25 YEARS OF THE DIARY OF JACK THE RIPPER: THE TRUE FACTS by Robert Smith

[Mike J. G.]

The fact that JM liked to be called "Sir Jim" in his own home? The fact that Gladys Maybrick was often unwell??

And this blows you away? This information wasn't available at all? Anywhere? We heard about how hard-to-find the National info was to locate, and I've had it in a once-easily-obtainable local book for years. To the best of my knowledge, I didn't see any mention of Liverpool Soundings on this forum, yet it's a book that I own that contains a lot of information on Florence, the 1889 National and the Maybricks' public dispute, and that wasn't the last time Egan wrote of the Maybricks, as we know. So unless there's concrete evidence that "Sir Jim" and "unwell Gladys" is unobtainable information, I shan't be changing my views any time soon.

[Mike J. G.]

Indeed they are. Has anyone managed to track down the receipt for Mike Barrett's trans-atlantic plane ticket yet? I demand that it's published right here, right now, so we can put and end to all this nonsense once and for all...

edit: Or maybe Trevor Christie is our master forger? Surely more likely than old Bongo Barrett.

You seem to be missing the point. If this information was available, then were was it acquired from? If it was available to Christie, then it was available to begin with.

I thought this information was hard to come by? Obviously it was as difficult to come by as the supposedly hard-to-find National details.

[Mike J. G.]

For what it's worth (not much, really) I have never been convinced either that Maybrick was the Ripper or that he wrote the Diary. I am not totally sure, though, that if it's a hoax then it must be a modern hoax; however, apart from the claimed anachronisms, the prose, such as it is, does smack of someone at a time rather later than 1889 trying to write how he might imagine a Victorian gentleman would write. The result I feel is rather clumsy.

A major problem we have is that by far the majority of stated opinions (including mine) concerning the Diary are very subjective, and are just opinions (sometimes very strongly held) rather than proven facts. The waters are, I think, now far too muddied for any clarification of the Diary's authenticity or otherwise.

Graham

When you have so many false flags and evidence of lies, it's hard to have much faith that we're dealing with a genuine Ripper diary, but there'll always be people willing to fool themselves, and that's down to the romance of such a thing as a diary of Jack the Ripper.

How utterly fulfilling would it be to have a complete confession and a detailed write-up to go along with it, that reads like a thriller mystery?

How amazing that the world's most mysterious and unsolved crimes could be so beautifully summed up and explained in story-form.

[ohrocky]

You'll have to read the new book.

I'm not wasting my time reciting it here for the naysayers to naysay over..

So anybody who has an opposing view to you or, as in my case, no particular view at all, is a "naysayer"?!

I am always open to persuasion when it comes to JtR. I have no "favourite" suspect and I'm not trying to cash in by writing a book. I would be delighted if the Diary could be proved to have been written by Maybrick but I'm not seeing any evidence that it was.

It was this kind of spikey, accusative response, that put me off posting on here despite having registered many years ago. Maybe this "closed shop" approach is why so many don't hang around for long.

You've seen me off. I won't trouble you again.

[Mike J. G.]

I am. Well, Robert Smith is to be exact. Christie's archive is in Wyoming, and according to the new book it hadn't been accessed prior to Keith Skinner's visit there in June 1993. To quote Robert Smith;

Neither "Sir Jim" nor "Sir James" appear anywhere in Etched in Arsenic, nor any other publication or record.

And yet the author of the Diary uses "Sir Jim" no less than thirty-three times. Strange, huh?

So...the information was available post-1889? Hardly what you made out to me originally, then, that it was hard to find.

So basically, you're talking coincidence? What's one more of those in a diary that is chocked full of them?

Coincidentally, Maybrick wrote in two entirely different hands, something that is quite rare in any human on the globe.

Coinidentally, Maybrick invented the term one off instance.

Coincidentally, Maybrick drank in the Poste House before it came to be known by that name.

Coincidentally, Maybrick listed items exactly as they appeared in a book to be published around 100 years later.

Maybrick, International Man of Coincidence.

[Kaz]

So anybody who has an opposing view to you or, as in my case, no particular view at all, is a "naysayer"?!

I am always open to persuasion when it comes to JtR. I have no "favourite" suspect and I'm not trying to cash in by writing a book. I would be delighted if the Diary could be proved to have been written by Maybrick but I'm not seeing any evidence that it was.

