|
 |
 |
|
|
|
** This is an archived, static copy of the Casebook messages boards dating from 1998 to 2003. These threads cannot be replied to here. If you want to participate in our current forums please go to https://forum.casebook.org **
Archive through May 08, 2001
Casebook Message Boards: The Diary of Jack the Ripper: General Discussion:
The Maybrick Diary-Archives 2001:
Archive through May 08, 2001
Author: Mike David
Tuesday, 08 May 2001 - 06:42 am |        | Paul wrote:
"Yes, but when determining who committed the crime, does 'probability' come into play before an assessment of the evidence or after it?"
Paul,
I have to admit I find this a slightly odd question! Probability can only be assessed on the basis of data. Without data there is nothing to assess probability on.
In this case, I assessed probabilities based on the only strongly positive and negative data currently available: the fact that Barrett owned the diary; the fact that he also owned the Sphere book and the fact that he did not appear to know the physical details of forging the diary.
Mr Smith:
the possibility of Barrett owning both the Sphere book and the diary by chance alone is no more than 0.0083%, and could well be much smaller again.
This tiny chance remains possible of course, but, given these odds, it is much more reasonable to suppose that the diary and the Sphere book are causally connected rather than merely randomly associated.
In other words, that the Crashaw quote appeared in the diary in the form it did as a direct result of Barrett owning the Sphere book.
cheers
Mike |
Author: Mike David
Tuesday, 08 May 2001 - 06:48 am | | Yaz,
There is certainly a place for statistical probability in a courtroom, indeed it is used there, though as with all other expert testimony it ends up being mangled by non-scientific lawyers!.
As to your other point:
If you look at my post of yesterday you'll note I do most emphatically not apply statistics to the unmeasurable aspects of human behaviour, but to the calculable odds of certain events happening by chance. I wouldn't dream of trying to assess a person's character or personality or their individual behaviour patterns, based on probabilities - but it is perfectly easy to calculate what the statistical chance is of a given person owning a given book. In fact statistics of this kind are routinely used every day to assess probabilities, in insurance fraud and other legal cases, and indeed in the investigation of ESP and related phenomena.
John/Caz,
Thank you for very kindly explaining to me your views on probability data. I am sure you are sincere. However, I was trained as a mathematician and as a logician. I have worked on statistical probabilities for legal and insurance purposes, so I am fairly familiar with the territory and probably do not need this well meant advice, and to be frank I cannot agree with it.
The assessment of probability I have used here is perfectly appropriate for the purpose. It is the same system that would be employed forensically and for insurance purposes (to determine possible fraud for example).
In the case of the 'diary' the data is relatively sparse and easy to compute, yet telling. Even in layman's terms it is pretty clear that Barrett is more likely to have forged the diary than anyone who has never owned it, and that the Crashaw quote is very unlikely to be merely a coincidence. One's 'gut feeling' on seeing data like this is of a heavy implication of involvement on Barrett's part. And this gut feeling is supported by the simple calculations I showed here.
These calculations are not subjective, they are indeed a firm and definite indication of the probabilities in the case, which I think any objective or rational seeker after truth ought to factor in to their assessment.
If you and others choose to find reasons for not doing this, then it seems I have mistaken the purpose of this discussion.
cheers
Mike |
Author: Martin Fido
Tuesday, 08 May 2001 - 07:26 am | | Paul,
Who's condemning anyone on a gut feeling? Having some training in self-critical awareness, I know that it's there. That doesn't mean I can eliminate it. Nor does it mean I will let it lead me to categorical condemnation of anybody. It does mean I can take it into account when assessing my own and other people's arguments. And I can let people know it exists so that they can take this into account in assessing mine. Would you rather I concealed it and pretended that everything I say rests excusively on logic or probability mathematics?
Aren't there also situations when one man's experienced gut instinct or hunch is worth another's cool logic and reason? If Bernard Berenson had looked at a painting in a gallery and felt vaguely uneasy without being able to put his finger on what was wrong, a wise buyer would have set aside his own knowledge of the gallery's excellent reputation, the apparently immaculate provenance put forward, and the fact that it looked, point for point like every other Andrea del Sarto he had ever seen. When Peter Imbert followed his hunch, to the furious concern and disapproval of other customs officers and police officers at Dover, his insistence on sawing some unoffending students' car in half uncovered the cache of smuggled drugs.
I offer no follow-on condemnation of Mike or anyone else when I remind you that my gut instinct from the outset was to say that this was a pretty unsophisticated piece of work, and to disagree absolutely with the point by point analysis in which you painstakingly offer reasons for thinking the forger was sophisticated. This judgement, (Caroline), rested purely and simply on the nature of the diary, and in no way on my assessment of Mike's or Anne's abilities at that time: I didn't know anything about them except the bits of hearsay trickling back from Paul and Shirley and Feldy, none of which suggested the glazed-eyed stone-waller I first saw either on the '60 Minutes' television programme or in the run-up to Shirley's book launch (I can't at this date remember the order of events).
I'd have to add that some of the ad hominem arguments for sophistication rest on 'experts' who have always seemed to me a bit out of their depth in historical waters (David Canter) or did not commit themselves to nearly as much as has been claimed (Dr Forshaw); and others point to experts whose historical judgement has often been shown to be vitiated (Colin Wilson and Melvyn Fairclough).
Now there's a double-whammy across the supposed cosy alliance of A-Z authors and John Omlor admirers! but you're used to it after 13 years of our non-stop arguing, I trust.
But perhaps you will agree with me that we are reading a lot of postings from people who evidently are not used to recognising and discounting their own gut-feelings, and seem to become correspondingly aggrieved when confronted with logical analysis of their arguments or general dsiagreement, since they are not able to set aside the element of involuntary faith making them wrongly convinced that opposition must rest on bad faith.
(Chris, part of all that responds to part of what you said. So let me add my complete agreement that the Maybrick-Graham connection was a Feldman delusion forced on to Billy. Unlike many people, I have seen a transcript of that notorious interview, though, alas, I didn't retain it, never imagining that it would ever become an item of serious contention. I've said before and I'll say again, I've never seen such an appalling piece of interviewing. In trying to push Billy to say what he believed, Feldman got completely at cross-purposes with the old man, and there were a sequence of completely silly exchanges, until ultimately Billy blurted out his supposed connection with Florence. Nothing leading up to it suggested that it was likely to be true. Everything suggested that he was trying to find some way of getting out of the fog of confusion. Nothing indicated that he expected to surprise Anne or Feldy. My impression was that he was saying what he thought they wanted him to say and what seemed to fit with what he thought were facts. Later this became Billy's 'remarkable knowledge' that Florence was somewhere on her own in England aet 15, and so could have had her illegitimate baby behind everyone's back. (With whose help and connivance, for God's sake?) I was told that I had been shown 'a very bad transcript'. This seemed to me a pretty paltering excuse for treating an oustandingly bad interview as an important starting point for a historical line of enquiry. I have never seen a single solitary piece of evidence that even remotely suggested any family connection between the Grahams and the Maybricks. It is one of the maddest pieces of Feldmania.)
Peter - Oh, no! I never imagined that anything so nice and friendly as a golfer would threaten me at Potter's Bar. (My father had a handicap of +2 and was all-India amateur champion one year; my prep school was surrounded on three sides by a golf course, and we used to hide in the bushes and steal the balls). I thought that a specific type of human being called A MURDERER would pop out and slaughter me HORRIBLY because that was the sort of thing he LIKED doing. Holding this belief was quite compatible with having read about the completely different Michael Queripel. I couldn't claim to having much sophistication or self-awareness or critical judgement, aet 13... Paul Begg will assure you that the child is father to the man...
Robert, What a surprise, and how nice to see you here!
As a Victorian literary historian with a fairly strong second string in 17th century poetry, may I, however, differ completely from your suggestion that it is quite probable that the Maybrick family would have owned and read Herbert and Crashaw? Herbert seems just possible, though very unlikely, Crashaw pretty much out of the question. Herrick would be the standard late Victorian idea of an acceptable 17th century poet. the fact that the paterfamilias was parish clerk is a complete red herring, indicating neither especial devotion nor any taste for poetry one way or the other. Practically everyone in the middle classes went to church, withlut necessaril;y having any very deep faith, and lower- or middle-middle class gents got kudos asnd satisfaction from being churchwardens, vestrymen (= parish counsellors) and the like.
