (imagine that), so even though he wrote the "Poste House," the diarist might have meant one of those, despite their being named things like "The Angel."
Hey, it's close, you know.
This is exactly the sort of desperate and utterly irrational reading maneuver that has been going on since the beginning of this whole diary fiasco. (I was just writing about this in an e-mail to someone this morning.)
It was perfected, of course, by Paul Feldman, who wrote the worst Ripper book ever, an amateurish piece of dreaming disguised as research that made it sound as if the book were credible. Page after page of this sort of thing, where desire is allowed to replace common sense, and all errors are simply overlooked or excused with wild speculation and desperately unlikely scenarios. I sometimes feel sorry for people like Paul Begg and Keith Skinner, whose names will always unfortunately appear there, in a minor way, as sort of the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of that tragic piece of pro-diary propaganda, even though they both now openly and readily admit that the book is obviously a fake.
And of course, even before that, this sort of excuse making was put forward by the book's publisher, when he got back the Rendell report, didn't like what it concluded (that the book was obviously a fake) and so published the thing anyway claiming it was real and even including his own piece of dreaming and wishing sort of propaganda to try and excuse all the diary's obvious errors, inconsistencies, handwriting problems, missing details, and its complete lack of provenance.
And before long we were hoping James had "multiple personalities," and praying he might have just forgotten what he did with Mary's breasts, and reduced to silence concerning how he saw a line in a confidential police report about his own victim, and we were interrogating Anne's father and her little girl to learn the real truth (because old people and children always report things accurately, after all), and even looking at faces in snapshots and saying "Well, yeah, they sort of look like old portraits of Maybricks, so maybe...."
And unfortunately, all of this nonsense has gone on for more than a decade.
And it's still going on right here on this thread and on the Crashaw thread and all over Diary World.
It's all they have.
So they just keep offering up more excuses and more completely anti-common sense arguments.
Maybe the diarist didn't mean "The Poste House" when he wrote "The Poste House." Maybe he meant the Angel.
The desperation is actually sad.
All over a silly book that has no hope of being real.
Such is the absurdity of Diary World (and, I suppose, of life).
So we march on, with nothing new and nothing real,
--John
|
Jennifer D. Pegg
Chief Inspector
Username: Jdpegg
Post Number: 649
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 03, 2004 - 9:09 am: | |
Hi John,
I think by now I get your point.
The Angel was called The Angel and the Poste House was called The Poste House and furthermore the Angel was never called the Poste House right?
Cheers (its appropriate this time)
Jennifer
"Think things, not words." - O.W. Holmes jr |
Howard Brown
Sergeant
Username: Howard
Post Number: 28
Registered: 7-2004
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 03, 2004 - 6:05 pm: | |
Hi John:
One thing that I pondered today was the intent of the Diarist to emphasise/ make important for posterity,the name of the pub he had a few beers in..
I fully acknowledge that I might be off on this point,but I have wondered for a while why it was so...
Normal people,as in teenaged girls as an example,will simply say, " Joan and I went to the beach and then saw these nice looking guys at a bar"....No,I don't peek into kid's diaries....well,maybe once.
Why a fueled up murderer with the normal lack of empathy for others that is a characteristic of that breed,would care to mention by name,where he was downing some suds, is sort of puzzling....at least to me.
Being,more or less,an interloper,into a discussion that was doing just fine without me, I will only say that it would be nice to see Mr. Smith take up the offer to have the Diary examined.
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John V. Omlor
Chief Inspector
Username: Omlor
Post Number: 511
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 03, 2004 - 9:38 pm: | |
Hi Howard,
Yes, and of course a forger that was not all that bright but thought he was giving his work some genuine Liverpool flair might indeed take the time to name a pub he knew was there (even if it wasn't there when the supposed author was supposed to be writing). Maybe a pub, like, say, The Poste House.
Wait, isn't that exactly what he wrote?
How could he have done something so dumb, you might ask?
