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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 **
TIME FOR A RE-VALUATION II
Casebook Message Boards: The Diary of Jack the Ripper: General Discussion:
TIME FOR A RE-VALUATION II
Author: Mark Andrew Pardoe
Sunday, 10 November 2002 - 08:37 am |        | Whatho Peter,
I think there are many problems with the text of the diary. A lot of them have been reviewed on these boards before. If one of them can be answered I can start to view Mr Maybrick with further interest.
As I am a member of the Inn Sign Society (oh yes, there is an organisation for every loony in Britain) and research and lecture about the history and meaning of pub names I am very interested in the Poste House. We are told his pub was not known by that name in 1888 and so it was impossible for James to have a pint of Cain’s in there. Earlier this year on another thread I suggested a way the pub may have had that name as a nick-name. I do not remember you commenting then but I would like you thoughts. It require you visiting Liverpool to do a bit of research and I am sure the Scouces will welcome a Red such as yourself with open arms and to swap footy yarns with happy abandon. Anyway, can you help here?
Cheers, Mark not Mar |
Author: Tee Vee
Sunday, 10 November 2002 - 10:45 am | | I used to go in a pub called "The Peggy" but "factually" it was never called "The peggy" It was called "The Pegasus" Maybe it was next door to a post house. Maybe it WAS a post office before it was the pub, but it just kept its namesake by local folk. I mean we all know that Mr Maybrick used the post quite a bit. More than you hear of him drinking a cains anyway. Hello again Pete. I have a page for you to read, now this does have some terrible errors in it, but some peeps have been sucked in by it. Check it out for a giggle http://www.imaginema.co.uk/Aspects_of_a_Psychopath/index.htm
Yours truly.
Tee |
Author: Caroline Morris
Monday, 11 November 2002 - 08:36 am | | Hi All,
I think our theoretical modern forger was a bit silly if he decided the pub in Cumberland Street now named 'The Poste House' would be a suitable place for Sir Jim to take refreshment at.
But then again, he apparently sat back while Mike Barrett not only handled, placed and profited from his creation, but also claimed to be the mastermind behind it.
So just how much of a silly faker was this diary author?
Love,
Caz |
Author: Mark Andrew Pardoe
Monday, 11 November 2002 - 02:20 pm | | Whatho Caz,
Perhaps he sat back in the Poste House while Mike bought him loads of ale with the profits.
Cheers, Mark (in need of a couple of pints himself) |
Author: Caroline Morris
Tuesday, 12 November 2002 - 06:25 am | | Hi Mark,
Yeah, but what did he do to Mike when he buggered up future profits by claiming that all his work was just a simple piece of modern scallywaggery thought up by his drinking partner? Buy him a packet of pork scratchings and pat him on the back? 
And who is 'he'? The invisible man? Oh I forgot - no one will ever need or want to know who actually dunnit - only that it was done, in the late 1980s, over a couple of pints. Simple.
Love,
Caz |
Author: R.J. Palmer
Tuesday, 12 November 2002 - 10:19 pm | | Caz--For Your Information:
"Historian Keith Skinner suggests the diary was a very old forgery, but a forgery nontheless, because of errors in historical detail.
He cites an occasion when the diary author mentions a Liverpool pub called the Post House, but said the pub did not acquire the name until after 1888.
A show of hands at the end of the conference reveals that about 30 delegates were convinced the diary was a forgery."
---from the BCC coverage of the Psychology Conference at Liverpool University. 16 Sept 1998.
Do you think Keith is mistaken in his assumption that the diary refers to Post House?
Do you think Roger Wilkes is mistaken in his claims that the Muck Midden acquired this name after 1960?
What do you think this does to the argument that the diary is a "very old forgery"?
Cheers, RJP |
Author: Caroline Morris
Wednesday, 13 November 2002 - 08:53 am | | Er, it's not an assumption on Keith's part, RJ. The diary gives us:
'I took refreshment at the Poste House...'
And I'm sure Roger Wilkes is not mistaken in his claims that the pub in Cumberland Street, known as the Muck Midden in Maybrick's day, acquired its new name, 'The Poste House', in recent times. I've also heard this particular watering hole referred to as simply 'Liverpool's smallest pub'.
There is no way of telling if a forger had this specific building in mind and, if so, why. Obviously if the forgery is a 'very old' one, he couldn't have. But why couldn't a forger, working on the diary at any time, have made such a place up, assuming wrongly or rightly that in 1880s Liverpool there would have been at least one inn referred to as the post house by its customers?
