How to make Ripperology better?

[John Wheat]

[QUOTE=Iconoclast;n785504]

Ridiculous.

No it was a good post by Fishy.

[Iconoclast]

[QUOTE=John Wheat;n785514]

No it was a good post by Fishy.

Ridiculous.

[John Wheat]

[QUOTE=Iconoclast;n785532]

Ridiculous.

Get your own phrase. Not very original are you?

[Iconoclast]

[QUOTE=John Wheat;n785534]

Get your own phrase. Not very original are you?

Ridiculous.

[John Wheat]

[QUOTE=Iconoclast;n785538]

Ridiculous.

Not very original are you?

[John Wheat]

[QUOTE=Iconoclast;n785538][QUOTE=John Wheat;n785534]

Ridiculous.[/QU

[John Wheat]

[QUOTE=Iconoclast;n785538]

Ridiculous.

[Iconoclast]

[QUOTE=John Wheat;n785542]

[John Wheat]

[QUOTE=Iconoclast;n785551]

Ridiculous.

[Wickerman]

If you walked into a court of law with a lawyer and this argument, you'd be laughed out of the place or soon doing time for contempt. You don't just get to disparage what you've barely studied and what you definitely don't like....

You shouldn't criticize that which happened long before you joined Casebook.

Nothing has changed since I wrote this some 20+ years ago.


In a brown paper package, like many you’d see.
It was coming to London, was coming to me.

Then a knock on my door, and as I turned to look.
In walked a man, with just half a book.

“It’s a diary” he said, “it was given to me”
“It’s a hell of a story, just wait and see”

So we sat in my office, in silence we read.
And in shear disbelief, I looked up and said.

“To see if it’s real, and in case there’s a doubt,
some tests will be done, we’ll have it checked out”

So we tested the paper, we tested the ink.
Then at first our results made my heart want to sink.

Then a second opinion, in case it was wrong.
And what we heard back made us want to go on.

The writing we thought we could verify clearly.
but did we succeed ? .....well, some would say ...nearly.

The age of the book we established, .....almost.
but the age of the ink ? .....well, some would say ....close.

They said that the words such a killer might write.
I said, “could we prove it ?” ....well, some said, ...”not quite”.

And in test after test more opinions we sought.
the proof would elude us, it always fell short.

So with money and time we invested so long.
We had to show confidence, we were not wrong.

And with heads held up high, we then published our word.
And stated quite firmly, ....”no one could prove fraud”

Jon S.

And thats pretty much the same position today, it's still a load of bull$hit, m'lord!

[Iconoclast]

You shouldn't criticize that which happened long before you joined Casebook.

I wasn't aware that I had. So you researched the Maybrick scrapbook in depth twenty years ago. Two questions:

1) Did you keep your research up or did you close your mind around 2002?
2) Do you honestly think many (or any) of the other dissenters who post on here have actually read anything about the scrapbook?

Just by way of a highly illuminating example, I remember Sam Flynn once admitting to only ever having read an online transcript of the text and that was enough to make him an expert on its authenticity. That's right, just the text in the cold light of the digital age. No Harrison I or II, no Feldman. Alas no Smith and Jones. No Morris, Linder, or Skinner. Not even a Lord Orsam. Not even an O'Clast! But armed with the arrogance only a schoolteacher could muster, he had decided he was right and scrapbook 'supporters' were told that they were wrong. And if you're told you're wrong, that must be you wrong then. When I read that, I remember thinking how challenging the task had become during those halcyon days of the Casebook long before I started posting.

Nothing has changed since I wrote this some 20+ years ago.

And with heads held up high, we then published our word.
And stated quite firmly, ....”no one could prove fraud”[/I]

Jon S.

And thats pretty much the same position today, it's still a load of bull$hit, m'lord!

Shame about the **** rhyme at the end, Jon, but actually perfectly encouraging in tone and content. Although you feel that the proof would elude us and it always fell short, one might argue that the lack of a definitive disproof is an astonishing situation to find ourselves in.

What happened before I joined Casebook, by the way? Did stuff get resolved and the killer unmasked or was there just more hot air exchanged digitally?

Should I assume that my thoughts acquire greater weight as they age?

And did I become more insightful when I started to post rather than the many years when I simply read Casebook posts?

Ike

[caz]

Witt lived in Camberwell, 5 miles from Whitechapel. The letter I refer to indicates Maybrick was there in September 1888 complaining of eye issues.

Your point of Mortgenstern is a valid one, I was not commenting on him specifically. I am commenting on the plethora of other 'candidates' who seem to get much higher billing than Maybrick based on nothing more than being the first to one scene for example. Or a mentally ill jew. Or slightly odd local mortuary attendant. These candidates have no evidence of violence against women.

Kosminski once attacked his sister with scissors and people accuse him of being violent towards women. Yet, when Maybrick attacks his wife (multiple times) that is dismissed as "well things were different back then, a bit of domestic violence was accepted."