Probably the same way he could have written the book in the completely wrong handwriting, taken credit for other letters all in completely different handwritings, included a line from a police document there's no way his supposed author could have seen, failed to come up with any believable provenance whatsoever, made simple historical mistakes about the murders, reproduced common misconceptions about the crimes found in modern sources...
And on and on and on....
His only hope would be a softly willing reading public desperate to believe (for whatever reason).
And whattaya' know. That's just what he found around here.
So it goes,
--John |
Jennifer D. Pegg
Chief Inspector
Username: Jdpegg
Post Number: 653
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 04, 2004 - 4:38 am: | |
Hi Howard,
your point interests me. It is along the same lines I was thinking the other day. I was thinking why if forging a diary would you mention a pub that clearly was not there. It would be relatively easy to find out. Why not use a pub that was there (like the Angel was)?
It's sure odd!
Cheers
Jennifer
"Think things, not words." - O.W. Holmes jr |
Chris Phillips
Inspector
Username: Cgp100
Post Number: 401
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 04, 2004 - 5:22 am: | |
I was thinking why if forging a diary would you mention a pub that clearly was not there. It would be relatively easy to find out.
Perhaps not that easy to find out - Shirley Harrison didn't manage to discover this before publishing her book on the diary, though perhaps she should have.
Surely the point is that many of the errors and anachronisms in the diary could have been avoided with a little careful research. Just as the spelling errors could have been avoided by the use of a dictionary, and the grammatical errors could have been avoided if the forger had been better educated.
The conclusion I draw from this is not "No forger could have been so stupid - the diary must be genuine", but "The forger was pretty stupid".
Chris Phillips
|
Jennifer D. Pegg
Chief Inspector
Username: Jdpegg
Post Number: 655
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 04, 2004 - 5:58 am: | |
Chris,
I wasn't drawing conclusions honest!!
Jennifer
"Think things, not words." - O.W. Holmes jr |
Caroline Anne Morris
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Caz
Post Number: 1168
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 04, 2004 - 2:37 pm: | |
My my, what a lot of fuss over a bloke claiming in his diary to have gone into his local for a beer.
I excuse you all for not knowing too much about English pubs and their history, and the various names the regulars of those pubs have used over the years that have never actually appeared over the door.
I even excuse you for not knowing that familiar, affectionate and colloquial names like the 'post house' (used in Victorian times to recall the 'good old days' of the coaching inns), or the 'glue pot' (used for certain pubs in more recent times because one tends to get stuck in there  ), rarely escape from the confines of a regular imbiber's thoughts or conversation to become the official name over the door of a public house once called something else entirely.
(I have no idea how many real 'Glue Pots' there are, but it might be a useful exercise to find out, and also to discover how many other pet names we have for pubs that hardly ever get to see themselves on an inn sign.)
But I don't excuse Mike Barrett, if he spent a couple of hours perfecting his magnificent disguised writing skills when he should have spared a couple of minutes to nip into the 'Smallest Pub in Liverpool', as The Poste House in Cumberland Street is also fondly called by some (but no official change of name yet, I don't suppose) and seen its prominently displayed history as 'The Muck Midden', when Maybrick would have been around.
Love,
Caz
X |
Chris Phillips
Inspector
Username: Cgp100
Post Number: 403
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 04, 2004 - 2:50 pm: | |
Caz
The challenge still stands - can anyone find any documented evidence at all of any pub in Liverpool except the Poste House ever being known as the post house? (And then explain the spelling and capitalisation.)
It's that straightforward.
Chris Phillips
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Jennifer D. Pegg
Chief Inspector
Username: Jdpegg
Post Number: 666
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 04, 2004 - 3:05 pm: | |
Caz,
also please tell me what it is that leads you to this conclusion that poste house was a common expression. I have never heard it before (is it northern).
Sorry to nit pick!
Jennifer
"Think things, not words." - O.W. Holmes jr |
Christopher T George
Chief Inspector
Username: Chrisg
Post Number: 830
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 04, 2004 - 3:12 pm: | |
Hi, Caz
It is the smallest pub in England because Andy Aliffe and I hardly fitted in there, and you know that Andy is not one of the biggest chappies around. Sorry Andy. 