Love,
Caz |
Author: R.J. Palmer
Wednesday, 13 November 2002 - 05:28 pm | | Caz--Hi. I'm well aware that the diary refers to Poste House. But clearly Keith seems to be saying [unless he was misquoted] that the Poste House mentioned in the diary is the one in Cumberland Street --otherwise it wouldn't be "an error in historical accuracy".
So if it is an error, to what era does this date the diary? According to Wilkes, the Muck Midden retained that name until at least the early 1930s and maybe even to the 1960s [surely an easy matter to clear up by referring to city directories?]
But didn't Keith suggest a date for the diary in the 1920s? Has he found new information about the Cumberland Street Pub? Or is there a contradiction here somewhere?
It would be interesting to hear his thoughts.
Cheers, RP |
Author: Caroline Morris
Thursday, 14 November 2002 - 08:45 am | | Hi RJ,
Ah, if only everyone thought of the diarist’s ‘Poste House’ as conclusive proof of a modern forgery, we could both stop boring the readers rigid. 
If Keith once assumed, as did many others, and as many still do, that the diary author intended Maybrick to take his refreshment at 'the one' in Cumberland Street; and if subsequent info has revealed that this establishment was first called 'The Poste House' well after the 1920s, I can only conclude that Keith is no longer assuming anything in particular about the author’s intended location. I certainly haven't heard of any new information that suggests the Cumberland Street pub was likely to have been referred to as a post house in the old days, but I trust Keith to let me know if there is any. But short of tracking down the forger and asking him, I would suggest to you that none of us can say with absolute authority that the one in the diary is meant to be the one in modern day Cumberland Street.
Naturally, there will be the usual accusation that it’s a ‘convenient’ argument that the author may not have meant the Cumberland Street pub after all. But nevertheless it is a valid argument, unless you can prove he must have done. And these things work both ways. You seem to be holding on like grim death to the absolute conviction that the forger made a fatal mistake by choosing to include 'the one' in Cumberland Street, with little or no thought for the pub’s history and therefore its suitability. As you are so certain the diary and watch are obvious fakes of recent origin, and that Mike and/or Anne must know it too, isn’t it rather pointless to invest this much time in debating the kind of details that simply cannot be resolved without the forger’s own confirmation/denial - especially when so much trouble has also been taken to argue that the forger needn’t/shouldn’t be smoked out alive?
If it is all such ‘an easy matter to clear up’, I do wonder why on earth Melvin Harris is still banging on about faulty batches of hardback books and unpublished reports, and why you are still entering into debate on the subject. And I do not believe, as you appear to, that Keith would be remotely interested in the investigation into the diary's origins ten years down the line if he knew in his heart of hearts that it had all ended - by the tenth line of the diary - in Cumberland Street.
Love,
Caz |
Author: Peter Wood
Thursday, 14 November 2002 - 01:37 pm | | Dear Mar
Whatever it is that you want me to do - let me know, providing it doesn't involve walking into the post (e?) house wearing a man utd shirt and shouting "Michael Owen is a girl!"
Actually I did have occasion to walk through Liverpool town centre in the hours of darkness a short while ago, fortunately I had some friends for company. I'd been to a concert - on the way back to the car we passed a pub belting out old Beatle's songs. I shouted out "Give it up, it's over, let go, nobody listens to the Beatles anymore".
When I looked up my friends were 200 yards ahead of me and running like the wind! Oh happy days!
For those of you interested in FACTS - try reading Shirley's book, she details her search for the original name of the pub once known as the muck midden and she said the records don't exist (or words to that effect), so it is entirely possible that the poste house could have been so called back when James Maybrick was Jack the Ripper. Now stop your arguing.
Regards
Peter Not Gary. |
Author: R.J. Palmer
Thursday, 14 November 2002 - 02:13 pm | | Dear Caz-- Yes, I hold on to it like 'grim death', but this is because I really don't believe that there is a 'valid' counter-argument. The Poste House in Cumberland Street is the only pub in Liverpool by that name [Wilke's claims there was no pub by that name in 1888]; so, pending some new research, the 'alternative' is theoretical at best. Of course, you seem to be suggesting that the diarist might be using 'post house' in a generic sense; but in the diary the phrase is written in the uppper case: Post House, a proper name.
