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** 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 06 October 2001
Casebook Message Boards: The Diary of Jack the Ripper: General Discussion:
TIME FOR A RE- EVALUATION!:
Archive through 06 October 2001
Author: Peter Wood
Monday, 01 October 2001 - 01:41 pm |        | Having been a student of the ripper for many years and having read most of the books on the subject, it may surprise some of you that I have only recently encountered the Jack the Ripper Casebook - whilst wishing to create some discussion I wouldn't want to go over old ground that some of you 'veterans' of the board have discussed many times, but I do feel that some of the arguments are so contentious that they would stand a re-evaluation.
It appears that the non believers of the diary debate tend to centre their disagreements around one particular point i.e. 'the breasts weren't on the table, ergo I'm not prepared to discuss anything else'. I have many points which I would love to discuss with some of you in relation to the diary and would mention three to begin with.
1) The 'Mibrac' entry in the register at the Charing Cross hotel - surely this PROVES Maybrick was the Ripper?
2) The letter which Paul Feldman unearthed in Maybrick's handwriting bearing an uncanny resemblance to a letter from the Ripper written in Scotland - does this not PROVE that Maybrick wrote the ripper correspondence?
3) The 'Treble Event' - only alluded to in the diary and a previously unpublished Ripper letter - that has to be more than coincidence, doesn't it?
I really hope we can discuss this in a friendly manner.
Peter.
P.S. Just to put the cat amongst the pigeons, it is my opinion that as John McCarthy is reported to have broken Mary Kelly's door down then he would have been amongst the first in the room and is well qualified to say that the breasts were on the table, whereas Dr Bond's notes were not made until after the post mortem on Kelly - plenty of time for him to have become confused and made a mistake. I feel that John McCarthy's evidence PROVES the diary to be right in relation to Mary Kelly's breasts, I DO NOT think that Maybrick forgot where he put them - Dr Bond was an unreliable witness, pure and simple. |
Author: R.J.P.
Monday, 01 October 2001 - 10:58 pm | | Peter--Hello and welcome. I'll only touch on your first point: 'Mibrac'. With a helpful hint from Keith Skinner, I was able to finally locate this advertisement that Paul Feldman had referred to in his book. I put this on the boards back on the 3rd of August, but for your convenience I'll reprint it [along with my original comment] again. This is the entirety of what actually appeared in the 'classified' section of the Times:
Inkeepers Act, 41 and 42 Vic., Cap 38.-- Notice is hereby given, that UNLESS the LUGGAGE LEFT at the Charing-Cross Hotel, West Strand, London, consisting of weaving apparel and personal effects, previous to the 15th September, 1887, is CLAIMED and all charges theron paid before the 31st May next, in the names undermentioned, the same will be SOLD by public AUCTION to defray expenses: -G. Hilbert, A. Bayley, M. Lehfeldt, Miss West, S.E. Mibrac, G. Mathhew, C.T. Cantillon, F. Desbac, Lake Price, Siger, E.A.R. Verbeck, Captain White, E. Courtois, J.A. Jenkins, A. Harper, L. Young, O.E. Thomas, A. St. Clair, Dr. Young, Skrine (?), Count de Basky, J. Solomons, Captain L. Owen. By order of G.S. HAINES, Secretary, Charing-Cross-Chambers, Duke Street, Adelphi. 13th April, 1888."
* * * * *
My original comment:
How Feldman found this I haven't the faintest idea. He must have read every Times in 1888. And how he used this to make the remarkable claim that the police were looking for a man named 'Mibrac' [Final Chapter, p 106] I really don't know. It seems like a misleading and weak attempt to make 'Mibrac' into a contemporary police suspect. Considering that this baggage (or coat or clothing) was left prior to Sept 1887, I consider it a wild stretch of the imagination to suggest that this can be in anyway linked to the fellow the police were looking for in Oct 1888."
In case my original point is a little cloudy, let me restate it. This is nothing more than an old advertisement meant for people who forgot their umbrellas at a hotel. They were lost sometime prior to 1887---a year before the Ripper murders at the very least. Maybe longer. Now, even if I grant you that 'S.E. Mibrac' is Maybrick [I don't, by the way] how on earth does this prove anything except that Maybrick lost a coat or an umbrella back in 1887??? How does this translate that the police were looking for Mibrac or Maybrick?
But the fault is not with you. The fault is in how Paul Feldman reported this bit of information. I remember also being impressed by this little gem when I read his book. But looking at it a little closer, it's not much more than meaningless marginalia IMHO. Best wishes, RJP |
Author: Paul Carpenter
Tuesday, 02 October 2001 - 03:42 am | | Hi Peter, hope we can have a more meaningful debate than some of the other slurry that I've been involved with recently!
Like RJP, I'd just like to touch on one point you made. I'm by no means an expert on this, but I do have a couple of observations...
"2) The letter which Paul Feldman unearthed in Maybrick's handwriting bearing an uncanny resemblance to a letter from the Ripper written in Scotland - does this not PROVE that Maybrick wrote the ripper correspondence?"
Firstly, in order to follow this reasoning, one has to assume that the letter from Scotland was actually written by by the Ripper. In other words, we are certain that we know this letter could only have been written by the Ripper alone. I am unfamiliar with the letter in question, so I would be interested to know why it is that this letter is considered to be a genuine letter from JTR.
The feds received (searches probably faulty memory) something like 2000 pieces of alleged 'Ripper' correspondance, so I am interested as to why Feldman chooses the Scottish letter as being genuine. It is an easy leap to make to following this the wrong way round, i.e. "Maybrick was the Ripper, this letter looks like it was written by Maybrick, therefore this is a genuine letter."
Secondly, handwriting comparison is not really an exact science. People's handwriting changes over time, and the circumstances under which they are written affect the writing. My handwriting is far neater on an official letter than it is on a postcard to friends, and a cursory examination of my writings from a year or two ago shows that my handwriting has changed considerably. It is far smaller now, and I have taken to running lots of letters together in a single scrawl that even I struggle to decipher. The diary itself is proof of that...
So what was the date of the Maybrick letter that Feldman used as a comparison. If it was roughly contemperaneous with the Scottish Ripper letter, then there is possibly some avenue of interest. Even so, I would prefer to see a match made between the Ripper diary and one of the Ripper letters...
Cheers!
Carps |
Author: Peter Wood
Wednesday, 03 October 2001 - 04:43 pm | | | RJP and CARPS, thank you both very much, you made my day by replying. Can I respond to RJP first? Just to make one thing clear to you - I sometimes like to throw the cat amongst the pigeons, so to speak, so I would NEVER dare to state anything as 100% fact, rather I would love to invite some informed and reasoned debate. Your point on the date of the advert is perfectly valid, as I had noted this myself. But you must remember that Shirley Harrison and Paul Feldman have uncovered links of Maybrick with Whitechapel MANY YEARS before the Ripper murders - and don't forget his brother Michael lived in London, whilst Maybrick did business with a company in The Minories. Would it not be reasonable to suppose that Maybrick didn't just wake up one day and decide to kill seven women? Isn't it more likely that the urge festered in him over a period of time? That he would have 'stalked' his prey, got to know the lay of the land? If my assumptions are right, and I think many psychologists would back me up on this, then the 'Mibrac' entry can only REINFORCE the argument for Maybrick being the Ripper, as it associates him with Whitechapel well in advance of the Ripper murders. I take your point about the spelling - but I don't think it is so tenuous that we should discard it lightly, don't forget Maybrick was a man who liked to play games with his name and his real name was never to be found on transatlantic crossing records even though we know he spent several months of each year in America, so he must have gone by something or the other. Robbie Williams likes to travel as 'Biggus @*1$!', so why not accept that Maybrick didn't register in his own name? Don't let me down, let's get a debate going here, and don't forget my other points about the 'Treble Event'. See you soon, Peter. |
Author: Peter Wood
Wednesday, 03 October 2001 - 04:51 pm | | Carps, without having Feldy's book to hand it's a little difficult to comment on the exact dates, I suppose you could say that if I was a PROPER student then I should know them, but Feldman presents fact after fact after fact and I don't think even the memory man could remember everything he puts forward.