Hi ero,

IIRC, the real James Maybrick threatened to "break every bone" in the body of the children's nurse, when he caught her scolding his young daughter Gladys.

If that was the norm for 'Victorian Dad', I'm jolly glad I wasn't around back then.

I don't think there is much doubt that the real James could be a nasty piece of work at times. Doesn't make him a murderer of course, but it would give a hoaxer one of several reasons to think he could be turned into the ripper, despite his Liverpool home.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Isn't this, in fact, the same incident?

Christie, Colquhoun, Harrison, Feldman, etc. only describe one fight, and, infamously, even the diarist refers to his violence as a "one off instance."

At trial, it was stated that James and Florrie had been married for eight years and had not quarreled or fought before the incident with Brierley.

The way it is usually described, the quarrel over the Grand National occurred on 29 March, at which time Maybrick did indeed blacken his wife's eye.

She then took to her bed for a week.

On 6th April, she met Brierley again and told him of being beaten and dragged around the room--but this wasn't the day before--she was referring to the same incident on 29 March.

But perhaps you have a source that shows otherwise?

I wouldn't expect every episode of domestic violence, abuse or control to be witnessed and fully documented, but perhaps you are right, and this really was a once only failing on Maybrick's part, despite the fact that the law turned a blind eye to how a man chose to discipline his wife if she displeased him in any way. If you want to argue that this was the first and only instance, because there were no others witnessed, fair enough, but one black eye is one too many to make a saint out of a devil.

My first husband gave me a black eye once. This really was a one off, when we were playing bridge with friends and I should have played a different card. I literally told people at work the next day that I had walked into a door! I didn't leave him over it because he was mortified and never did it again, but it taught me something new about his nature. It was only when he later threatened to hide my rail season ticket, so I couldn't get to my job in London, because he wanted me to stay home, keep house and have his kids, that I finally saw the light and escaped the tightening noose.

[caz]

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. - Carl Sagan

Should it not be the obligation of the lawyer presenting the Maybrick scrapbook as genuine to prove his case?

"It's all been proven to be a genuine, Your Honour! Proven!"
"Proven? What is your definition of 'proven' here, counsellor?"
"Well, the one we all use, Your Honour - it means that's your opinion about something"
"Can you give me an example of a 'proven' argument in favour of the scrapbook being genuine?"
"Easily, Your Honour. The presenter of the scrapbook said he got it from this guy in a pub. While it's true that he later confessed to forging it, the only debatable matter seems to be why he said that, not whether the scrapbook is genuine - that ship has already sailed.'. So there you have it, Judge"
"And has that ship already sailed, counsellor? Does the data incontrovertibly, unequivocally, undeniably show that the scrapbook was genuine?"
"Erm, well no, Your Honour. That's not what 'proven' means, though, is it?"
"Next case!"

Hi George,

If only the presenter of the scrapbook had said he got it from 'this guy in a pub', but alas he never did say that. It's not even strictly accurate to say he 'confessed to forging it'. He merely claimed to have done so, without providing any proof, and without apparently understanding what 'forging' entails. There was no attempt to 'forge' Maybrick's handwriting, so no proof it wasn't someone's literary exercise, never intended for publication.

How many men would you have happily seen hanged as Jack the Ripper on the strength of their unsupportable 'confessions', made when they were clearly not firing on all cylinders? I believe there were quite a few hopeless liars around at the time, who made false confessions to some of the worst crimes ever committed. To their credit, the police didn't see them as an easy nick.

To anyone who actually knew Mike Barrett, his claims to have forged the diary were extraordinary, and as such they will require extraordinary evidence before anyone can finally lock him up and throw away the key. He was no forger, but he was a very naughty boy.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

At this remove, even CCTV footage of the Barretts creating the diary in their Goldie Street home could not shake the faith of the believer.

Oh the irony.

It takes a queer sort of faith to imagine that scene ever happened, or could be created out of anything more solid than fairy dust.

The solid rock of Diary belief cannot and will not be shaken. Not ever.

You do seem unduly concerned about the one and a half posters who appear to have this solid rock of Diary belief.

I would be more worried about the solid rock of belief in the tales of Mike Barrett if the believers were not so damned condescending, while failing to acknowledge the gaps in their own knowledge and understanding of the man and all the events.

The Sunday Times couldn't do it. Kenneth Rendell's team couldn't do it. Harris couldn't do it. Nor Evans nor Sugden nor Omlor nor Phillips nor Hacker nor anyone else. Lord Orsam, too, has failed.

I wonder why? All they had to do was hunt the hoaxer(s) and expose them, and Ike would have disappeared in a puff of smoke and given you some peace. But we got excuses every time for their own abject failure to do so.

Really, the only suitable reaction to such savants is to roll down the window shade when you see them coming up the walk.

Unfortunately, it took me many years to realize this.

So why are you still commenting on the subject and asking ero for more evidence of Maybrick's bad behaviour?