The Cumberland Street establishment is only 300 yards from Maybrick's office in Tithebarne Street [a location where Anne Graham once worked] and roughly the same distance from the Liverpool Cotton Exchange. About as far as Mitre Square was from the Goulston Street message. It's also a short walk from 'Whitechapel' [Florie's alleged meeting place]---which is mentioned in the very same passage in the diary. It's thoroughly understandable that Shirley Harrison & others would have identified the pub as the one on Cumberland.
We are talking about the little neighborhood where Maybrick worked. A reference to City Darts in a newly found letter by Aaron Kosminski might not be an anachronism, but common sense would suggest that it was.
Cheers. |
Author: R.J. Palmer
Thursday, 14 November 2002 - 04:04 pm | | | Peter---Er...Hi. In regards to the "FACTS"...Mrs. Harrison is wrong on this point, I'm afraid. Wilkes mentions that the Liverpool Citizen did an lengthy article on the pub in December, 1887 [bad luck for Maybrick fans!] which clearly proves that the pub's name was the Muck Midden. The Post Office from which the pub may have later taken its name didn't exist until 1899. Wilkes goes on to mention an illustration in the 1932 Liverpolitan Magazine which still shows the wrought iron "MM" over the pub's doors. You might enjoy reading the enlightening essay by Melvin Harris called "A Guide Through the Labryinth" if you'd want to see the details. Best wishes, RJP |
Author: Howard Brown
Thursday, 14 November 2002 - 04:56 pm | | | Dear R.J.: Thanks for the above information on the Muck Midden. HB |
Author: Timsta
Thursday, 14 November 2002 - 05:04 pm | | Hi all.
Surely no establishment was actually *formally* called the 'Muck Midden'?
As a Liverpool native I am pretty familiar with the custom of giving pubs nicknames - 'The Big House' aka The Vines on Renshaw St comes to mind, you *never* hear it called The Vines, but that's actually its name, and the name on the pub sign - are you sure that there wasn't actually a formal name? Anyone checked in a Kelly's or POD?
Regards
Timsta
PS for those unfamiliar with Northern English dialect, the word 'midden' is cognate with 'outhouse'. |
Author: Caroline Morris
Friday, 15 November 2002 - 06:54 am | | Hi RJ,
Thanks for the geography and history lessons. I would imagine that when drinkers in Victorian times said they were going to the posthouse for a pint, they would be referring to an inn, originally where horses were kept for posting, but which would have had its official name over the door. As such, the actual words 'post' and 'house' would not have been in evidence anywhere in any form. But nevertheless that would have become its adopted name.
So, just as many pubs are called the glue-pot (because its regulars get stuck in there ), anyone writing about going there is as likely to use the upper case as the lower, ie the 'Glue Pot', and so we get the 'Poste House'. The diary author does also misspell posthouse by adding an 'e' to 'Post', but this is hardly surprising as he also misspells 'posthaste', rendering it 'poste haste' - twice, I believe. In fact there is only one 'post' in the dictionary with an 'e' on the end of it, and that is 'poste restante', which arguably would have been far more in evidence on signs, in the form 'Poste Restante', and that spelling unconsciously registered, than either posthouse or posthaste would. (Have you also noticed how at least two regulars here spell the word 'poste' when they refer to a written post? I couldn't find that in the dictionary.)
Let's find the modern forger, RJ, and we can then ask him why he didn't pick on a nice old inn that was known to be a former posthouse, but instead clocked the post-Victorian sign (not a poste-Victorian one!) on the watering hole known today as 'Liverpool's smallest pub', formerly known as the muck midden (a euphemism for shi* hole, for those in any doubt) and stuck it straight in the diary on line ten. I'll be fascinated to hear his reasoning.
Love,
Caz |
Author: Peter Wood
Saturday, 16 November 2002 - 09:58 am | | The diary debate has really suffered since John Omlor left the arena. Bring back John Omlor!
Why bother discussing the name of a pub when no one can even be certain if it is the exact pub that the diarist refers to?
Better to discuss the fascinating subject of the ink that has passed all attempts to "prove" it modern and is not Diamine.
What matter then the name of a pub if the ink isn't Diamine? Because if the ink isn't Diamine then the diary is genuine.