Your reply interested me because you seem to be putting forward many of the points Feldman himself put forwards regards handwriting, but you almost seem to say that that proves the diary fake. Am I right in assuming that? Personally I put very little store in the handwriting arguments because I know I have several styles myself and upon first reading of the diary, I was almost convinced that I had written it! There is very little handwriting available which we can take 100% genuine as being Maybrick's, and that which is available is in business letters, so you could almost expect that NOT to match the diary. The letter in question that Feldman referred to was posted in Galashiels and, forgive me if I am wrong, but I think was posted about 6 October 1888. My only concern here is that Feldy also quotes another letter which he thinks is genuine which was postmarked 5 October in London! So either Jack the Ripper flew by Concorde or he might have to revise his arguments. My main argument, if you see the two letters side by side, is that the handwriting is too alike not to have been written by Maybrick. Surely a forger could not have hoped for such good fortune. Looking forward to your reply and that of anyone else who wants to join in.
Peter. |
Author: R.J.P.
Thursday, 04 October 2001 - 05:32 am | | Peter--Hello. Some random comments. Now, I'm trying to be open-minded, but reading your above argument, isn't it perhaps fair to say that you and Paul Feldman are 'having your cake and eating it, too"? Feldy makes particular pains to dismiss the damaging fact that Maybrick's handwriting doesn't even remotely resemble the Maybrick diary, nor the 'Dear Boss' letters, and he uses similar arguments: handwriting changes, arsenic might have effected him, etc. etc.,( or, if all else fails, the offical will [not the diary!] was a forgery).
This is all well & good if one wishes to except those arguments, but then the coin is flipped over and a big deal is made about how Maybrick's handwriting resembles one particular letter posted from Scotland. As you state, "Surely a forger could not have hoped for such good fortune." But how so? As Paul Carpenter rightly points out, there were hundreds of 'Ripper' letters. Take anyone's handwriting and compare it to hundreds of random letters and I have no doubt that you will find at least one that is a remarkable match. It's merely a matter of statistics and homogeneous education, not "good fortune".
But I'm afraid I'm the wrong person to debate with you. I have to admit that my mind is closed when it comes to the Maybrick diary. I've read Feldman's book, all three editions of Shirley Harrison's books, all the available published essays on the diary, as well as a smattering of private correspondence, etc., and I'm still convinced it is a modern forgery. Sorry for that. But let me make a friendly suggestion. If you want to convince the die-hard skeptics out there to 're-evaluate' the diary, you're going to have to overcome several very hefty hurdles. The diary mentions two murders in Manchester that never happened and a lady named Mrs. Hammersmith that never existed. Find proof of these two elusive references and you'll turn some heads. Until then, the diary looks a lot like fiction. Let me also suggest that you pick up a copy of Bernard Ryan's The Poisoned Life of Mrs. Maybrick sometime and see for yourself if the claim that the diary contains obscure information about the Maybrick household really holds up to scrutiny.
Finally, I'm curious. Do you mind if I ask you a question? Don't all those strange manruverings & various statements by Anne Graham and Mike Barrett conjure up in your mind some serious room for doubt? I mean, bottom-line, the provenance is pretty wretched, isn't it? Why all the hub-bub and secrecy if the thing is legitimate?
Best wishes, RJP |
Author: John Omlor
Thursday, 04 October 2001 - 08:48 am | | Hi Peter,
I'm afraid RJ is right about the discussions of handwriting in Paul Feldman's work. See, the problem in almost all of Feldman's arguments, really, is the logic. He has a habit of asking rhetorical questions or citing a simple or solitary instance or fact (the alleged similarity of the diary handwriting to one of the many Ripper letters, for instance) and then illegitimately leaping to a completely invalid and unestablished conclusion which is not even proven inductively by the premises (on the basis of overwhelming evidence) let alone deductively (on the basis of sound argumentative structure -- i.e. wherein if the premises are true the conclusion must necessarily be true). In order to make his largely unestablished conclusions carry the illusion of weight, he announces them triumphantly and often in an exclamatory manner, or he simply leaves them hanging as insinuating questions that he can't actually answer and assumes the reader will leap to the conclusion for himself and thereby believe that Feldman has proven his point (consider the questions on page 251 of the paperback about the mysterious "John Over" and the watch initials, for an example of this -- Feldman himself says "we may never know the answers" but then proceeds along later in the book as if he has established some link between Emma Parker and Anne's family, etc.). In fact, he has established nothing and the rest of his reading becomes speculative fiction.
It's a fun book to read, but the gaps in Paul's logic and his arguments and the hurried assumptions and lack of careful or patient construction of established premises and valid conclusions that follow from them make it mostly just a collection of possible links and a list of "what ifs?"
Of course, saying all of that tells us nothing at all about who actually did write the diary. That's a question neither you nor I nor Paul nor RJ nor anyone seems to be able to answer with any reliable or convincing evidence to support their theory and without immediately giving rise to a whole host of annoying contradictions.
And now, I hear a number of people who have just met Albert Johnson expressing doubts about his forging the watch engravings. Of course, if the watch does turn out to be even a day older than the Hillsborough Soccer Disaster and the arrival of the Sphere Guide at Mike's place, then there's a whole new slew of questions that arise concerning both the when and the who of the diary's scene of composition (and that's not even mentioning Caz's recent observations about the ink bronzing effect she saw -- or didn't see -- last weekend).
"What?" people are now saying.
Head back to the diary discussion boards for a translation of that strange little paragraph above. 
No, I don't think Paul Feldman makes a very careful or sound case. And no, I don't think he knows -- I don't think any of us know, if we're honest with ourselves -- who wrote the book.
Enjoy your days and nights,
--John |
Author: Caroline Anne Morris
Thursday, 04 October 2001 - 10:20 am | | Hi John,
My guess is that all those who have now taken the opportunity to meet Albert, and still believe the diary is a modern fake created with the knowledge and/or help of one or both Barretts, will be even more reluctant to give their opinions about the watch scratches and who made them and when.
Already I have heard of at least two people who are saying they are not really interested in the watch and think of it as an irrelevant sideline. But if Albert isn't a forger, and has no reason to believe the scratches weren't already inside his watch when he bought it in 1992, it just can't be ignored - it needs explaining somehow.
The bottom line is this: if the watch already had Maybrick's name scratched into it by the time it was sold to Albert, how can the diary be modern?
And if the diary is modern, Albert is putting on one hell of an act, which has so far cost him many hundreds of pounds, and apparently gained him very little, apart from hostility and scepticism among people who have yet to meet the man.
Love,
Caz
PS I'm still hoping that someone, perhaps Ivor Edwards, will ask Melvin more about the iron-gall ink he used in 1996, when he wrote the sample I saw on Sunday, on Victorian paper with a Victorian pen. As I said, it looks nothing like the diary ink. |
Author: R.J.P.
Thursday, 04 October 2001 - 12:29 pm | | Caz--I think I was one of the misguided souls who brought the watch back into the conversation ages ago by saying that I was impressed by Colin Wilson's defense of Albert Johnson. I said then and I say again now that anecdotel evidence is a difficult animal to wrestle with. But certainly nothing has changed. Many were quite willing to accept Albert Johnson's honesty. But there are still problems. If the watch & the diary are truly linked, why aren't the initials of the mythical Manchester victims on the watch? Why just the canonical five? This makes no sense, unless perhaps one considers the possibility that the watch's scratches were fashioned after the initial reports of the Maybrick diary had appeared in the paper---but before the diary itself was published . And again, as always, I think Melvin asked a solid question. Why all the superficial scratches on the inside cover? Whats up with that? And the timing of the discovery is still a little too hard for die-hard skeptics like me to take. I don't know the answer, but my best guess at the moment is that someone might have played a joke on Albert. The watch is interesting, but I don't see it calming the 'sea of troubles' that is battering the Maybrick diary.
