September 17th Letter

[mac-the-kipper]

I'm just glad John didn't take up my suggestion of using a Dulux colour chart by the letter to help get the colour reproduction right, otherwise some people might be pointing the finger at a big fluffy dog as the faker.

Rob

I always thought I could detect the stained forepaw of the creator of those letters.

[Cap'n Jack]

Thanks Pete, por una poca de gracias, gracias.

[caz]

Sorry John, but regardless of intent or design on anyone's part, the original image appears modern because of the modern background.
As I said it is a subtle distinction to make, but by heavens in certainly works... in much the same way as if I was to photograph my valuable Penny Black postage stamp with a modern Cornflake packet as the background.
It would cast doubt in the minds of those seeing the image as to its real age and origin.
Previously I had taken umbrage with you over the colour enhancement of the image. I still do.

Hi AP,

I actually disagree with you on this one (and it’s not just because I’m biased in favour of anything John Bennett says or does ).

I think you may have this the wrong way round. If something is genuinely old, like a Penny Black (and my dad had many of them in his vast stamp collection so I can speak from personal experience here), its antiquity tends to appear more obvious with an incongruous modern background like a cornflake box. Conversely, a modern cereal packet should stand out like a sore thumb surrounded by, say, Edwardian food packaging.

So in fact, one might have expected more of a contrast with John’s lined paper, if the letter bore the correct date. If I had wanted to make the letter look more modern, I might have popped a very obviously old and yellowed piece of paper in poor condition under it for the photo.

But in any case, anyone who could be influenced that easily is surely not worth worrying about. The letter is whatever it is, and no amount of back and forth about the way other people see it should cut any ice at all with grown-ups who don’t give a toss who may be proved right or wrong, but who merely wait, forever if necessary, before making up their own minds, for the kind of ‘Hitler Diaries’ evidence that nobody could reasonably dispute, however much the truth might hurt their petty little minds.

Love,

Caz
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[caz]

What is your disagreement with me here? The description given in my post is a pretty good summing up of the appearance of this letter. Indeed, I would add that the paper, and ink for that matter, does not resemble any to be found in MEPO 3/142, nor any of the many Victorian letters in my own collection.

The Hitler diaries are a poor basis for comparison here as they are 62 handwritten volumes. Chemical analysis showed that the binding contained polyester threads not produced until after WWII, the glue contained post-war chemicals and the paper and ink were of post-war manufacture. The arguments of what 'our modern hoaxer' would or would not have assessed and used are totally baseless. The fact is that the paper used in this letter is cheap and modern looking - re-read the initial description that I gave.

Hi Stewart,

No disagreement at all. You saw what you saw and I haven’t seen what you saw.

I was merely acknowledging that before you mentioned it, I had not really appreciated that cheap modern paper stood much of a chance of resisting scientific attempts to prove it inconsistent with any paper manufactured in or before 1888. I knew about the difficulty of distinguishing certain modern inks from Victorian ones, but I didn’t realise that there would be anything like the same difficulty with paper. I wasn’t doubting your word on this, but explaining why I had previously assumed it would have been a doddle for the experts to distinguish cheap modern notepaper from old.

I also think it would be interesting to know whether the author of the letter had any idea what their paper choice might reveal (or keep secret) about its real age under closer examination and chemical analysis. I wasn’t arguing that the author was bound to have assessed the chances of the letter coming unstuck just like the Hitler Diaries did if the materials were not chosen with a bit more care. It’s entirely possible that the author didn’t care whether or not alarm bells would ring at the sight of the paper or ink, or whether either could quickly be proved modern or not.

All I’m saying is that if the motivation for writing it and slipping it into the archives was, for instance, to get a book out of it at some point, as others have suggested, it would seem a little short-sighted neither to know nor to care if there was any chance at all of pulling it off. If, on the other hand, it was just a daft prank, played by a very bored joker with no expectation of it being taken seriously, then there would have been far less reason to care about the materials used. And yet the letter was stuck inside that plain folder, which others have suggested may have been by design on the author’s part, to provide a possible explanation for it not being filmed along with the other documents in the file.

Trying to get inside the author’s head, using the available facts and the views expressed by others, does not imply any disagreement with you.

