Maybrick and the diary.

[Graham]

If anyone out there is qualified in Mariaspeak, I'd sure appreciate a translation of her recent posts, because I haven't the faintest idea what she's on about.

Graham

[Limehouse]

Well, Maria was right about one thing. She IS wasting her time!

[Maria]

If anyone out there is qualified in Mariaspeak, I'd sure appreciate a translation of her recent posts, because I haven't the faintest idea what she's on about.

Graham

Graham:

I wrote it in English.

I realize there are retarded people on these threads but I thought even you could grasp it !

Limehouse:

You are right.

- Maria

[Graham]

Graham:

I wrote it in English.

I realize there are retarded people on these threads but I thought even you could grasp it !

Limehouse:

You are right.

- Maria

You wrote "it" in English? Well, whatever "it" was meant to be, it certainly wasn't couched in the language of Shakspeare, Coleridge and Milton. But never mind, dear, I've learned to make allowances for you.

Graham

[Maria]

Graham:

You have been exposed as a troll, and you are, either that, or you have the understanding God gave a mosquito !

- Maria

P.S. And that would be insulting mosquitos !

[Graham]

Graham:

You have been exposed as a troll, and you are, either that, or you have the understanding God gave a mosquito !

- Maria

P.S. And that would be insulting mosquitos !

Phew!

There's no way I can keep up with such quick wit and rapier-like repartee. I prostrate myself at the feet of the world's greatest living comedienne!

Graham

[Doctor X]

"Now pay Melchie his two pounds and run along!"

--J.D.

[Graham]

"Now pay Melchie his two pounds and run along!"

--J.D.

Someone's on the ball! (And it was £80...)

Graham

[caz]

...You're right, of course - to accept the watch was genuine you have to accept the C5...

...Caz Morris has always insisted, and I believe her implicitly, that Albert Johnson's character is beyond reproach, but there is always the possibility - I repeat the word, possibility) that he was set up...

...To me, after many, many re-readings, the one thing about the Diary is that it contains no new information - there is really nothing in it that we didn't already know...

Hi Graham,

Unfortunately so little is ever really set in stone - or in this case gold.

Fantasists and hoaxers are mere amateurs compared with serial killers when it comes to being strangers to the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. You can’t trust a single one of them not to deceive the world and themselves.

Take the Lusk letter for instance. I’d like a pound for every time I’ve heard the argument that it can’t be genuine because the ripper would not have eaten half a human kidney. It’s baseless on two counts: no evidence that killers never eat the organs they take; plenty of evidence that when killers aren’t busy denying what they did do, they are claiming things they didn’t.

If just one serial killer has ever denied a murder that was down to him, or claimed one that wasn’t, then no, you don’t have to accept the C5, regardless of who put the marks in that watch.

I have been through the watch purchase and ‘discovery’ scenarios a hundred times and can find no way for Albert to have been set up. I only wish I could, because I would grab it and use it in support of his character being beyond reproach. Sod the watch - how could it possibly matter if someone did hoax it on the back of the diary, if the circumstances let Albert off the hook? He is a real person living a real life, not a chess piece, nor a character in an internet game, nor a silly artefact created by an undoubted mischief-maker, whose behaviour I would never defend.

For the marks to have been made after Albert bought the watch, I know I’d have to accept, at the very least, that he is a liar and co-conspirator, who paid for tests, fully aware that the marks had been made very recently indeed. That would be infinitely harder for me to swallow than the idea of him being an innocent pawn in someone else’s stupid game, played in the wake of the first diary headlines. But I’m stuck with it because sadly the evidence doesn’t allow him to have been. To accept he is an innocent pawn is to accept that the game started before he owned the watch.

If Maria can provide proof that her hubby was approached by Stanley Dangermouse and his friend, Shirley Harris (famous wrestler and brother of Melvin Harris), prior to June 1993, and was asked to help them steal into Albert’s house, find a suitable gold watch, put the marks inside and then persuade him to take it into work and show it to a co-conspirator, cunningly disguised as Albert’s workmate, then I’ll express my absolute delight to the men in white coats as they have me carted off.