Chris
Christopher T. George
North American Editor
Ripperologist
http://www.ripperologist.info
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John V. Omlor
Chief Inspector
Username: Omlor
Post Number: 519
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 04, 2004 - 3:49 pm: | |
Yes, Chris.
Of course that challenge still stands.
But history and the record and common sense are not what this is about, obviously.
This is about making excuses for anachronisms.
Because the diary says one thing and history says another, so there must be a way to account for this (other than the obvious one).
Even if that way makes no particular sense.
He wrote the name of the pub, even capitalized both the P and the H and everything.
He wrote "the Poste House."
So surely he must not have meant the Poste House.
No, that would be too obvious.
Surely he must have meant the Angel.
Of course.
Onward into the realm of pure desire we go.
--John
PS:The argument that any forger who wouldn't have checked whether the name was in place during the right century was making an "inexcusable" mistake forgets that the forgers made many such "inexcusable" mistakes very similar to this one, including getting the handwriting wrong, getting the details of the murders wrong, repeating mistakes from modern books, having their author cite a line from a police document he could not possibly have seen, and, of course, failing to produce an even vaguely verifiable provenance.
This "inexcusable" mistake would be completely consistent with and directly in keeping with all the other ones the forgers made. Why should anyone be surprised?
There is no way the real James Maybrick ever drank at the Poste House. And there's no way the real James Maybrick ever wrote this book. And everyone reading these words right now knows that.
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Caroline Anne Morris
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Caz
Post Number: 1174
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Friday, August 06, 2004 - 5:51 am: | |
Hi Chris,
‘The challenge still stands - can anyone find any documented evidence at all of any pub in Liverpool except the Poste House ever being known as the post house? (And then explain the spelling and capitalisation.)
It's that straightforward.’
Er, possibly not, Chris. As I thought I had already explained, ‘the post house’ would have been a colloquial expression (and yes, Jenn, I would imagine a fairly common one, but I can’t prove it) used mainly in the distant past, and almost exclusively in conversation, to refer to a place of alcoholic refreshment that was at the time, or had once been, a coaching inn. If you look it up in Chambers, you get: ‘post house an inn, orig. where horses were kept for posting…’
Our local, before we moved house in 1996, was officially called ‘The Hare & Hounds’, but hubby always used to refer to it as the airy-fairy. Had I kept a diary during those years of frequenting this pub, I should almost certainly have mentioned us popping in there for a quickie (or three) after work, or a game of pool on a Sunday, and my instinct might quite naturally have been to write: the Airy-Fairy [sic].
There are two pubs on the edge of Mitcham Common which, hubby tells me, are referred to by their respective regulars as the red house and the blue house. As far as we know, they have never had those names officially, and I’m not even sure they would be recognisably red or blue these days, but still the names persist - in conversation. And in one’s diary, one might well refer to them as the Red House and the Blue House.
The difficulty, with any name or expression not generally seen written down anywhere, is deciding how you are going to spell it if you ever have occasion to do so. Referring to a post house in one’s diary, in the old days, one might naturally choose capital letters as I have in the above modern examples: the Post House [sic].
But what if a sign like ‘Poste Restante’ [sic] (used commonly in Victorian times, I believe, and indicating a department of a post office where letters are kept until called for) were to feature predominantly in one’s day-to-day life (as it may well have done in the real James Maybrick’s, when he didn’t want his wife or staff seeing certain items of correspondence)? Might not the French e have had appeal to a pretentious nature in those days: a certain je ne sais quois, turning the humble ‘post’ subtly, and perhaps subconsciously, into the more memorable and desirable ‘poste’ – not only when thinking about post houses in one’s diary, but also when using the expression ‘post haste’ (to quote from Chambers again: ‘the old direction on letters, haste, post, haste…’), which the diarist renders ‘poste haste’?
One thing’s for certain – you wouldn’t call our post hasty these days. But the expression doesn’t have to die an anachronistic death just yet – not on these boards. It can now be used to reflect the haste of John O’s posts in response. Or should that be respons… zzzzz 
Have a great weekend all.