Bosh. |
Author: Mark Andrew Pardoe
Saturday, 16 November 2002 - 07:17 pm | | Oh Peter,
It's much more interesting to discuss pubs; it's even better to be in one whilst you're discussing them. If I have the choice between beer and ink I think I'd know which one to chose.
Cheers, Mark wishing he had pint of Kimberley Bitter handy. |
Author: Peter Wood
Sunday, 17 November 2002 - 08:14 am | | Kimberley Bitter? I'm sure I was at school with her.
On another strand Caroline and RJ have got their knickers in a twist over that trusty old Sphere guide and the Crashaw quote. I have the definitive answer on that one - and it fits in with Mike Barrett as a person.
Mike and Shirley were both curious about the quote as it appeared in the diary. Shirley asked Mike to investigate it. Mike did just that - he asked the guy at the second hand book store where such a quote may appear, the guy tells Mike "The Sphere guide". At this point it is immaterial as to whether or not Mike is aware that he has that book in his house because Mike then ascertains that the Liverpool library has the book so he can claim to Shirley that he has "found" the quote and it's author.
Cool huh?
Peter |
Author: Monty
Monday, 18 November 2002 - 07:47 am | | Peter,
....and was she 'handy' ??
Monty
|
Author: Peter Wood
Monday, 18 November 2002 - 02:16 pm | | | Err ...no. |
Author: Mark Andrew Pardoe
Monday, 18 November 2002 - 05:57 pm | | But I got my "hanson"
Cheers, Mark |
Author: Peter Wood
Saturday, 23 November 2002 - 01:57 pm | | Could Jack the Ripper have been related to Myra Hindley?
Ok guys
Attention has been deflected away from the diary for far too long.
I have sat here and pondered, ney sobbed, over the loss of John Omlor from the proceedings.
John and I may have ripped (excuse the pun) into each other at times, but he was a gentleman poster. I wish he would return, for the diary debate has fallen flat and I can only take that as meaning you lot cannot prove the diary to be the modern forgery that you all wish it to be.
So I thought I would throw the cat (sorry Ichabod) well and truly back among the pigeons again with this little snippet:
Could Jack the Ripper have been related to Myra Hindley?
As you all know, I'm not one for research - more for posing questions - let someone else do the research. But it does strike me as a subject that would stand having six quid spent on it that Myra Hindley's grandmother was called ...
Ellen Maybury!
So it's not an exact match, but those of you who have followed the diary story will know that Maybury is just another version of Maybrick - indeed the Maybury part of "Sir Jim's" family is mentioned in PHF's book.
I seem to remember someone called Ellen too.
Too much to be coincidence, right?
Not only was James Maybrick Jack the Ripper, but he was also related to the Moors Murderers.
Peter |
Author: Christopher T George
Saturday, 23 November 2002 - 09:15 pm | | Hi, Peter:
I admire your jocular effort to resuscitate the ailing candidacy of Jimmy of Mayberry.
Unfortunately, your old sparring partner John Omlor has evidently found other vineyards to tend. Perhaps it was because he found the arguments here entirely circular, which is also what disenchanted me eventually.
Visitors may be interested to know that I have e-mailed Dr. Thomas Ind whose name came up on another board. Hopefully I will hear back from him and learn if he has been able to do any more digging into the medical aspects of the case or if he has been too busy.
Best regards
Chris George |
Author: Peter Wood
Sunday, 24 November 2002 - 01:34 pm | | Thanks Chris
I'll just keep on posting here until I find a new generation of anti diarists to argue the toss with.
Personally I'm still convinced that the diary is genuine, that James Maybrick wrote the diary and that James Maybrick was Jack the Ripper.
Regardless of all else no one, not even John Omlor, has come up with a good answer as to why "Sir Jim" appears so many times in the diary.
I was fobbed off with "Well, Sir Jim and Sir James bear no resemblance to each other" - well, excuse me ... "Sir Peter", "Sir Pete", Geddit?
Thought you might.
Further still, the scientific evidence still sits comfortably and squarely in "Sir Jim" Maybrick's corner.
So that's cool by me, if you lot can't raise yourself for a fight I'll just adopt the same stance that Patricia Cornwell is taking over Walter Sickert - you've got to prove that he didn't do it.
Yep, James Maybrick is guilty until proven innocent
Peter |
Author: Monty
Monday, 25 November 2002 - 11:36 am | | Peter,
That 'guilty till proven innocent' stance does not exist in British law therefore......
....case against Maybrick dismissed.