I am not going to be drawn into one of your puerile 'diary' debates, suffice to say that you do not know as much as you think you do. I do not argue endlessly that Tumblety was the Ripper - mainly because I don't know that he was. There is no evidence for who the Ripper was. But I know an obvious fake when I see one.

That's what I said - I do not accuse you of arguing endlessly that Tumblety was the ripper, because you very clearly don’t know that he was and, as you confirmed on one of the Anderson threads, you ‘might respond’ when you ‘perceive erroneous or false reasoning in attacks on the theory’ but you ‘never try to push Tumblety onto anyone’ and are ‘well aware of all the contra-arguments’.

So I wish you would do me the similar courtesy of not accusing me of arguing endlessly ‘in support’ of the diary, when I have never argued, on or off the boards, that Maybrick wrote it, nor have I tried to push him onto anyone or write a book making a case for him being the ripper (he is not even a suspect in my eyes, as I have reminded people on countless occasions, but I may as well have been talking to the cat ), but I do tend to respond, just like you, when I perceive erroneous or false reasoning on the subject that hasn’t been adequately addressed by others - and that’s regardless of what is being propped up badly: modern hoax, older hoax or the totally baseless real deal.

If any theory is worth supporting, it can only play right into the hands of the doubters to patronise them with poor arguments or misinformation and, when that inevitably fails to impress, accuse them of stupidity and worse, merely because they expect better quality belt and braces before buying the trousers. So if someone wants to support this letter being old, I will listen to whatever they come up with but I won't be patronised.

It does you little credit to say I do not know as much as I think I do (which begs the question what have I claimed to ‘know’ that I don’t?), while demonstrating how little you know about what I have argued ‘in support’ of and what I haven't. How could you know, if you sensibly steer clear of the very boards that contain such information? I do hope you don’t accept second-hand gossip from certain posters who wouldn’t know the truth about what I ‘support’ if it bit her - I mean them - on the bottom.

One of the most amazing things about this '17th Sept. 1888' letter is the fact that it has been 'hanging around' since 1988, that is 20 years, and still its status has not been resolved. The blame for this must surely lie with officialdom. It has become a saga and will soon be worth a book all of its own.

And this is precisely what I was trying to get across with my first recent post to this thread - ie why the heck its status could not have been resolved by officialdom by now. And you told me it was not so easy if paper and ink could not be proved modern by scientific analysis.

So like you, I don’t know what the best solution is. At this point all we both know is the problem.

Love,

Caz
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[Stewart P Evans]

Thank You

Hi Stewart,
No disagreement at all. You saw what you saw and I haven’t seen what you saw.
I was merely acknowledging that before you mentioned it, I had not really appreciated that cheap modern paper stood much of a chance of resisting scientific attempts to prove it inconsistent with any paper manufactured in or before 1888. I knew about the difficulty of distinguishing certain modern inks from Victorian ones, but I didn’t realise that there would be anything like the same difficulty with paper. I wasn’t doubting your word on this, but explaining why I had previously assumed it would have been a doddle for the experts to distinguish cheap modern notepaper from old.
the materials used. And yet the letter was stuck inside that plain folder, which others have suggested may have been by design on the author’s part, to provide a possible explanation for it not being filmed along with the other documents in the file.
Caz

Thank you for the clarification. I suppose that I should add that the description of the paper was not mine, thus the mention of it being 'like a page from a cheap notebook you would buy at Woolworths' was not mine. To indicate this I placed the description in speech marks.

[Stewart P Evans]

Guesswork

Hi Stewart,
All I’m saying is that if the motivation for writing it and slipping it into the archives was, for instance, to get a book out of it at some point, as others have suggested, it would seem a little short-sighted neither to know nor to care if there was any chance at all of pulling it off. If, on the other hand, it was just a daft prank, played by a very bored joker with no expectation of it being taken seriously, then there would have been far less reason to care about the materials used. And yet the letter was stuck inside that plain folder, which others have suggested may have been by design on the author’s part, to provide a possible explanation for it not being filmed along with the other documents in the file.
Trying to get inside the author’s head, using the available facts and the views expressed by others, does not imply any disagreement with you.