Learned Victorian parsons and the sorts of people who formed the Early English Texts Society were interested in finding, editing and publishing little-known 16th and 17th century poets (just as some post-graduate students in my day held vain hopes of finding a 'new' metaphysical poet and 'making their names' as they felt Bertram Dobell had done with Thomas Traherne in 1896). Crashaw never enjoyed 'popularity', before, during or after WWI.
And everything I know about James Maybrick suggests a man so profoundly Philistine and unaffected by religion that he wouldn't have cared for any poetry at all, let alone forced his way through a difficult piece of 17th century baroque devotional poetry.
All the best to all,
Martin F |
Author: Yazoo
Tuesday, 08 May 2001 - 08:32 am | | Hey Chris:
No, I am not hinting darkly...or otherwise.
The series of questions I asked may eliminate some or all of the rest of the questions.
But if we, non-experts in the "art" of forgery, believe that choosing a more-or-less well-known historical person as the alleged author makes the forger's job harder without necessarily making the forgery more credible, we should ask why was that choice made.
If Feldman felt...something...let's call it concern or uneasiness about Maybrick as the forger's chosen author...did he "insinuate" the Maybrick/Graham family connection to ease his own mind on this question?
Feldman's concerns need not concern us, but I think we do need to look at the pros and cons of the forger using Maybrick.
Then, as we proceed -- if we proceed -- we should also look for any data that answers the question "Why Maybrick over all other available choices for the diary's authorship?
Yaz |
Author: John Omlor
Tuesday, 08 May 2001 - 08:44 am | | Good morning all,
Several short notes to a few people.
Martin,
I would certainly not condemn your gut feeling. It is perfectly valid precisely because you explicitly told us it was a gut feeling and that you were presuming the Barrett's guilt a bit before it had been fairly established even as logically "likely" or "probable" (with the implied qualifier, Mike). It was honest and you were not trying to convince others of it's ultimate accuracy and therefore, to me it seems perfectly appropriate. When Paul then says that he would not like to see anyone condemned on such a gut feeling, that is of course also fair, but not really in argument with you, since you have not tried to convince anyone that the Barrett’s should indeed be condemned. Your two positions do not really speak to one another's as far as I can see, and therefore you really have no legitimate quarrel with one another.
Now when it comes to the diary's sophistication, we are in the murky and hazy area of critical reading and interpretation (and not at all in the area of stuff like statistical probability or even simple logic). This is a critical and aesthetic question. I find the diary rather unsophisticated in terms of its narrative construction and its plot and voice. It seems to me to be thoroughly conventional in its use of fictional structures and therefore not at all like a real account of a day to day lived life. It has all the patterns of a well-made, cheesy novel and therefore is not a serious or sophisticated attempt to accurately reproduce the less patterned and more fragmentary and more haphazard and less neatly constructed patterns and anti-patterns of a diary in which someone would write their thoughts now and again. But that is just me reading. I can't defend this position with logic (or math), all I can do is cite specific textual evidence in support of my conclusion like the in media res beginning that still gives us all we need to know or the melodramatic climax of the Kelly memories or the over-the-top single page entry that perfectly fits the last sheet. I then hope that others see this also as evidence of self-conscious physical construction and an unsophisticated and ultimately unsuccessful attempt to accurately reproduce the scattered entries of a real day-to-day life. But I am perfectly happy to admit this is only my reading supported with some of the text and certainly not a logically (or mathematically) established one. When we begin to actually read the diary, we are on different ground -- the ground of critical interpretation and aesthetic judgment. That's even less likely to be in any way decisive than investigating the evidence concerning the identity of the forgers. I look forward to spending more time on this ground though. It's fun. 
Karoline,
Thank you for reminding me that you agree with both parts of my little syllogism. It suggests that you also recognize that both parts say two different things. Now here's the next step. You do also realize that the first sentence in no way allows you to say the second with any more than your "I think" as largely unevidenced and contradictory speculation. Nothing in the first sentence implies the second.
I don't smoke.
I don't know if you smoke.
Therefore I can say, now, that it is more likely that you smoke than it is that I do.
But I cannot say, yet, that it is more likely that you smoke than it is that you do not smoke.
Agreed?
You and I didn't write the diary (I wish we had, together).
I don't know if Mike wrote the diary (even you must agree with this)
Therefore, I can say that it more likely that Mike wrote the diary than that you and I did.
But I cannot yet say that it is more likely that Mike wrote the diary than that he did not write the diary.
(i.e.: "Mike probably wrote the diary." with the implied qualifier spelled out for the other Mike)
If you feel you can say the second sentence then that must be because you think the evidence allows you to and not because of the first sentence, of course. This means we go back to the evidence. Even Mike David yesterday admitted this:
"Most of the evidence in the case so far, unfortunately is nul evidence. The presence of the text on the wp; the red diary; Barrett's confessions; none of this either supports or contradicts the probability of Barrett's involvement, and therefore it is meaningless to this analysis until further data might clarify the situation."
Add to that Mike’s inability to describe how he forged the diary and his silence about the Crashaw quote when he needed it to be believed and when he had allegedly lodged it only months before with his solicitors and I do not think you can fairly claim that our second sentence is anything like validly or logically established (and Mike’s numbers do not help you here, I'm sorry to say, since they cannot give a statistical determination concerning when Mike actually first saw the Crashaw quote and that's the only piece of evidence he is even considering.)
Robert,
An excellent and fascinating post, I thought. I do agree with Martin, as something of trained literature scholar, that the work of Crashaw would have been a very, very odd thing to be rolling around in James Maybrick's mind. Unless we can find some link in Maybrick's youth or at some other point in time, with Catholic education or an interest in translating sacred hymns or even studies in Latin where he might have come across Crashaw's reworking as an exercise in poetic translation or at least a Catholic hymn book or two around the house, this remains a point that seems, historically, almost inexplicable. But I think your thoughts on several of the other issues we are discussing here are very interesting and should give us all pause.
Mike,
You still write: "Even in layman's terms it is pretty clear that Barrett is more likely to have forged the diary than anyone who has never owned it..." But this is not the question we were discussing. I was never challenging this claim, especially since we do not have any idea yet how many people owned it. No, this was not the claim that was being challenged at all. I was challenging the claim that Mike is more likely to have forged the diary than he is not to have forged the diary, and you cannot learn anything about this claim from the one you make here and your numbers have not allowed anyone to fairly or logically make this claim yet since the only evidence you cite to support this claim is the appearance of the Crashaw quote in the diary and your numbers have not told us whether it is more likely that Mike saw it there before the Spring of 1992 or after the Spring of 1992. Consequently, you actually have no evidence of any reliable sort at all to support any claim concerning Mike's being more likely to have forged the diary than not to have actually forged the diary (and that is what "Mike probably forged the diary." means -- with the implied qualifier again spelled out for you).
Finally, Caz writes:
"My point is that none of us should ever have judged the document by the skills they see or don't see in their preferred suspect."
I think this is very true and very important. And I don't even have a preferred suspect.
Thanks all,
--John |
Author: Paul Begg
Tuesday, 08 May 2001 - 09:03 am | | Martin
Apologies for a poorly timed comment. I wasn't directing that remark at you specifically but at those who, as you have characterised it "are not used to recognising and discounting their own gut-feelings, and seem to become correspondingly aggrieved when confronted with logical analysis of their arguments or general dsiagreement, since they are not able to set aside the element of involuntary faith making them wrongly convinced that opposition must rest on bad faith.
Saying that, I imagine that hunches have often proven as wrong as right. We just tend to remember the right one and forget the ten wrong ones, but I am, of course, perfectly well aware that a thorough knowledge of and an appreciation of a subject can enable someone to make a value judgement on little more than a “gut reaction”, or as it is probably more accurately expressed, experience.
As for my use of the word 'condemned', it can be changed to 'judged' of simply to 'a conclusion'. All I was saying is that I would personally prefer to see a conclusion based on a full and proper assessment of the evidence rather than an instinctive response.