Monty
|
Author: Peter Wood
Monday, 25 November 2002 - 06:43 pm | | Sure it exists Monty, just ask them nice middle class white boys accused of murdering the black boy - Stephen Lawrence.
Like I said before: Guilty until proven innocent.
Case against Maybrick reopened. |
Author: Paul Carpenter
Tuesday, 26 November 2002 - 07:58 am | | Ah Peter, don't worry - I'm just hovering in the wings, waiting for something new!
Cheers
C |
Author: Philip C. Dowe
Wednesday, 27 November 2002 - 06:05 am | | Peter, Peter, Peter,
As I work in the law-enforcement I cannot subscribe to your statement!
WHY MUST WE PROVE THAT MAYBRICK IS THE RIPPER?
You have to prove that Maybrick is the Ripper and convince us with your proof, not the other way around! Until there is proof there is no case to open or close.
Philip |
Author: Philip C. Dowe
Wednesday, 27 November 2002 - 06:06 am | | PS.
Comes from typing too fast. The question should read:
WHY MUST WE PROVE THAT MAYBRICK IS NOT THE RIPPER? |
Author: Caroline Morris
Wednesday, 27 November 2002 - 07:29 am | | Hi Philip, All,
If anyone could simply prove the diary a modern forgery, there would be no one left on the planet who could argue that Sir Jim and JtR were connected in any way before the late 1980s.
It should, in theory, have been a doddle to rub Maybrick out of the picture with a damp cloth, even if Sickert is now sticking to the canvas with $6 million worth of superglue.
But, in practice, all the while the diary and watch forgers are not exposed for the scouser scallywags they are believed to be, Maybrick cannot step cleanly out of his frame, Murgatroyd-like, but will continue to haunt us, whether we like it or not.
From another thread, I shamelessly pluck the following:
'Yes, historical researchers should be able to present people in less than flattering light without fear of lawsuits. But they should do so with truth and fair handling of the facts as their defense and not be allowed to get away with whatever sloppy research and baseless accusations they want just because dead people can't press charges.'
Let's hope this will be remembered when all the forger suspects are with us no more, and start going down in the history books as definitely ascertained scouser scallywags.
I can almost hear myself now, as a very old white-haired lady, saying to all who will listen - and a few who won't - "Ah yes, but they only thought they knew who wrote that diary."
Love,
Caz |
Author: Philip C. Dowe
Thursday, 28 November 2002 - 03:34 am | | Hi Caz,
If this forum still exists when we are old, there will be people who will listen!
Yours,
Philip |
Author: Peter Wood
Thursday, 28 November 2002 - 08:09 am | | Be assured that I make sure you still listen!
Carps, good to see you are still around.
As it is widely accepted that Mike Barrett did not forge the diary, then we can safely take things like the Crashaw quote, the Sphere guide and Melvin Harris' reluctance to let anyone see it - out of the equation.
I was asked by someone who doesn't have much of an interest in the case as to why the diary came to light in Liverpool.
It's a fair question.
It could have come to light anywhere, but if it had come to light in Aberdeen would you believe it anymore than you do now?
The diary has not been killed, nor has Maybrick been proven innocent.
The diary is one of the few tangible pieces of evidence left in the investigation, along with the watch and the letters.
If a few scousers had cobbled it together and scratched some markings in the back of a watch then it would have been proven a forgery by now.
But it hasn't.
So it isn't.
You can make statements like "The Maybrick forgery" until the cows come home, but that proves nothing.
If you find it hard to believe that the diary is genuine then that is just something you will have to get over, it is only the limitations of your mind that will not let you even begin to entertain the possibility that Maybrick was the ripper.
Once you get over that you will see the truth.
Without the Crashaw quote, without the Sphere guide, without Mike Barrett as the forger - you are left with the options that the diary is either genuine or, preposterously, an old forgery.
The other "possibility" that Maybrick was a fantasist is too off the wall to take up webspace.
If it was so easy for the Hitler diaries to be debunked, why can't the Maybrick diary be put to bed?
The exhaustive tests done on both the diary and the watch suggest it is more likely to be genuine than a modern forgery.
You just have to accept it guys, Walter Sickert may have written some of the letters but it was James Maybrick who slaughtered the women.
I think we'll take a break in proceedings there and resume after lunch.
