One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[MrBarnett]

Does anyone have any idea what a ‘two-off’ heifer or bull might be?

[Scott Nelson]

I've always been interested in where, specifically, the diary was found-- if it came from Battlecrease. For example, were there saw marks observed in the floorboards of Maybrick's bedroom by the electricians? Did they exist prior to their beginning work in 1992? Are they visible today? Did the bedroom floor overlie a crawl space accessible from below? Sorry to divert here -- it's the engineer in me.

[Graham]

I'd also like to learn just how a dying man could hop from his death-bed, lift a heavy oak floor-board, deposit the Diary into the cavity thus revealed, replace the floor-board and then hop back into bed to pull the sheets back up to his nose as if nothing had happened. Or did he bribe one of the servants to do this and then to keep his/her mouth shut? If so, I rather sense that in that particular household the mouth wouldn't be shut for long.

Graham

[Al Bundy's Eyes]

Does anyone have any idea what a ‘two-off’ heifer or bull might be?

I'm pretty sure I've woke up next to one....

[Kattrup]

Another thing one could wonder is how it’s possible to argue vehemently for an imagined Battlecrease provenance, stating about the work being done and MB’s phonecall “Now if you see those two events colliding by pure chance, there's not much I can do to help you.”

and still “lean firmly towards the hoax camp” while saying: “Mike could still have ended up with a mid to late 20th century fake created by a prankster who sensibly intended to remain anonymous.”

Are those two imagined provenances not mutually exclusive? If the diary came from Battlecrease, as has been insisted with no supporting evidence, it was, it is argued, the first time the floorboards were lifted, so the diary must be Victorian. How then is it possible for MB have ended up with a modern fake?

[Yabs]

I'd also like to learn just how a dying man could hop from his death-bed, lift a heavy oak floor-board, deposit the Diary into the cavity thus revealed, replace the floor-board and then hop back into bed to pull the sheets back up to his nose as if nothing had happened. Or did he bribe one of the servants to do this and then to keep his/her mouth shut? If so, I rather sense that in that particular household the mouth wouldn't be shut for long.

Graham

Hi Graham.
Maybrick appears to have had quite a busy day on the day of the last journal entry dated the 3rd of May.
So I don’t think he was quite on his deathbed yet.

“.......on this Friday, the 3rd, Mr. James Maybrick was fairly well, that he went to his office, he had a Turkish bath, and that it was not until midnight of that Friday that he was taken seriously ill. But what will my readers think of the presumption of this doctor, who had never before attended a patient who had died of arsenic, and who had never even seen Mr. James Maybrick until Tuesday, the 7th, taking upon himself on such grounds as he has given to dogmatically fix the 3rd of May as the date of the fatal dose”

[Graham]

Hi Graham.
Maybrick appears to have had quite a busy day on the day of the last journal entry dated the 3rd of May.
So I don’t think he was quite on his deathbed yet.

“.......on this Friday, the 3rd, Mr. James Maybrick was fairly well, that he went to his office, he had a Turkish bath, and that it was not until midnight of that Friday that he was taken seriously ill. But what will my readers think of the presumption of this doctor, who had never before attended a patient who had died of arsenic, and who had never even seen Mr. James Maybrick until Tuesday, the 7th, taking upon himself on such grounds as he has given to dogmatically fix the 3rd of May as the date of the fatal dose”

Hi Yabs,

yes indeed, Jim managed to stagger down to his office carrying, as some have averred, the very Diary itself, which he then secreted somewhere in his office for later discovery. I wasn't implying that he actually stuffed the Diary under the Battlecrease floorboards on 3rd of May to crawl back to bed and expire there and then. He lasted until Saturday the 11th before shuffling off what remained of his mortal coil. Maybe 'deathbed' should have been rendered as 'the bed upon which he died'. Still, even a week before his ultimate breath, I'd defy him to get down on his knees, lift the carpet, removed the nails, and lever a floorboard up and put back everything as it was. Those Victorian floorboards were nothing like the thin bits of tat used in modern houses. Anyway, I just can't accept that the Diary was ever under the floorboards of Battlecrease or any other house.

Graham

[c.d.]

The whole house was also thoroughly searched by the police after Florence Maybrick was arrested.

c.d.

[MrBarnett]

I'm pretty sure I've woke up next to one....