But to move on, I didn’t first mention David Canter and I didn’t mention Colin Wilson or Melvyn Fairclough at all. And my point about “sophistication” was intended to do no more than highlight the question of whether or not the forger intended his creation to pass critical examination by experts or whether it was a slipshod, obvious forgery knocked together without much or any thought (which I think it patently wasn't). This question was offered in direct response to Chris George’s suggestion that the ‘diary’ was a practical joke perpetrated by Tony Devereux on his pal Bongo the Clown. And also to highlight the question of whether anyone capable of creating a document intended to pass critical expert examination would have given it such a daft and improbable provenance.
As for the interview with Billy Graham, your reading is probably correct (the transcript is reproduced in Feldy's book), but Keith has a slightly different view based on actually having been there when it was conducted or hearing the tapes (I forget which). But was it was all part of a story Billy and Anne had pre-arranged to tell? Was Billy winging it, carried away with elaborations of his own? Was he trying in honesty to rationalise what he thought Feldy was saying with half-forgotten memories and speculations of his own? Or are you wrong and Billy, perhaps sparked by Feldy, really was trying to make sense of what he thought was the truth?
I dunno the answers. Just posing questions. |
Author: John Omlor
Tuesday, 08 May 2001 - 09:17 am | | Robert,
One other small note:
You write:
"Interest in Crashaw waned after the First World War, and only the Clarendon Press edition has been published since then. First published in 1927, a second edition appeared in 1957. It has been out of print for at least 25 years."
This is not strictly true. In 1921, T.S. Eliot published the essay "The Metaphysical Poets" which reviewed a new collection of the works of these 17th Century writers, edited by the renown scholar Herbert Grierson. Eliot's essay, along with another essay of his called "Tradition and the Individual Talent" became a staple of the new critical texts that began informing a new critical method of reading and analyzing and thinking about poetry and poets. A side effect of this was a dramatic rebirth of the popularity of 17th Century poetry. Crashaw benefited tremendously from this and by 1940 he was usually included among the major metaphysicals, along with Donne, Herbert, and Marvell. His work was almost always included in anthologies of the metaphysicals and in anthologies of British poetry in general. He is in all the Nortons, of course (though our poem is not usually included among the most anthologized). In the 1950's a huge slew of books on Crashaw, serious scholarly studies, came out. Several by the biggest names in the field at the time, including L.C. Martin, Warren, Wallerstein, Warnke and several others whose names do not start with "W." Since Eliot revived the life of the metaphysicals in the 1920's, and since the New Critics used Eliot's essays to re-canonize the metaphysicals in the 1940's and 50's, Crashaw has been routinely taught in courses on Metaphysical Poetry and in courses on Seventeenth Century Literature. Today the Crashaw industry is alive and flourishing. My university library alone has three separate collections of his complete works and two or three shelves of books strictly on Crashaw. He is in many ways radically unlike his fellow metaphysicals, because of his Latin influences and his delight in emotional extremes and violent images juxtaposed with the sacred, but he remains a canonical figure in the study of poetry and has been since at least 1940 and even as early as 1927.
He was, I believe, much less a canonical figure in the study of poetry in Victorian times. This is why Eliot gets credit for rediscovering the Metaphysicals and pronouncing their unification of sensibilities as a new and sadly no longer possible poetry for the Modern age, after the First World War. They had all but vanished in the critical study of poetry in the 19th Century, and certainly, if James Maybrick knew Crashaw it was not likely to be from a study of poetry but from a religious or linguistic interest (either from Catholic friends or interests or from Latin study and the translation of Sacred Hymns, of which our poem is one).
Just wanted to clarify some of this. You are correct when you say that the Clarendon is still the standard Oxford edition of Crashaw's Complete Works, but I believe a critical edition was produced in the early 1970s here in America as well. I am not at school at the moment, but I have seen this edition there and will check it out next time I visit the library. It does have, of course, our little poem and the original Latin poetry, and critical and explanatory textual notes as well. There have also been any number of volumes of Metaphysical Poetry collected and published over the last sixty years and I am confident that Crashaw's work is in almost all of them.
Thanks for your provocative thoughts on the diary and the issues we have been discussing here.
Yours,
--John |
Author: Yazoo
Tuesday, 08 May 2001 - 09:18 am | | Hey Caz:
I think you articulate my concerns over what little I know of the "expert" statements provided about the diary.
Unless the question(s) put to the expert was formulated in the most neutral of language, there is a possibility of at least unconscious bias in the "expert's" answers. Both pro and con diary believers may be guilty of this unconscious bias.
A simple example:
There may not seem to be a great distinction in the following two forms of what may be the same question, but the subtle (or not so subtle) distinction may be coloring the "expert's" response.
Question:
1) Is this a genuine Victorian diary?
2) Is this document a fake Victorian diary?
These examples hint at a bias toward "genuine" and "fake." There are probably other subtle shadings of potential bias if we do not know the exact form of the question(s) that the "experts" were asked to answer, and if they were not given the time or the sense of urgency to do more than "look at" the diary in light of the submitted question(s).
“I am writing to confirm that I examined the manuscript diary you brought to me recently and saw nothing in it inconsistent with it being of a late nineteenth-century date.” Not even the fact that the 'diary' isn't written in a book that would qualify as a diary?
“However from a limited look at the volume, there is nothing to indicate that the “Jack the Ripper” diary is not of the 1880s, and in my view the writing is of the same period.” Here we have an indication of the quality of the examination of the diary -- the "limited look" -- but also we might ask for a distinction between something being of the 1880s versus the diary writer's ability to make the diary appear to be "of the 1880s." What, if any distinction, can be easily demonstrated from writing of the 1890s, 1900s, 1910s, etc., let alone someone wishing to merely parrot the look of 1880s writing?
I'm not picking on the experts. I'm simply asking that we consider the questions they were asked and the amount of time they were given to form an answer -- and, in some cases, are they really qualified to offer any knowledgable opinion on the totality of the document (the book, the writing, the ink, the text, the supposed author, the author's assumed state of mind, etc.)?
You all probably know the story of the blind men and the elephant -- along with its lesson or moral -- better than I do. Does the lesson or moral apply to these responses we have from experts?
Yaz |
Author: Paul Begg
Tuesday, 08 May 2001 - 09:37 am | | Hi Mike
“Probability can only be assessed on the basis of data. Without data there is nothing to assess probability on.”
True. But what is the data?
Mike owned the ‘diary’ and the claimed statistical probability is that the forger is the person who most benefits from the forgery. But beyond the evidence upon which that statistical probability is based, there is no other evidence presented and, more importantly, no evidence specific to this case.
But having thus ‘fingered’ Mike as statistically the most probable forger, “facts” are then presented, the cumulative effect of which is the conclusion that Mike is most probably guilty.
But the ‘most probably’ is based on an interpretation of those “facts” that infers guilt. But that interpretation is not the only interpretation. Quite ‘innocent’ interpretations are possible and equally valid. If the ‘innocent’ interpretations are in fact correct then the ‘most probable’ conclusion isn’t ‘most probable’ at all.
So, is the conclusion that Mike is ‘most probably’ the forger based on a full and proper assessment of the data or is it based on a a statistical probability ‘confirmed’ by “facts” biasedly interpreted?
Turning to your specifics, that he owned the ‘diary’ is not in itself meaningful as he would have ‘owned’ it whether he forged it himself, was party to its forgery, was a wholly innocent patsy, simply the unsuspecting receiver of a gift the origins of which nobody knew, or possessed a genuine document.
That he owned the Sphere book is about the only piece of evidence we possess that actually links Mike to the ‘diary’ and I agree with you when you write: “In other words, that the Crashaw quote appeared in the diary in the form it did as a direct result of Barrett owning the Sphere book.”
But that is a very different statement from one that Mike’s ownership of the Sphere book shows that Mike forged the ‘diary’, which is the sort of statement John Omlor has been arguing against. Mike wasn’t the only person who had access to the book. Anne certainly could have seen it. So, too, could Billy Graham and Tony Devereux. Indeed, it might even be argued that the mistranscription could indicate that the passage was written by someone who had seen the quote rather than someone who had the Sphere book next to them as they wrote – that it was put in by someone other than the book owner who could have consulted the actual book.
