Maybrick..where are we?

[spyglass]

HI ALL, and thanks for your views and updates.

So to summerise, nothings changed since I last took an intrest in the maybrick events some eight years ago.
I would just add my view on the subject that I too believe it to be a fake, however I dont hold a hatefull grudge against the hoaxers invoved like some people do. I agree it may have polluted serious ripper research and hindered things, but I find it in it self a great mystery and side bar to the jtr mystery.
And whoever was behind this, you cant help smile.
To finish; I believe it to be a fake but an old one, and like JTR would love to know the answer.

[Jason]

It has already been definitively proven to be a fake. whether or not YOU choose to accept that is irrelevant.

show me the proof and i may accept it...and please dont let it be the "poste house didnt exist in those days" argument.....i know Liverpool and i know Liverpool very well, i am fairly certain that i could prove that there was a Poste House pub in Liverpool in 1888....

[Phil Carter]

We are in a place where people are trying to make as much money as possible.

Hello Dave,

Indeed. The more the merrier. Gullability is preyed upon with great immorality.

best wishes

Phil

[caz]

Hi Caz,

Exactly how much lovely lolly is up for grabs?

Regards,

Simon

As others have said, Simon, why even waste your time asking about it?

Or do you have proof of who was involved and have been keeping quiet to waste everyone's time even more?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

This is absolutely correct. the time and effort that's been wasted on this diary nonsense just invites other hoaxes. I guarantee you that in a few years, we'll be seeing "private papers" from Abberline, Swanson, Anderson, or McNaghton naming the Ripper. and it will be because this bogus diary was given some degree of credibility.

Why 'in a few years', Pontius? People were saying the same thing back in 1993 after the watch came along - even before the diary text was published for the first time. (So if our diarist had denied killing Liz Stride, for example, the watch with its scratched ES in the back would have been exposed in seconds and gone the way of the Hitler Diaries.

People have now had nearly two decades to flood the ripper market with new hoaxes, so how many have you seen so far?

And why are you still here, if the subject is such a waste of your time and effort?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

One of the more ironic aspects of this is that Robert Smith claims to be the legal owner of copyright in the diary, that right supposedly having been conveyed to him by Mike Barrett - which, of course, could only be the case if the authorship of the diary were known!

Hi Chris,

I'm surprised to see you here wasting more of your time on this.

Robert Smith didn't just 'claim' this out of the blue - he sought proper legal advice and took it, because this kind of situation obviously doesn't happen every day, despite what some people seem to think. And the operative word in your post is 'supposedly', so you supposedly don't actually know that Mike Barrett had the right in the first place to convey.

Where nobody (with a shred of credibility) is claiming copyright as the author of a handwritten document, which nobody has been able to date any later than 1970, I don't see the problem with the legal owner of the scrapbook acquiring copyright of its contents - not from Mike but from a Mr Nobody who could have died decades ago for all anyone knows.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

A smokescreen has now descended over the diary, while the owners try to eek out this whole charade to keep people interested.

Hi Dave,

What do you mean - owners - plural?

Robert is the sole owner and only said what he said on Saturday night because the subject came up during the 'Question Time' format of the meeting. Why should he have to keep quiet while others can say whatever they like, whether they are well informed or know next to nothing? He very rarely speaks in public about it otherwise, unless asked to do so.

I don't care about the "Post House" or any scientific tests......I am looking at the behaviour of people involved and human nature. At the time of the murders hundreds of people wrote fictitious letters to the press and this document is just an extension of that.

Absolutely - I agree. I just don't see the evidence that this particular fictitious extension didn't take shape much nearer to the time when there were 'hundreds of people' at it. By the 1980s the few who were at it were generally caught out sooner or later and went to prison. What makes you think that the odd fake document can't emerge decades after it was created, just like genuine ones can and do.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

I would just add my view on the subject that I too believe it to be a fake, however I dont hold a hatefull grudge against the hoaxers invoved like some people do.

Hi spyglass,

Well said. I would be miffed if I knew the hoaxer(s) to have been alive in 1992, watching everyone tear each other apart over this thing, whether they did it for the hope of fame and fortune or not.

But grudges tend to hurt the person holding the grudge more than anyone - as someone said recently, you may as well give yourself poison and wait for the other person to feel its effects.

Love,

Caz
X

[Ally]

Absolutely - I agree. I just don't see the evidence that this particular fictitious extension didn't take shape much nearer to the time when there were 'hundreds of people' at it. By the 1980s the few who were at it were generally caught out sooner or later and went to prison.

Love,

Caz
X

The reason the fakes were generally caught out is the documents were allowed to be tested thoroughly to determine their authenticity. Something the diary owner refuses to allow to occur.

Of course, that does put a wrinkle in determining its authenticity one way or another doesn't it.

[Hamrammr]

Hi all,

My memory fails me, but wasn't the diary revealed before the watch? Very suspicious. First the diary comes out and money is thrown about in the general direction of the diary owner, then suddenly 'oh look, I have this pocket watch with the victim's names etched in it as well now!'

And why did it take so long for someone to reveal the diary? It was quite obvious what it was so why was it left so late?