By the way, the incident with Mrs Hammersmith was new information, whether the diary author knew she existed and could have met the real James Maybrick as described or chose to invent her for jolly. New information may embrace misinformation, invention and even incomprehensible drivel, as Maria’s posts so beautifully illustrate.

And what about the whore’s mole bonnet? Did Florie own one, or was it supposed to belong to one of Sir Jim’s conquests?

Every piece of new information or misinformation has some purpose to it, if only for padding out a ripping yarn.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Originally Posted by Mrsperfect
What are the odds of a 'murderer' being a murder victim?

Hi Mrs P,

I don’t know. Interestingly, there is a legitimate ripper suspect who is thought by some to have been murdered by his brother. He was fished out of the Thames. Monty Druitt's the name.

And of course Florie Maybrick had the narrowest escape from becoming a victim of legal murder as a convicted murderess. Her own statement in court very nearly sealed her fate, because she admitted putting powder in Jim’s meat juice and claimed it was at his request.

The diary turned it round and turned her hubby into a serial murderer who begged Florie to polish him off with the powder, preventing the hangman from doing his rightful job.

Poetic justice, by someone who blamed Jim for Florie’s fate? Or was it really just a case of lousy poetry?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Hi Graham, Magpie,

Michael Maybrick’s role in the proceedings is hard to fathom because it’s full of ambiguities.

If we believe Charles Ratcliffe, for instance (as quoted by Graham), Dr Humphreys refused a death certificate after talking to Michael, citing strong symptoms of arsenical poisoning. Michael requested a post-mortem, which was duly performed, but he wasn’t satisfied because no arsenic was found and the body was exhumed [for a second inconclusive examination].

But according to Chris Jones, who is compiling a Maybrick A-Z, the New York Herald reported in August 1889 that Michael claimed during an interview that he tried his best to ‘have the physician give a death certificate that would have prevented the trial entirely, but he refused to do so, and when the trial came I assure you I was a most unwilling witness’. Mrs Briggs, in an interview with the same paper, is reported as saying much the same: the ‘charge arose out of the refusal of the doctors to sign a death certificate, even although they were earnestly pressed to do so by the brothers Maybrick’ [presumably Michael and Edwin].

So someone got their wires very badly crossed at some point. If Ratcliffe’s claim that Michael actively opposed the issue of a death certificate was true, then the doctors involved would have been acutely aware that any claim that he had tried his best to get one issued was total cobblers.

The brothers may have needed to weigh up the pros and cons quite quickly in the wake of Jim’s final illness if it’s reasonable to conclude that they were well aware of his chronic drug taking (not to mention the long trail of mistresses and brothel dwellers that had followed him everywhere since his youth) and the likely exposures to come if Florie was accused of poisoning him to leave her free for Alf Brierley.

Michael had his musical ambitions and rising social status to consider and Edwin was in a tricky position over his own relationship with his sister-in-law. Added to that, the blasted Yapp woman had opened Florie’s insanely indiscreet letter to Alf and handed it over, making it impossible for the brothers to deny any knowledge of the scandal attaching to the family. Florie and Alice, between them, had effectively made a fool of James and exposed the tip of the iceberg, whether his own grubby secrets could be buried with him, or would all come out if he came up again.

Which would have been the lesser of two evils? No murder charge against a potentially guilty Florie, with a minimum risk of highly embarrassing publicity for the Maybrick men? Or ensuring the full weight of the law would come down on her if she had added so much as a speck of arsenic to the bushels Jim had taken himself, and bracing themselves for the negative fallout?

It’s a tricky one, because as Magpie said, if Michael murdered James he only needed the death certificate to get away with it, not a cunning plan to set up Florie, which presumably would have included planting the insane amounts of arsenic that were found around the house and among her personal belongings. It’s hard enough to comprehend how anyone could believe she was responsible for it all, let alone that Michael would over-egg the pudding to that degree and expect a judge and jury to swallow it. The implication was that, like Maria, if Florie’s brains were dynamite they wouldn’t have blown her mole bonnet off.