And I think you also have to weigh Mike’s ownership of the book against his almost total ignorance of the conception and execution of the forgery. On balance, does ownership of the book outweigh the ignorance and suggest that Mike forged the ‘diary’, or is it possible that the quote was seen by someone else?
And finally, what we are talking about here is not necessarily Mike’s total uninvolvement, but the claim that Mike forged the ‘diary’, which was until recently what was being claimed. But there is a lot of goalpost shifting going on here, with people making subtle changes to what they are saying or to what others are saying, but without acknowledgement. Thus, Karoline can write above: “I think MB is more likely to have been involved in the forgery than any but one or two other people.” But the addition of that “one or two other people” actually makes one hell of a difference to what she was saying last month. Which I only mention because what Karoline was arguing is what John Omlor was arguing against. |
Author: Christopher T George
Tuesday, 08 May 2001 - 09:40 am | | Hi, all:
First of all, I would like to thank Robert Smith for contributing his valuable and well-considered thoughts. I may not agree with you that the Diary is a Victorian document or that James Maybrick is the likely author but I appreciate your interesting and well reasoned essay. I especially appreciate you pointing out that the Diary text immediately preceding the "O costly intercourse of death" lines also appears to be derived from the original Crashaw poem "Sancta Maria Dolorum." This is the first time I have heard anyone make this observation and it is I believe a most valuable contribution. I also agree that the transcript errors you cite sound as if they could have been made by someone listening to the Diary text being dictated to them from the existing Diary which fits the scenario originally posited by Mike that he dictated to Anne from the Diary for her to type the text onto the word processor. I still think we need to see a copy of the original transcript, however, to see what other deductions are possible. Possibly either Paul or Keith will find their copy in time for the Bournemouth convention for those interested to peruse it against the facsimile of the Diary or even the Diary itself?
Second, Martin, I am glad you agree with me that the idea of a family connection to Florence Maybrick was planted in Billy Graham's mind by Paul Feldman due to his interviewing technique. I was interested that you saw a transcript of the interview and that this was apparent to you. I have only read the version of the interview in Feldman's 1997 Virgin hardback, but have to agree as to the absurdity of the interview and that an almost reluctant Billy Graham acceded to Feldy's suggestion that there could have been a connection. I am pleased that you also think that Maybrick's being familiar with the poetry of the Catholic metaphysical poet Richard Crashaw is unlikely even given his family connection to Liverpool's Church of England (i.e., Protestant) St. Peter's Church, thus refuting Robert Smith's notion that the cotton merchant could have been an afficianado of Crashaw's poetry.
Third, Paul, I think it is reasonable to think that if there was a real connection between Billy Graham and Florie Maybrick, he may have mentioned the connection prior to encountering Feldman. He apparently felt strongly enough to call Florie a "cow" for her promiscuity--or was he only mirroring a Liverpool oral tradition about Mrs. Maybrick that any Liverpudlian of his generation might have exhibited? Also what about the alleged visits to the grave of Mr. Finn, the supposed father of Florie's illegitimate child? Is there any evidence that these really took place before Feldman's arrival on the scene, or is the story of the grave visits a concoction to support the (in my opinion) Feldman-manufactured family connection?
Fourth and last, I have not the faintest idea who forged the Diary, suspicion against the Barretts and (possibly) Gerrard Kane notwithstanding, but such things as the echo of the police list of Eddowes' belongings "one tin match box empty" only published in 1987 would argue that it is a forgery of 1987 or later. If the forgery was done as early as 1987 or 1988, before the experts began to examine the Diary in 1992, I should think those four to five years could have been long enough for the ink to establish itself on the pages and look established enough to seem old to an expert such as Dr. Nicholas Eastaugh.
Best regards
Chris George |
Author: Paul Begg
Tuesday, 08 May 2001 - 09:50 am | | Hi Yaz
You are beginning to ask questions about how the investigation was conducted, recognising in a partail way how injurious the polarisation into pro- and anti- camps was to the way in which questions were asked and the answers interpreted, and begining to see (or at least publicly articulate) things that we should try to establish in the event that similar documents enter the commercial domain in the future. That's brilliant!
Also, the point I made about those experts is that nothing leapt out at them, such as the lack of bronzing over which a palava has been made in certain quarters. They, of course, were not asked for in depth studies, just a broad general opinion on which it could be decided that further investigation might or might not be justified.
All I am trying to do is encourage an analysis of the 'diary', not from its storyline, but to determine how much knowledge the author had about what experts would look for and the effort he took to produce a document intended to fool them. As Caz has observed, at times the 'diary' seems to be a book for Everyman, all things at all times. |
Author: Paul Begg
Tuesday, 08 May 2001 - 10:02 am | | Hi Chris
If the forgery was done as early as 1987 or 1988, before the experts began to examine the Diary in 1992, I should think those four to five years could have been long enough for the ink to establish itself on the pages and look established enough to seem old to an expert such as Dr. Nicholas Eastaugh.
Mike apparently obtained his copy of the Sphere book at some point after the Hillsborough disaster on 15 April 1989, the implications to your '87/'88 suggestion are obvious. How well-established the ink looked in June 1992 also has implications for the hypothesis that the 'diary' was only penned shortly before it was taken to Doreen Montgomery, especially for the idea that Mike and Co., went dashing hither and thither to find something suitable to write in after the little maroon diary proved unsuitable.
Cheers.
And thanks for the book, being read (and enjoyed)right now! |
Author: John Omlor
Tuesday, 08 May 2001 - 10:09 am | | Hi all,
One small timing point that I had forgotten, but that I learned again from reading Robert Smith's excellent post.
Mike Barrett first called the literary agent's (Doreen's office) to see about bringing over the diary over two weeks before he'd even gotten the red diary. Mike received the little red diary on March 26th. Mike had already called Doreen's about bringing the real, finished diary to her offices, two weeks earlier on March 9th. And yes, the little red diary was ordered using Mike's real name and was delivered quite traceably to his own home address.
And Mike took the diary to Doreen's on April 13th (only two and half weeks after the red diary had arrived at his house) -- and he had already talked to Doreen about bringing it in two weeks before getting the red dairy.
And now we are just supposed to assume that he bought the little red diary intending to use it in a criminal fraud only two and half weeks after receiving it using his own real name and at his own home address? Even though he had already called an agent's two weeks before he even had the red diary and asked if he could bring the diary over? THIS is the "most likely scenario?"
Here's a simple question that might save us all a lot of time:
When Mike first talked to Doreen on March 9th, did he happen to tell her what the diary looked like? If he did, then we can be sure that he was holding the scrapbook diary as a finished product by March 9th (two weeks before he even received any red diary). And that he had already planned to take this diary to Doreen's only a month later. What would be the most likely scenario for the red diary purchase two weeks after this call, if this was the case? Not what are all the possible scenarios? What do people really still believe is the "most likely" one? What does the evidence here actually, objectively tell us?
Interesting.
--John
PS: Worth remembering:
"The red diary for the year 1891 was sent to Mike at Goldie Street on 26th March 1992. All very traceable – indeed Anne did the tracing of the transaction and the payment freely and openly, and handed the red diary over to Keith Skinner. Mike phoned the agent, Doreen Montgomery, about the diary on 9th March 1992, and on 13th April 1992 took it to her in London." |
Author: Yazoo
Tuesday, 08 May 2001 - 10:40 am | | Hey Paul:
I think we are following the same lines of inquiry. At least, I am unaware of any disagreement between us on approach, methods, or the areas we need to look at first.
My recent posts have been to offer for consideration the 'diary' as a thing: 1) a book (its condition, characteristics, etc.), 2) allegedly written by Jack the Ripper (assumedly the most important point for the forger), 3) who also happens to be James Maybrick (a curious specificity in the choice of authorship that was intentionally rather than haphazardly or accidently made by the forger).
What can these three areas tell us about the forgery?
If we can state we know nothing right now and cannot learn anything right now, then move on, by all means.
