Most ridiculous suspect

[FISHY1118]

lol i see it! although looks more like a skeletal zombie like figure with staring eyes

Yup thats its exactly

[erobitha]

Darryl/Wickerman,

We aren't talking about 'scribble', though, are we? We're talking about something so very different from the GSG as to be quite incomparable. Just letters here and there, with two of them on a dark wall in a dark room (regardless of the time of day) with utter gore all around to take the constabulary eye off anything quite unexpected such as letters in blood.

But - hey - it's actually not open for debate! Countless posters testify that the letters 'F' and 'M' are clear on Kelly's wall and yet only I on this site believe that the scrapbook is Maybrick's so they aren't biased.

And neither am I - if they weren't there, I'd say so. If you know so little about the case that you've bought into the 'the initials aren't there' charade, that's your problem not mine.

Ike

I would suggest posters should consider how light plays a major part in any form of photography. The room was dark. That is not conjecture it is fact. There were three sources of natural light.

Two small windows and a door. Windows of which were caked in grime and had a small gap due to one being broken. We have photos of this. The other being via the main door. When the main door is opened it blocked half the light from the window and darkened the corner where the partition door was. The room was also in a courtyard. Natural light would have a hard time entering the room at the best of times.

Dried blood goes dark brown on wood. If you are not looking for it, why would you see it? They did not have the flash of light in the room at the time to see it clearly.

[Darryl Kenyon]

Dried blood goes dark brown on wood. If you are not looking for it, why would you see it? They did not have the flash of light in the room at the time to see it clearly.

So when the photograph was taken nobody bothered to look at the printed copy ? And Abberline etc fumbled around in the dark sifting through ashes etc with nobody discerning that they needed better light ?
And as Herlock says, why put the initials low down on the wall ? Maybrick didn't do that with the GSG , he took his time and wrote it in [ I believe ] a good schoolboy hand .
Regards Darryl

[Darryl Kenyon]

Darryl/Wickerman,

We aren't talking about 'scribble', though, are we? We're talking about something so very different from the GSG as to be quite incomparable. Just letters here and there, with two of them on a dark wall in a dark room (regardless of the time of day) with utter gore all around to take the constabulary eye off anything quite unexpected such as letters in blood.

But - hey - it's actually not open for debate! Countless posters testify that the letters 'F' and 'M' are clear on Kelly's wall and yet only I on this site believe that the scrapbook is Maybrick's so they aren't biased.

And neither am I - if they weren't there, I'd say so. If you know so little about the case that you've bought into the 'the initials aren't there' charade, that's your problem not mine.

Ike

It is not my problem Ike ,. My problem is with the evidence . I suggest that the police would have looked/searched that small room from top to bottom with a fine tooth comb for any form of clue, be it writing or whatever with the best means necessary., IE Lanterns etc , if it was gloomy or dark. Abberline etc at any time in that room would have been no more than a few feet away from the supposed initials. If the initials were drawn in blood and were disguised somewhat so they looked like bloodstains, couldn't they just actually be bloodstains .

Regards Darryl

[erobitha]

So when the photograph was taken nobody bothered to look at the printed copy ? And Abberline etc fumbled around in the dark sifting through ashes etc with nobody discerning that they needed better light ?
And as Herlock says, why put the initials low down on the wall ? Maybrick didn't do that with the GSG , he took his time and wrote it in [ I believe ] a good schoolboy hand .
Regards Darryl

Why would they discern they needed more light? The objective was just to photograph the victim’s body and look at that. In the early years of forensic photography you want to believe they had a full 360 degree grasp of such details?

As being low down I don’t see that as an issue at all. He leaned over the bed and wrote where he was most comfortable. Also if the motive was to be a subtle clue then he perhaps thought lower would be better. Except for some it’s so subtle they can’t even see it.

P.S. Aberline was probably a good copper for the age but he was not Columbo. He was a man and was fallible just like so many of us are.

[JeffHamm]

If i knew how to do that i could outline a extra terrestrial figure, head and body, all the way down the left hand side . Wick can you draw it in if you see it ?

Do you mean the orange one on the left. There's also a downward looking face (blue) just to the lower right, and an arrow pointing to the blue one to make sure we don't miss it.

- Jeff

[FISHY1118]

Yes ,Thanks Jeff , Looks creepy indeed.