By the way, the current issue of the Fortean Times has an interesting article on the so-called Ica Stones of Peru. Some amazing artifacts were brought to light by a humble farmer named Basilo Uschuya. These are stone petroglyphs showing ancient Peruvians hunting dinosaurs, performing surgery, and the like. The trouble is that Uschuya eventually confessed that he had forged the artifacts. But then he recanted, saying that he only confessed because it was against Peruvian law to sell archeological items and he wanted to escape imprisonment. Then he recanted his recantation. He recently told a German reporter that the stones were genuine; but around the same time showed a reporter from the BCC how it was all achieved: with a dentist drill and by baking the stones in an oven filled with cow dung. Imagine, a humble Peruvian farmer with a dentist drill. Makes me wonder if a certain ex-scrap metal dealer isn't a few notches higher on the totem pole than many people suspect. Cheers, RP |
Author: Mark Goeder
Thursday, 04 October 2001 - 01:00 pm | | Hello Peter,
I just wanted to add something to the murder in Manchester.Just because there are no records of the murdered Woman in Manchester doesnt mean
that they didnt take place.
But what if they did?
Maybe he did kill a prostitute but the body was never found.Maybe she was reported as missing only.Maybe she was a very lonely person with either friends or family.
Maybe...maybe...maybe.
But something doesnt seem right.
IF the diary is a forgery ( which I dont think )
WHY should the writer take the risk and "make up" a story about a murder which didnt even take place?
If the forgery is a modern one, why did the writer mention a murder in Manchester which didnt exist?
Could it be that the body was never found?
Just because we cant find any reliable information about this specific murder doesnt mean it didnt happen.
Maybe she just was not missed and the body never found.
I would also like to know your thoughts regarding the writing on the wall in kelly's room.
The critics of the diary argue that they either cant find the " M " on the wall or that they are simply blood splashes.
There is an " M " on the wall and most people can see it. There were probably blood on the wall, but I doubt if it splashed the letter M so we could all see it.There has to be an explanation for all of this somewhere, but who knows.
I must admit, it does seem like a stroke of luck for the forger to weave the writing on the wall into his story. The forger was even luckier to see the " M " carved in to Eddowes face at Mitre square.Even luckier still when it was made known that a letter was found at the scene of the Chapman murder with the letters " M " and " J " on it.
I think there are too many unanswered questions that have to be resolved before any of us can sit back and call this diary a fake.
I am about 90% sure that the diary was written by Maybrick and that Maybrick was the ripper.
The way the first few pages were written still makes me feel unsure. The whole plot and nearly all the characters can be found on the very first 2 pages.( Harrisons hardback )
I am interested in your opinion, please reply.
Mark |
Author: Mark List
Thursday, 04 October 2001 - 02:53 pm | | Let's all remember that there's no REAL way to prove that anyone was the Ripper.
As many of us remember, John Omlor and I had a long debate on the validity of Maybrick writting the Diary. Interestingly enough, Maybrick isn't the only "new" suspect. there's also Joe Barnett, who doesn't get as much heat as Maybrick does. This is, obviously, because there's no 'smoking gun' pointing at him, but he is just as likely a suspect as Maybrick (if you remove the watch and the diary from the equation).
I would think that the watch came first and then the Diary. That's my opinion. The how and way and where and who, I don't know and have not had a lot of time/resources to try and find out.
a)Did Maybrick write the diary? I don't think so.
b)Could he have? maybe, I don't know.
c)Is the Diary fake? It sure could be possible.
d)If it is fake, does that make Maybrick any else credible as a suspect? No.
On casebook.org we have Lewis Caroll, 'the lodger', doctors, princes (who weren't even close to Whitechapel), a woman, Americans, Englishmen (both upper and lower class), Mad Russian and Polish immigrants, and sailors as suspects.
And none of them get as bad a rap as "Our Hero" James Maybrick. Poor Guy....
Ah, it feels so good to be back and debating Maybrick...
-Mark |
Author: John Omlor
Thursday, 04 October 2001 - 04:49 pm | | Hi Mark,
You write about Joe B.:
"This is, obviously, because there's no 'smoking gun' pointing at him, but he is just as likely a suspect as Maybrick (if you remove the watch and the diary from the equation)."
Jeez, if you remove the watch and the diary from the equation, Joe is a lot more likely to be the Ripper that James. Hell, if you remove the watch and the diary from the equation, I suspect anyone who was alive and in England in 1888 is about as likely to be the Ripper as James is.
The watch and the diary are what give us everything else. Without them, there is no reason to find M's on the wall or Mibrac's on hotel registers or anything.
Which reminds me, I can think of a simple enough reason to throw a murder or two that no one has ever heard of into my forged Ripper diary. It's a logical thing to do, since if it turns out there is a murder wherever you place one, you get credit for something no one ever noticed before and it adds to your case for authenticity; and if no one can find one, you keep the experts busy searching for something that doesn't exist and no one can finally prove that a lonely and forgotten prostitute wasn't murdered in Manchester and the records are lost or never existed. It's a no-lose strategy actually, and makes perfect rhetorical sense within a scam scenario.
I'm just not sure that any of the players we know so far were likely to think of things this way. And besides, there's no way to link any of the players we have so far to the actual composition of these words on the pages in any case -- especially if the watch scratches turn out somehow to pre-date the Sphere Book arrival, leading us only to two possible conclusions -- that the Sphere Book wasn't the source for the Crashaw quote or that there was an incredible coincidence and that two completely unrelated parties forged separate items that claimed that previously unsuspected Liverpool merchant James Maybrick was Jack the the Ripper without either knowing about the other one. What are the odds on that one?
Fun indeed,
--John |
Author: Mark List
Thursday, 04 October 2001 - 05:42 pm | | John,
Good Show!
You're right about the likelihood of anyone fingering Maybrick without the Diary or Watch.
But, I was simply stating that on a stand-alone basis James was a good enough suspect as anyone else.
Besides, where, and how, did Lewis Carroll show up a suspect? Through anagrams? Someone just thought that it sounded good? Who knows? but we still get a kick out of thinking about it. And so Maybrick is still with us, I think the POSSIBILITY is still there however unlikely it may seem.
I'm more along the lines of "the Lodger" or as Hitchcock's silent classic called him, "the Avenger" who killed blonde models...
_-Mark |
Author: Peter Wood
Thursday, 04 October 2001 - 06:17 pm | | Hello all! It certainly is good to see so much healthy debate and respect for other people's opinions going on. I can't help thinking that the debate on this strand is veering away from what I originally wanted to debate, but that's cool - you all have your own points of view and I guess we all have our favourite piece of evidence to either prove or disprove the diary as authentic.
I hope Mark Goeder gets to read this, as up until his input I was beginning to think it was me against the world arguing the authenticity of the diary!
As an overview, I strongly believe that Maybrick IS a good candidate for the ripper - even without the diary, the point being that it was the diary which brought Maybrick to our attention.
Let's take a little step backwards to try to make some sense of this - when Melville McNaghten wrote his memorandum naming Ostrog, Druitt and Kosminski, it was in response to an article in a newspaper naming Thomas Cutbush as the killer. Now quite why he would want to defend Cutbush is beyond me, but that is not relevant - what is relevant is that in naming those three people McNaghten has opened up a whole big can of worms that Ripperologists throughout the years have seized upon as 'evidence'. From contemporary reports and various memoirs, other sources included, it seems obvious that there was never ONE single view on the identity of the ripper - indeed there were several conflicting opinions. So all that McNaghten was doing was the equivalent of us today looking at a series of murders in New York, for example, and if somebody was to say 'I think the Zodiac Murderer did that', we would respond 'Nah, Bugs Bunny, George Bush and Tony Blair are more likely suspects than him'. Do you all see what I mean? McNaghten wasn't really advancing any opinion that any one of those three could have been the ripper - he was just using ridiculous examples plucked out of thin air to say that it couldn't have been Cutbush. The libel laws back then were as powerful as they are now and only one of the three people named in the memorandum was dead (Druitt) and so McNaghten couldn't have accused the other two of being the ripper for fear of being sued. And he didn't accuse them of being the ripper, did he? He just said they were more likely than Cutbush, which is really saying nothing at all, because Bugs Bunny is more likely than Cutbush. So all the ripperology throughout all the years which has centred around the McNaghten Memoranda in it's various forms has been totally misled by a red herring! Please tell me you agree!
