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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 16 April 2002
Casebook Message Boards: The Diary of Jack the Ripper: General Discussion:
Diary 10 Year Anniversary; Reflections:
Archive through 16 April 2002
Author: Robert Smith
Friday, 12 April 2002 - 11:38 am |        | REFLECTIONS UPON THE 10TH ANNIVERSARY
It was ten years ago, almost to the day (13th April 1992), when Mike Barrett first brought the “Maybrick Diary” to London, to show it to Doreen Montgomery at the Rupert Crew Literary Agency. How far have we come in all that time?
The debate about the diary on these boards is increasingly polarised. Rarely do the anti-diarists concede any weakness in their arguments. For them, it is so obvious that, unless one is a knave or a fool, it has to be accepted that the diary is a hoax. Now while I do think the diary is a Victorian document, and could well have been written by James Maybrick, I accept there are sound reasons why other people may disagree. Healthy scepticism is fine. A closed mind is not.
One instance of the inability to keep part of the brain open to another view, is the ready acceptance by the closed minds, that all the information in the diary about James Maybrick derives from Bernard Ryan’s 1977 book, “The Poisoned Life of Mrs Maybrick”. They happily dismiss as irrelevant or lucky chance, the many instances in the diary of obscure and previously unpublished details about Maybrick, which historical research has subsequently shown to be correct.
A forger would not have found in Bernard Ryan’s book any reference to the previously unnoticed letter by Florence Aunspaugh, who was a young guest in the Maybrick house in 1888. It is archived in the University of Wyoming, and in it, she refers to Maybrick as “Sir James”. This remarkable discovery helps to explain the obsessive use (over 30 times) throughout the diary of “Sir Jim”, referring to Maybrick.
Nor would a forger find in Ryan, that the Grand National of 1889 was one of the “fastest” races for some eighteen years. This fact was disputed on these boards, until reliable evidence was posted last year. The diarist’s words are: “… true the race was the fastest I have seen.”
And Ryan is not the source for this entry in the diary: “Christmas is approaching and Thomas has invited me to visit him”. James Maybrick’s brother, Thomas, lived in Manchester and a few pages later, there is confirmation of the visit: “Thomas was in fine health. The children enjoyed Christmas. I did not.” Ryan does quote from Florence Maybrick’s mother’s letter to the Home Secretary of 4th August 1892, but does not include the relevant passage, that in “The December of 1888…. She [Florence] was left unattended by her husband.”
It would have been crucial to a forger, to know that Maybrick was familiar with the streets of Whitechapel, because, according to a wealth of academic research and forensic evidence on the behaviour of serial killers, unless he was, he would be an unlikely suspect for the Whitechapel murders. What information on Maybrick’s Whitechapel links would a forger have gleaned from Ryan? The answer is none, because they were only discovered after the diary came to light. Three examples follow.
A forger would not have discovered from Ryan, that Maybrick’s mistress, Sarah Robertson, lived with her aunt Christiana in Stepney, just one mile from the Whitechapel murders, and that Maybrick lived with her so intimately, that in a codicil to a will dated 1868, her aunt’s husband refers to James Maybrick as Sarah’s husband.
A forger would not have known from Ryan, that on a stone in the main entrance to the medieval Parish Church of Stepney, just 50 yards from Sarah’s home, were engraved the words, “Time Consumes All”, too close for coincidence to the motto on the Maybrick coat of arms established in 1881, “Time Reveals All”.
Nor would a forger learn from Ryan about Maybrick’s business partner, Gustavus Witt, whose offices in 1888 were just 400 yards from the Mitre Square murder of Catharine Eddowes.
Another fascinating Whitechapel link with the diary has been recently provided by the leading police profiler, David Canter, Professor of Psychology at the University of Liverpool. Based on a detailed analysis of “mapping” the crimes of dozens of serial killers, he has identified Middlesex Street, Whitechapel, as the place where Jack the Ripper lived on the occasions of the murders. It is the very same street, where the diarist claims to “have taken a small room”.
None of the above corroborating information had been published in Ryan, or indeed in any other book, prior to Mike Barrett showing the diary to Rupert Crew ten years ago. But does any of it raise a moment of doubt or hesitation in the minds of most of the enthusiasts, who regularly cry “fake” on this site?
Probably not. However, it turns out, the public may have a different view, to judge from the recent programme, “The Trial of Jack the Ripper”, produced by London Weekend Television for the UK Discovery Channel. On the evidence presented in the programme, 40% of the studio audience and 38% of about 15,000 members of the public, voted for James Maybrick as Jack the Ripper.
The full figures for the four candidates offered were:
James Maybrick: Studio 40%, Viewers 38%
Dr Frances Tumblety: Studio 32%, Viewers 29%
Sir William Gull: Studio 16%, Viewers 20%
Aaron Kosminski: Studio 12%, Viewers 13%
While the above figures must be treated with great caution, they indicate a very dramatic contrast to the views of most people, who post on these boards. Even if the voters are thought to be mad, manipulated or misguided, they must be given credit for not being drawn to the superbly presented “prosecution” of Kosminski by Angela Rippon (by common consent both more popular and more attractive then the diary’s advocate, Jeremy Beadle). They also were bright enough to dismiss the Royal Conspiracy candidate, Sir William Gull. Perhaps the non-expert studio audience and viewers have the benefit of a quality often absent from the brilliant intellects at work, determined to drive the diary into oblivion – an open mind.
A timely footnote on this subject, was the announcement on 12th March 2002, that Sir Roger Casement’s private ‘black’ diaries from a century ago, which were generally held to be a forgery, are in fact genuine. Like Maybrick, Casement had a secret life, which had to be hidden from society and the police.
Due to work pressures, I have not responded until now to Melvin Harris’s post of 16th February 2002. I don’t propose to respond fully to him here, but note that we still do not have answers to these important questions:
1. Has Diamine’s former chief chemist, Alec Voller, really changed his opinion, having concluded to Shirley Harrison, Sally Evemy, Keith Skinner and me (and a tape-recorder), when examining the physical diary in 1995, that the diary ink is “not Diamine manuscript ink”?
I am very surprised, that based on a colour photocopy, where the colours can only be approximate, Mr Voller is said to have stated, that a letter written by Nick Warren in Diamine ink in 1995, “has taken an appearance similar to that of the diary, as regards the fading, bronzing.” So strange this, when he could detect only “barely visible” bronzing, when he examined the diary in my office. Unless Mr Voller is willing to examine both the original diary and the original letter side by side, which is the only acceptable basis for a revised opinion, then his 1995 opinion, that the diary was not written with Diamine ink, must stand.
2. Why, if it has no significance, did Analysis for Industry report to Shirley that chloroacetamide “was detected and determined at a level of 6.5 parts per million”?
The level is indeed tiny, and is extracted from, Melvin reports, an ink sample weighing less than 0.0000583g. We really have no idea how much chloroacetamide, if any, is in the diary ink. (Melvin assumes the University of Leeds is wrong, when they say there isn’t any chloroacetamide present.) Even if it is present, no extraction test was done on the same weight of Diamine ink, necessary as a control for any meaningful comparison.
The problem for Melvin is that chloroacetamide constitutes a substantial 3.28% of the dry Diamine ink, but there is no figure ascertained for the amount, if any, of chloroacetamide in the diary ink, with which to compare it. We really don’t know if it’s zero, a contamination, a small trace, or a substantial constituent. Melvin wishes to prove that the diary ink is Diamine, but this test by AFI doesn’t do it. It doesn’t even demonstrate that the presence of chloroacetamide in any quantity is significant in dating the ink as modern, as the substance existed and was in use in 1888.
3. Did the Sphere volume fall open at page 184 (the page with the quote from Crashaw) when Mike first saw it?
I would like to take Melvin up on having the book binding expert examine it. He could at least describe any imperfections likely to have occurred at the time of manufacture. I think he would have a hard time establishing, whether the book fell open at page 184 from the start, or only by the time when Melvin and Alan Gray first saw it in Autumn 1994.