[mpriestnall]

Erich von Daniken meets Jack the Ripper. I love it!

[Herlock Sholmes]

Agree with you Fishy, you were honest, others are just playing words, there is no such thing as dismissing Druitt out of hand, this phrase means NOTHING, so don't give it a lot of thought.

People dismiss Druitt because he is ridiculous as a suspect.

Abberline dismissed it, and stated that there is absolutely nothing to it.



The Baron

Of course you agree with him. You agree with him because it’s a point that I’ve made and history clearly shows us that your hobby is having snide digs at me, usually on the subject of Druitt. I re-posted exactly what I said. It’s there in black and white. If you think that the phrase ‘out of hand’ has no meaning I’d suggest that you read this, from a Dictionary of Phrases.

out of hand

2. Without due discussion or consideration.She's s o stubborn that she just rejected my suggestion ou t of hand.We'd like to try some alternative treatm ents. They're a bit unconventional, but please don 'tdismiss them out of hand.

It can’t be clearer.

Your opinion on Druitt isn’t required because it’s riddled with your own personal personal bias.

You favour Kosminski as a suspect. No problem; a fair suspect. But I cant recall Abberline even mentioning him as a suspect do you? A man absolutely central to the investigation into the ripper murders and yet not one word about a suspect that was apparently identified by a major witness in the crime after a police operation to take him to The Seaside Home. So why is it so important that Abberline didn’t think that Druitt was the ripper and yet it’s not important that he doesn’t even make any mention of the suspect that you favour?

[FISHY1118]

fishy
herlock said those who dismiss druitt "out of hand" are clueless. you see the difference I hope.

He was in england at least, was known to visit london and at one point had an office there. His suicide coincides with the end of the C5 and he generally fits the witness descriptions. More importantly he was suspected by a senior police officer-at the time.

Im sorry but Sickert as a suspect is almost as ridiculous, if not more in some ways, than maybrick. the royal conspiracy and its off shoot goofball theories, while making for good movies, has been a black eye on Ripperology about the same as Maybrick and the stupid diary. There are similar ridiculous suspects-like Van Gogh and lewis carrol etc, but luckily they have been pretty much drummed out of existance, and rightfully so. Unfortunately the crackpot theories of sickert and maybrick have not-but hopefully this thread will go a little ways toward that end.



when one has to resort to these type of desperate defenses, similar to a certain diary thread title, it just shows how weak and ridiculous a suspect actually is.

Hardly desperate at all Abby, it it too much to ask some concrete evidence that isnt just what other people may have said or written at the time without verification ?
Have you seen the Mrs Sickert letter dated the 6th Sept ? i havent , for all we know it could be the year befor or befor that. Stephen Ryders article doesent mention the year 1888 does it ? So lets see it,? if you can show it to me ill shut up about it .

[Iconoclast]

The reason 'countless posters' see those 'letters' is because those same 'countless posters' believe the theory.
I can make countless Casebook members see anything I want them to see, even you.

Look at what I've drawn below at left, then see the untouched image on the right.
If you look close enough you can see the numbers & the faces I've drawn.

I'd say the green markings are two ears with a couple of whiskers showing - its more like Felix the Cat!

I'll guarantee I have just made everyone who looked at this post see things they never knew were there, and what is worse. They will forever see those numbers & figures every time they look at the original photograph. Thats the way the mind works.

I'm going to politely bow out of this discussion as I've already overstayed my welcome, but - before I go - it's incumbent on me to address some of the tedious and repetitive 'positioning' (I almost - appositely - typed 'poisoning' without thinking there) that frequently passes as argument around here.

Firstly, the Maybrick scrapbook makes a clear prediction: it predicts that Florence Maybrick's initials will be found in Mary Kelly's room. James Maybrick could have had no idea that his note in his scrapbook would one day be verifiable but - with the use of photography in actual crime scenes now in its infancy - it was. We have a photograph (we have two but the second one provides very little detail regarding Kelly's room). Therefore, we could proactively turn to that infamous photograph to see if there is any evidence of one or more 'F's and 'M's being there. The key bit is proactively. We are seeking a specific thing. We are not turning to the photograph to see if we can smugly find something (the sillier the better, of course, so that the whole process is imbued with a false sense of vapidity). So we are not looking to see if we can find something and then we find something which looks very tenuously like a cat's whiskers, etc., so that we can say "Look, if you want to, wishful thinking will find you anything". Finding something is not the same as finding a specific thing. This point has been made many many times on The Greatest Thread of All but apparently it's a load of **** and no serious poster reads it so - of course - you wouldn't have known that. The miracle of this photograph is that the existence of 'F' and 'M' somewhere connected with Kelly's room is predicted - it comes before the analysis not as a consequence of the analysis. There's an entire world of difference. If I had asked you all to find the initials 'BG' or 'CE' or 'KL' or 'DW' or 'HS' or 'LN' or 'II' or 'RH', you would not then have found them. Granted, you would have found something that looks vaguely like a cat's whiskers and thus you could utterly miss the point by crowing about it (as though you've shattered the original premise), but you won't have made a point.