Where Joe Barnett comes into the equation I do not know. Are we seriously supposed to believe he killed his girlfriend's friends to keep her off the streets and then thought 'stuff it' and killed her as well. It doesn't fit.
Mark, regarding the two prostitutes killed in Manchester either side of the canonical victims, I don't have a strong opinion on them either way, because if the diary is going to be proved genuine or otherwise then it is going to be done on the evidence already known about Jack The Ripper, i.e. the five canonical victims. Sorry, but I don't have much more to say about that right now. As regards their initials missing from Albert's watch, well maybe he just didn't know them, after all the killings seem to have attracted no publicity. Maybe Maybrick just strangled them, certainly the first one, and they were mistaken for dying of natural causes, I just don't know.
One more interesting thought that I'm surprised Shirley Harrison and Feldy didn't make more of, is that the diarist wrote 'a handkerchief red led to the bed' - and George Hutchinson made a point of saying that he saw Mary Kelly in the company of a man who gave her a red handkerchief. Clearly the diarist is claiming to be the person that Hutchinson saw - and yet the description is so unlike Maybrick, or is it? Would a forger deliberately ally himself with a sighting of a man who a witness said looked nothing like Maybrick? There may have been some discussion regarding the reliability of George Hutchinson's evidence, but there can be no doubt that the diarist is claiming to be the person that Hutchinson saw. Anybody got any comments on that?
And still nobody has replied to my observation regarding the 'Treble Event'. If the diary is a forgery, how did the forger learn of the letter which warned of a 'treble event'? That, to me, is one of the strongest pieces of evidence to prove the diary's provenance and yet nobody seems to want to debate it!
Let me say that (I believe like Paul Feldman) I am just as interested in the story of the diary if it DOES prove to be a forgery, because whoever has done it has hoaxed many respected names and caused others to become embroiled in the debate. If it was a forgery, why can't someone just prove it? Why can't someone find even a single document that shows Maybrick was somewhere else when the murders - even one of them - were/was committed? Forget the murders, prove that Maybrick was in America when one of the Jack The Ripper letters he is associated with was posted in London, then Paul Feldman's house of cards will come crashing to the ground, and he and I will shake your hand and join you in looking for the forger. If the forger exists, find them! If the diary is a forgery, then Anne Barrett, and her father (God rest his soul) are liars. Could you look her in the eye and call her a liar? She claims to have seen the diary in the 1960's, her father before that, do you really believe they wrote it?
I have waffled on for far too long, please give me some feedback on your views as regards:
a)The McNaghten Memoranda being a red herring.
b)George Hutchinson's suspect being Maybrick, or at least the diarist claiming to be the person Hutchinson saw.
c) The Treble Event.
Many Thanks to you all, and remember - it's only a discussion.
Take Care
Peter. |
Author: R.J.P.
Thursday, 04 October 2001 - 07:33 pm | | Peter--Hello. Just one more bit about the Galashiels letter that you have been mentioning. You might consider the following comment made by Melvin Harris in his 'Fact File' response to Paul Feldman:
"This letter of the 8th October is headed 'Galashiels' and the resemblance to the Maybrick letter is wholly superficial. Both feature a right-sloping writing, based on the standard school writing guides, but there the resemblance ends. If the letters are enlarged, then the many differences are obvious. What is more this letter doesn't even claim to be from Jack. It poses as a warning from a second killer, that's why it is signed 'The Ripper' and its accurate text (not Feldman's) reads in part : " I have to thank you and my Brother in trade, Jack the Ripper..."
Added to that is a promise to knife five victims in Scotland. An obvious hoax, this. Only someone lacking discrimination would even think of trying to use it."
So it seems that Paul Feldman left out the pesky detail that this letter was not even proported to be from Jack the Ripper. So if it was written by Maybrick, could one argue that this suggests that Maybrick wasn't Jack the Ripper?
I'm afraid I have to disagree with your view of Macnaghten's memo. He had no fear of libel---it was a confidential report. And Druitt, for one, wasn't just an unlikely name that Macnaghten plucked out the air; he had serious suspicions about his guilt. This is made clear by the references made by Macnaghten many years later in his memoirs, Days of My Years.
As for the 'treble event'--people have commented on this in the past. I'm pretty sure Melvin Harris mentioned it in one of his dissertations, and John Omlor gave it a shot back on 5 June, 2001, 9:33 pm on this very board.
Cheers, RP |
Author: Caroline Anne Morris
Friday, 05 October 2001 - 06:13 am | | Hi RJ,
Why do you describe yourself as a ‘misguided soul’, to have brought the watch back into the conversation? Of course ‘there are still problems’ if we all accept Albert’s total honesty – that’s the whole point. No doubt if someone could have dug up the tiniest bit of dirt about the man, all the ‘problems’ would have miraculously diminished.
Your best guess is now that ‘someone might have played a joke on Albert.’ Well, if you want to continue to convince yourself and the board that a not-so-daft Mike Barrett was a fraudster akin to that humble Peruvian farmer with a dentist drill, don’t you have to do better than guess, or dismiss the watch as merely ‘interesting’, after declaring yourself to be misguided for bringing it up again?
The watch won’t go away, RJ. If you want to nail Mike Barrett down as a co-forger, you should at least be willing to explore how and when Albert could have had such an odd joke played on him, and who could have left him with an artefact he could sell for a six figure sum in $ (if only he wasn’t worried about the responsibility of passing on something potentially jinxed - this is what he told me and others in Bournemouth).
There are people who have met and/or questioned Mike over the years who are 100% convinced he had no hand in creating this diary. That includes me. It’s not based on a desire for the man to be innocent, nor a desire for the diary to be old. It’s based on what we know about Mike. And you still haven’t commented on whether you think the Crashaw quote was plucked by pure chance from Mike’s open Sphere Guide pre-1992, without anything being known about the poet, including his Whitechapel connection. If you think this is the way it must have happened, that coincidence dwarfs the fact that Mike had the book in the first place. Just how much more luck and coincidence are you willing to swallow before you concede that the evidence, or lack of it, suggests that Albert and Mike are both ignorant of the origins of their artefacts?
Whoever wrote the diary knew that nothing had appeared in the papers about the Manchester murders. If they really happened there’s no reason why he should have discovered the victims’ names. Likewise, if he invented them to add spice, why would he try to invent initials for them? He put no names to the victims in the diary apart from Kelly, which is consistent with a lack of interest in them as people, and only knowing their names from reading the papers like everyone else.
The initial thing is therefore not inconsistent with the diary and watch being a double event. And it has to be a double event, IMHO, if Albert wasn't involved in forgery. You have to explain how his watch could have been tampered with without his knowledge after he bought it, and with no one engineering Albert's discovery of the scratches.
Love,
Caz |
Author: Christopher T George
Friday, 05 October 2001 - 06:30 am | | Hi, Caz:
Great to meet you in Bournemouth, "in the flesh" as it were.
I must say I do not understand now and did not understand in Bournemouth your argument about Albert Johnson. I was pleased to be introduced to Albert by Keith Skinner on the night before the Maybrick panel (Saturday night). I agree he seems an ordinary man and seems unlikely to have forged the watch.... but what do I know? I am no expert on criminals. And even if he is honest, so what? Both the watch and diary have no provenance whatsoever and there is no reason to think either belonged to Maybrick. There must be an explanation for the existence of both artifacts and the more likely explanation seems to be that both the writing in the diary and the scratches in the watch are forgeries between 1889 and now than that either could have been done by Maybrick. So I must say I find your eagerness to somehow "prove" an argument for the diary through Albert and the watch to be very misplaced.
I also have to say, and will be writing more about this for Ripper Notes that the Maybrick panel on Sunday was rather odd in that part of the thrust of the panel was "we are all honest folk." I am prepared to accept that Robert Smith, Shirley Harrison, Albert Johnson, and Melvyn Fairclough, have acted in good faith. On the other hand, in terms of the publishing of Shirley's book, perhaps it should not have been published unless the authenticity of the Maybrick diary could have been proved. As it is, the diary is a long way short of being proved to have been written by James Maybrick and my concern as I voiced to Keith Skinner on Saturday night is that the public is being misled into thinking Maybrick was the killer when there is no solid evidence that he was.