Love,
Caz
X
|
John V. Omlor
Chief Inspector
Username: Omlor
Post Number: 532
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Friday, August 06, 2004 - 7:44 am: | |
The diary has its alleged author drinking in a pub called the Poste House.
There is a Poste House in Liverpool and was when the diary first appeared.
There was not a Poste House when the real James Maybrick was alive.
So what do we get from Caroline?
"Might not the French e have had appeal to a pretentious nature in those days: a certain je ne sais quois, turning the humble ‘post’ subtly, and perhaps subconsciously, into the more memorable and desirable ‘poste’ – not only when thinking about post houses in one’s diary, but also when using the expression ‘post haste’ (to quote from Chambers again: ‘the old direction on letters, haste, post, haste…’), which the diarist renders ‘poste haste’?"
I really don't have to say anything else.
The lengths some will go to out of pure desperation to keep at least a glimmer of hope alive are become more and more self-evident every day with every new post.
Now it's all right there, on the surface.
Some of us here have simply stopped reading and are now well along on Figment's ride through the land of Imagination.
We're making excellent progress now.
--John (turning "subtly, and perhaps subconsciously, into the more memorable and desirable" Jacques)
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Chris Phillips
Inspector
Username: Cgp100
Post Number: 411
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Friday, August 06, 2004 - 7:55 am: | |
All I can say is that if Maybrick had such pretentious Francophile leanings, it must have been very frustrating for him not to be able to spell words like rendezvous (or even to come close!).
Chris Phillips
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John V. Omlor
Chief Inspector
Username: Omlor
Post Number: 535
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Friday, August 06, 2004 - 8:04 am: | |
Ah, but Chris,
Surely, that's when the drugs must have kicked in.
--John (learning there's an excuse for everything, even if you need a shovel, a pick-axe and night goggles to find one)
(with apologies to Steve M.) |
Jennifer D. Pegg
Chief Inspector
Username: Jdpegg
Post Number: 681
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Friday, August 06, 2004 - 10:12 am: | |
Hi ,
I was just having a look to see where the Poste House pub Liverpool was and a few things caught my eye. Namely its proximity to the following Liverpool streets
Pall Mall
Marylebone Street
and most interestingly
Whitechapel Street.
Jennifer
"Think things, not words." - O.W. Holmes jr |
John V. Omlor
Chief Inspector
Username: Omlor
Post Number: 537
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Friday, August 06, 2004 - 10:41 am: | |
Hi Jen,
You mean, where the Poste House pub in Liverpool is, right?
It is there now.
It was there when the diary first appeared, too.
It was not there as the Poste House in the nineteenth century, though.
Bummer.
See ya,
--John |
Jennifer D. Pegg
Chief Inspector
Username: Jdpegg
Post Number: 685
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Friday, August 06, 2004 - 10:47 am: | |
John,
Did I say that, not when I checked I didn't.
I just recall something in the diary about Whitechapel Liverpool, Whitechapel London or something.
Incidentally is there a Whitechapel in Liverpool and if so where is it?
Jen
"Think things, not words." - O.W. Holmes jr |
John V. Omlor
Chief Inspector
Username: Omlor
Post Number: 539
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Friday, August 06, 2004 - 10:54 am: | |
Hi Jen,
In your post, you wrote "I was just having a look to see where the Poste House pub Liverpool was..."
I was just changing your "was" to "is," for obvious reasons.
Happy Friday,
--John |
A Smith
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Friday, August 06, 2004 - 9:13 am: | |
My local is called the "Log Cabin" but is known by locals as "Crosshill" because of its location and even more colourfully as the "Rat Pit" apparently in recognition of vermin related problems of yesteryear. Another local pub is known to one and all as "Old Mick's" although it has never officially been called by that name.
Another in the area used to be called the "Cats Eyes" and although it has long since changed its name it is still referred to in broadest Glaswegian as the "Dugs Lugs" (Dogs Ears). The point being that many pubs in Britain have names known only to the locals.
The complication with "Poste House" is of course the fact that there was indeed an establishment bearing that moniker.