However, no one should dismiss these areas because one or more people have already offered opinions in these matters and counter-opinions have been formed/argued/beaten-into-the-ground on those opinions.
Nor should we consider these areas as "closed" to discussion if or when new data or facts, or even basic (hopefully unbiased) questions, have been offered.
Can we work together to formulate data and facts, rather than pile opinions on top of opinions?
To All:
I also want it known that if I remain in this discussion it is with the complete understanding -- by all parties, sides, camps, what-have-you -- that I don't want to be in any camp or on any side. My questions and comments and suggestions should not be interpreted as favoring/attacking one side or another; nor will I ever make personal attacks upon any individual as a person.
Proffered thoughts, questions, ideas, assumptions can and should be scrutinized and challenged -- my own as well as anybody else's (no immunity granted for intellectual properties).
At this moment, I can't see that we have very much information on which I would need to decide that anything is more likely/probable/true or false -- except the general consensus that the diary is a forgery.
If even that consensus can be reasonably challenged, however uncomfortable or angry it makes us, as long as the challenge is based on sound reasoning, we would all be negligent not to address the challenge (not the person making the challenge) with equally sound reasoning.
Last, however aggravating it may be to anyone who already somehow "knows" both my questions and the answers (or my intent on offering either), I, personally, cannot proceed until what is supposedly "known" has been reviewed, not in the light of to what, to whom, or where this information points, but to eliminate unconscious bias, to compare initial (maybe hurried) opinions with (any?) new information that has arisen over time, etc.
The existing information should be reviewed for both its quality and to show if (and in what areas) there are gaps that need to be filled with more data instead of assumptions/probabilities/opinions.
From what I see, to the best of our individual abilities, we are all striving towards knowledge, understanding...the truth, if you prefer.
Yaz |
Author: Paul Begg
Tuesday, 08 May 2001 - 10:43 am | | | Almost ploughing the same furrow, Yaz! |
Author: Christopher T George
Tuesday, 08 May 2001 - 10:45 am | | Hi, Yaz:
A well-written post. Yes, I believe all of us here are striving towards knowledge, understanding, and truth. Let it remain so.
Best regards
Chris |
Author: John Omlor
Tuesday, 08 May 2001 - 10:50 am | | Hi All,
For the sake of accuracy...
I was correct when I mentioned to Robert that I thought there had in fact been a Complete Works of Crashaw collected and edited since the Oxford Clarendon that was first released in 1927 and then again in 1957.
My library has:
The Complete Poetry of Richard Crashaw.
Edited, with an introd. and notes, by George Walton Williams.
Edition:
[1st ed.]
Published:
Garden City, N.Y., Anchor Books, 1970.
Description:
xxvi, 707 p. illus. 21 cm.
Includes:
English, Latin, Italian, and Greek.
Includes bibliographical references.
I believe this is a Norton book.
Also, as a part of the active teaching of Crashaw in the past fifty years, we also of course, now finally have a concordance, although it came a little late onto the scene:
A Concordance to the English poetry of Richard Crashaw by Robert M. Cooper, in 1980.
Finally, I should point out that the 1970 Complete Works, edited for Norton by Walton Williams, is apparently now also sadly out of print. Although a look at the annotated bibliographic guide to work on Crashaw published in the early nineties shows a tremendous amount of both scholarly books and anthologies including Crashaw in them that have come and gone sine Eliot's "rediscovery" of the Metaphysicals and their re-canonization by the post-Eliot New Critics, beginning in the late 20's and peaking in the early and mid '60's.
That's the facts, Jack,
--John |
Author: John Omlor
Tuesday, 08 May 2001 - 10:53 am | | Hi Yaz,
That all sounds good to me.
--John |
Author: John Omlor
Tuesday, 08 May 2001 - 11:20 am | | Hi Chris,
Way back on March 2nd, of this year I posted, all in good fun, a little pop-Freud psychology concerning the text surrounding the Crashaw quote.
I wrote this while slightly laughing:
"In the diary, right after the 'Oh costly intercourse of death' line, the writer writes,
'Banish the thoughts banish them banish them ha ha ha,
look towards the sensible brother'
"Now, (big smile here) one could argue that Maybrick is caught up in memories of his hideous acts when, in the midst of his horrific reverie, he thinks of the lines from Crashaw. The lines, of course, come from The Mother of All Sorrows and Maybrick begins to think about his own mother, who is, of course, at the center of the unconscious reason for his murderous reaction to Florrie's infidelity. This act of maternal memory threatens to bring Maybrick's unconscious motives too close to the surface of his conscious mind and, feeling the pressure, he cries out to himself to 'Banish the thoughts banish them banish them.' As a way of escaping these unpleasant associations he deliberately thinks of another member of his family, thereby displacing his thoughts of his mother into safe thoughts of his brother ('look towards the sensible brother'), thinking this will give him some relief."
I was kidding at the time (and still am), but now, in light of reading Robert's remarks surrounding the quote, I must point out that this reading is no less likely or significant than his noticing images of "blood" and "wounds" and "eyes" in the surrounding text (which would very likely have been there in any case what with this being a Ripper diary and all, and what with Crashaw always loving to combine images of physical violence and the crucifixion and suffering of Jesus).
And as for Robert's "psycho-sexual" reading:
"In the poem, the woman, whose “eyes bleed Tears” is Jesus’s holy mother, Mary. At the moment in the diary where the quote appears, the writer has just completed his graphic description of the “very best” murder, that of another Mary, the only Ripper victim to be named in the diary. And throughout the diarist’s poem following the murder of Mary Kelly are the repeated references to a very different mother, “the whoring mother”, Florence Maybrick."
This "psycho-sexual" reading is creative, I agree, but so little else in the diary shows Maybrick turning to literature when faced with extreme psychological or sexual conflicts or crises, that it seems just as unlikely an account of the author's thoughts or intentions as my own comical one offered above. In fact, I think I'd now claim that mine might even seem more possible and likely to be accurate, since there are at least some actual pyschoanalytic concepts within and behind it (no pun intended). 
The problem is that nowhere else in the text does Maybrick demonstrate any tendency whatsoever to turn towards literature or sacred poetry or even religious thoughts when faced with a psychological or sexual crisis or particularly horrific memories. Consequently, we can use no other part of this text in support of the likelihood of this particular reading and interpretation and therefore it does not finally have very much strength or credibility, I am afraid. After all, we judge the soundness and usefulness of critical readings on how close and detailed and careful they are and how much of the text the reader is able to use in support of his or her interpretation. Here we can only find one short line and some surrounding ones. This might be a problem.
All the best,
--John |
Author: Mike David
Tuesday, 08 May 2001 - 12:13 pm | | Paul, I am afraid once again your reply to me makes me unsure whether I am talking to an objective investigator or a cousel for the defence!
You write:
"Mike owned the ‘diary’ and the claimed statistical probability is that the forger is the person who most benefits from the forgery."
Actually, cui bono was not the basis of any of my deduction. I suggest you read a little more carefully! I began from the first premise that those who could be shown to have owned (not profited from) the diary were per se more likely to have forged it than those who could not be shown to have owned it.
Let me say before you raise any objection that I began with this premise specifically because it has been generally agreed upon by everyone - including you and John.
"But having thus ‘fingered’ Mike as statistically the most probable forger, “facts” are then presented, the cumulative effect of which is the conclusion that Mike is most probably guilty."
The facts I have used are - facts. I see no need for the quotation marks, whatever they are intended to imply.
"But that interpretation is not the only interpretation. Quite ‘innocent’ interpretations are possible and equally valid."
If by "equally valid" you mean equally probable - then to put it simply, you are wrong, as I have already demonstrated. There is only a fraction of one per cent chance that Barrett owned the Sphere book "innocently".
"If the ‘innocent’ interpretations are in fact correct then the ‘most probable’ conclusion isn’t ‘most probable’ at all."
What an extraordinary and whimsical claim! A thing is only improbable - if it doesn't happen. And anything that happens must have been probable all along!
My dear fellow - If a horse has a 100 - 1 chance of winning a race - and it does win, that doesn't mean it was likely to have done so all along, does it? It means, the horse had one chance in a hundred of winning, and this just happened to be the time when that one chance came up.
