Most ridiculous suspect

[Herlock Sholmes]

Strange how they the letters do not appear to there in a better quality picture?

Very strange Tristan.

[rjpalmer]

I wonder how people would have viewed Maybrick if only the watch had emerged.

If they were as wise as you, Caz, they would have considered him as "equally unlikely" to have been the Ripper as Lewis Carroll, Prince Eddy, Charles Lechmere, William Bury, Jacob Levy, Frank Tumilty, Monty Druitt, George Chapman aka Klosowski, and Aaron Kosminski.

I know because someone told me this only a few posts ago.

[Losmandris]

Hello Ike,

As you know I tend to avoid diary debate but this is just something that I’ve always found a little problematical about the letters. It’s simply the way that they are formed. The F looks smaller than the M and also different in style. There’s also a an unusually large gap (imo) between the two letters with, I believe some other ‘marking’ in between them. Now you’ll have to take my word that I’ve never dipped my fingers in blood, but I have dipped them in paint. I’ve done a painting or two that way, and if you dip your finger into paint (or blood) it’s as easy to write neatly and with well formed letters as it is with a pen. I can’t see why the letters are so poorly formed?

Also, why were the letters written so low down on the wall - at the level of the bed? It seems a bit awkward to say the least. Surely he could have found a piece of wall space that was blood-free and written the letters more legibly and in a more easy to see location if the killers intent was to leave a message to be seen?

Strange how they the letters do not appear to there in a better quality picture?

[Wickerman]

'Profiting by former blunders the police called a photographer to take a picture of the room before the body was removed from it. This gives rise to a report that bloody handwriting was on the wall, though three or four people who were allowed to enter the room say they did not observe it, but possibly they were too excited to notice details.'

Anyone want to guess when this was written?

.....

Hey Caz, did that original 'report' ever surface?
This story only appeared in U.S. newspapers that I can see, do you know more than you're letting on?

[Abby Normal]

'Profiting by former blunders the police called a photographer to take a picture of the room before the body was removed from it. This gives rise to a report that bloody handwriting was on the wall, though three or four people who were allowed to enter the room say they did not observe it, but possibly they were too excited to notice details.'

Anyone want to guess when this was written?

Answers on a saucy postcard.

It means nothing, of course, except that anyone could have speculated, at any time, that the killer might have left some kind of written clue at the scene. It doesn't make it any more likely that he did, but the possibility remains.

I don't believe the diary is in the handwriting of a Maybrick or a Barrett.

IMHO every suspect named at the time or in later years is equally unlikely to have been the ripper. If we had him on the list, I tend to think we'd know him.

The Maybrick watch was scratched before the diary was published and its contents known, and I strongly believe it was scratched long before 9th March 1992, when the diary was first heard about. Someone either suspected Maybrick or wanted to put him in the frame for whatever reason. He is just about the most ridiculous person for anyone to have selected out of thin air to wear Jack's shoes. He should have been easy enough to eliminate in his own right, without the diary's help, but ironically it's the diary itself that has always been used to clear his name.

I wonder how people would have viewed Maybrick if only the watch had emerged.

Love,

Caz
X

oh good lord.

[Abby Normal]

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 .

nah im done here. you and and baron have shown your true colors, calling druitt and lechmere , de facto suspects at that, ridiculous while touting actual ridiculous crackpot suspects like sickert. not worthy of further discussion for me.

[Abby Normal]

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.



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?

yup. and koz was dismissed by by a higher up in the city police, smith i beleive, who said of andersons choice..he only thinks he knows.

[caz]

'Profiting by former blunders the police called a photographer to take a picture of the room before the body was removed from it. This gives rise to a report that bloody handwriting was on the wall, though three or four people who were allowed to enter the room say they did not observe it, but possibly they were too excited to notice details.'

Anyone want to guess when this was written?

Answers on a saucy postcard.

It means nothing, of course, except that anyone could have speculated, at any time, that the killer might have left some kind of written clue at the scene. It doesn't make it any more likely that he did, but the possibility remains.

I don't believe the diary is in the handwriting of a Maybrick or a Barrett.

IMHO every suspect named at the time or in later years is equally unlikely to have been the ripper. If we had him on the list, I tend to think we'd know him.

The Maybrick watch was scratched before the diary was published and its contents known, and I strongly believe it was scratched long before 9th March 1992, when the diary was first heard about. Someone either suspected Maybrick or wanted to put him in the frame for whatever reason. He is just about the most ridiculous person for anyone to have selected out of thin air to wear Jack's shoes. He should have been easy enough to eliminate in his own right, without the diary's help, but ironically it's the diary itself that has always been used to clear his name.

I wonder how people would have viewed Maybrick if only the watch had emerged.

Love,

Caz
X

[Herlock Sholmes]

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

Hello Jeff,

Looking closer I see that the first ‘hump’ of the ‘m’ has a solid horizontal line which makes it appear as an ‘A.’ The first line of the second ‘hump’ is more faint and with a small space with no blood which hints that the two ‘humps’ aren’t necessarily connected. The squiggle beneath the second hump is also in as solid lines as the rest of the ‘m’ and with no similarly thick lines anywhere near suggesting to me that the ‘squiggle’ is part of the whole mark. To get an ‘m’ we have to erase that horizontal line and the squiggle.

Also just below the ‘M’ we appear to have the word ‘GET’ written rather clearly all things being considered?

[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.

[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 ?

[FISHY1118]

Well f Me

[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....

[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

[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 .