I dont however see the bad spelling or capitalisation as a problem. A trawl through these boards reveals (presumably) educated people whos spelling is woeful. (Or is it woefull?)
I once had an application for employment from a young lady who proudly informed me that she had just completed a course in Higher English at Collage, and my 14 year old daughter had to point out to her English teacher that there was no such word as jelous.
My own use of capitals earlier in this post was spontaneous and certainly not by design.
John.
His only hope would be a softly willing reading public desperate to believe (for whatever reason)
And whattaya know thats just what he found around here.
Sorry I'm running a bit behind but can I ask, his only hope of what?
It is a mystery to me what a forger has gained from this whole deal which means his hopes have been realised. I would have thought that the prospect of a long spell in one of Her Majesty's hotels would be the most likely outcome.
And John please believe me I am not suggesting that you are in any way mistaken in this statement so please avoid the sarcasm and irony if you reply. I genuinely have problems with certain aspects (this point being one of them) which mean that unlike yourself I am not 100% convinced that the diary is a forgery. I agree that the likliehood is that it is such but still a seed of doubt remains.
Alan
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John V. Omlor
Chief Inspector
Username: Omlor
Post Number: 541
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Friday, August 06, 2004 - 11:51 pm: | |
Alan writes,
"The complication with 'Poste House' is of course the fact that there was indeed an establishment bearing that moniker."
In fact, there still is an establishment bearing that moniker. Even now. And was in the 1970s and 1980s. There just wasn't in the 1880s. For most people, that would tell them something.
The rest, the quaint but desperate idea that he wrote "Poste House" but meant "Angel" or some other such silly pleading, remains for those who would seek to excuse, by any means necessary, this one of the diary's numerous textual, historical inaccuracies.
So it goes,
--John
PS: I meant "his only hope" of getting the thing to see the light of day; of not having it properly squashed as soon as it appeared, instantly revealed for what it plainly and obviously is, an ahistorical, inaccurate, anachronistic text written in the wrong handwriting which makes impossible claims and has its author writing impossible things.
All that could save him from that fate was the participation of a willing few readers desperate to excuse everything from a line in a report the author could not have possibly seen to the name of a pub which did not exist then but does now to handwriting that is clearly not the supposed author's to mistakes about the murders and the killer's family to numerous ahistorical moments to an utterly artificial and fictional dramatic structure to a complete lack of provenance right down to a report by a collection of document experts saying the thing was clearly a fake, and release it all anyway arguing that it still might be real.
|
Jennifer D. Pegg
Chief Inspector
Username: Jdpegg
Post Number: 690
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, August 07, 2004 - 6:14 am: | |
hi,
where was the pub the Angel located?
What part of Liverpool did James Maybrick live in?
Jennifer
"Think things, not words." - O.W. Holmes jr |
Caroline Anne Morris
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Caz
Post Number: 1176
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, August 09, 2004 - 4:54 am: | |
Hi Jenn,
Just scroll up to the first three posts in this thread! It’s all there, handed to the readers on a plate.
No, don’t even do that, I’ll hand it to you now on an even bigger one, in case anyone else missed this info first time round.
From Robert Smith:
There was a daily coach service from London to Liverpool called The Expedition, which left the Saracen’s Head, Snow Hill, Holborn, at 5.00pm and arrived at the Angel Hotel in Dale Street, Liverpool three days later at 1.00pm. The route went through Henley on Thames, Oxford, Stratford on Avon, Birmingham, Newcastle under Lyme, and Warrington, to its final destination at the Cotton Exhange.
Anyone standing outside the Exchange, could have looked across Dale Street and watched The Expedition enter the Angel Hotel, which was conveniently situated next to Liverpool’s coaching office, where passengers bought their tickets.
Maybrick, from his early thirties (around 1870) was working at the Cotton Exchange. If he wrote the diary, it is probable that he would have been referring to the Angel, but there is another possibility – an even older pub called the Old Post Office. It was built about 1800 and was so-named, because it was next to Liverpool’s first post office, in School Lane.