You would still lose a lot of money if you bet on 100 - 1 odds most of the time, becaue the horse will always lose more than it wins.
Now, the odds of Barrett owning the Sphere book by chance are 12000 - 1!
Of course that one chance may come up. It may turn out that against all odds Barrett did own the Sphere book by sheer blind coincidence. But I would not advise you to put too much faith or money on that eventuality coming to pass.
" I agree with you when you write: “In other words, that the Crashaw quote appeared in the diary in the form it did as a direct result of Barrett owning the Sphere book.”"
But that is a very different statement from one that Mike’s ownership of the Sphere book shows that Mike forged the ‘diary’.
The fact that Barrett ever owned the diary gives him a current probability of 99.9999997% of having been involved in creating it.
There is also a 99.9917% probability of the Sphere book having been used as a source book by the forgers.
It remains possible that someone else borrowed Barrett's book and later gave him the diary. But absent any evidence to the contrary, normal legal procedures would assume that the man who owns both book and diary is the most likely person to have used one to produce the other.
Presumably you concede this is rational? that the man with the body under his floor boards is the most likely murderer? that the man with the Sphere book and the diary is the most likely person to have taken the Crashaw quote out of the first and put it into the second?
cheers
Mike |
Author: Yazoo
Tuesday, 08 May 2001 - 12:13 pm | | A note to anyone who is wary or suspicious of the approach to this forgery that has been proposed:
If you are disheartened or believe this is an exercise that will unconsciously or deliberately obscure the transparent guilt of anyone, I see no reason for this feeling.
Why?
1) If this loose, informal investigation ever produces results, the results would (perhaps must) be presented to the accused.
2) Past attempts to gather more data or to confront a discrepancy in the data by questioning those involved with the diary has produced at least temporary confusion in the inquirers, bringing the investigation or questioning to a sudden halt.
3) The person confronted has offered alternate explanations of the data that have either surprised the questioners or, since they lacked data to counter these unexpected alternatives, have stopped the process.
4) Only by anticipating as best we can any alternative explanations of the data can the questioners immediately counter the accused's explanations.
5) If we fail to anticipate, the immediate pressure on the accused is relieved.
6) The questioners meanwhile have revealed both the strengths and weaknesses of their arguments while the accused has actually revealed little if anything.
7) Having escaped the immediate pressure of questioning, and with the knowledge that they've gained, they can and probably will have sufficient time to create more obfuscation if they consent to another questioning.
8) And every attempt to prove our suspicion of guilt that fails, at the very least, puts us in a bad light (we could be seen as "persecuting" X, Y, or Z), and may seriously harm our credibility as accusers.
9) Only a sustained questioning of the accused that builds pressure based on facts, with data at hand to thwart the accused's alternative explanations, will we be able to show, either by the accused's ultimate inability to answer or, not improbable, a sensible confession/explanation of the forgery scheme, that the accused is guilty of what we charge.
Have patience. Enter your thoughts in the form of questions that can be answered by data -- either immediately or later, as the process unfolds and new data is added. You may end up with a case built on something more substantial than probabilities, likelihoods, speculations, or theories -- from which the guilty cannot escape once you are ready to confront them.
Yaz |
Author: Karoline L
Tuesday, 08 May 2001 - 12:20 pm | | John writes:
"The problem is that nowhere else in the text does Maybrick demonstrate any tendency whatsoever to turn towards literature ... "
Maybrick of course doesn't demonstrate any tendencies anywhere in the text - because Maybrick didn't write it.
K |
Author: John Omlor
Tuesday, 08 May 2001 - 12:31 pm | | Karoline,
I agree! Hurrah!
I was of course responding to Robert Smith's reading of the text and demonstrating the problems with it, even assuming his own premise that Maybrick might have written it. I was challenging his conclusion that the textual evidence suggests that Maybrick (or any unamed author) seemed to know the whole Crashaw poem and not just the two lines that appeared. I do not think the text can reliably be said to actually suggest this, for reasons I have given clearly above.
But thank you for your close reading.
As always, I remain,
--John |
Author: John Omlor
Tuesday, 08 May 2001 - 12:32 pm | | Mike,
One question.
What does the following sentence mean?
"Mike is probably a forger."
(and remember, it has an implied qualifier and therefore is not logically meaningless)
Again,
"Mike is probably a forger."
What does this sentence mean?
--John |
Author: John Omlor
Tuesday, 08 May 2001 - 12:40 pm | | Mike,
You continue, despite Martin's clear and decisive demonstration of the flaw in your reasoning (which you have noticeably never addressed), to write:
"The fact that Barrett ever owned the diary gives him a current probability of 99.9999997% of having been involved in creating it."
One question only:
How many other people might have once owned the diary?
Not how many others do we know about so far, since that tells us nothing we can use in determining likelihood -- there may obviously have been owners of this diary of which we are still completely unaware.
So being objective, and using only what we know as facts and can say for sure:
Please read this question carefully.
Logically and statistically and potentially speaking:
How many other people might have once owned this diary?
--John
PS: So that's a total of two questions, now.
1.) What does this sentence mean: "Mike is probably a forger."
2.) How many other people might have once owned this diary?
If you could answer those two questions specifically, I would be grateful. |
Author: Paul Begg
Tuesday, 08 May 2001 - 12:44 pm | | Hi Mike
Have you started a distinct and separate argument with John Omlor or are you still debating his logic in general? I ask because I wasn't taking issue with the few facts you produced, but with what others such as Karoline have said, against which John Omlor was arguing. Hence it is their statistical probability and their facts, not yours, unless you share theirs. By facts, therefore, I was not referring exclusively to the ownership of the Sphere book. I had hoped that this was clear from my then specific comment on and agreement with you about the Sphere book.
As for my extraordinary and whimsical claim, why don’t you simply forget math and properly assess the source material? Or are you basing your conclusions wholly and solely on the Crashaw quote? As far as that is concerned,
“ the man with the body under his floor boards is the most likely murderer?
Well, that really rather depends on how many people had an opportunity to put he body under the floorboards doesn’t it? It’s the monkey/fish argument. Ditto the Crashaw quote. On top of which, what exactly are you arguing - that Mike composed the 'diary' and penned it? That he just composed the diary? That he did no more than provide the quote? |
Author: Christopher T George
Tuesday, 08 May 2001 - 12:58 pm | | Hi, John:
I agree that overall the writer of the Diary does not "demonstrate any tendency whatsoever to turn towards literature ... " I say overall because the Crashaw quote is in there and you yourself have remarked that you can't explain how in came to be in there or why it is there.
I would say that every one of the bits of pastiche in the Diary are being used for a purpose, be they the Crashaw lines, the cadges off the Dear Boss and Lusk letters, the Punch cartoon from September 1888, "TURN ROUND THREE TIMES, AND CATCH WHOM YOU MAY", etc., are all milked for their meaning and contributions to the rather melodramatic Maybrick story. So while the writer does not adeptly use literary motifs throughout, I don't think it is unreasonable to think that, in addition to the known Crashaw quote, parts of the surrounding text could be from Crashaw too. In this respect, I think Robert Smith may be correct that the Diary wording preceding the quote could be derived from or, rather, crudely "inspired by" the poem.
Moreover, you may in fact be right, although you suggested it in fun, when you earlier wrote:
"In the diary, right after the 'Oh costly intercourse of death' line, the writer writes,
'Banish the thoughts banish them banish them ha ha ha,
look towards the sensible brother'
"Now, (big smile here) one could argue that Maybrick is caught up in memories of his hideous acts when, in the midst of his horrific reverie, he thinks of the lines from Crashaw. The lines, of course, come from The Mother of All Sorrows and Maybrick begins to think about his own mother,
who is, of course, at the center of the unconscious reason for his murderous reaction to Florrie's infidelity. This act of maternal memory
threatens to bring Maybrick's unconscious motives too close to the surface of his conscious mind and, feeling the pressure, he cries out to himself to 'Banish the thoughts banish them banish them.' As a way of escaping these unpleasant associations he deliberately thinks of another member of his family, thereby displacing his thoughts of his mother into safe thoughts of his brother ('look towards the sensible brother'), thinking this will give him some relief."