Robert Smith |
Author: Ivor Edwards
Friday, 12 April 2002 - 11:55 pm | | | Hi Robert, I hope this post finds you well. In relation to the TV programme on the diary I believe it is no good telling the public half a story ( the better half ) and then asking for their opinion. If they were presented with Mike Barrett and Anne Barrett and the rest of the saga I dont believe for one moment that the outcome would have been the same. Also the public were not faced with other suspects which are just as strong if not stronger than those put foward.Gull for example was based on a hoax story.Some of the people who appeared on the programme can hardly be referred to as experts on the case. The public deserve to learn of all the facts before making a judgement just as a jury learn of all the known facts before they are asked to pass judgement.Was Melvin Harris asked to appear on the programme to give his views on the diary ? I dont think so. Those who were involved in the programme were chosen carefully no doubt.Beadle for example believes the diary genuine and no doubt has an invested interest in pushing the diary. In fact it was he who suggested at Bournmouth that the next conference be held in Liverpool. Whether or not this was his own idea I do not know.In regard to Professor Canter he has been known to give incorrect opinions throughout his career on murder cases so he could be wrong in this instance.He wrote me a letter stating," Your further evidence is most intriguing, especially given the emergence of the supposed " Ripper Journal". I have seen this document. The material you have may be very relevant to proving or disproving the authenticity of the Journal". I must say that since the saga of the diary began 10 years ago I have not been impressed by the way the diary has been handled. I dont believe for a moment that it cannot be proven to be a hoax or the genuine article. Very best wishes. |
Author: VanNistelrooj
Saturday, 13 April 2002 - 05:31 am | | Robert
I applaud your post. It is exactly the kind of reasoned and well presented evidence that the anti diarists will juts thumb their noses at. And still shout 'fake'.
I have, at much expense to my own reputation, attempted to liven up the debate on these boards. I am accused of repeating myself and being boring (that from someone who is supposed to be a moderator, not an agitator).
But Robert, you summed it all up perfectly with this: "Rarely do the anti-diarists concede any weakness in their arguments. For them, it is so obvious that, unless one is a knave or a fool, it has to be accepted that the diary is a hoax.
And that is where we are at, Robert. I believe the diary is genuine, they don't. I am willing to debate it, they aren't. Asked to put forward their best arguments against the diary I simply get replies of "No", or "Peter, look in the archives - it's all there, we've gone over it a thousand times". For them, Robert, their job is done. In their own minds and amongst their own clique they have "proven" the diary to be a fake, when in reality they have done no such thing.
I enjoy the debate Robert, and I welcome the comments in your post above, but I fear they will fall on deaf ears. The ears of the very same people who were denouncing the diary before Shirley's book had even been published.
Perhaps one of the anti diarists would care to go through your post and answer your points individually and with some care?
Regards
Peter |
Author: Ivor Edwards
Saturday, 13 April 2002 - 06:52 am | | | Peter,Shame on you, stop lying and twisting the truth to suit your own ends.Did you pick up such bad habits while serving in the police force or did you already possess them prior to joining ? I have seen people on these boards debate the diary with you and they have used fact and logic when doing so.In fact some have shown the patience of a saint when dealing with you. Like other pro-diarists I have seen you stick you head in the sand and ignore all put before you.As for the word reality you have no clue as to to the true meaning of the word and you are giving the wrong impression that you have been hard done by. But the truth of the matter is simple, you have reaped what you have sown.Robert has given opinions in his post which is fine however the post does not show that the diary is genuine as you appear to believe with your comments of, "reasoned and well presented evidence" Even if it was proven that the diary was written in 1888 or any time in the 19th century ( which it has not ) it still would not prove that Maybrick was the Ripper which he was not. Opinions are one thing being bloody minded is quite another. You have been given a fair crack of the whip to put your views across and because they are not excepted you are bent all out of shape.People have been prepared to debate the diary with you while you state they have not as far as I am concerned you dont take the biscuit you take the whole packet. |
Author: John Omlor
Saturday, 13 April 2002 - 07:16 am | | Peter Wood writes about Robert Smith's post:
"Perhaps one of the anti diarists would care to go through your post and answer your points individually and with some care?"
Ally,
Can I?
Since nothing in Robert's well-written post is actually evidence of the diary's authenticity and almost nothing of what he mentions above would have been necessary for the forgers to know, given what actually appears written on the diary's pages, and since the reaction of the general television watching public to a single program tells us nothing whatsoever about the diary's authenticity either, I would be delighted to respond point for point and demonstrate how Robert has in fact offered us no real evidence at all that the book is authentic.
(And besides, the -- "'Time Reveals All' is too much like 'Time Consumes All' engraved in a medieval church to be a coincidence" -- argument is priceless and deserves highlighting.)
So can I respond? Or would it be just a waste of server space?
Please let me know.
--John |
Author: Ally
Saturday, 13 April 2002 - 07:58 am | | John,
I am not you mother. You can respond to whatever you want. Has it all been answered before? Yes. Is it a waste of server space? Yes. Do I think the debate on the Diary will end based on those two things? No. The Diary debate will go on. What I object to is Peter's asking the same questions 10 times and getting the same responses ten times. The Time thread is now closed for remodelling. I will stay on top of any new threads to make sure they don't ever get that large and cause me that much aggravation again.
Ally |
Author: John Hacker
Saturday, 13 April 2002 - 10:25 am | | Robert,
I wasn't going to stick my nose back into the diary stink, but I wanted to address one of your more ridiculous "questions".
"Why, if it has no significance, did Analysis for Industry report to Shirley that chloroacetamide “was detected and determined at a level of 6.5 parts per million”?"
What possible relevance would there be to *why* answered Shirley's question with an irrelevant answer? This has what to do with Jack? Or even Maybrick? Nothing. It does however point an illuminative light in the direction of the poor investigation that has been made into this thing.
And if you are actually concerned about the "why", why not simply contact AFI for clarification? It would certainly be better than trying to represent your confusion as a reasonable doubt in the tests veracity.
"The problem for Melvin is that chloroacetamide constitutes a substantial 3.28% of the dry Diamine ink, but there is no figure ascertained for the amount, if any, of chloroacetamide in the diary ink, with which to compare it."
The problem is that you folks commissioned a test into whether there choloracetamide in the ink, didn't like the results, and are now trying to misrepresent those results in a rather sad attempt to mislead the public IMO. If you are concerned about the actual content level of the chlorocetamide in the ink, perhaps some tests should be done to ascertain that? You do still have the book, right?
It's pretty sad to try and blame Melvin for inadequacies in testing you commissioned, and to try to pin "problems" (lack of definitive data on the content level in the ink) that are of your and Shirley's making. You guys set the bar, and promptly tripped over it.
"We really don’t know if it’s zero, a contamination, a small trace, or a substantial constituent."
Umm... YES we know it's not zero. Don't even try that here Robert. The methodology of the test pretty much rules out testing contamination, the ink and paper has been tested as well as the paper alone, confirming that the chloroacetamide was in the ink.
I've gone through and explained the AFI test at length on the boards. And it certainly should be obvious to anyone who actually looks at the tests methodology. I would be glad to go through it again with you if you are actually interested in the facts of the test, but at first read that certainly doesn't appear to be the case. This would not be a difficult question for you to resolve if you actually had any interest in doing so. I sincerely hope that I am wrong however, and we won't see this nonsense again.
Regards,
John Hacker |
Author: Philip C. Dowe
Saturday, 13 April 2002 - 11:26 am | | Hi,
while surfing on the net I found the follwong quote from 1993:
"The Times said the handwriting in the diary did not match Maybrick's writing on his will and in a marriage register, he used words that did not come into common usage until much later that the Victorian era, and scraps of paper and evidence of glue in the diary showed it was used as a photo album in the early 1900s."
Anybody care to comment on the last sentence?
Philip |
Author: Peter Wood
Saturday, 13 April 2002 - 11:31 am | | John (H):
"If you are concerned about the actual content level of the chlorocetamide in the ink, perhaps some tests should be done to ascertain that? You do still have the book, right?
Answer:
"chloroacetamide was detected and determined at a level of 6.5 parts per million".
Why the confusion?
Robert's not confused. Robert re stated what AFI said because he is saying they must have said it for a reason. They didn't just make it up John. The chloroacetamide was present in the amounts stated. Now, whether or not that was due to contamination from the control is immaterial, because clearly the ink cannot be diamine.
And if it isn't diamine then you detractors have a big problem.
That's why you continue to claim the ink is diamine and accuse Robert of "being confused".
Twist it any which way you like John, but the results do not speak in favour of the diary ink being diamine.
With respect
Peter. |
Author: Caroline Anne Morris
Saturday, 13 April 2002 - 12:02 pm | | Hi John (H),
'The problem is that you folks commissioned a test into whether there [was] choloracetamide in the ink, didn't like the results, and are now trying to misrepresent those results in a rather sad attempt to mislead the public IMO.'