Secondly, to Herlock's points. I don't know why Maybrick put his wife's initials where he did. Was he sitting on the edge of the bed? Kneeling over Kelly's body? Who knows? Who cares? Why was there a difference in position of the two initials? Who knows? Did he write them in separate movements (reaching over for more blood for the 'M'). Who knows? Who cares? It makes no material difference to the fact that those initials were where they were - it just confuses the person who doesn't understand why they were where they were, that's all. This applies in the same way to the fact that the 'F' is rather obviously less marked than the very clear 'M'. No-one knows why that was the case, but our not knowing is not the same as Maybrick not knowing. One reason could have been that he simply used too little blood for the 'F' so corrected himself with the 'M'. Oh, but then someone will say, "So why didn't he re-draw over the 'F'?". The answer to that is that only the person who put those letters there knows for certain. Doesn't mean he didn't put the letters there. Why didn't he carve an 'M' next to the very clear 'F' he carved into her arm? No-one knows except the person who - in this case - didn't do it.

Thirdly, there are only two posters on Casebook who openly declare for Maybrick and one of them - erobitha - does not necessarily accept the scrapbook as being written by Maybrick (his favouring the evidence of the watch over the scrapbook). Therefore, I am the only person who posts who believes the scrapbook was written by James Maybrick. But I am most certainly not the only poster who can see those initials. Those who sit on the fence and those who sit on the other side of the fence have acknowledged that those letters appear to be on Kelly's wall, so let's not have any of this "Oh, you only see what you want to see" bollocks.

And - before anyone says it (but they probably still will because there's always a village somewhere without its resident idiot) - the fact that Maybrick wrote "An initial here, and an initial there" does not rule out his wife's contiguous letters on Kelly's wall. There is no reason why we should expect Maybrick's private scrapbook to be semantically precise, nor can we assume that those two letters were not to be found separately in other parts of Kelly's room (once again, I remind you about the 'F' on her arm).

Just as a final aside, those who write the scrapbook off as a hoax might do well to ask themselves how much they have reviewed the case against Maybrick before doing so. Have you read Harrison I, Feldman, Harrison II, Jones, Smith I, Smith II? Have you read the three major works on Florence Maybrick? Have you read her autobiography? Have you read Orsam's litany? Have you read the brief, embarrassing dismissals of Maybrick's candidature in major published works? Or have you just accepted that it's a hoax because everyone says it's a hoax even though it has never been shown to be a hoax in the thirty years of its presence in the public eye?

To return to the source as I depart this discussion, you could never - in all seriousness - describe James Maybrick as a ridiculous suspect. Unless, that is, you simultaneously admit that every single other 'suspect' is at least as equally ridiculous, and unequivocally far more so.

Ike

[Aethelwulf]

I'm going to politely bow out of this discussion as I've already overstayed my welcome, but - before I go - it's incumbent on me to address some of the tedious and repetitive 'positioning' (I almost - appositely - typed 'poisoning' without thinking there) that frequently passes as argument around here.