What is one of the biggest motifs in the Diary but "Maybrick's" hero-worship/jealousy of his brother? And who is he trying to destroy but the "whoring mother"? The crude oedipal-like theme here is, I think, most definitely meant, and most probably (and conveniently) cadged from Crashaw like the other "steals" from the actual Ripper or Maybrick cases or from media references that bolster the story. I believe both you (if unwittingly at first!!!) and Robert Smith have made some important points about this passage in the Diary.
With best regards
Chris George |
Author: John Omlor
Tuesday, 08 May 2001 - 01:15 pm | | Hi Paul,
See, the problem here with Mike's use of probability, I now suspect, is that he is beginning his analysis assuming that Mike Barrett is the only one who ever owned this diary (or that Mike is one of a very few people who might have once owned this diary).
Of course, this is precisely what we do not know and what we are investigating -- who else might have once owned this diary.
So you cannot begin an analysis assuming that no one else ever owned the diary if you are trying to determine who else might have once owned the diary. If you do, of course your numbers are going to come up heavily and overwhelmingly favoring Mike as the forger -- since you are assuming that he is the only one who ever owned the book, and this is actually the one thing we must not assume since it is after all precisely what we are supposed to be investigating.
Mike David's probability numbers, therefore, become worthless, since he has failed to account for how many other people might have once owned this book -- and the numbers cannot account for that, because we do not know how many other people might have once owned this book! We don't know where or when or by whom it was written and therefore we have no idea how many other people might have once owned it.
Also, all he has shown us so far is that it is more likely that Mike forged it than it is that someone who never owned the book forged it. This is true. It is also pointless, because someone who never owned the book could not have forged it. Duuh.
Now, if he could show us that it is more likely that Mike forged the book than it is that he did not (Karoline and Peter's original claim) -- that would be something useful.
But he can't. Because he only accepts one piece of evidence as even suggesting this -- the Crashaw quote -- and his numbers cannot determine whether it is more likely that Mike saw the Crashaw quote in the Sphere volume before Spring of '92 or after Spring of '92.
Everything else concerning the case, the confessions, the transcript, Kane, the red diary, everything, he has already admitted is nul evidence and does not speak either way to the probability of Mike's complicity or non-complicity.
So you see, the numbers tell us very little, finally and we are back to looking at the evidence and what it objectively tells us. Like the above detailed timing of the diary purchase for instance.
Bye for now,
--John |
Author: Christopher T George
Tuesday, 08 May 2001 - 01:22 pm | | Hi, John:
I entirely agree with you about the flaw in Mike David's probability estimates. There is too much missing information for such estimates to have meaning. Of course, you are entirely correct that we do not know whether the Barretts were the only owners of the Diary, or if, as Paul has conjectured, neither of them knew much about it, let alone were integral in its forgery.
Chris George |
Author: Paul Begg
Tuesday, 08 May 2001 - 01:28 pm | | Hi John
Well, history is about seeing what the evidnce objectively tells us and not mathematical probabilities. I'm intrigued to know, though, what Mike is actually saying: is it that Mike actually conceived, composed and penned the 'diary' himself? That he conceived and composed it? Just conceived it? Just composed it? Just contributed the Crashaw quote? What? And if Mike actually didn't pen it himself, then somebody else was involved, namely the pen person, so why is Mike still more likely to have forged the 'diary' than the pen person? Or isn't there a pen person? And... |
Author: John Omlor
Tuesday, 08 May 2001 - 02:09 pm | | Hi Chris,
Yes, there is no question that there is some crude Oedipal stuff throughout the diary. But it is so obvious -- unlike authentic confessions in a real diary, which, assuming the writer would not have been able to consciously and explicitly detail his own complexes (and this, after all, is the nature of the unconscious and of Oedipal repression and desire), would not have had the conflicts so completely spelled out and on the surface as a created work of fiction might. We are supposed to see these conflicts in the stereotypical way they are manifested -- we do not have to "discover" them the way we might in a real diary (or even in a good or sophisticated post-Freudian novel, for instance). I mean, really... Kafka's fiction seems to be a more likely and believable account and confession of authentic psychological crises than Maybrick's allegedly real "diary." Or so it seems to me.
But I have to pin you down on the Crashaw poem and its clear influence or the simply coincidental similar images surrounding it.
Let's go back to Robert's original analysis.
He writes this:
[L]ook at the two lines in the poem, which immediately precede the one and half lines quoted in the diary.
“While with a faithfull, mutuall floud
Her eyes bleed Tears, his wounds weep Blood.”
Then read what immediately precedes the quote in the diary.
“I want to boil boil boil, see if their eyes pop. I need more thrills, I will go on, I will go on. nothing will stop me nothing. Cut Sir Jim cut. Cut deep deep deep.”
And in the paragraph before that, we get:
“I keep seeing blood pouring from the bitches”.
That is some coincidence of language and imagery: in the poem there is a “floud” of blood from wounds; in these few lines in the diary, we have “blood pouring” from wounds. In the poem, the eyes “bleed Tears”; in the diary the eyes “pop”.
So our language that is said to indicate knowledge of the rest of the Crashaw poem in the diary is
1.) "a flood" of blood in Crashaw, and "blood pouring from wounds" in the diary
2.) "eyes bleeding tears" in Crashaw, and "eyes popping" in the diary
Now Chris, the chances are that in a diary where James Maybrick is allegedly recounting his adventures as Jack the Ripper, we are going to get blood pouring from wounds and some mention of eyes.
In almost any sacred Crashaw poem the writer might have cited we are going to get several images of blood and wounds (the blood and the wounds of Christ) and copious weeping, especially by Mary, with whom Crashaw had something of an obsession.
So the odds are that Robert would have been able to offer a similar reading (scant and quick and undetailed as it is) about any juxtaposition of Crashaw sacred verse and Ripper memories. It would not imply that the writer knew the rest of the Crashaw poem at all.
Add to that the fact that nowhere else does the writer have Maybrick think in terms of literature or sacred poetry and the fact that nothing else in the text supports the claim that the writer had read the rest of the Crashaw poem rather than just the one line cited by Ricks, and we still don't know anything about whether the lines surrounding the text even suggest the lines elsewhere in the poem or not.
This is why I did not think Robert's little literary critical reading was very strong or convincing. It was certainly not as significant or convincing, I think, as several other more factual and detailed pieces of information in his very valuable and important post.
But that's just my reading and I am just having fun at the moment.
Be cool, 
--John |
Author: Mike David
Tuesday, 08 May 2001 - 05:59 pm | | "Mike David's probability numbers, therefore, become worthless, since he has failed to account for how many other people might have once owned this book -- and the numbers cannot account for that, because we do not know how many other people might have once owned this book"
I'm afraid this observation is based on a really serious misapprehension of the way deductive reasoning is employed in all branches of science and historical research the world over.
Let me try and take you all through the process involved here:
There is at the present time solid proof for only two people having ever owned the diary - that is Mike Barrett and Anne Graham.
If I'd wanted to be rigorous I would have based my calculations on these two alone, but in order to be generous I factored in the two other people who have been claimed as owners of the diary and based my deductions on this combined figure.
It is a pure logical nonsense to claim that the probability assessment thus arrived at doesn't mean anything since it may later turn out one day that other people we presently know nothing about also owned the diary.
Of course it may. It is always possible for new data to emerge that radically changes the case, and when it does, of course one factors it into the assessment.
And if such new data ever emerges in this case, then all the current probabilities will inevitably change.
If it ever turns out that Devereux never owned the diary, or Graham never owned it, then that will alter the equation fuerther in favour of Barrett's involvement.
Likewise if it ever becomes known that others we presently know nothing about also owned it, or if the thing is ever shown to be too old to have been created by any of these four people, then these probability estimates of mine will become valueless -
But as yet it hasn' happened. At the moment there is no piece of evidence anywhere to even hint that anyone but those four people ever owned the diary, and until there is, we are left with these four people and no one else - and the calculations I presented remain the best assessment of probabilities based on data currently available.