Actually John (H), it was Melvin Harris who commissioned the AFI test for the presence (only, not the amount) of chloroacetamide - not Robert or Shirley - because Melvin believed a positive result would support Mike Barrett's tale of buying the diary ink in a certain shop where Diamine was subsequently found to be available, a modern ink which contains chloroacetamide.
You have totally ignored the question of whether the presence alone of chloroacetamide is enough to prove the ink is Diamine (contrary to Diamine's own former chief chemist's 1995 opinion, which he hasn't officially or satisfactorily retracted since), let alone prove that Mike purchased the ink used in the document in question.
So has the ink, in your opinion, been proved beyond doubt to be Diamine or not?
And if not, and Mike didn't buy the diary ink himself (which almost no one around here appears to still believe anyway), how does the presence alone, of a chemical that existed in 1888, prove what ink was used, when it was bought, and when applied to the paper?
Keeping an open mind in the absence of conclusive scientific evidence can hardly be called nonsense, surely?
Love,
Caz |
Author: Caroline Anne Morris
Saturday, 13 April 2002 - 12:38 pm | | Hi again,
In fact, the AFI test can't possibly have proved the diary ink to be Diamine, otherwise the modern hoax theorists would have been theorists no longer from that point on, and would not have needed to enter into arguments about O costly empty tin match boxes, Sir Jim's eight little whores and how sacred are the sacred Kane samples. The fact that a lot of time has been spent by 'anti-diarists' on such arguments can only mean one thing - the Diamine question has not been settled, and they know it.
Love,
Caz |
Author: R.J. Palmer
Saturday, 13 April 2002 - 01:22 pm | | The phrase "Time Consumes All" and similar variations is a commonplace to be found on countless sundials, tombstones, archways, etc.
RP |
Author: John Omlor
Saturday, 13 April 2002 - 02:23 pm | | Indeed, RJ.
I was going to mention that, and point out that there is a great deal of difference between "Time Consumes All" and "Time Reveals All." In fact, they are almost opposites of each other. And the fact that Robert mentions them and then says they are somehow "too close to be a coincidence" is even more evidence of the shoddy and wishful way the argument for the diary is constructed. As a child, by the way, I was called Jack. Now I study "Jack the Ripper." Coincidence? Well, yes. Actually, it is.
And the forgers would not have to be "lucky" in any way in light of Robert's observation, simply because there is a medieval church with a completely different and historically popular three word slogan inscribed on it. It would not necessarily have to have had anything to do with the Maybricks or the the case whatsoever. It's not even a fortunate or meaningful coincidence. It is simply a post facto association. You can create them all day long if you try. There's no reason a forger would have needed to know them and they certainly cannot be considered evidence of anything, including the diary's authenticity.
Neither, of course, is the fact that a servant at one point calls James Maybrick "Sir James" in a letter; since the character of Maybrick in the diary never calls himself that. And he calls himself "Sir Jim" as part of a conceit, a fantasy about being knighted by the Queen. It has nothing to do at all with what the servants call him or what he commonly calls himself, not even in the diary. So the letter found in Wyoming is not even relevant to the actual prose in the diary, nor is it evidence of the diary's authenticity, since it is quite clear, demonstrably clear, that the forgers would have not needed to know anything about it at all to write what actually appears on the pages of the diary. The subsequent appearance of the letter is not even a necessarily meaningful coincidence, since the phrases aren't even the same. (By the way, do we even know whether anyone ever called the real James Maybrick "Jim" even? Or whether he ever called himself that?)
I won't even get into how irrelevant what the tv watching public thinks after seeing some show. This is not a rational argument for authenticity or even for the case for the diary being a 19th century document. And there is still no evidence anywhere, including no evidence ever offered by science, that even suggests that this diary existed in the 19th century.
And, incidentally, Robert lists three things a forger would not have known:
"A forger would not have discovered from Ryan, that Maybrick’s mistress, Sarah Robertson, lived with her aunt Christiana in Stepney, just one mile from the Whitechapel murders, and that Maybrick lived with her so intimately, that in a codicil to a will dated 1868, her aunt’s husband refers to James Maybrick as Sarah’s husband."
And apparently, the forgers did NOT know that, since it is nowhere in the diary.
"A forger would not have known from Ryan, that on a stone in the main entrance to the medieval Parish Church of Stepney, just 50 yards from Sarah’s home, were engraved the words, “Time Consumes All”, too close for coincidence to the motto on the Maybrick coat of arms established in 1881, “Time Reveals All”."
And apparently, the forgers did NOT know that, since it is nowhere in the diary.
"Nor would a forger learn from Ryan about Maybrick’s business partner, Gustavus Witt, whose offices in 1888 were just 400 yards from the Mitre Square murder of Catharine Eddowes."
And apparently, the forgers did NOT know that, since it is nowhere in the diary.
So apparently our forgers did not know exactly what they could not have known and seem to have known precisely what they could have known because it was already published.
What an amazing coincidence!
There is not a single piece of verifiable information anywhere in the diary that would not have been available to writers in 1989.
Robert's post is very carefully written. I believe he realizes this. But his paragraphs can lead to the misimpression that the diary has stuff in it the forgers could not have known.
It does not.
In fact, Robert's post might very well be considered evidence that the real James Maybrick did NOT write this diary, since he would have known all this stuff and yet it's nowhere to be found in the diary's pages.
And there is not a single piece of real evidence anywhere that links this diary to the real James Maybrick or that places it in the 19th century. And the handwriting does not match the real James Maybrick's and there is a quote from an obscure poem by Richard Crashaw in it and there are a number of conflicts with the historical record and there is the confusion about what Michael did for a living and I still don't see any reason whatsoever not to think that this diary was written after the real James Maybrick was already dead.
I could go on to talk about all the rest of Robert's points or to enter into the scientific discussion, but I'll stop and save server space and say also that I agree with Ally about what has been answered around here in the past.
But keep at it, all. It's fun.
All the best,
--John |
Author: John Hacker
Saturday, 13 April 2002 - 02:44 pm | | Hiya Caz,
It's been a while.
If indeed it *was* Melvin who commisioned the test, than I suppose I owe Robert a small apology. However Shirley Harrison is listed as the client on the AFI documents I have. Robert Smith is also referenced, but I saw no reference to Mr. Harris. I'll have to check into it, there seems to be some confusion there.
"You have totally ignored the question of whether the presence alone of chloroacetamide is enough to prove the ink is Diamine"
Yes I have. I don't really have any strong feelings on the matter. (The delusional misreadings of Peter Wood do not reflect my views.) Frankly I don't really care at the moment beyond the fact that chloracetamide was not used in 1880's inks.
"Keeping an open mind in the absence of conclusive scientific evidence can hardly be called nonsense, surely?"
Keeping an open mind as to what the results of the test implies is all well and good, however attempting to misrepresent those results is simply dishonest in my opinion. There is no chance that there was "zero" chloracetamide in the ink. The 6.5 number referes to the concentration in the acetone bath. These are the facts.
If Robert wants to try to assert that the numbers refer to the content in the ink, he ought to try to support that statement by using facts rather then trying to guess at their motivations in answering. They answered so it must be what I wanted to hear? It's disingenious, and it's sad. If he has questions about why they answered or what the tests mean, how hard can it be to ask, rather than blindly raising his own personal ignorance as a reasonable doubt?
The ink question certainly requires more testing to be able to give us a better idea as to what the actual ink used was. Agreed. But let's at least be honest about what the results of the tests we do have actually mean.
Regards,
John Hacker |
Author: Goryboy
Saturday, 13 April 2002 - 06:23 pm | | John O:
I agree: the "diary" only contains what the forgers could have known as of 1989-91. It does not present any new evidence or information not known to anyone circa 1989-91. THEREFORE....
...whattaya wanna bet the "missing" 40 pps contain "new" information about Maybrick or the murders? Stuff the forgers added in order to gild their rather rancid lilly?
The diary was bogus in '92.
It is still bogus in '02.
And it will remain bogus no matter how many more "missing" pps Barrett conjurs up. The whole affair reeks -- the mismatched handwriting, the paper and ink tests, the "watch," the "crucifix," and now the new 40 pps. It all seems so very desperate, don't you think?
Best regards,
John F. |
Author: Peter Wood
Sunday, 14 April 2002 - 07:39 am | | John Omlor
Let's deal with 'Sir Jim' first.