The appeal of this pub as a candidate is that, as well as being a coaching inn in Maybrick’s lifetime, with direct access for the coaches to the main thoroughfare, Hanover Street, it was also only a few yards from his boyhood home. His father (and his grandfather before him) was Parish Clerk of St Peter’s Church, which was demolished in 1922, but in the 1880s was the Parish Church of Liverpool. The young Maybrick would have watched the coaches arriving and departing from the Old Post Office. Significantly, School Lane leads directly into Whitechapel, which the diarist mentions in the same paragraph as “the Poste House”.
And from me:
In 1997, the landlord of an old coaching inn on Dale Street, now called Rigby’s, was asked, simply “Where is the post house?”
Cumberland Street, with its Poste House, is only a few blocks away from Rigby’s. Yet the landlord didn’t even consider this to be the post house in question, but immediately described a pub in School Lane called The Old Post Office.
…the western end of School Lane joins the southern end of Whitechapel, and the pub is very close to Central Station where Maybrick would have boarded for Aigburth. It is also apparently very close to St. Peter’s Church, and where Maybrick grew up.
The diarist claims to have made up his mind that ‘London it shall be’, while he was actually in the pub. So if the pub itself is supposed to have made his thoughts drift to that other city, as his words appear to suggest, then The Angel, according to Robert’s description above, would very neatly fit that bill.
And any attempts John O may make, to imply that the only pub in Liverpool known as, and pronounced the Post House is the one in Cumberland Street (which has no obvious connection with London apart from its proximity to Whitechapel, Liverpool, which it shares with both The Angel and The Old Post Office anyway), have been pre-empted by the example of the central Liverpool pub landlord, whose mind went straight to a pub, but a different pub of a different name - The Old Post Office – when asked, “Where is the post house?”
Love,
Caz
X
PS How many people, I wonder, would even tackle a word like 'rendezvous', if they knew they were well out of their depth? The diarist thought he was being rather clever if he imagined it should be rendered 'rondaveau': hopelessly on the wrong track, but he somehow succeeds in giving the word an equally distinctive French flavour.
(Message edited by Caz on August 09, 2004) |
Jennifer D. Pegg
Chief Inspector
Username: Jdpegg
Post Number: 705
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, August 09, 2004 - 4:59 am: | |
Hi Caz,
thanks for the info (again sorry about that)
Cheers
Jennifer
"Think things, not words." - O.W. Holmes jr |
Caroline Anne Morris
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Caz
Post Number: 1177
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, August 09, 2004 - 5:19 am: | |
No problem, Jenn.
Oh, and in case anyone is confused by my use of the phrase 'succeeds in', I wasn't implying the diarist 'is famous for' giving French words a French flavour. 
The diarist is, on the other hand, (in)famous for his continued success at dodging investigators and armchair theorists alike. He can't dodge forever - or can he?
Love,
Caz
X |
John V. Omlor
Chief Inspector
Username: Omlor
Post Number: 550
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, August 09, 2004 - 8:11 am: | |
Of course, as we've all seen on this thread, repeatedly now...
It's not "diarist" who is dodging.
The "diarist" writes "The Poste House."
There is a pub with exactly that name in Liverpool. Capital P, capital H, ends with an e. Just like in the book.
The dodging starts only when some people are desperate enough to say "Sure, he wrote 'The Poste House",' but he didn't mean 'The Poste House.' He meant some other pub. We hope.
What nonsense.
What a casual disregard for the simple act of reading.
What an expression of pure desire over common sense.
All because the appearance of that pub on these pages shows us that the real James could not have written the book. And apparently some people are so disturbed by that obvious conclusion that they'll do anything to avoid it, even tell us that the "diarist" didn't really mean the words he wrote but was thinking of something else, some other place that he did not write.
I can't imagine any response less scholarly, less respectful of history and common sense, more an exhibition of pure will and a sad unwillingness to face what is a clear and simple truth offered us by this and so many other pieces of evidence, from the completely wrong handwriting to the lack of provenance to the impossible line from the police files to the mistakes in history and details about the crimes and the author’s family right down to this naming, exactly, a place that is there now but wasn't then (a simple and straightforward anachronism).