Best regards
Chris George |
Author: Philip C. Dowe
Friday, 05 October 2001 - 06:57 am | | Hi there,
I have read the diary dozens of times and every time I read it, the following thought arises:
"Would Jack have kept a diary?" and then
"Would Jack have engraved the names in a watch?"
Serial killers have been known to have collected souvenirs. O.K. But their vistims are usually faceless and without names, that is why they very seldom kill freinds, neighbors or family. By engraving their names in a watch he is turning his victims into people with a identity. I don't believe in it.
The diary feels fabricated. Anybody (even in the 1960s) who had the facts of the case could have written it. I could have as well. It has the feeling of somebody having made of list of everything vital and having turned it into a diary.
The question remains: Why? He could never make money out of it or it would not make him famous.
Perhaps Maybrick was fascinated in the case because he was in London at the time and dreamt of being Jack? Don't forget he was a drug addict at the time. We are looking for proof that the diary was Maybrick's and Jack's, but perhaps only one of these is true. Even if Maybrick wrote the diary it is no proof that he was Jack.
Yours, Philip |
Author: Caroline Anne Morris
Friday, 05 October 2001 - 07:32 am | | Hi Chris,
You wrote:
'There must be an explanation for the existence of both artifacts and the more likely explanation seems to be that both the writing in the diary and the scratches in the watch are forgeries between 1889 and now than that either could have been done by Maybrick. So I must say I find your eagerness to somehow "prove" an argument for the diary through Albert and the watch to be very misplaced.'
But, Chris, I am not trying to argue for the diary. I'm simply trying to ascertain when it could, or could not, have been created, using Albert's account of the watch to help me.
You, RJ, and others have argued that the diary was created sometime between mid-1989 and early 1992. But if the watch, plus scratches, was sitting in a jeweller's shop all that time, that can't be right, can it?
Chris, unless you are accusing members of the Maybrick panel of being insincere or dishonest about their beliefs, how can you say they are misleading the public - or at least, any more than anyone else has done with their own pet suspects, such as Tumblety, D'Onston, Barnett and so on? There is no 'solid evidence' against any of them, is there?
Hi Philip,
I think we have to walk before we can run here. We can't even establish whether the diary and watch came into being before or after 1989, let alone if they date back to Maybrick's time.
Now I must dash - dentist's appointment beckons - grrr.
Love,
Caz |
Author: Philip C. Dowe
Friday, 05 October 2001 - 07:44 am | | Hi Caz,
I was trying to add a psychologists view. As we don't know when diary and watch were written and engraved, it is not unimportant to ask the question whether Jack would have done either. Concerning the watch I would say NO!. Concerning the diary I would say PROBABLY NOT!.
The watch is a forgery or has nothing to do with Jack. If Jack wrote a diary I cannot imagine him have written it in a kind as this one. As I am no expert in paper and ink, I try to look at as a psychologist (I hope Ed does not read this :-)) and my gut tells me: forget it.
Hope the dentist didn't drill.
Love,
Philip |
Author: Monty
Friday, 05 October 2001 - 08:17 am | | Howdy all,
Is diary keeping a trait with serial killers?
I cannot recollect any others keeping a diary. If it was just an aid to the memory (I believe that serial murderers like to relive their killings) then I can't figure out why.
An act like that would certainly be etched in my mind.
Monty |
Author: R.J.P.
Friday, 05 October 2001 - 09:30 am | | Caz--Hello. Sounds like y'all had a great time in Bournemouth.
I don't really wish to 'debate' that the diary is a recent forgery---I have no particular motive to do so; I am merely stating the conclusions that I've come to after having read the various books, reports, etc. Accept or dismiss my conclusions at your leisure. If it wasn't for the fact that much of the so-called 'evidence' is contradictory, fair-minded people wouldn't be drawn into arguing back & forth over what it all means.
That Crashaw lived (and his father preached) in Whitechapel is remarkable. I don't know if there is a mathematical formula for determining whether or not this is a greater or less 'coincidence' than Mike Barrett owning the Sphere guide. Maybe it's a matter of taste. But I certainly don't think I am obliged to swallow a larger set of coincidences then those who must swallow the oddities of the unpublished police list/the Sphere Guide/and the nearly simultaneous appearance of the diary & the watch after an alleged 100 years of obscurity. Let alone how the diary seems to mimick Ripperlore that didn't come into full bloom until the 1960s.
I think that Martin Fido wrote one of the more astute comments about the Maybrick diary in the introduction to his book The Crimes, Detection, and Death of Jack the Ripper. He wrote:
"Since some of the diary's historical data only became public in 1987, it seemed an intriguing document, and, indeed, if science proved it to be over six years old, it would present the baffling question of how a forger gained access to unpublished coroner's papers, and then made such inadequate use of them."
For me, the key word is 'inadequate'. Again, it's possibly a matter of taste, but the diary's text just doesn't work for me. I think it is a rather silly document, and I don't see anything in the diary that suggests that the author(s) did serious research. So it is impossible for me to believe that they: a)had private knowledge about the Maybrick household; b) had access to unpublished coroner or police papers; and c) would have known something as obscure as Richard Crashaw having Whitechapel connections. Since the ink evidence is contradictory and science hasn't proven that the document is over 6 years old, then I have to come to the conclusion that the information was pilfered from easily obtainable published texts, ie., after 1987.
In Mike's tape he makes reference to a letter he wrote to Shirley Harrison (?) that used some obscure quotes, Latin, etc. He admits in the tape that he really only nicked these quotes from Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse book. Earlier, Mike came forward with the diary that contains the obscure line from Crashaw. Is it unreasonable for me to wonder if Mike did the same trick & nicked the line from the essay, especially when no other explanation seems particularly palatable?
As for the watch, what am I suppose to do with Tim Dundas?
Best wishes, RJ Palmer |
Author: Christopher T George
Friday, 05 October 2001 - 11:39 am | | Hi, RJ:
Thanks for your contribution and for quoting Martin Fido's apt comments about the Diary.
One member of the audience at Bournemouth quoted (or misquoted) Fido as saying the ink in the Diary when he first saw it was blue. The ink is now most definitely black and both Robert Smith and Shirley Harrison confirmed that it always has been black so it would seem that Fido was misquoted.
In the panel discussion, Harrison remarked that Maybrick was a megalomaniac. This is a statement that I contest. The historical James Maybrick appears to have been a pretty ordinary businessman, give or take his drug habit, and it is the Diary that provides the idea he may have been a megalomaniac. Peter Birchwood in the Oxford meeting commented that he believed that the historical James Maybrick was a fairly average Victorian paterfamilias, no more and no less.
I intend to write a report on the Maybrick panel and the Oxford meeting for Ripper Notes but for now suffice it to say that the personnel in attendance at Oxford were myself, Peter Birchwood, his wife Maria, Shirley Harrison, Melvyn Fairclough, Keith Skinner, and Keith's friend Coral Atkins. The writing samples from Gerard Kane were shown by Birchwood to Skinner, Harrison, Fairclough, and Atkins, and in return Keith Skinner turned over to Birchwood material, including the transcript of the interview with Billy Graham.
As in the sample of Kane's handwriting on the Devereaux will of 1979, the new samples again showed some letter formations similar to those in the Diary and may indicate Gerard Kane was the penman. However, they are not, to my mind, definitive proof that Kane was responsible for the Diary, and nor was any proof produced that Kane was intimately involved with Mike Barrett and Tony Devereaux. Possibly Melvin Harris has such proof and Skinner pressed Birchwood to know what Harris knows and has not revealed. Birchwood in reply stated that he is his own man and was not acting as Harris's agent. There was also discussion of the Australian angle and Steve Powell's story that the Diary may have been forged in Australia when Anne Graham worked there as a nurse in the late 1960's. Enquiries continue into this angle.