It's imprtant to the diarist, he uses it in abundance. Now, dear John, if you are right and the diary is forged - how are you going to explain the forgers excessive use of a term that was associated with Maybrick in 1888, information that could not possibly have been known to the forgers in 1989?
It arises 'merely' as an afterthought of "the fictionial James Maybrick" imagining himself being knighted by Queen Victoria? Oh please John! You don't believe that at all! In fact the text quite clearly refutes that, because the term appears well in advance of JM mentioning Queen Victoria. Stop telling lies, John.
And you express surprise that someone called James could be called 'Jim'. Seriously? You ask for 'evidence' that anyone ever called JM 'Jim'. Come on John, accept it, people called James also get called Jim, Jimmy etc.
Likewise people called John (you, my grandfather) get called 'Jack'.
So why the surprise?
Maybrick was called numerous things, by his wife, by his friends, by his business associates. He got called Jim. Deal with it.
Now ...the stuff regarding Ryan, Sarah Ann Maybrick and Gustav Witt, to which you answer all the time: "And apparently, the forgers did NOT know that, since it is nowhere in the diary".
But John, it doesn't have to be in the diary, does it? Because it is in history. The point Robert was making (which you well know) was that it is stretching incredulity too far to imagine that a bunch of scousers could concoct a diary purporting to have been written by James Maybrick (a.k.a. Jack the Ripper) without being in possession of the information he details.
You see John, you would have us believe that "the forgers" wrote the book, foisted it upon the world, and then left it to Shirley, Paul and Robert to uncover solid evidence that James Maybrick really did have connections with Whitechapel. That his mistress had lived there. That he was conducting business there right up until the time of his death.
It doesn't wash John, and you know it. If the diary is a forgery, the forgers have enjoyed an incredible amount of luck. I prefer to think that whoever wrote the diary either had access to the records at Wyoming OR the diary was written by James Maybrick.
"And there is not a single piece of real evidence anywhere that links this diary to the real James Maybrick or that places it in the 19th century".
That old chestnut again! Watch this John:
"There is still not a single piece of real evidence anywhere that places this diary post 1989".
Why post 1989 John? Well, because that is when Paul Begg says Dr Bond's report on MJK was first published - and the forgers must have had access to that to have their Ripper imagining 'putting them by the whores feet', right?
So, the earliest that the diary could have been forged is 1989 and on 9th March 1992 Mike took the diary to London. And the ink had aged sufficiently to fool Alec Voller? Please ...
As things stand John (and I have made this point before) the scientific evidence does not conclusively prove either of us right, but it does place the diary so far in the past that the diary has to be genuine. Because, as soon as the scientific evidence places the diary before 1989 then you have a problem.
I expect you'll perform your 'wrong century' sleight of hand trick a few more times before this debate is over. Try this John. For you to be right, the scientific evidence doesn't place the diary in the right decade, in fact it places it eight decades earlier and within two decades of the Whitechapel murders.
The scientific evidence is never going to be so conclusive that it will place the construction of the diary to Time/Day/Date/Place, but you infer what you can from it, John. And it strongly suggests that the diary was not written post 1989.
Time reveals All? James Maybrick was granted his coat of arms at the beginning of July 1881, two weeks before his marriage to Florie. Two weeks before he married the woman who would cause him to become Jack the Ripper. I think Robert's "find" of Time consumes all is 'cute', but not even necessary to the debate when you consider the weight of evidence in favour of JM being Jack the Ripper.
The diary is genuine John. But before you go tap tap tapping away in a blind panic, perhaps you would care to comment on why the scientific evidence doesn't support your case?
Regards
Peter. |
Author: Peter Wood
Sunday, 14 April 2002 - 08:02 am | | Philip
"The Times said the handwriting in the diary did not match Maybrick's writing on his will and in a marriage register, he used words that did not come into common usage until much later that the Victorian era, and scraps of paper and evidence of glue in the diary showed it was used as a photo album in the early 1900s."
Anybody care to comment on the last sentence?
Yeah, go on Philip, you twisted my arm.
Scraps of paper? Evidence of glue? I was under the impression that an imprint had been found that showed the book may have held a photograph at some time since it's creation and that the imprint was purportedly of a popular size of photograph post 1914 (?). But how could a scrap of paper show the size of the photograph? Anyway, Paul Feldman dealt with this point adequately enough - the imprint that was found could only have been of the portion of the photograph that was attached to the diary. And as no one really knows where the diary was after 1889 then no one can state what it was being used for. Maybe one of JM's descendants decided to put photographs in it. Big deal.
Now to the glue. I mention that because Alec Voller drew attention to it during his examination of the ink and yet no one seems to have paid it much attention until you raised the subject, Philip.
From page 369 of Shirley's excellent book:
" ...there you see a dot of ink which is beneath the glue so it's been there a very long time. The glue does not have the feel of modern synthetic glue ..."
Yet more conclusive evidence that the writing in the diary is old.
Thanks for reminding me of it, Philip.
Regards
Peter. |
Author: John Omlor
Sunday, 14 April 2002 - 08:43 am | | Peter,
As you know, at the request of the readership, I am not going to engage at length in yet another futile, circular, illogical, irrational and pointless argument with you about things we have already covered in detail. Everyone is tired of it and I don't blame them.
I will offer only three points in summary and then leave to save server space.
1. There is no document or evidence anywhere which says that the term "Sir Jim" was ever associated with the real James Maybrick by anyone back in 1888, despite your outright lie above.
2. All the stuff the forgers "could not" have known that Robert lists, they apparently did not know, since they do not include it anywhere in the diary. And the real James Maybrick would have known all those things, he would have been living them, in fact, and yet they are nowhere in the diary. Thus, this evidence suggests that the diary was written not by the real James but by the forgers, who obviously and demonstrably did not know what they could not have known.
3. Every scientific conclusion ever offered concerning the date of the diary's production has it being produced after the real James Maybrick was already dead. James Maybrick could not have written this diary after he was dead. It's just not physically possible.
It's simple, really. Even the smallest bit of rational thought leads to the inevitable conclusion that the thing is a hoax -- in which the handwriting doesn't match the real Maybrick's, there is a quote from a nearly historically impossible source, there are various historical inconsistencies with the documented record, and there is a glaringly artificial Aristotelian structure. The book remains completely unlinked in any way, by any evidence whatsoever, to its supposed author and there is still no sign, scientific or otherwise, that it could have existed when its alleged author was still alive.
But, dammit, I have promised not to do this, and so I really do quit once again.
Please be assured, everyone, that my involvement this time was only in response to Robert's initial intervention, not to Peter's misleading, irrational and repetitive nonsense.
So you will get no more responses from me, Peter. I will, out of respect for the time and patience of our readers and fellow board members, who have requested I do so, ignore your future posts. You have the field once again to yourself.
--John |
Author: Philip C. Dowe
Sunday, 14 April 2002 - 11:40 am | | Hi Peter,
thanks for your comments, but before we start going around in circles again, how about this one:
Why are the first pages missing?
If Maybrick wrote the diary then it would make no sense in him tearing out the first pages. He confesses to multiple murder, so would could make things worse. Starting in the middle of a sentence lends us to think that something was written on the page beforehand.
Come up Peter - give us an explanation.
Philip |
Author: Caroline Anne Morris
Sunday, 14 April 2002 - 12:41 pm | | Hi Gory,
You write:
'It all seems so very desperate, don't you think?'
But desperate on whose part?
Whenever Mike has shown signs of real desperation, it's always been when he's either trying to prove he wrote the diary himself, or that Anne wrote the diary, or that Anne lied to him (in the process of lying to everyone else), about the diary being old and coming from her family.
As Robert has suggested, anyone who so much as questions the idea that Mike and co forged this document in the late 1980s, is seen as either dishonest or a complete idiot. And now I suppose we can add desperate to the list.
I've often wondered why the forgers didn't stick to a much shorter piece of work, even a single-page letter, having James confess to being Jack on his death-bed, instead of making up 63 pages of the stuff. This was one of the points raised about the Casement Diaries. Why go to the bother and added risk of faking far more material than was needed for the purpose?