Apologies if these comments are so familiar as to be practically invisible, but I thought I'd throw in.

D

[DirectorDave]

Hi Caz,

Ok, so one person might "own" this document, but more than one person has a vested interest in it. "Owner" was not used as a legal term.

In truth I don't care how old it is, I really don't care who wrote it or why. I refuse to devote any thinking time to this whole sorded mess.

If Ripperologist want to spend their time getting to the bottom of this then fair enough....knock yourself out.....just don't expect me to care one iota about it.

Once the "finders" were exposed as liars I lost what little interest I had.

[Chris]

... I don't see the problem with the legal owner of the scrapbook acquiring copyright of its contents - not from Mike but from a Mr Nobody who could have died decades ago for all anyone knows.

I can well believe you may not see any problem with it, but anyone who has the slightest acquaintance with copyright law knows that the ownership of a manuscript is entirely unrelated to the ownership of copyright in that manuscript, and that there is no way of "acquiring" copyright in a work whose author is unknown.

Robert Smith may well have been advised that it would be difficult for the author to sue him for breach of copyright. But that's very different from asserting he owns the copyright, which implies that the authorship of the manuscript is known and that he acquired the copyright from its previous owner.

[Chris]

Robert Smith didn't just 'claim' this out of the blue - he sought proper legal advice and took it, because this kind of situation obviously doesn't happen every day, despite what some people seem to think.

And of course, precisely this issue is an extremely hot topic at the moment because of the Google Books project. You can find more information about the situation in the UK here:

http://www.ipo.gov.uk/pro-types/pro-copy/c-policy/c-policy-orphanworks.htm

You will see that there are proposals to change the law to make it possible for orphan works to be copied under licence, with payment being held for the copyright holders in case they come forward. But the law doesn't even allow that at the moment. To suggest someone can simply assert ownership of the copyright in an "orphan work" on the basis that they own the manuscript is absolute nonsense.

[caz]

Hi Chris,

Sorry for the delay in replying. I was on holiday.

Once again, I didn't suggest that Robert could 'simply assert' ownership of the copyright in an "orphan work"; all I know is that he sought and took legal advice from a top specialist in intellectual property. Neither of us knows the details of that advice, so what's the point in guessing, or claiming to know better than the specialist concerned?

Your original stab at irony was this:

One of the more ironic aspects of this is that Robert Smith claims to be the legal owner of copyright in the diary, that right supposedly having been conveyed to him by Mike Barrett - which, of course, could only be the case if the authorship of the diary were known!

But you missed because you seem to be the only one suggesting that Mike Barrett could ever have owned the copyright in the diary.

The real irony is that it is indeed absolute nonsense to suppose that Mike could simply have asserted such ownership on the basis of the manuscript being in his hands. It was and remains very much the work of an unidentified author.

The reason the fakes were generally caught out is the documents were allowed to be tested thoroughly to determine their authenticity. Something the diary owner refuses to allow to occur.

Of course, that does put a wrinkle in determining its authenticity one way or another doesn't it.

Hi Ally,

Not sure what you mean by the above, unless you know of anyone who has asked to conduct a specific test which could have determined the diary's authenticity 'one way or another', and has been refused permission to do so by Robert himself.

Moreover, the simplest test of authenticity - comparing the handwriting with that of Maybrick - was 'allowed' and conducted an awfully long time ago, and most people today accept that there is no match. I thought you'd be one of us, so why would you see any 'wrinkle' put in the way of resolving the fake v genuine question?

Also, you may have missed what I previously posted:

Robert Smith, the current owner of the diary, restated on Saturday at the WS1888 meeting that he had been investigating whether the latest technology could help him date when the ink actually met the paper and had, as usual, drawn a blank. So it could be a waste of people's money testing the diary unless the results could show definitively that it could not have been written before a certain date.

At present, the best ink-on-paper dating we have from professional scientists [the Rendell Team in the US, who were commissioned in 1993 to expose the document as modern, ie post-1987] is "prior to 1970".

In short, if you are not even convinced that the handwriting proves the diary to be a fake, what are you expecting the latest technology to determine exactly?

And why did it take so long for someone to reveal the diary? It was quite obvious what it was so why was it left so late?

Not sure what you mean by this, Hammy. I didn't think it had been established how long the diary had been in existence, nor how long anyone had known about it, before the literary agent Doreen Montgomery got the first telephone call about it from Mike Barrett in March 1992. One poster thought he was still trying to find the raw materials for it at the time!

In truth I don't care how old it is, I really don't care who wrote it or why. I refuse to devote any thinking time to this whole sorded mess...

.....just don't expect me to care one iota about it.

I don't 'expect' you to care about anything you don't want to, Dave. But you bothered to post about it, which is more than can be said for the majority of readers. You can share my little "unclean" bell if you like. There aren't many of us still bothering.

Love,

Caz
X

[Chris]

Caroline Morris

There's really nothing difficult or complicated about this. If you take the time to reread what you posted, and what I wrote in response (and preferably follow the link I provided to information about "orphan works"), I'm sure you'll get the point.