Peter |
Author: Paul Carpenter
Thursday, 28 November 2002 - 08:43 am | | Ah Peter... the earth goes round the sun... Leeds continue to plummet towards eternal mid table mediocrity, and you still gamely plug the diary... long may it continue!
To recap:
There is nothing regarding the facts of the killings in the diary that could not have been lifted from a few commonly available books on the case.
There is nothing in the life of 'Maybrick' as told in the diary that cannot be found in the book (whose name I forget - see the archive) about the trial of Florrie.
The diary's provenance is lousy - consisting, as it does, of the word of a self-contradictory and unreliable man against the suddenly recovered memory of his ex wife. And of course there is no documentary evidence of its whereabouts over the one hundred missing years of its supposed life.
The one piece of content that actually seems to be out of character with the rest of the text is the quote by Crashaw. Which, as we all know, is relatively rare in print - even today (and certainly rarer than hen's teeth in Maybrick's day). Bafflingly, the guy who brought the diary to light happened to own the self same poem. In his loft.
But you knew all this already, didn't you?
All the best
C |
Author: Philip C. Dowe
Thursday, 28 November 2002 - 09:19 am | | Hi Peter,
I admire the way you go on, really! But the limitations of my mind are not reached yet.
a) The diary is not evidence. Because you cannot prove that Maybrick wrote it. The other sample of his handwriting is different.
b) There are mistakes in the diary. May I remind of the two usually lovely aspects which mark the difference between man and woman. The breats were not on the table.
c) The diary was found in Liverpool so that a connection could be made between the mansion, the diary and the man.
d) The rest was said by Carps! It has been said often enough.
So long and thanks for all the fish!
Philip |
Author: Peter Wood
Thursday, 28 November 2002 - 04:59 pm | | Gentlemen -the game is afoot!
"There is nothing regarding the facts of the killings in the diary that could not have been lifted from a few commonly available books on the case".
Really? And these books were available ...when? 1910, maybe? 1922? Or post 1989 when the only source for the location of MJK's breasts as (possibly) being by her feet was published.
"There is nothing in the life of 'Maybrick' as told in the diary that cannot be found in the book (whose name I forget - see the archive) about the trial of Florrie".
Is that so? Ahem, whisper it slowly, "S i r J i m". That's not all, but it will do - I wouldn't want to cabbage your heads.
"The diary's provenance is lousy - consisting, as it does, of the word of a self-contradictory and unreliable man against the suddenly recovered memory of his ex wife. And of course there is no documentary evidence of its whereabouts over the one hundred missing years of its supposed life.
I'm not disputing that the diary's provenance is bad ...but it's far from lousy, Anne Graham's father was prepared to give it a provenance back to the 1940's and his story intimates that it was in the family long before then.
It is a shame that one of the main planks of the diary detractors is that it was 'discovered' by Mike Barrett - a scouser. Had it been 'discovered' by a little old lady at a car boot sale or, heaven forbid, in the same circumstances as the Littlechild letter - would that have really changed your view of it?
The one piece of content that actually seems to be out of character with the rest of the text is the quote by Crashaw. Which, as we all know, is relatively rare in print - even today (and certainly rarer than hen's teeth in Maybrick's day). Bafflingly, the guy who brought the diary to light happened to own the self same poem. In his loft".
The Crashaw poem was in print before Maybrick was born - 'nuff said on that. Mike didn't 'own' the poem, he had a copy of a Sphere guide that had a quote from the poem in it. Mike has never given a satisfactory answer to how he came by that Sphere guide and, if you are correct and it was in his home when he took the diary to Shirley, then why didn't mention it when he was trying to 'prove' that he forged the diary?
Mike didn't forge the diary; the Sphere guide and the Crashaw quote are red herrings.
"The diary is not evidence. Because you cannot prove that Maybrick wrote it. The other sample of his handwriting is different".
Of course the diary is evidence, much the same as a gun is evidence in a murder trial as the prosecution and defence attorneys argue over who owned it. The reason I can't prove that Maybrick wrote it is because there are so few examples of his handwriting remaining, those that do tend to be business correspondence - much different to a privately written diary.
"There are mistakes in the diary. May I remind of the two usually lovely aspects which mark the difference between man and woman. The breats were not on the table".
There are no mistakes in the diary and there are two points that will counter your argument.
Number One: John McCarthy, the first man in the room said that the breasts were on the table, I should think he knew what breasts looked like.