I understand that a recording was made of the Oxford meeting and there is discussion of whether to post it here. There is also discussion of whether to come up with a consensus statement about the meeting that all parties in attendance in Oxford will agree on.
Hi, Caz:
You ask:
Chris, unless you are accusing members of the Maybrick panel of being insincere or dishonest about their beliefs, how can you say they are misleading the public - or at least, any more than anyone else has done with their own pet suspects, such as Tumblety, D'Onston, Barnett and so on? There is no 'solid evidence' against any of them, is there?
Well, Caz, this was the subject of a discussion that I had with Keith Skinner until 4:30 am on Sunday morning. I began by saying that the public was misled into thinking that Maybrick could have been Jack the Ripper and Keith, as you did, countered by asking if I thought that the parties who published The Diary of Jack the Ripper (i.e., Shirley Harrison and Robert Smith) were being dishonest, and was I also saying that any author who advanced a suspect was being dishonest, e.g., himself and Martin Howells when they wrote about Montague John Druitt as a Ripper suspect in The Ripper Legacy or Stewart Evans and Paul Gainey in The Lodger aka Jack the Ripper First American Serial Killer, in which those authors proposed Dr. Francis Tumblety as the Whitechapel murderer. Well, I would say there is a material difference between putting forward such candidates as Druitt or Tumbletly since both of those candidatures are based on verifiable opinions of police officials in genuine documents, i.e., the Macnaghten memoranda and the Littlechild letter, whereas the Maybrick candidature is based solely on a dubious document with no provenance. Again, I would contend that Maybrick should not have been proposed as a candidate on such grounds.
Best regards
Chris George |
Author: Caroline Anne Morris
Friday, 05 October 2001 - 12:54 pm | | Hi RJ,
You wrote:
'...it is impossible for me to believe that [the diary author(s)]...would have known something as obscure as Richard Crashaw having Whitechapel connections.'
I find it impossible to believe that you can so easily accept that whoever dreamed up a diary about the Whitechapel murders had no idea his only quote in 63 pages came from a poet with Whitechapel connections.
As you say, it must be a matter of taste which coincidences people find the most or least palatable, perhaps according to their preconceptions, expectations or desires. I can only repeat that when I first read the diary books, this member of the great unwashed public was not misled by the authors into believing Maybrick was Jack and wrote the diary - otherwise I would not have bothered finding the casebook. But neither have I been misled by anyone trying to convince me that Mike, Anne and/or Albert are knowingly involved in forgery. Even Melvin Harris doesn't believe Mike or Anne created the diary does he?
You also wrote:
'Is it unreasonable for me to wonder if Mike did the same trick & nicked the line from the essay, especially when no other explanation seems particularly palatable?'
You can wonder what you like, RJ, but don't you also pause to wonder how the line passed from Mike to the penman, without either of them realising the coup over Crashaw's Whitechapel link? I'm sorry to push you on this one, but you said yourself you don't like coincidences. Neither do I. You won't accept that Crashaw found his way into the diary other than through Mike's Sphere Guide. Yet you are happy to accept the amazing luck Mike had to use this particular poet to inspire the Whitechapel Murderer.
I don't know what you are supposed to do with Tim Dundas. I can only say that when I looked at the watch through a magnifying glass held by Albert's wife, Valerie, try as I might I could not see any scratches at all (they are not engravings by the way, Philip), although others in a better light said they could just about see something there. I really don't know if Dundas would have used strong enough magnification, when he examined the watch prior to 1992, to have brought such markings to his attention, let alone enabled him to make out what they were, given that he wouldn't have been looking for, or expecting to see, any such thing.
Hi Chris,
So are you saying that Shirley, Robert and Feldy don't really believe that Maybrick could have been the ripper, and are simply being dishonest in putting their theories forward for the public to digest and decide for themselves? Or are you saying that even if they truly believe the diary to be genuine, they are worse than all the other theorists who truly believe in their own suspects, despite the fact that none of the candidates proposed in their respective books would be convicted in a court of law as they stand?
Do you not trust the public to have any unproven theories thrust their way, lest they swallow them whole?
Love,
Caz
PS No, Philip, no drill - just a good polish.  |
Author: Peter Wood
Friday, 05 October 2001 - 01:47 pm | | For the attention of Philip C. Dowe: So you could have written the diary in the 1960's on the known facts, could you? Answer me one thing, where would you have looked for the reference to a 'Treble Event'?
Peter. |
Author: R.J.P.
Friday, 05 October 2001 - 02:26 pm | | Caz--Hello. I don't mind in the least that you are 'pushing' the point, but I must say that my opinion has nothing whatsoever to do with 'preconceptions' or 'desires'. What you are in effect saying is that the author of the diary knew the personal history of Richard Crashaw and specifically used the 'O Costly' quote as a playful allusion to Whitechapel-- and that, therefore, I assume, Mike Barrett's copy of the Sphere is entirely coincidental. That seems like a stretch to me. Is there anything else in the diary that shows that level of sophistication? [I can only think of the 'Hammersmith' allusion, but that's hardly a brain-storm]. I can only repeat what I already said. The Maybrick text doesn't strike me as being sophisticated enough to have been written by someone with a vast knowledge 17th Century English religious poets, unpublished Ripper documents, and hard-to-obtain material about the Maybrick trial. I admit it: I can't prove with either logic or physical evidence that this is the case. Theoretically, the diarist could be a remarkably knowledgeable and sophisticated researcher with a vast amount of resources at his/her disposal, but I certainly agree with Martin Fido that if this is the case, he/she sure made an 'inadequate' use of their talents. So yes, I think the Crashaw/Whitechapel connection is a coincidence.
I tend to agree with you about Shirley Harrison however. I used to take the hard-line, and I can see where Chris, as a historian, is squeemish about the use of suspect documents in writing a history. The British High Court did say that the public would be 'deluded', but they didn't prevent the publication of the diary. They only allowed the critics [in this case the Times] freedom to publish their own opinions. As much as I distrust the diary, I can't help but believe that Feldy and Shirley Harrison honestly believed the diary to be genuine. It's also hard to argue that Maybrick is a worst suspect than Carroll, Prince Eddy, or Francis Thompson.
I think the difference between Shirley's book and a dishonest history is that her book really isn't about Maybrick being the Ripper, using a forged document to prove her case. Her book is really about the document itself: its provenance, the scientific analysis, etc. So I don't begrudge her the book.
Chris---Thanks for the most interesting update. I'll certainly have to read your article! Best wishes, RJ Palmer |
Author: R.J.P.
Friday, 05 October 2001 - 02:54 pm | | John--Let me guess: my argument is some sort of reverse inverted tautology. "The diary can't be that sophisticated because it isn't that sophisticated!" 
Peter--Use your same line of reasoning with the police inventory list and see where it leads you.
See y'all another day. RJP |
Author: Philip C. Dowe
Friday, 05 October 2001 - 03:16 pm | | Hi there,
Peter:
I wrote my posting earlier in the office (no Ripper books there). When I got home I realised that I made a mistake. You have got me thinking. HARD!
Caz:
I used "engraved" because others before me had used it.
See you next week, I am taking a weekend off with the family (plus one or two books)
Yours, Philip |
Author: Peter Wood
Friday, 05 October 2001 - 03:49 pm | | Philip: Thank you for being so gracious, it is the mark of a good man, I hope my last message didn't come across as being too 'harsh', but it seems to have had the desired effect. Isn't it impossible to debate all the points of interest in one go? That's why I like to pick a point at a time and rip it to pieces. Please see what you can come up with on the 'Treble Event', I'd be interested to hear your opinions.
One thing I did agree with on your earlier message, yes it does look like someone sat down with all the known events and set out to make a good story of it all, but that doesn't necessarily mean the diary isn't genuine. I am still of the opinion that the majority of 'anti-diarists' just can't accept that the guy who killed five (or more) prostitutes in London over a hundred years ago wrote it all down, I still have trouble coming to terms with that one myself, but the evidence is all there. Long may the debating continue.