Hi John (H),
The AFI test of October 1994 was, I believe I am right in saying, commissioned by Melvin Harris, on the basis that if chloroacetamide was present in the diary ink this would be support for Mike having bought Diamine, specifically, for the forger(s) to use. But unless Melvin can show that Diamine is the only ink, from the 1880s to the 1990s, that could possibly have contained chloroacetamide, he has neither proved the diary ink to be Diamine, nor that Mike bought it. And, as I said, if he had proved either to be the case, John O and others would not still be arguing the toss about the diary text - it would have been over by October 1994, and Melvin wouldn’t even have needed Mike’s Sphere Guide as evidence of anything.
The Leeds test of November 1994 was repeated by the lab, of their own volition (and not at Shirley’s request), because a minute amount of chloroacetamide showed up first time round, which Leeds (not Shirley) attributed to contamination from the control. The second test showed no chloroacetamide. Now, to me, as a non-scientist, one thing bothers me. Why, when the Leeds equipment had proved itself sensitive enough to measure this specific chemical in minute amounts during the first test, didn’t it manage to find any when the test was repeated under contamination-free conditions - if the ink was indeed Diamine, or had chloroacetamide as one of its ingredients? To rule out the negative Leeds result as unreliable, on the basis that they admitted to an initial contamination problem, seems like an easy get-out and to miss the point. If contamination was indeed a problem, and responsible for the initial result, then the chloroacetamide found came from the control and not from the diary ink. But if it did come from the diary ink, Leeds had no contamination problem after all. Yet Leeds thought they did, and appear to have attributed the second, negative result to the elimination of that problem, and not to the sudden failure of their equipment to detect a chemical that it had no trouble finding the first time.
Hi John (O),
I gathered Robert’s thrust was less to do with claiming evidence for the diary’s authenticity and more to do with questions like, if a forgery, was James a lucky choice for Jack, or an informed one? Did the writer make a conscious decision to choose someone he knew had at least some personal connection with Whitechapel? If so, how did he know that there was any connection, seeing as none came from Ryan? And did he anticipate that investigators would look into this angle and be able to discover some previously obscure or unpublished links for themselves? As you rightly point out, the fact that the forger doesn’t exploit such links in the diary might mean he doesn’t know about them, which leaves us with the lucky forger who had no right to expect anyone ever to connect Whitechapel, London, with the real James, as he did with his fictional Jim. But I’m not sure why you would necessarily expect to see, in a genuine article, any specific references to more ‘innocent’ Whitechapel connections, business or pleasure. How do you know that such a writer might not feel the need to keep certain aspects of his double life in totally separate mental or physical compartments? How would you ever know which bits he wasn’t prepared to mix up and record in the same journal and why? Roger Casement, for example, kept two sets of diaries going – one black and one white – covering the same period of time, and they were entirely different in nature, so that the kind of things he would record in the black never went into the white and vice versa.
Was Middlesex Street a lucky choice of location for the ripper’s bolt hole, or an informed one, by someone who had read about serial killers’ comfort zones and such? Isn’t that more the point about Canter and Forshaw’s opinions? How much would a forger have to know, or read up about the subject, to have made certain choices that appear in the text? And what are the chances that someone who knew very little about the subject could get through 63 pages without the psychologists picking up on this ignorance and citing glaring examples of it? Was Middlesex Street picked by Mike or Anne Barrett because they knew they needed their Liverpudlian ripper to lodge in a place that the psychology would support? Can we really put all such choices down to either common sense or lucky guesswork?
Love,
Caz |
Author: Peter Wood
Sunday, 14 April 2002 - 01:44 pm | | Philip
"Why are the first pages missing?
Come up Peter - give us an explanation".
But Philip, I don't have to - the diarist provides the explanation himself, queue P.467 of Shirley's book:
"I am afraid to look back on all I have written. Perhaps it would be wiser to destroy this, but in my heart I cannot bring myself to do so. I have tried once before, but like the coward I am, I could not".
And it's nice to know that John won't be jumping in to accuse me of using the diary to prove the diary, because he ignores my posts now.
It's the only explanation you need Philip. Either way we view the diary - genuine/forgery - the matter of the missing pages is a mystery and an interesting discussion.
Regards
Peter. |
Author: Peter Wood
Sunday, 14 April 2002 - 01:59 pm | | What's that John? You've been getting e mails asking you to stop responding to my posts? Freedom of speech?
Funny that, because a few weeks ago when you toddled off on holiday and I blew a gasket and 'retired' from the boards, I was getting e mails telling me that my view was needed to balance things out. Don't believe me? There are people on here who both posted messages and e mailed me.
Anyway, so to this:
"There is no document or evidence anywhere which says that the term "Sir Jim" was ever associated with the real James Maybrick by anyone back in 1888".
I am going to concede one very minor point to you there John, for we can't prove that the term 'Sir Jim' was associated with JM in 1888, but we can prove that it was associated with JM by someone who was present in his house in 1888. The document in question is the letter that PHF found at Wyoming that proved Maybrick was referred to as Sir Jim. The letter was by Florence Aunspaugh. Remember her, John? She visited Maybrick's house in 1888.
As for point 2, Caz has dealt with that admirably. You know full well that Robert isn't arguing that any of that stuff appears in the diary, just that it provides a link with London for James Maybrick, the supposed Liverpool Victorian Cotton Merchant.
Nice to see that you have abandoned your pathetic "in the wrong century" argument and are now settling for "after JM's death". Indeed yes John, that is where the science is presently taking us. And if I interpreted the scientific evidence literally I would be of a mind to say the document is an old forgery. But I go for one of two options, it is either genuine OR a modern forgery. And it most certainly is not a modern forgery, quite clearly proven by the scientific evidence if nothing else, for the science places the documents creation at least eighty years before the publication of the last text your bunch of forgers would have needed to peruse. All for one lousy line.
I knew you wouldn't be able to resist one final use of the A word! Aristotelean! Yippee, I'll bet Robert and Paul and Shirley are quaking in their boots at that one. John's said the A word again everybody.
"...there is a quote from a nearly historically impossible source ..."
Crashaw? But John, Crashaw was published many years before JM was even born. So that is not historically impossible. It's not even nearly historically impossible. Historically it's very possible indeed. Now, if you want to raise a valid argument for why JM wouldn't have had Crashaw's works in his house, then that is a different issue, but until then stop spouting such claptrap.
"It's simple, really. Even the smallest bit of rational thought leads to the inevitable conclusion that the thing is a hoax".
It's simple really. Even the smallest bit of rational thought leads to the inevitable conclusion that the thing is genuine.
Peter. |
Author: Christopher T George
Sunday, 14 April 2002 - 07:40 pm | | Hi, all:
For what it's worth my old Liverpool school friend Geoff Andrews offered the following reflections on the British TV broadcast The Trial of Jack the Ripper in which Maybrick topped the poll. I think it gives a good idea of what most British viewers probably thought of the program:
"Although I don't know much more than you've told me I never really thought Maybrick would be Jack. (Possibly because I didn't want a Liverpool man to be the one). The program was much more thorough than the last program I saw and I have to say to my uneducated brain it is very possible to see that he could be the man. They discussed 'The Diary' and its scientific analysis and also had electron microscope photos of the scratches on the watchcase showing microscopic 'aged' particles in the scratches, etc. There were some well known names I recognised from current Ripper researchers and all in all I thought it was a well researched program."
Geoff also mentioned in regard to my own research and interest in Maybrick and Jack, "You seem to be very busy as usual with all of your talks and your upcoming Baltimore Ripper convention. I read your article about Tumblety with interest, thanks for sending it over. Strange that you lived in Aigburth near to where Maybrick lived and also Baltimore where Tumblety lived. You never lived near Whitechapel did you??"
As has been mentioned on these boards before, in jest by Mr. Omlor, I would make a good candidate for the forger of the Diary. I am from Liverpool, lived up the street from where James and Florie Maybrick lived at Battlecrease House, I am a writer, and I have an interest in the Ripper. So you see I could be "fitted up" as the forger if someone wanted, much as Maybrick has been fitted up as the Ripper.
As Peter Birchwood remarked in Oxford at the mini-summit on the Diary in October, the known facts, outside of the Diary and the watch, lead us to believe that Maybrick was a typical Victorian paterfamilias. We know he took drugs. But then we know that many people in Victorian times took a multitude of odd drugs and patent medicines that people of today would not take. Maybrick was a walking pharmacy as one of his friends stated. We know that Maybrick hit Florie on at least one occasion but there is no reason to think that he was any more of a monster than most middle class husbands or much more of a hypocrite. Even if he had a common-law mistress, Sarah Robertson, who called herself Mrs. Maybrick, and who happened to live in Stepney near Whitechapel some twenty years before the murders, the keeping of a mistress was hardly uncommon. And why should it be significant for a Liverpool businessman to have connections with London or with the East End? None of this makes James Maybrick the Whitechapel murderer. Certainly a bogus Diary and a few suspicious scratches in a watch do not make Maybrick the Ripper.