Firstly, the Maybrick scrapbook makes a clear prediction: it predicts that Florence Maybrick's initials will be found in Mary Kelly's room. James Maybrick could have had no idea that his note in his scrapbook would one day be verifiable but - with the use of photography in actual crime scenes now in its infancy - it was. We have a photograph (we have two but the second one provides very little detail regarding Kelly's room). Therefore, we could proactively turn to that infamous photograph to see if there is any evidence of one or more 'F's and 'M's being there. The key bit is proactively. We are seeking a specific thing. We are not turning to the photograph to see if we can smugly find something (the sillier the better, of course, so that the whole process is imbued with a false sense of vapidity). So we are not looking to see if we can find something and then we find something which looks very tenuously like a cat's whiskers, etc., so that we can say "Look, if you want to, wishful thinking will find you anything". Finding something is not the same as finding a specific thing. This point has been made many many times on The Greatest Thread of All but apparently it's a load of **** and no serious poster reads it so - of course - you wouldn't have known that. The miracle of this photograph is that the existence of 'F' and 'M' somewhere connected with Kelly's room is predicted - it comes before the analysis not as a consequence of the analysis. There's an entire world of difference. If I had asked you all to find the initials 'BG' or 'CE' or 'KL' or 'DW' or 'HS' or 'LN' or 'II' or 'RH', you would not then have found them. Granted, you would have found something that looks vaguely like a cat's whiskers and thus you could utterly miss the point by crowing about it (as though you've shattered the original premise), but you won't have made a point.

Secondly, to Herlock's points. I don't know why Maybrick put his wife's initials where he did. Was he sitting on the edge of the bed? Kneeling over Kelly's body? Who knows? Who cares? Why was there a difference in position of the two initials? Who knows? Did he write them in separate movements (reaching over for more blood for the 'M'). Who knows? Who cares? It makes no material difference to the fact that those initials were where they were - it just confuses the person who doesn't understand why they were where they were, that's all. This applies in the same way to the fact that the 'F' is rather obviously less marked than the very clear 'M'. No-one knows why that was the case, but our not knowing is not the same as Maybrick not knowing. One reason could have been that he simply used too little blood for the 'F' so corrected himself with the 'M'. Oh, but then someone will say, "So why didn't he re-draw over the 'F'?". The answer to that is that only the person who put those letters there knows for certain. Doesn't mean he didn't put the letters there. Why didn't he carve an 'M' next to the very clear 'F' he carved into her arm? No-one knows except the person who - in this case - didn't do it.

Thirdly, there are only two posters on Casebook who openly declare for Maybrick and one of them - erobitha - does not necessarily accept the scrapbook as being written by Maybrick (his favouring the evidence of the watch over the scrapbook). Therefore, I am the only person who posts who believes the scrapbook was written by James Maybrick. But I am most certainly not the only poster who can see those initials. Those who sit on the fence and those who sit on the other side of the fence have acknowledged that those letters appear to be on Kelly's wall, so let's not have any of this "Oh, you only see what you want to see" bollocks.

And - before anyone says it (but they probably still will because there's always a village somewhere without its resident idiot) - the fact that Maybrick wrote "An initial here, and an initial there" does not rule out his wife's contiguous letters on Kelly's wall. There is no reason why we should expect Maybrick's private scrapbook to be semantically precise, nor can we assume that those two letters were not to be found separately in other parts of Kelly's room (once again, I remind you about the 'F' on her arm).

Just as a final aside, those who write the scrapbook off as a hoax might do well to ask themselves how much they have reviewed the case against Maybrick before doing so. Have you read Harrison I, Feldman, Harrison II, Jones, Smith I, Smith II? Have you read the three major works on Florence Maybrick? Have you read her autobiography? Have you read Orsam's litany? Have you read the brief, embarrassing dismissals of Maybrick's candidature in major published works? Or have you just accepted that it's a hoax because everyone says it's a hoax even though it has never been shown to be a hoax in the thirty years of its presence in the public eye?

To return to the source as I depart this discussion, you could never - in all seriousness - describe James Maybrick as a ridiculous suspect. Unless, that is, you simultaneously admit that every single other 'suspect' is at least as equally ridiculous, and unequivocally far more so.

Ike

you really couldn't make this stuff up. oh, hang on....

[FISHY1118]

Well f Me

[FISHY1118]

Hang on a sec , Let me get this right ,are you saying that gash on Mary Kellys left arm folded inwards is somehow an ''F'' ? an upsidedown one at that ?

[caz]

Well, for one thing, he is said to have wielded a wicked soup spoon while living in Norfolk, Va. He killed them with kindness.

Oh, well that's that, then. We didn't need all those millions of words from RJ over the last couple of decades, arguing that Mike Barrett wasn't talking complete bollocks whenever he claimed to know who wrote the diary.

James Maybrick collected donations from his colleagues to feed the needy. What a smashing fellow he must have been to pass round the hat.

Harold Shipman was a smashing GP to all the patients he left alive.