One more theory to throw into the melting pot - does anyone think that Mrs HAMMERSMITH could have been in any way related to T A HAMER who attended Maybrick's funeral? i.e. double barrelled surname Hamer - smith, after all the diarist did get confused with the spelling.
Enjoy your weekend
Peter. |
Author: John Omlor
Friday, 05 October 2001 - 05:53 pm | | Hi RJ,
The only thing that strikes me at the moment is that if people's impressions are correct and Albert didn't scratch the watch -- if it was somehow already scratched with Maybrick's name before the date of the soccer disaster -- then we have a problem. Because that would mean that there was an artifact made up to look like James Maybrick was Jack the Ripper before the Sphere Guide arrived at the Barrett house (and therefore before the Crashaw quote could have come from the Sphere Guide). And since there seems to be no link whatsoever between the Barretts and Albert Johnson, such timing would be very difficult to explain if the scratches really were there before the date of the disaster. It would indeed be an incredible coincidence if someone somewhere was faking or had faked a watch and someone somewhere was faking a diary, both claiming the same thing about Maybrick as Jack without either knowing what the other was doing. And if the watch was forged before the soccer disaster (and I certainly don't know that it was or that I even think it might have been), then it was forged before Mike even had access to any Crashaw quote to nick.
Just a single thought on timing for the afternoon.
Peter,
Concerning Paul Feldman's interpretation of the "treble event" passage in the October 5 "Dear Friend" letter and in the diary, I have indeed tried to carefully and clearly demonstrate why Feldman's reading here of the "treble event" reference and the letter is logically flawed and makes a claim to considerably more than it is entitled.
You can find my reading, in detail, if you head to the board under "General Discussion" called "The Maybrick Diary" and then to the subheading called "Archives 2001: Archive through June 06, 2001." Once you open that link, scroll down to a lengthy post of mine, that RJ has already mentioned, dated "Tuesday, 05 June 2001 - 09:33 pm." There, you can follow Paul's leaps of reading and the excess to which his desire for a recognizable conclusion leads him in that section of his book.
It might give you something to think about concerning whether the diary really does have any claim to authenticity because of its mention of taking three "next time."
Let me know what you think. Thanks,
--John |
Author: Peter Wood
Friday, 05 October 2001 - 08:12 pm | | John,
Thanks for the referral to your old message. Yes, I did read it. No, I don't agree with it.
Feldman is just making connections. Isolate the 'treble event' from the letter for a moment, forget about divine powers etc etc. Clearly at about the time of the murders someone saw fit to mention the possibility of doing three in a night, this only after two had been done in a night. Then for the next 100+ years........ NOTHING! Not until the diary appeared was there a mention of a 'treble event'.
To my mind (and Feldman's) the two HAVE to be linked. There is no other explanation - except of course for that four letter word - LUCK.
The diarist alluded to 'three', so did the letter writer, and yet the diarist (if a forger) could not have possibly seen the letter - so why the mention of 'three'. Why? The answer is because he was saying it as he saw it, he was writing it as he thought it, he genuinely wanted to know if he could outwit the police and kill three prostitutes in one night.
The conclusion is, and has to be, that James Maybrick was Jack the Ripper.
I am already looking forward to your reply.
Peter. |
Author: Ivor Edwards
Friday, 05 October 2001 - 11:11 pm | | | Caz, At least D'Onston can be placed in Whitechapel at the time of the murders. At least he was arrested by the police on suspicion of being Jack the Ripper. People who knew him said they believed he was the killer. And there is much more to place him in the frame. This is a sight more than can be said for Maybrick and most of the other suspects.Also there is not the stigma of a hoax surounding 98% of the other suspects.You should read my book on D'Onston and read up on other suspects apart from Maybrick who I might add is not even a contender in the eyes of many people. |
Author: Caroline Anne Morris
Saturday, 06 October 2001 - 03:47 am | | Dear Ivor,
I don't have any problem with people who have pet suspects. For you, the ripper was D'Onston - that's fine. For others, he was Tumblety, or Druitt or Maybrick and so on. I have no fixed ideas, no fixed suspect. I am a reader who waits to be convinced by someone that their theory is the right one. But I'll need proof against one suspect before my mind will become closed to the rest. So it looks like I may have to wait an awful long time. Great, isn't it?
Love,
Caz |
Author: Caroline Anne Morris
Saturday, 06 October 2001 - 03:56 am | | So RJ,
Of all the places in all the world the obscure metaphysical poet could have come from (as far as Mike Barrett or Mr. Big or the penman knew), I am just left wondering what the chances were of it being Whitechapel, London.
I wish I could swallow this one as easily as you have - quite amazing.
Love,
Caz |
Author: Paul Begg
Saturday, 06 October 2001 - 05:07 am | | Hi Chris
As one of the organisers of the Bournemouth Conference, I can say that within the Conference theme of ‘faction’ the purpose of the Maybrick panel was to give delegates an opportunity to meet some of the principle players in the ‘diary’ story and to view the artefacts. If people went away with a somewhat clearer perception of the people and issues then that was a bonus. However, you wrote that your “concern as I voiced to Keith Skinner on Saturday night is that the public is being misled into thinking Maybrick was the killer when there is no solid evidence that he was.” But every theory misleads readers into believing that it is true. If the author accepts his evidence, believes his arguments, and argues his case persuasively, then he is likely to persuade his reader. Only when analysed might critics knocks holes in the evidence and the arguments. And this is true of Tumblety, Donston, Kosminski, Maybrick or whoever. What really matters is the sincerity with which the argument is believed and with which it is advanced. Given that the Maybrick panellists have had some extremely harsh things said about them, especially on these Message Boards, it can hardly be surprising if their primary concern was to make clear that they are sincere and honest people, not the money-grubbing charlatans and swindlers as portrayed.
And although there may be some merit in the view that no book should have been published until the authenticity of the Maybrick ‘diary’ could be proved, that’s hardly realistic nor does it represent common practice. We are dealing with theories and by definition a theory is a thing unproven and papers, articles and books outlining theories are published all the time. Should they not be published until the theory is proven fact?
And there is solid evidence for thinking that Maybrick was the killer. That solid evidence is the ‘diary’ itself. It is real. It is tangible. You saw it and maybe even held it at Bournemouth. It’s as real as the Littlechild letter, the Swanson marginalia or the Macnaghten memoranda. It is only distinguished from those items by not being accepted as genuine. But its genuineness is part of the debate. To dismiss it as a worthless post-1987 forgery is to have reached a conclusion which in the opinion of some commentators is premature and unjustified by the available evidence. What Shirley Harrison and Paul Feldman have done is to present their arguments based on their research. And I am very glad that they have done so. It’s a pity that their books may have misled some people into accepting that Maybrick was the Ripper, but the point I think Keith and Caz were trying to make is that every other theory has similarly misled people into accepting the theorists candidate. There really isn’t a difference.
Well, actually there is a difference. Or a possible difference. And that’s sincerity. If Shirley Harrison and Paul Feldman are insincere in what they have written then they are indeed guilty of knowingly and wittingly being misleading. But if they are sincere then they are no different from any other theorist. And they deserve the same degree of respect. I think the Maybrick panellists were trying to show that they were sincere.
As for Albert Johnson, you wrote “I agree he seems an ordinary man and seems unlikely to have forged the watch.... but what do I know?” Frankly, I’m not sure that we have experts who can immediately identify a liar from a truth-teller. Court rooms would be simpler places if there were. But all any of us can do is assess a person as we find them. And I don’t think anyone who spoke with Albert Johnson or his wife would have come away from the meeting thinking other than that he is an ordinary man unlikely to have made the scratches in the watch. And if you came away with that feeling then you, like the rest of us who have been confronted with that awkward thought, must address the question of who put the scratches there and when. And, of course, how that effects the ‘diary’ itself. Addressing that question doesn’t commit you too it, of course, but since we are not here dealing with an obvious charlatan and could in fact be dealing with an honest man, the question does need addressing. |
Author: Christopher T George
Saturday, 06 October 2001 - 06:23 am | | Hi, Paul:
I have great difficulty accepting that you actually believe the statement that you wrote,
And there is solid evidence for thinking that Maybrick was the killer. That solid evidence is the ‘diary’ itself. It is real. It is tangible. You saw it and maybe even held it at Bournemouth. It’s as real as the Littlechild letter, the Swanson marginalia or the Macnaghten memoranda. It is only distinguished from those items by not being accepted as genuine. But its genuineness is part of the debate. To dismiss it as a worthless post-1987 forgery is to have reached a conclusion which in the opinion of some commentators is premature and unjustified by the available evidence.