All the best
Chris George |
Author: John Omlor
Sunday, 14 April 2002 - 07:44 pm | | Ignoring Peter's regrettable and irrational nonsense, I'll respond to Caz.
Hi Caz,
One thing has always troubled me about the "lucky forgers" argument. It almost implies a logic of inevitable necessity and fulfillment. But there needn't have been any luck nor any necessity involved. They picked James Maybrick as their candidate probably for reasons we have already discussed concerning anniversaries and the Liverpool connection and the availability of information, etc. The fact, later discovered by researchers and stitched onto the authenticity argument post facto, that Maybrick's personal history in some ways intersects with the area around this part of London isn't even a significantly unexpected surprise, given his class and occupation, but it was in no way at all necessary for the forgers to know this and it isn't even all that lucky for them, since these facts, focused on only later by researchers looking hard for anything at all to link the real Maybrick and Whitechapel ("Time Consumes All," really!), or facts very much like them, were bound to be discovered and labeled as somehow significant or fortunate. But when you examine them closely, you see that these particular facts in no way at all serve as evidence that the diary is authentic (since these facts don't even appear in the diary) and don't even indicate that the forgers could have known, would have known or needed to know them to write what they did. Also, none of these facts are evidence that the real Maybrick had anything at all to do with these crimes, and therefore they do not support the diary's claim to authenticity.
What looks like "luck," I am saying, is quite possibly no more than forced and creative and exclusive, reductive, and particular interpretations of wide-ranging history in order to produce specific connections which actually in no way at all argue for the diary's authenticity or for Maybrick as the Ripper.
Canter and Forshaw, incidentally, seem to me to be stunning examples of reading after the fact to re-produce history in ways that, as I have patiently explained before, are theoretically problematic if not downright impossible given the fact that they were faced with an anonymous and undated text. They had no subject to analyze, and therefore they were working methodologically backwards and found what was needed as informed by their own particular, professional subject positions. Such influence is absolutely inevitable when working with written texts and written language and it renders the conclusions mentioned with their names highly suspect.
Personally, by the way, I suspect Middlesex was chosen for its verbal joke opportunity, which the diary quickly and obviously takes advantage of. The later speculative conclusions by the doctor coming to the text after the fact is simply a product of his own professional training and interpretive desires which would always be an inevitable part of his reading.
You ask me:
"Can we really put all such choices down to either common sense or lucky guesswork?"
Yes. Absolutely. I don't think the actual text of the diary reveals a single choice anywhere that is not easily seen as obvious and clichéd and stereotypical and melodramatic and sourced from readily available materials.
We make this text much more complicated than it really is when we interpret after the fact. We do it over and over again. That is the inevitable result of our own desires and the "professional's" expertise and reading tendencies. In fact, I suspect almost all of this nonsense concerning the "psychological insights" of the forgers is the result of the psychological insights of the diary's readers.
I have colleagues who find symbols everywhere, in every written text, and others who find psychological subtleties everywhere, and still others who find complex economic or political insights everywhere. Does this means the author knew about all of these things when he was writing? Absolutely not. It means reading is largely the product of reader's desires. The history of the reception and multiple readings of the diary is a stunning and egregious lesson in this.
Finally, the fact is that all this stuff that Robert has learned about James Maybrick's life never shows up anywhere in "his" diary. But if the real James Maybrick was writing the diary and was living all this stuff, where the hell is it? Why is it never mentioned in any way? If anything, Robert's observations about what Maybrick was living and had lived is even stronger evidence that the real Maybrick did not write this text. I think the idea that the real James Maybrick was writing his diary/confession as the Whitechapel killer but judiciously avoiding or editing out any actual references to his supposed life in Whitechapel stretches what you call "common sense." If anything, this would be just the sort of stuff for the black diary rather than the white one, wouldn't it? This "Maybrick as self-editor" excuse seems to me to be a reach to try and save the diary against what is already overwhelming evidence of its inauthenticity.
There is no handwriting match, the idea that the real James Maybrick in 1888 is quoting one of Richard Crashaw's obscure sacred Latin hymns is a bad historical joke, there is a narrative that is full of the worst sort of filmic serial killer clichés, the science all places the time of the book's production after the alleged author was already dead and no one has ever found even a single piece of evidence of any sort that suggests that this book could be linked in any way to its supposed author or to the 19th century. It's a hoax.
But you all already knew that.
--John
PS: For those newcomers reading the boards. Here is an important warning.
Above you'll find a poster saying the following:
we can't prove that the term 'Sir Jim' was associated with JM in 1888, but we can prove that it was associated with JM by someone who was present in his house in 1888. The document in question is the letter that PHF found at Wyoming that proved Maybrick was referred to as Sir Jim. The letter was by Florence Aunspaugh.
This is a lie.
It is a fully conscious and deliberate and deceitful lie.
The writer knows it is a lie and writes it anyway, hoping you won't notice and be seduced into believing his historical nonsense. It may not be the largest of lies, but it represents a pattern of intellectual dishonesty. It is embarrassing and shameful and if it accurately characterizes the status of the case for the diary's authenticity then there is no reason for this board to exist or for any discussion to continue.
At no time in any letter ever discovered anywhere does Florence or anyone alive in 1888 ever use or mention the phrase "Sir Jim" and the writer knows this and lies anyway.
This is precisely why this poster does not deserve my direct response nor your respect nor your time nor your patience. Anyone willing to lie like this should be considered an irresponsible and deceitful charlatan. He should on no account be taken seriously.
Thanks for your time. |
Author: Richard P. Dewar
Sunday, 14 April 2002 - 11:28 pm | | The question that stumps most advocates of the legitimacy of the diary is: what fact would ever convince you that the diary is a hoax?
My surmize is that even if someone admitted to fabricating the diary, the proponents would not believe it.
Oh, wait, that already happened. Didn't it?
Richard |
Author: Richard P. Dewar
Sunday, 14 April 2002 - 11:33 pm | | My favorite diary rationalization relates to its errors about crime scenes.
Though the author of the diary got certain crime scene depictions wrong, we are asked to believe that Maybrick was in such a psychotic state he forgot exactly what he had done to his victims and therefore copied from newspaper accounts.
Rich |
Author: Ivor Edwards
Monday, 15 April 2002 - 01:28 am | | Peter,
In response to your post to John O you included the words, "Why are the pages missing".
Let me for a moment place myself in the shoes of the forger. I cannot find an empty diary circa 1888 but I have found an old photograph album that can pass as such which contains empty pages but also includes pages with photos.The pages with the photos can be removed but this places me in a dilemma. If the pages are removed it could cause suspicion so I have to get over this somehow. What better way then than to solve this problem by writing in the diary,
"I am afraid to look back on all I have written.Perhaps it would be wiser to destroy this,but in my heart I cannot bring myself to do so. I HAVE TRIED ONCE BEFORE etc".
By such a comment I have simply implied that I have tried to destroy the diary by tearing out a few pages. Taking such action would give me an 'out' and would hopefully help in dealing with the missing pages problem. |
Author: Philip C. Dowe
Monday, 15 April 2002 - 01:57 am | | Hi Ivor,
I started that little debate. We have given Peter enough space to argue the usual points and I found two that had not been discussed (or if they had 488 posts ago).
Sorry Peter but the argument does not stick. "I have tried once before" does not imply that he tore out some pages but that he tried to tear out some (JOHN AM I RIGHT HERE?). Our forger would like us to think that his author tore out the first pages but he (or she) used the wrong language. So I will go with Ivor on that one.
A dot of ink under the glue as proof that the diary is old? Imagine this you are sticking photos into an album and you find ink (and writing on the pages). What would you do? Read it. So if the ink was there before the glue it was only a dot and the album was otherwise empty or the writing was boring and consisted of nothing concerning Jack..
Philip
PS Does anybody - by chance - have the names of the servants / maids who worked for the Maybricks in the late 1888s? |
Author: Andy & Sue Parlour
Monday, 15 April 2002 - 06:46 am | | Regarding the use of Sir James in the so-called diary/journal it is quite obvious. The idea to use that came from the judge at the trial of Florence Maybrick : Sir JAMES FitzJAMES Stephen!