It was this kind of spikey, accusative response, that put me off posting on here despite having registered many years ago. Maybe this "closed shop" approach is why so many don't hang around for long.

You've seen me off. I won't trouble you again.

I am sure that I must be missing something here, and I'm prepared for the bullets to start flying in my direction...

Not 'that' prepared, obviously...



No, theres plenty here using snippets of misinformed information to bury the diary... I was referring those as the real 'naysayers'...

many here haven't read the new book and STILL feel obliged...odd

[Mike J. G.]

Yes they are. And we know they're facts as Florence Aunspaugh (daughter of JM's friend and business associate James Aunspaugh) mentions that JM was called "Sir James" at home in private correspondence to Trevor Christie, and similarly Florence Maybrick mentions that Gladys was frequently unwell in private unpublished letters. So much for the Diary being concocted from 3 easily available books...

It's amazing how many red flags people will ignore while asking you to give credit to vague details that are obviously not as secret as they'd have you believe. Seems legit.

[Mike J. G.]

No, theres plenty here using snippets of misinformed information to bury the diary... I was referring those as the real 'naysayers'...

many here haven't read the new book and STILL feel obliged...odd

Kaz, people tend to use their common sense to dissect the "coincidences" and weigh up the chances, and that's something that diary advocates tend to not do.

As far as the new book, I've been told that it doesn't contain anything new besides the names of the electricians. If it contains anything more, then feel free to let me know, because from what I gather, this talk of well they haven't read the book is about as useless a claim as I know something you don't know, which is especially useless when there's nothing else to know besides the names of a few electricians.

[Mike J. G.]

I never knew Mike, so my stance since 1992 has been to listen closely to those who did. Seems to me that everyone who knew Mike and who has expressed an opinion on his possible role as Diary forger have all said he simply wasn't capable. If you knew him well and you disagree with that then fair enough.

Again, the hoaxers of the world always have a good laugh about how everyone is so hellbent on insisting that they simply couldn't have done it.

There's nothing in the diary that makes me think Stephen King should be relegated to the back of the queue in terms of great authors. My Maybrick poem blows the **** out of the diary, lol.

[Sam Flynn]

Or maybe Trevor Christie is our master forger? Surely more likely than old Bongo Barrett.

Trevor Christie could write in coherent English, so that rules him out. (And, before someone suggests it, I don't accept that the forgers would have deliberately aimed to depict James Maybrick as someone utterly incapable of producing a half-decent rhyming couplet.)

[Mike J. G.]

I'm not saying Mike wasn't capable; I'm saying that several people who knew him have said he wasn't capable, and I'm not questioning that assessment as I'm not in a position to know any better. I find it telling that nobody who knew Barrett has come out and said they believed he certainly was capable of researching and then writing the Diary. You can fool some of the people some of the time...

I think you should check out a guy called Roger Patterson, he, too, fooled all of Yakima, Washington and most of California and beyond. A simple, down-on-his-luck cowboy by day, suffering from cancer, yet by night he was a rootin-tootin artist who devised the iconic Patterson Bigfoot Film.

He was just a quiet guy, that suit couldn't even be made in Hollywood today! said the gullible fella at the back of the room.

[Kaz]

Kaz, people tend to use their common sense to dissect the "coincidences" and weigh up the chances, and that's something that diary advocates tend to not do.

As far as the new book, I've been told that it doesn't contain anything new besides the names of the electricians. If it contains anything more, then feel free to let me know, because from what I gather, this talk of well they haven't read the book is about as useless a claim as I know something you don't know, which is especially useless when there's nothing else to know besides the names of a few electricians.

Indeed

but your coincidences can be explained away.

Theres FAR more coincidences FOR JM being JTR than against.

[Mike J. G.]

Indeed she did, and Caz isn't the only one. Robert Smith remained in constant contact with Barrett up to his death last year and also remained convinced he didn't write it.

Wow, well I'm convinced.

[Mike J. G.]

is forgery so simple that a unemployed ex-scrap dealer could fool scientists at his first attempt?

Yes.

If it's a forgery, and it could very well be, I'm sorry guys but it's not an amateurish one.

I disagree.

[Mike J. G.]

I'm not making it up, I'm using ascertained facts to reach a perfectly plausible conclusion.

That kind of cavalier thinking is what gave us such nonsensical tales as Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code.