Number Two: The diarist muses about 'leaving them by the whore's feet' - strangely enough that's where Bond says one of them was found. Bond's report wasn't published until 1989, Mike Barrett didn't own the book that it was published in. With the savagery and brutality that the ripper displayed in murdering MJK, I am prepared to concede that there could have been breast material both on the table and by the feet, although from the photographs remaining it appears that there is flesh on the table, but it doesn't appear that there is flesh by her feet. Also, MJK's head doesn't appear to be propped up on anything, either.
"The diary was found in Liverpool so that a connection could be made between the mansion, the diary and the man".
Pure speculation of course. How about this: The diary was found in Liverpool because that's where the family of the person who was given it lived? Added to that, of course, when Mike Barrett was offered the opportunity to "buy" a provenance for the diary he turned it down flat - hardly the manner of a forger now, is it? So there was never an intention to link the diary with Battlecrease house.
One day you will both see the truth.
Leeds are reaping what they sow: i.e. sacking a very talented man for a vegetable. eight losses at this stage of the season? Scandalous. Lets welcome Robbie Fowler to Old Trafford in the new year, he may as well bring Woodgate with him.
Peter |
Author: Paul Carpenter
Friday, 29 November 2002 - 05:02 am | | Ah the threadbare old Sir Jim / Sir James affair... I've got a nice warm nostalgic glow now... whither Omlor?
Suffice it to say that they ain't actually the same. See the different spellings? You might think that its a small difference, a trifling detail. But my friends call me "Carps" - not "Carpo". Anyone who did call me Carpo is generally someone who doesn't know me very well or is guessing at my nickname.
But certainly if I were a fictioneer, writing about a Victorian businessman, the idea of him calling himself (sardonically) "Sir Jim" would probably have been top of my list. It's a pretty obvious trick. It's certainly a simple enough idea to have occurred to his scullery maids or whatever. Not exactly straight out of left field is it?
Which is the problem with the diary full stop. Very little of it is arguable either way, as it is so vague. Where there is detail, it simply corroborates with known sources. Hence the Manchester "murders" are vague, whereas the Mary Kelly murder is graphic.
To my mind there is nothing compelling enough in the diary to say definitively that: Maybrick wrote this text, and that Maybrick was the killer.
Simple as that!
C |
Author: Philip C. Dowe
Friday, 29 November 2002 - 06:55 am | | After seeing that England are taking a hammering against Australia again, I decided to take a look here and what do I see and Peter has taken up the batting, but I would say you are run out for 99!
On the breats you are right, even Donald Rumbelow had the location of the breats on the table in his revised edition, but we now can be fairly certain that they were not on the table. John McCarthy may have recognized them when they were in place but not when they were caught of, unless they were placed front end up! Anybody who cocked up the story between 1888 and 1989 would have placed them on the table. Wrong!
A gun is only evidence when it can be proved a) to have been used in a crime or b) used by a suspect. As we cannot prove that a) it is genuine or b) written by Maybrick it is not evidence.
Do you have two different sets of handwriting? I don't, but you presume that Maybrick did. Well you have to don't you.
Case rested!
Philip |
Author: Philip C. Dowe
Friday, 29 November 2002 - 06:56 am | | PS
typing too fast again: read breasts for breats! |
Author: Peter Wood
Friday, 29 November 2002 - 01:23 pm | | Carps - the important part of Sir Jim/Sir James is the SIR bit! I think we can take it as read that Jim is a diminutive of James - lets not go down that road again.
'Sir' Jim is very important to the diarist - so much so that he mentions it over and over again. We know for a fact that Maybrick's wife referred to him as 'Jim'.
The Manchester Murders: Watch this space, you may get a pleasant (?) surprise soon ...
Philip - I'm afraid I don't watch cricket, but I appreciate the analogy. I gave up watching when Beefy stopped playing. Every game needs some characters, although I did enjoy the tv series about the "Bodyline" controversy when Jardine told his men to aim straight for the body. Jardine and Harold Larwood pitted against Don Bradman - that's the kind of thing that would get viewers back!
Yes, I do have several styles of handwriting - I think we all do. The handwriting has always been the thing that bothered me least about the diary.
Regards
Sir Pete |
Author: Tee Vee
Saturday, 28 December 2002 - 06:51 am | | | So Guys Does this recent showing of the diary on channel 5 (U.K) mean that there will be an influx of new believers, and the start of the diary hurricane discussion starts from the eye once again????? |
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