How about a ‘one-off promising filly’?

https://jtrforums.com/showthread.php?t=33982

[Yabs]

Hi Yabs,

yes indeed, Jim managed to stagger down to his office carrying, as some have averred, the very Diary itself, which he then secreted somewhere in his office for later discovery. I wasn't implying that he actually stuffed the Diary under the Battlecrease floorboards on 3rd of May to crawl back to bed and expire there and then. He lasted until Saturday the 11th before shuffling off what remained of his mortal coil. Maybe 'deathbed' should have been rendered as 'the bed upon which he died'. Still, even a week before his ultimate breath, I'd defy him to get down on his knees, lift the carpet, removed the nails, and lever a floorboard up and put back everything as it was. Those Victorian floorboards were nothing like the thin bits of tat used in modern houses. Anyway, I just can't accept that the Diary was ever under the floorboards of Battlecrease or any other house.

Graham

I definitely agree Graham.

Plus, if it was necessary to lift the floorboards at Battlecrease so that Electrical work could be undertaken, including the installation of storage heaters, it would have only been to connect to, add to, or modify the existing wiring.
So another electrician would have already been there.

In my personal opinion, the suggestion that Maybrick hid the journal so well that it doesn’t get discovered again except by chance when it turns up again shortly after general public interest in the ripper is rekindled a bit convenient.

I am always willing to listen and learn though.

[c.d.]

If I remember correctly, Maybrick's bedroom was always locked and he had the only key so there would seem to be no reason to go to great lengths to conceal it.

c.d.

[rjpalmer]

I don't have a horse in this race but the way the first affidavit was compiled, and the details set out in that affidavit suggests to me that there was more than an element of truth contained within that document. The answer to proving or disproving what is written is for all the salient points mentioned to be investigated, and then and only then will people be able to judge where the truth lies.

To which Caroline Brown responds:

A nice post, Trev!

I absolutely agree that the answer to proving or disproving what Mike dictated to Alan Gray is to investigate all the salient points to see what adds up and what doesn't, and what can be supported and what can't, and then and only then will people be able to judge if they can rely on Mike's word or not.

Sometimes I can't believe the utter audacity of a certain contributor to this discussion.

How will "people be able to judge" the legitimacy of Barrett's confession if they are not given access to the Barrett/Gray tapes? Wouldn’t these be a highly relevant part of examining “all the salient points”??

It has been admitted--by Diary supporters themselves--that Barrett's affidavit was typed up by Alan Gray. Although Barrett signed it, and supposedly dictated it, it is generally agreed that Gray helped Mike craft his statement and organize his 'evidence.' This was done over many days and weeks, and these long 'sessions' between Barrett and Gray were recorded on audio tape.

The 5 January 1995 confession was one element of this process and is what has been released to the public. But the possibility exists that Gray didn't transcribe or correctly interpret everything that Barrett had told him over these many sessions, or may have missed or misinterpreted other “salient points.” Maybe he even got some of the dates wrong. As I have stated many times, Gray was not a 'Ripperologist' and was not a historian and may not have completely understood all the information that Barrett was telling him. Even the Diary Defenders have conceded this point and have even repeated it back to me as if it is their own unique and original insight. Gray, in his own later statements, even concedes that he didn’t originally understand the immediate relevance of, for instance, Mike’s revelation of the source of the Crashaw quote. There could have been other things that he hadn’t understood.

What amazes me about the above post, is that I have recently received a fairly good bullocking for goading Keith Skinner into releasing these tapes for independent assessment. Fair enough. Maybe people don't like my methods or my attitude, but one can hardly argue that I wasn't living up to the standards and spirits of Keith's own philosophy!

From Keith:

“What I do know however is that the point of Jonathan’s series of Diary podcasts is to let people, who may be interested in the 27 year old controversy, hear the voices of key figures involved, at precise moments in time which have been caught on tape. These recordings have not been doctored. There is no hidden agenda to present anything but the facts. What reason would we have for giving a bias Roger?”

Fair enough, but why doesn’t this also apply to the Barret/Gray tapes?

What on earth could be more relevant than hearing Barrett's full confession and discussion of the diary’s origins “at the moment which it was caught on tape” without any ‘doctoring’ or editing? Isn’t Barrett the ‘key figure’? Isn’t my request in the very spirit of Keith’s own statement?

If Caz is so eager for the public to judge the legitimacy of Barrett's confession, using “all the salient points,” why does she not join me in calling for the release of these tapes? If they show Barrett's confession to be poppycock, why not deliver the final death blow by releasing them and allowing the public to hear this popplycock "undoctored," to use Keith's terminology?