Dodging. Yes. There has been plenty of dodging around here.
But the "diarist" is doing none of it.
And the forgers, apparently, didn't even have to. Not, at least, for some readers.
Still nothing new, still nothing real,
--John (still trying to turn "subtly, and perhaps subconsciously, into the more memorable and desirable" Jacques) 
"Oh, that Bruce Springsteen! Of course...."
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Peter Birchwood
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Monday, August 09, 2004 - 5:34 pm: | |
Some weeks ago I deleted my account in disgust at the attempt by one person to involve me in Maybrick craziness which entailed my receiving a number of emails demanding the release by me of documents that had been placed (by me) on the Casebook some years back.During the past weeks I have noticed an incredible amount of nonsense being placed on the Maybrick boards.
Now whether it was Robert Smith or another who came out with the pearls of wisdom concerning Maybrick standing outside the Cotton Exchange watching the mail coach come in, I immediately have trouble with the statement being put forward as fact but with no dates backing it up.
A short internet search comes up with two references on different sites stating that 1/ one of the last adverts for coaches appeared in a local (Liverpool) paper about 1845 and 2/ the last of the London-based mail coaches was taken off the road in the spring of 1846.The references are quoted below:
PortCities Liverpool
The coming of the train
"Although these coaches were providing a useful service it was not long before other types of transport took over. The opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in 1830 and later train services in the area meant that people could use this new type of transport which was even quicker. It was only fifteen years later that one of the last advertisements for coaches appeared in the local newspapers."
http://www.allanyeo.co.uk/html/history.html Concerning Travelling Post Offices.
"So, on 2nd November 1830 the Royal Mail was entrusted to the railway for the first time, beginning a new era in the history of mail transport. By the spring of 1846 the railway age had arrived and the last of the London-based mail coaches had been taken off the road."}
Now maybe there was a late local mail-coach service from Liverpool to somewhere that kept running into the 1870's or later. Maybe. The problem is that the first two paragraphs quoted refer explicitly to the service from London and as they lack any date are designed to let the reader believe that Maybrick saw the London coach turn into the Angel from his position outside the Cotton Exchange during the 1870's when it seems clear that it had not been running for at least 24 years! And of course if it was another Inn that perhaps was close to his family's home, then he may have seen that at the grand age of 8!
Perhaps there is an answer to this. Maybe the original source for the statement made by Robert Smith actually used a firm date which would make it perfectly possible for an adult Maybrick to have seen the London Coach. Maybe. But if a firm date was mentioned and could be backed up by reference to a firm source then why not give that source, the date and the context. That surely would have made the whole Smith statement much more reliable. As it stands, and as it is quoted above, it looks more as though there is an attempt to deceive rather than to illuminate. |
Christopher T George
Chief Inspector
Username: Chrisg
Post Number: 833
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 10, 2004 - 1:40 pm: | |
Hi, Peter
Nice to hear from you with your wise counsel once more. I hope you are well?
Peter, your reminder that mail would have arrived in Liverpool in 1888 by train rather than by stagecoach is naturally an excellent point, unless we are still thinking in terms of Dickens and "Quality Street." As you mention, the Liverpool-Manchester railway, was opened in 1830 as the first passenger railway in the world, and by 1888 the cities of London and Liverpool and all other British metropolises would have been long linked by rail.
Indeed, let's remember that Sickert and Maybrick theorists alike are reliant on rail travel to get their man to and from the "Smoke" to commit the Ripper's bloody deeds, aren't they? 
However, Peter, to play devil's advocate for a moment: the Angel Hotel in Dale Street, Liverpool, the former staging post for the Royal Mail, could still have been known locally as a "post house" even forty years after the mail coaches stopped coming there. Just a thought. I hold no brief for the Diary as you know, Peter, and tend to think John Omlor is correct that the Poste House in Cumberland Street is meant by the forger but for the sake of looking at all possibilities, that alternative should be mentioned.
Best regards
Chris George
Christopher T. George
North American Editor
Ripperologist
http://www.ripperologist.info
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