With so many places that it has supposed to have surfaced from, I can think of at least four, the next one could be: That it was found in a packet of cornflakes. now that I would believe. |
Author: Christopher T George
Monday, 15 April 2002 - 10:55 am | | Hi, Andy and Sue:
Nice to see you here. You might actually have made an astute observation in linking the name of the judge at Florie's trial, Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, as a possible origin for "Sir Jim." If, as we think, the hoaxer studied a book or books on the Maybrick case, if not also the trial record in The Trial of Mrs. Maybrick edited by Irving in the Great British Trial series, they would have well known that the judge in her trial was "Sir James." Of course we cannot know for sure, but that name could at least have worked subconsciously on the hoaxer and given them the idea to make Maybrick call himself "Sir Jim."
I side with John Omlor in thinking that it was natural for the person who was pretending to be Maybrick to confer a mythical knighthood on Maybrick, particularly as he was duelling with the authorities and setting himself up against Abberline (the "funny little man"), Scotland Yard, and Queen Victoria and her royal government.
The mention of "Sir James" in the Aunspaugh papers in Laramie, Wyoming, appears to be only a record of a servant in the Maybrick household calling her master that nickname behind his back, there being no evidence that Maybrick himself called himself by that name. It would be a natural thing for a servant mockingly to call an employer who thought himself high and mighty.
Hi, Philip:
Yes, the names of the servants in the Maybrick household are well known as they were all mentioned during Florence's trial even if they did not testify. Parts of the trial transcript are available on this site.
Mr. Addison: What did the household consist of besides Mr. and Mrs. Maybrick?
Nurse [Alice] Yapp: I was nurse, Brierley was housemaid, Humphreys was the cook, and the waitress, Cadwallader.
The housemaid Brierley, by the way, was no relation to Alfred Brierly, Florie's lover.
A Nurse Gore and another nurse, Mrs. Low from Hale, tended to Maybrick in the final stages of his illness. Also involved in the household in the days before Maybrick's death, were two family friends, Mrs. Hughes and her sister Mrs. Briggs.
All the best
Chris George |
Author: John Omlor
Monday, 15 April 2002 - 12:16 pm | | Hi Chris,
Yes, and you'll notice that nowhere in the Aunspaugh papers in Laramie, Wyoming does the phrase "Sir Jim" ever appear. It is never even mentioned, by Florence or anyone, contra Peter's blatant lie above that this letter somehow "proves" that the real Maybrick was referred to as "Sir Jim." That phrase, in fact, appears in only one place -- the bogus diary.
Sometimes facts can be stubborn things and history is actually a reviewable record.
All the best,
--John |
Author: stephen miller
Tuesday, 16 April 2002 - 02:07 am | | Hi Philip I looked up Battlecrease House in the 1891 census just in case some of the servants may have stayed in employment there but could not find it on Riversdale Road West Derby it may be there I may have missed it due to my reading of the handwriting
from steve
 |
Author: Philip C. Dowe
Tuesday, 16 April 2002 - 02:37 am | | Hi all,
Christopher and Stephen: thanks a lot. It is difficult trying to research a theory living in Germany, but your information helps.
I think we had this discussion some time ago, but the idea will not let go and afetr reading Anons post (claiming to know who wrote the diary) the thought is getting larger and larger.
A rough outline: One of the major problems is that the pro-diary fraction (especially Peter Wood) claim that there is information in the diary that had to come from first-hand knowledge of the Maybrick family and the 1880s. While on the other hand the anti-diary fraction (I for one) claim that the information on the killings comes from newspapers and/or publications afetr the killings. What if both are right?
I know Anons postings should not be taken seriously, but what if this person really does know the truth. He/She claimed to know the family and that we would be surprised to find out when the diary was written.
I know this is stepping in thin ice (but no worse than blaiming the heir to the throne), but an explanation for both claims could be that a member of the staff or a "freind" of the family wrote the diary. Possible motive: blackmail. This person would have had first-hand knowledge of the family, would know when and where the family went, would gather information on the killings from the newspaper, could have got samples of Maybrick's handwriting, may have used a ledger from the Maybrick household.
Would do you think?
Philip |
Author: Christopher T George
Tuesday, 16 April 2002 - 03:51 am | | Hi, Philip:
Your approach to the Diary, to study the Maybrick servants and family friends for anyone with a grudge against Maybrick, may pay dividends. Note though that you said that they may have studied Maybrick's handwriting, but the writing in the Diary certainly does not match James Maybrick's known hand which is one of the biggest strikes against the document. One of the things about the Maybrick Diary, however, is that although the writer evidently mined Maybrick references to get information on Maybrick's marriage and office situation, there is no real mention of the names of the servants. Look at the names I listed when I cited Alice Yapp's rundown of the persons in the household. You won't find those names in the Diary. Neither are Mrs. Briggs and Mrs. Hughes mentioned. . . although the mysterious (and probably fictional) Mrs. Hammersmith gets a mention! Certainly a servant would make sure the narrative reflected the workings of the household, which it does not. Additionally, of course, although study of those around the Maybricks who might have had a motive to blacken James Maybrick's name might be useful, if, as most of us Diary critics think, the Diary was written fairly recently, no such motive probably existed.
Hi, Stephen:
Riversdale Road is not in West Derby, Liverpool, it is in the south end of the city, in Aigburth, off Aigburth Road. Were you looking at the wrong Riversdale Road? In any case, I should think that by 1891, the household would have been dispersed and the servants that worked for James and Florence would have gone to other situations. Remember, Jim was dead, Florence was in jail, and the children Gladys and James were taken by James's brothers, so the reason for the household no longer existed. Good thought on your part though to do that research in the 1891 census. You might try the 1881 census instead though. James and Florence married July 27, 1881, in Picadilly, London, and thereafter went to live in Norfolk, Virginia. However, James may have had an abode that he maintained in Liverpool with servants in 1881 that is listed in the census for that year. This would, I believe, have been before the couple lived at 7 South Road, Cressington Park, and their later move to Battlecrease House, Aigburth.
Best regards
Chris George |
Author: stephen miller
Tuesday, 16 April 2002 - 06:52 am | | Hi Chris the only Riversdale Road I can find in 1891 census anywhere near Liverpool is in West Derby and the entries come after Aigburth Road so it must be the same one
As for 1881 census
ADELPHI HOTEL RANELAGH PLACE LIVERPOOL
James Maybrick aged 41 occupation Merchant born Liverpool and married
All the best
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Author: Caroline Anne Morris
Tuesday, 16 April 2002 - 08:19 am | | Hi John (O),
Over on another board, where we were discussing whether the destruction of MJK’s face indicated the work of a jealous lover or a serial-killing stranger, substituting an anonymous whore for the real object of his hatred, I took the liberty of quoting the following two lines from the diary:
"I left nothing of her face to remember her by. She reminded me of the whore."
"One of these days I will take the head away with me."
Then I suggested that ‘certain psychologists/profilers might say the author of such words (whoever he/she is/was) knew a thing or two about serial killers.'
I even had the temerity to mix the bad with the bard, by quoting from Macbeth in the same post, to give an example of the opposite ‘psychology’ at work:
Lady Macbeth's feelings about the murder of Duncan: "Had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had done't".
In your reply you wrote:
'...the rather obvious and melodramatic lines you mention could just as easily have been offered by someone who knew no more about serial killers than you or I or the general movie-going public do.'
But with the greatest respect, John, I am having a few problems with how you know, any more than I do, or any more than the general movie-going public do, that this is the sort of thing Canter and Forshaw were looking out for when reading the document.
Yes, we can see the obvious and melodramatic bits, as amateurs on the subject of serial killers. But shouldn't we be giving the psychologists at least a bit of credit for noting all of those too? Do you know all the factors these professionals would be looking for (both presence and absence in the text) in order to judge if the writer knew what he was writing about or was putting down a load of cobblers? I certainly don't.
Imagine I try writing a book about the thoughts and actions - or (saucy) confessions - of a plumber. I know sod all about plumbing, but I write it anyway and hope for the best that I have used enough cliches about water on the brain, taps on the head, U-bend while I prod, to impress a master plumber who comes along to examine this anonymous text of mine, in which I'm claiming to be a professional in the trade.