I suspect the truth may lie somewhere in between, with Michael being caught up in a tide he could not do much to control. He may merely have tried to limit the damage as he saw each wave of it coming, but I’m not sure he would have used illegal means. I have little doubt it was Jim’s arsenic all over the place. But who placed it where it would be found after his death, and did they do it intentionally to set Florie up?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Caroline Morris has confessed that the diary is a sham this are her exact words:

" I believe in the diary because I know it exists. If you mean I ' Still believe ' it was penned by James Maybrick AKA Jack the Ripper, then you are quite simply wrong because I cannot ' Belive ' that and NEVER HAVE BEEN ABLE TO BELIEVE IT. ( my emphasis ) This is what Caroline wrote.

If you don´t believe me, you only have to look at it with your own eyes in my now defunct thread: Travelling Tips and Experiences.

Dear Maria,

With regard to the statement [confession] made by Caz, that she has never been able to believe that James Maybrick, also known as Jack the Ripper, penned the diary, I am in a position to say that my client was not in full control of her faculties when she made that statement.

My client placed the statement on a public message board, despite having every reason to believe that you would try to pass it off as new information that she did not want anyone else to know about, and imply that she had previously claimed that the handwriting bore such an uncanny likeness to that of James Maybrick, that there could be little doubt that he had held the pen.

With regard to your own statement, that ‘Caroline and one of her co-authors, Keith Skinner went over to Liverpool and this co-author announced there that he had evidence that could prove without a shadow of a doubt in a court of law that the diary is genuine’, my client informs me that she has never heard such a “load of old toss”, and that if you had been in Liverpool to hear Mr Skinner’s actual words you might have had a slightly better chance of reporting one or two of his words faithfully. “But not much”, she added. Mr Skinner has never claimed, either in public or to my client in private, that there is evidence of the diary being ‘genuine’.

However, my client informs me that you may be labouring under the illusion that documentary evidence of the diary coming out of Battlecrease House would prove it genuine ‘without a shadow of a doubt in a court of law’, and that this might explain why you got your wires “so badly crossed” on this occasion.

If you wish to join my client, she is currently in the Brown Windsor Soup treatment unit of the Mayhem Hospital in Croydon.

Kind regards,

Sue Grabit & Run, Solicitors

[Omlor]

Lots of writing here recently, but of course, still no evidence of any sort that the diary is anything other than what the text tells us it is -- a cheap modern hoax.

We do get another whisper about "documentary evidence of the diary coming out of Battlecrease House", but of course, like IKJ's secret evidence that proves James was the Ripper and like Steve Powell's evidence to support his claim that his friend Park wrote the book, and like so many other claims of secret knowledge here in Diary World, this one too remains deliberately withheld from the public despite it being mentioned so often. And May is almost here and a full year will have passed since this particular bit of secret squirrel evidence was first announced in public despite the inability or unwillingness of anyone to actually produce the goods.

Nothing at all has changed. The further tests on the watch that the expert long ago said were necessary have not happened, despite more than a decade going by. The diary itself has not and will not even be shown to qualified scientific experts so that they might at least determine what is and is not possible using the latest available technology even as we move towards fifteen years and counting.

The games keep getting played. No one here thinks the real James had anything to do with the book. We know he didn't. But that doesn't stop the game playing here and, given past performance, it seems very likely that you'll all some be able to check back at these threads in another five years and read the very same conversations repeating themselves.

Nice to know there are still traditions left in the world, no matter how ridiculous and trivial they might be.

--John

[caz]

Omlor,

My client asks: What kept you?

[Omlor]

On the other hand there are bright spots.

I am pleased to see that both here and on the thread about the rumors concerning some crazy new Diary Book and on the Steve Powell thread, the discussions have all taken a decidedly silly and deliberately goofy tone, with talk of Fawlty Towers, the power of the number 8, and even my own more or less "virtual" existence.

This is just the sort of lunacy the diary question deserves. This is just the level of seriousness with which all things related to this worthless hoax should be treated.

So things are looking up here in Diary World, despite there being, of course, still nothing new and nothing real.

As always,

--John