Come on, Paul! Really! The Maybrick Diary is not genuine merely because it exists. Then by that same argument the Hitler Diaries were genuine because they existed, and Abberline's presumed diary may be genuine because it may exist. I don't think you would advance the argument that either of those two examples could be so, would you?
Surely the talisman for proving something authentic goes much beyond whether there is a document that purports to be something. It has to be proven to be an authentic document by experts who compare the handwriting to the writing of the individual who allegedly wrote it and to have an ironclad provenance which would indicate where the document has been since it left the writer's hand. The Maybrick diary has neither of these things and therefore must be presumed to be a bogus document not worthy of the attention you accord it.
You have said on a number of occasions that we should learn from the saga of the Maybrick diary. I should say then as I contended yesterday that a mistake was made in publishing this document that has nothing going for it that proves that Maybrick was the Ripper. The only thing barring the equally "iffy" watch that would tell us Maybrick was the Ripper is the Diary, and the Diary has not been and cannot be proven to be genuine.
Best regards
Chris George |
Author: R.J.P.
Saturday, 06 October 2001 - 08:19 am | | Chris--I have to agree with you here. Various lawyers, historians, and document examiners have set down guidelines for questioned documents over the years. For instance, Albert Osborn in his text Questioned Documents asks some of the fundamental questions that you ask above. Does the document have a clear provenance that can be traced back to the writer? Is the format of the document damaged or unusual? Does the handwriting compare with other known samples of the writer? Is the text historically accurate? etc. etc.
In the case of the Macnaghten Memo, the format was not unusual. The provenance is excellent; there is an Official Scotland Yard version in Macnaghten's own hand, and even a second independent version in the hand of Macnaghten's daughter. There are some historical innaccuracies, but commonsense and research would suggest that these are due to either a faulty memory of the writer or from the fact that he was basing his opinions on second-hand information.
In the case of the Maybrick diary there are huge problems. The subject matter is so sensational that it causes immediate suspicion. It was originally brought to light by someone who was trying to sell it to a publisher and claimed he got it from a man in a pub. Another provenance emerged only years later and cannot be confirmed. The document itself is both damaged (many pages torn out) and in an unusual format (written in a scrap album instead of a diary). The handwriting is clearly not that of James Maybrick. The text contains historical inaccuracies, but, unlike the Macnaghten memo, these seem to be due to the author culling his information from newspaper reports/books rather than from actual experience. In the standards set by Osborn and others, the Maybrick diary fails on every level. And yet, reading these boards, one might believe that it is the critics of the diary that are back on their heels. |
Author: John Omlor
Saturday, 06 October 2001 - 09:10 am | | Hello all,
First of all, a quick bit of re-reading.
Chris, You cite a passage by Paul saying that the diary exists, and is therefore at least "solid evidence," but that it is "distinguished from" other documents that exist because it is not accepted as genuine and "its genuineness is part of the debate." Paul concludes: "To dismiss it as a worthless post-1987 forgery is to have reached a conclusion which in the opinion of some commentators is premature and unjustified by the available evidence."
You then reply: "The Maybrick Diary is not genuine merely because it exists."
But this is not at all what Paul has written.
Nowhere in his post has he asserted the diary's genuineness, let alone claimed that it is genuine simply because it exists.
What Paul has written is quite literally true. He has said it does exist. It does. He has said that its genuineness is being debated. It is. He has said that some commentators are of the opinion that it cannot yet be dismissed as a post-1987 forgery. This statement is true. There are some commentators that are of this opinion. Paul has not even said that he is one of them. His claim is not that that the diary must be genuine because it exists. And nowhere in either the passage you cite or the rest of his post, it seems to me, does he ever suggest that such a claim would be possible.
Hi Peter,
Let me see if I understand your position. If I was writing a fake diary of Jack-the-Ripper, and I knew that there had been a double event, historically, so in my diary I had my Jack think that next time he might be able to kill three women in one night...
the only conclusion possible is that I MUST have seen a letter from October 5, 1888 in which someone mentions a treble event?
Do you see the problem here? There are a great many other reasons why I, as a writer, quite logically, would have an obsessed serial killer think of new ways to get bigger thrills and to write them in his diary and one of the first and most obvious, if he'd already famously killed two in one night would be to have him plan to kill three. It's not really just luck at all. It makes perfect sense.
But in any case, under no circumstances or rules of evidence or rules of logic at all can you then claim that my writing this necessarily mandates or somehow proves that I read some letter of October 5, 1888. It just doesn't necessarily follow from the premises.
Check it out.
All you and Paul F. are saying is:
There is a line in the diary where "Jack" thinks of the double event and wonders about taking three next time.
There is a reference in the letter of October 5, 1888 to a treble event.
Your logical conclusion from these two premises cannot validly be "Therefore whoever wrote the diary must have seen the letter.."
Because that "must" implies that there is no other possible way that someone could have written a text where his Jack thinks of killing three women in one night. And that is simply and demonstrably not the case. There are plenty of other simple and logical ways that a creative writer constructing the imagination of a fictional Jack would have had him thinking about "taking three next time."
This does not, let me be clear, logically or validly prove that the diarist did not see the October 5 letter. Not at all.
It only proves that the claim that he must have is logically and empirically invalid, simply through an appeal to experience and imagination.
It isn't even possible to claim that is it more likely that the writer saw the October 5 letter than it is that he just had a guy who committed a famous double event think of committing a triple one. Because it's not necessarily more likely.
Consequently the existence of the line in the diary cannot be used to prove that the writer must have seen the letter and therefore the existence of the line in the diary cannot be used to prove the diary was written by Jack the Ripper.
All Paul has done is offer a wishful speculation and disguise it in the language of a conclusion which, upon closer examination, is not only not necessary, but isn't even particularly preferable.
And none of this would even have to involve "luck." Not especially, since the idea of killing three follows so obviously from the famous experience of killing two. And no one else had Jack think of it for 100+ years, perhaps, because no one else was writing a first-person journal of Jack’s thoughts in that time. When they did, it made sense.
Thanks,
-John |
Author: Christopher T George
Saturday, 06 October 2001 - 09:59 am | | Hi, John:
As usual, of course, you are absolutely correct. Paul did not say that the Diary is genuine. In fact, he is clear in saying that the Diary "is only distinguished from those items [the Macnaghten memorandum and the Littlechild letter]by not being accepted as genuine." I believe what I was reacting to and what I still find to be a shocking statement is Paul's beginning preamble, "And there is solid evidence for thinking that Maybrick was the killer. That solid evidence is the ‘diary’ itself." Evidence of what? The Diary has not been proven to be genuine and probably cannot be proven to be genuine. So it is evidence of nothing at all. Do you see where I am coming from, John?
Best regards
Chris George |
Author: John Omlor
Saturday, 06 October 2001 - 10:11 am | | Hi Chris,
Ah. I think I see the problem. I was reading Paul's phrase "solid evidence" as meaning more "physical evidence" -- that is, something that actually exists materially rather than a story handed down, etc. It was, I thought, merely a way of distinguishing it from the rumors and stuff used to name other suspects, which are not actually available to us in material form. I didn't think he was using the phrase to imply either that the diary was genuine or that we can count it, yet, as "reliable evidence" of Jack's identity. Indeed, it may very well be false evidence, as Paul suggests when he mentions that the genuineness is still up for debate.
I read "solid" in Paul's post to read "actual" or "material" rather than "reliable." I might be wrong.
Clearly, though, whether the diary is reliable evidence of Jack's identity is what Paul suggests is still being debated by some commentators (not us). He's right. It is.
Hope that helps,
--John |
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