What is this master plumber going to conclude about my knowledge? He's hardly likely to declare that in his professional opinion the writer must either be a master plumber or someone who had studied plumbing in considerable depth, is he? (And yes, the pun is intended - why not?  )
Now, if a master plumber were asked to read any document concerning his trade, and if he were to tell us both that the writer obviously knows his stuff, who am I, the housewife with a nasty leak, or you, the literature professor with a furred up pipe, to disagree and start arguing that he can't possibly tell, from an anonymous text, whether the writer knows the first thing about the job or not?
Can you explain why your own qualifications are even relevant here, and why it should make any difference, whether we are talking about plumbing, Fair Isle knitting (which I do know something about ) or psychopathology, since neither of us are trained in those fields?
And can you explain how you can tell, from an anonymous text, that Middlesex Street was only chosen for its verbal joke opportunity, and had nothing whatsoever to do with where the diary’s Liverpool ripper might need to have conveniently placed East End lodgings for the murder nights? How is it that when others put forward more than one possibility for why this anonymous writer might have included certain lines, or a possibility you happen to disagree with, you put it down to desire on their part, or to working backwards and finding what’s ‘needed as informed by their own particular, professional subject positions’? Stating flatly that no one can ‘make or offer us any firm or reliable conclusions about the writer[s]’, you then go on to look inside their minds and tell me what most likely isn’t included in their thinking or their research or their desires for their diary. And that they ‘picked James Maybrick as their candidate probably for reasons we have already discussed concerning anniversaries and the Liverpool connection and the availability of information, etc’, when no one will know why ‘they’ picked Sir James for their Sir Jim without asking ‘them’.
Love,
Caz |
Author: Caroline Anne Morris
Tuesday, 16 April 2002 - 08:21 am | | Hi Chris,
‘Of course we cannot know for sure, but that name [“Sir James”, the trial judge] could at least have worked subconsciously on the hoaxer and given them the idea to make Maybrick call himself "Sir Jim."’
‘The mention of "Sir James" in the Aunspaugh papers in Laramie, Wyoming, appears to be only a record of a servant in the Maybrick household calling her master that nickname behind his back, there being no evidence that Maybrick himself called himself by that name. It would be a natural thing for a servant mockingly to call an employer who thought himself high and mighty.’
Yes, but how natural, Chris, and how common was this sort of thing? Can you cite other examples where Victorian servants mockingly referred to their employers as “Sir – ” followed by their Christian name?
And couldn’t Maybrick have heard himself referred to thus? And if so, couldn’t the nickname “Sir James” at least have given him the idea to call himself "Sir Jim"? You are, after all, using the same kind of reasoning when it comes to the trial judge and trying to read the hoaxer’s mind, to suggest how one example of “Sir James” could possibly have given rise to someone’s use of “Sir Jim”.
And John O let you get away with it.
Love,
Caz |
Author: John Omlor
Tuesday, 16 April 2002 - 09:05 am | | Hi Caz,
First of all, just to be perfectly clear, the Laramie letter is not only not "proof" that Maybrick was ever referred to as "Sir Jim" (Peter's lie), it's not even evidence that he was, especially since that phrase never even appears in the letter.
Now, as to your questions to me above...
Frankly, it doesn't really matter what the doctors "were looking out for when reading the document." Because if their goal was, as you say, "to judge if the writer knew what he was writing about," psychologically speaking and in terms of levels of knowledge or awareness, there is no way they could responsibly or definitively determine such a thing. Not because they are not qualified or properly trained, but because they were reading a written text without any idea who the author was and where or when it was written and therefore they are subject to all the inevitable laws of language and meaning and all the undecidabilities of actual reading. And those laws make reconstructing the psychological knowledge of an unidentified author from a written text (especially such a short and fragmented one) patently impossible.
They had no biography, no personal history to read against the written text and they had only the literature that is the diary, and it is inevitably subject to all the problems of interpretation that any literary text must fall prey to simply because of the unstable nature of the act of reading and interpretation.
And your plumbing example is not quite appropriate, since this not a process text -- it is not a text about simple, reviewable facts or methods. They are making psychological interpretations from written and unsigned material -- that is completely different than determining whether facts in a text about plumbing are correct. It is a different order of utterance altogether and therefore a different sort of interpretive activity is called for. Psychology is not plumbing. And the diary is a literary text with characters and with fragments and with revelations and with alleged memories -- an altogether different sort of beast.
The doctors, Caz, are not doing psychopathology in this case. They cannot be. They have no patient, no subject to analyze. They have no crime scene either. They have nothing material whatsoever on which to do a genuine pathological analysis.
They have an unsigned, written text.
They are reading.
I have a two BA degrees, a Masters degree, and a PhD. degree in reading, Caz (since you asked). I have "Dr." in front of my own name solely on the question of reading (since you asked). This is precisely what I am most qualified to speak about -- even more qualified, in fact, than the doctors in this case.
If they were analyzing a patient in a clinical setting, I would agree that they are the qualified ones and I am out of my league.
But they're not.
They are holding a book and reading it and interpreting it.
That's my business much more than it is theirs and they are in my territory and what they are claiming they can do simply violates the laws of language and reading and meaning and interpretation of literary texts. And there is now fifty years of published and reviewable theory and research to support this conclusion.
Finally, I accept your last two paragraphs completely.
When you ask me:
"And can you explain how you can tell, from an anonymous text, that Middlesex Street was only chosen for its verbal joke opportunity, and had nothing whatsoever to do with where the diary’s Liverpool ripper might need to have conveniently placed East End lodgings for the murder nights?"
I can't tell. That's why that paragraph in my post to you began with these words:
"Personally, by the way, I suspect Middlesex was chosen for its verbal joke opportunity, which the diary quickly and obviously takes advantage of."
It is a suspicion. I readily and happily admit that it is a completely unsupportable one at the moment. I have no way of knowing whether I am right about it or not. It was a claim of a completely different order than the one I was and am making about how reading and interpretation work and how the diary has been read over and over until it has become much more complicated (and reflective of its reader's desires) than it actually is. That claim is one I am sure about, because that is the inevitable result of all reading and interpretation. Likewise, my speculation as to why the forgers picked James was carefully qualified with the word "probably," once again indicating that this claim was of a different, more speculative order than my claims about reading and interpretations and its limits and boundaries. You are absolutely 100% correct that "no one will know why ‘they’ picked Sir James for their Sir Jim without asking ‘them’." I agree completely and always have.
Finally, as a fully qualified literary critic, someone professionally trained in the business of reading texts for psychological, linguistic, economic, political, and symbolic structures and qualities, I can give you my analysis of this book (and I have done so at great length and in page by page detail with Chris over on the "Diary Text" board). I see little or no sign in the pages of this document of advanced or professional or especially learned psychological or literary or linguistic or historical sophistication. NOTE: That says nothing at all about the authors, by the way. They may very well have been literary and psychological and linguistic and historical geniuses for all I know. They may not have been. I have no idea whatsoever. But I can speak about the text itself, knowing full well that any interpretation I offer, like anyone's, will be undecidably influenced by my own ideology and subject position. And to me, this is not a very complicated nor insightful text. And I believe the other professionally trained reader around here (Prof. Murphy) has said exactly the same thing.
Those are the conclusions of two people trained in what is actually happening here -- the reading and interpretation of a written text, a text which relies heavily on clichés and melodrama and simplistic plot structures and devices prevalent in the current popular culture.
I am saying nothing at all about the authors, Caz. I hope everyone understands that. But those are my best answers at the moment to your questions about my own qualifications in this matter.
All the best,
--John |
Author: stephen miller
Tuesday, 16 April 2002 - 09:56 am | | Hi Chris the area I have actually searched for Riversdale Road is Garston it appears on the West Derby CD in 1891 census by S&N Genealogy
Riversdale Road appears twice so I have now found No. 7 as expected no Maybricks are there but there are some servants whether these were employed by the Maybricks I don't know so if anyone wants a copy email me and I will send it
from steve
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Author: Christopher T George
Tuesday, 16 April 2002 - 12:20 pm | | Hi, Steve:
What you are saying makes sense because Aigburth was (is) in West Derby Hundred, which dates back to the Domesday Book in William the Conqueror's time, 1086, so Riversdale Road would appear under West Derby although it is in Aigburth or Garston. Glad we cleared that up and that you found no Maybricks home in 1891. Steve, I will be e-mailing you because I would be interested in getting a copy of what you have found.
All the best
Chris |
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