I do not believe that I have actually suggested a motive for the insertion of the fake letter (my opinion) into the Home Office files. Indeed, I do not feel that supplying the actual motive is crucial to pronouncing the letter a fake. Given the history of fakes and hoaxes, and the many motivations behind them and without the word of the faker/hoaxer, speculation and guesswork is all you are left with.

[Stewart P Evans]

Apologist

Hi Stewart, ...
So I wish you would do me the similar courtesy of not accusing me of arguing endlessly ‘in support’ of the diary, when I have never argued, on or off the boards, that Maybrick wrote it, nor have I tried to push him onto anyone or write a book making a case for him being the ripper (he is not even a suspect in my eyes, as I have reminded people on countless occasions, but I may as well have been talking to the cat ), but I do tend to respond, just like you, when I perceive erroneous or false reasoning on the subject that hasn’t been adequately addressed by others - and that’s regardless of what is being propped up badly: modern hoax, older hoax or the totally baseless real deal...
Caz

By 'in support' of the 'diary' I should have said 'acting as apologist for'. I have never accused you of claiming that Maybrick wrote it nor of you 'pushing' him onto anyone to write a book (where is all that coming from?)

But you hit the nail on the head when you stated 'as I have reminded people on countless occasions', which fits the bill for 'ace apologist' and you must be in line for the academy award for keeping the 'diary' debate alive over the years. On many occasions when debate on it fizzled out I have seen you leap back to start it all over again. And you have done so since c. 1998. You have also made a habit of introducing the 'diary' into threads which had nothing to do with it.

You should realise, as we all do (and perhaps you do) that there are folk who will simply never agree with you, whether or not you are right. But it simply has nothing to do with you believing the 'diary' is real or fake (and I had the impression that you didn't think it was real anyway), it is to do with your endless posting on the thing (surely an all time record on the boards) and I am certain that I haven't raised any subject nearly as much as you have the duff 'diary.'

[Stewart P Evans]

Opinion

Hi Stewart,
It does you little credit to say I do not know as much as I think I do (which begs the question what have I claimed to ‘know’ that I don’t?), while demonstrating how little you know about what I have argued ‘in support’ of and what I haven't. How could you know, if you sensibly steer clear of the very boards that contain such information? I do hope you don’t accept second-hand gossip from certain posters who wouldn’t know the truth about what I ‘support’ if it bit her - I mean them - on the bottom.
Caz

Well, that was just my opinion wasn't it? And I do make mistakes, no doubt you will prove me wrong.

I do not accept 'second-hand gossip' from anyone, in fact no one contacts me with information about you. I must confess to sometimes reading the 'diary' threads if I get bored and I was speaking from what I had perceived on these threads over the past 10 years. In fact I'm quite lonely here (with Rosie at work) - why don't you give me a ring?

[John Bennett]

Thank you for the clarification. I suppose that I should add that the description of the paper was not mine, thus the mention of it being 'like a page from a cheap notebook you would buy at Woolworths' was not mine. To indicate this I placed the description in speech marks.

I thought it certainly looked like cheap paper, rough in texture, and I have a feeling it may well have been me who coined the 'Woolworth's' comparison. Although I didn't use this phrase in the article in RN#26.

If indeed it WAS me who mentioned Woolworth's, it was on the old boards, pre-crash. But of course, it was only a personal opinion - it's just what it reminded me of when I saw it.

JB

[Stewart P Evans]

Interesting

I thought it certainly looked like cheap paper, rough in texture, and I have a feeling it may well have been me who coined the 'Woolworth's' comparison. Although I didn't use this phrase in the article in RN#26.
If indeed it WAS me who mentioned Woolworth's, it was on the old boards, pre-crash. But of course, it was only a personal opinion - it's just what it reminded me of when I saw it.
JB

No, it wasn't you I was quoting John. It's someone who saw it over 10 years ago. Interesting, though, that you thought the same as they did.

[John Bennett]

Thanks for that, SPE. How strange!

[Cap'n Jack]

The fact of the matter, boys, is that Woolworths' paper is good quality paper, and always has been; so rather than making a comparison you are making derogatary statements about this letter based on the myth that Woolworths sells crap.
What was I saying about snobs?