It would be eccentric to say the least to dismiss it all on the assumption that tomorrow or next year or next century there may arise some new evidence that changes everything.
And on a different note - it really is quite wrong to say we don't know enough to make such estimates, which are of the very simplest kind.
All we need to know in order to estimate the probability of the Sphere book belonging to Barrett by chance is the number of copies of this book printed and the approximate population of the UK at the time.
This gives us the figure of an 0.0083% chance that Barrett owned the book by coincidence. If instead of a relatively obscure work like the Sphere book, it was - say - the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, then the figure would be much lower.
Basically what you are seeing is a mathematical representation of what we all recognise as "common sense" reasoning. Indeed the reason it's so common and so sensible is because it's based on our own instinctive grasp of the mathematics of probability.
But I do recognise that this is not information most of you want to hear. So I won't trouble you with it again.
cheers
Mike |
Author: John Omlor
Tuesday, 08 May 2001 - 06:08 pm | | Mike,
Please answer these two questions:
1.) What does this sentence mean: "Mike is probably a forger."
2.) How many other people might have once owned this diary?
Thanks,
--John |
Author: John Omlor
Tuesday, 08 May 2001 - 06:42 pm | | Dear Mike,
So you yourself now admit that your probability statistics are only meaningful and applicable if Mike and Anne and perhaps one or two other people you know about are the only ones that have ever owned this book.
Well, thanks.
However, since what we are actually trying to determine here is who might have once owned this book, and how many people have at one time or another owned this book, that doesn't really help us very much.
We don't know when this book was written or where or by whom, and now you're telling us that only Mike and Anne and one or two other people could have ever owned it or else your figures become no longer accurate or useful?
Well, that certainly makes things easier.
You see, we are looking for evidence that someone might be the forger (that is, that they once owned this book).
Now you tell us that so far we only know that Mike and Anne owned this book.
Yup. That's right.
So therefore they are more likely to be the forgers than others who did not own this book.
Yup, right again. Of course, if someone did not own this book, then there is no way they could have forged this book. Duuh (again).
What Peter and Karoline have claimed is that it is more likely that Mike forged this diary than it is that he did not. This has nothing to do with whether it is more likely that Mike forged the diary than others who never owned the book and therefore could not have forged the diary, especially since we do not know who else has owned this book and that is precisely what we are trying to discover, after all.
So what you have told us (that it is more likely that Mike forged this book than it is that someone who never owned this book did) thus becomes irrelevant. Besides, how could someone "who never owned this book" have forged it anyway. What's the point?
Mike, someone who never owned this book could not have forged it, of course.
 So you are, after all this, telling us that it is more likely that someone who owned this book forged it than it is that someone who never owned it forged it. Well yeah, since the latter is impossible, I suppose the former is more likely.
Now Mike, you tell us that only Anne or Mike (and maybe one or two others) might have owned this book and that this is the starting point for your analysis. If this turns out not to be true, your numbers become no longer accurate or useful.
Unfortunately, we are all engaged in discussing precisely whether or not only Anne and Mike owned this book or whether others did before them. Since you already assumed the answer to this one, your analysis does not help us determine whether someone else owned this book before Mike or Anne and therefore forged it one little bit.
You have assumed the conclusion to our investigation before it has even begun.
Your reasoning becomes: If we assume that only Mike and Anne (and maybe one or two others we know about) ever owned this diary, then we can conclude that Mike or Anne (and maybe one or two others we know about) forged this diary.
Brilliant!
I would have never thought of that.
You are saying:
If we assume that only these people ever owned this book, then some of these people must have forged this book.
Insight! Of course. This helps.
If only four people ever saw this book before 1992, then only four could have possibly written it.
No!
Mike, What good is that?
----John |
Author: Mike David
Tuesday, 08 May 2001 - 06:46 pm | | John,
1. Without a qualifier the sentence means nothing in logical terms, as I've informed you before, and I am not clear what the purpose is of asking me again!
2. none. There is currently no evidence at all that any but four people ever owned the diary.
If you mean "how many people can be proved not to have owned it?" then the answer again is - none.
That is to say, no one who was alive at the time can be positivelty proved not have owned the diary, because it is impossible to prove a negative.
In that sense there are approx. 60,000000 "possible" owners in the UK alone.
But this is evidentially meaningless, as you will find out if you ask any historian, policeman, lawyer or scientist you can think of.
It's the same as saying that anyone who was alive and adult on November 22 1963 could have been on the Grassy Knoll and taken a shot at Kennedy.
It's technically true, but valueless. What we need is some kind of positive evidence to show who was on the knoll not who can't be proved not to have been there.
The evidence currently shows only four people have any probability at all of ever having owned the diary. This is a simple fact, and I have produced elementary statistics based on that fact.
it's not my fault if you find these realities difficult to accept. And there is nothing I can do if you just point blank refuse to accept them.
cheers
Mike |
Author: John Omlor
Tuesday, 08 May 2001 - 07:03 pm | | Mike
You are deliberately not reading.
You actually still insist:
"1. Without a qualifier the sentence means nothing in logical terms, as I've informed you before, and I am not clear what the purpose is of asking me again!"
But it has a qualifier, Mike. I have demonstrated this for you three separate and painful times. There is an implied qualifier.
"Mike is probably a forger." means "It is more probable that Mike forged this diary than that he did not."
"Mike is probably a child molester." has an implied qualifier. It means "It is more likely that Mike is a child molester than that he is not."
Why do you refuse to accept this? It is simple logic. You are trained in this stuff.
Do you see the implied qualifier in the sentence "Mike is probably a forger?" It is "Mike is more likely to be a forger than he is not to be a forger."
That is your qualifier.
Consider: Someone says to you "You're probably right."
People say this sentence every day. It has logical meaning. It has logical meaning because it has an implied qualifier.
"You're probably right."
This means "It is more likely that you are right than that you are not right."
Elementary stuff, here, Mike.
It is English. We both speak it. People say "A is probably B." every day and this is what they mean. That you refuse to admit this simple fact is bizarre.
--John |
Author: John Omlor
Tuesday, 08 May 2001 - 07:08 pm | | Now Mike admittedly writes:
"The evidence currently shows only four people have any probability at all of ever having owned the diary. This is a simple fact, and I have produced elementary statistics based on that fact."
Attention, everyone:
Mike's conclusion for us all is:
If only four people ever owned this diary, then at least one of these four must have written it.
Thank you very much, Mike.
I humbly accept this profound truth.
--John |
Author: Karoline L
Tuesday, 08 May 2001 - 07:16 pm | | John,
do you not realise that your entire argument is based on the logically untenable position of the undisproveable negative?
Of course one can't prove that ten, twenty, fifty or a thousand million different people didn't own the diary, for the simple reason that it is completely impossible to prove anything isn't true.
(try it - it can't be done)
It's to avoid this logical fallacy that rational deduction is not based on what can't be disproved - but on what can be proved.
Thus far only two people have ever been proved to have ever owned the diary. And until there is any evidence to show that anyone else ever owned the thing, this remains the simple stark facts of the case on which any reasonable assessment of probability or anything else has to be based.
I wonder why this is so hard for you to understand?
I think you really should go ask a lawyer, a law enforcement officer, a scientist, an historian, anyone whose business it is to work with data. they will tell you just what we are telling you.
K |
Author: John Omlor
Tuesday, 08 May 2001 - 07:27 pm | | K,
Not hard for me to understand at all.
In fact, I completely and totally agree.
See the post below.
Love,
--John |
Author: John Omlor
Tuesday, 08 May 2001 - 07:27 pm | | Hello everyone,
Now that we have seen that the laws of statistics and probability give us only the stunningly banal insights that
a.) Whoever forged this book must have once owned it. (Well... yeah!)
and
b.) If only four people ever owned it, then at least one of them must of forged it. (Well... yeah!, again),
we need to get back to our problem, which is who might have actually once owned this book because they wrote it.
I suppose that means examining the evidence. Oh well.
Shall we start with the timing of Mike's diary purchase or with the handwriting of Gerard Kane and whether or not there is any evidence that Kane knew Mike or whether he had anything at all to do with this book?
--John |
|
|
|
|