Keith Skinner can do what he wants---I have no control over his decisions, and I don't particularly care what he decides. But if a man has supposedly made a false confession (and this is what Keith Skinner and Caroline Brown want us to believe) what competent prosecutor or defense attorney or court of appeals would not want to review the original tape recordings of his statement? To see, for instance, whether he had been coerced, or coached, or, by contrast, whether he had demonstrated legitimate inside information that his interviewer had missed? Wouldn’t this be the most obvious and the most relevant source to review and study?

Of course, I do blame myself for not having kept the tapes I did have, because, sadly, with Barrett, Gray, Dangar, Feldman, and Harris all dead, I can’t imagine there would be any copyright restrictions or other reason why they couldn’t be downloaded to the internet.

[rjpalmer]

Also a question if I may..
Did Battlecrease not have electricity prior to 1992?
The installation of that would have required the removal of floorboards and possibly the ceiling area for central lighting which would also expose the area below the floorboards.

Perhaps the local council would have record of when this was done.

Hi Yabs.

No one seems too eager to answer your question, probably because the answer is rather embarrassing.

From the pen Shirley Harrison:

"...We made a return visit to Battlecrease House in June 1997 and sat in James Maybrick's bedroom, now Paul Dodd's living room. It was an eerie experience.

Paul [Dodd] was adamant. The house was originally gas-lit and converted to electricity in the 1920s. It was rewired again when his father bought it in 1946 and again in 1977 when Paul himself had gutted the place and lifted the floor boards. Had anything been hidden, he was sure that he would have found it then.

Work was done on the cellars in 1989 and in 1991 there were repairs to the roof but the workmen had no access to the house for this. Storage heaters were installed in two phases - in Maybrick's bedroom in the late summer of 1991 and in the downstairs flat in 1993. Paul had again undertaken the initial preparation himself.

But once we started pinning down dates, none of the people whose names we had been given appeared to have been in the right place at the right time. The key characters didn't want to talk. It was all very mysterious. Something might have indeed have been found at Battlecrease, but, whatever it was, it was seemingly not our diary and whatever it was had vanished...at least temporarily!..."


Question: what does Dodd mean by having done the prep work himself for the relevant projects? Was it Dodd who lifted the floorboards in March 1992? Or were they even lifted?

It kind of sounds to me like Dodd did the preparation, and the electricians only came in for the part that requires an electrical license. Many people remodeling their homes do this to save money. Anyway, only one electrician put in a full day on 9 March. What exactly did he do? We know other electricans wouldn't return until June. At this time, they finally installed the heaters, but they seemed to have also rewired some lighting in the ceiling in the room below, as you note. Wouldn’t this have entailed the floorboards from the room above? Why would they have lifted the floorboards twice? Wouldn’t any wiring for the two projects have been completed at the same time? If heavier wiring had been needed, don’t electricians usually just use the old wiring to restring the new stuff, or use the old conduits, rather than repeatedly rip out the floors and walls? A lot of questions, not a lot of concise documentation, other than the timesheets showing that the relevant employee, Eddie Lyons, was not at the house on 9 March 1992, and wouldn’t be there until later that summer---which makes him entirely irrelevant, since Barrett had already brought the diary to London by that time.

This bird does not fly.

[caz]

...Still, even a week before his ultimate breath, I'd defy him to get down on his knees, lift the carpet, removed the nails, and lever a floorboard up and put back everything as it was. Those Victorian floorboards were nothing like the thin bits of tat used in modern houses. Anyway, I just can't accept that the Diary was ever under the floorboards of Battlecrease or any other house.

Graham

Hi Graham,

I don't believe JM created the diary, or was the one who left it somewhere it would be found after his death. But your scenario is based on an assumption that he'd have needed to do the impossible, which isn't necessarily true at all. In theory, he could have loosened a floorboard beneath his bed at any time, and used it as hiding place for anything [including the diary if he wrote some of the entries while at home], before he finally lost the strength he had when supposedly going on a murderous rampage down in London's Whitechapel. If he had the strength for that, I don't see why a floorboard, which didn't defeat our wiry Portus & Rhodes electrician on 9th March 1992, should have defeated 'Sir Jim' back in 1888, at the height of his 'operating' career.

In short, what comes up once can come up again - and again.

Love,

Caz
X

[c.d.]

In short, what comes up once can come up again - and again.

Well maybe when we were younger and drank less beer.

c.d.