[caz]

That's the wonder of Woolworths, AP.

By 'in support' of the 'diary' I should have said 'acting as apologist for'. I have never accused you of claiming that Maybrick wrote it nor of you 'pushing' him onto anyone to write a book (where is all that coming from?)

Many thanks for the clarification, Stewart. I just felt that most readers would infer that anyone accused by you of arguing in support of the diary (whether they did it once or endlessly) must be in support of it being the genuine work of James ‘Jack the Ripper’ Maybrick, which would be quite unfair. I wrote that I had not tried to push Maybrick onto anyone (ie on the boards) or write a book making a case for him being the ripper. Sorry for not being clearer.

If you equate questioning the arguments other posters make for the diary resulting from a modern hoax conspiracy involving the Barretts with ‘acting as an apologist for’ the diary itself, that’s fair enough, except that even murderers are allowed a defence before being convicted and the key is thrown away.

But you hit the nail on the head when you stated 'as I have reminded people on countless occasions', which fits the bill for 'ace apologist' and you must be in line for the academy award for keeping the 'diary' debate alive over the years. On many occasions when debate on it fizzled out I have seen you leap back to start it all over again. And you have done so since c. 1998. You have also made a habit of introducing the 'diary' into threads which had nothing to do with it.

Now I’m am ‘ace apologist’ for the diary because I am constantly reminding people that I don’t consider Maybrick a suspect? How does that work? And I can assure you I don’t ‘leap’ anywhere these days. It can take me months to catch up with all the topics I’m interested in reading. It may seem like I’m starting ‘it all over again’ when I see, belatedly, posts that were addressed to me, or some comment that comes under our joint banner of ‘erroneous or false reasoning’ that I feel has not already been adequately addressed by anyone else at the time.

I rarely if ever start a new thread or a brand new discussion unless specifically invited to do so, and I bet you will find that I only post about the wretched subject on unrelated threads when someone has said something first that is related, either by invoking the d word itself or by observing, quite rightly, that people could comment with more authority on a document if they had seen or felt it in the flesh. If someone dangles a worm like that in front of me they can expect me to bite, considering all the so-called diary experts who would sooner run a mile than have to look at it in the flesh and have their own flesh creep.

You should realise, as we all do (and perhaps you do) that there are folk who will simply never agree with you, whether or not you are right. But it simply has nothing to do with you believing the 'diary' is real or fake (and I had the impression that you didn't think it was real anyway), it is to do with your endless posting on the thing (surely an all time record on the boards) and I am certain that I haven't raised any subject nearly as much as you have the duff 'diary.'

Well I dare say there are folk who will simply never agree with me, but I hope one or two would try to find out what they are actually disagreeing with first. It appears that even you are not too sure. “Caz doesn’t appear to think it’s real, but by God I will simply never agree with her, even if she’s right.”

As I said, if you take a closer look, I respond on the subject, but I very rarely raise it completely unbidden, and never where there is no possible relevance at all. In fact, I seem to remember you went into a positive frenzy of action shortly after your old and very dear friend Keith Skinner’s Battlecrease revelation, and started at least one new diary thread to rehash a lot of old diary news.

I do not accept 'second-hand gossip' from anyone, in fact no one contacts me with information about you. I must confess to sometimes reading the 'diary' threads if I get bored and I was speaking from what I had perceived on these threads over the past 10 years. In fact I'm quite lonely here (with Rosie at work) - why don't you give me a ring?

I’m very pleased to hear it. But your perception should have told you that I last visited the Maybrick threads nearly two months ago. And my memory isn’t telling me when I last wrote a post there that was not in response to someone else’s, but it feels like a very long time ago indeed.

It’s too late to ring you today but if you PM me your number and let me know when you have another spare moment, I’d be delighted. Not as good as seeing your etchings in the flesh, but I was always taught that good things are worth waiting for.

Love,

Caz
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[Sam Flynn]

... "ace apologist" = a dyslexic Houdini

[caz]

Hi Sam,

I thought for a minute you had heard about my own efforts to fake a ripper diary.

It's my 'escaped ape log'.

Love,

Caz
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