How Are The Mighty Fallen

[Tom_Wescott]

I have addressed Begg's question.

Begg has a question? He showed up here and posted a question?

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Ally]

LOL...I amended my post as you wrote that to reflect the same.
I have already said about fifty times I don't plan to argue Begg via his illiterate and ignorant proxy. If Begg wants to have a discussion he can get in here and have it.

[Jeff Leahy]

I have addressed Begg's question. If Begg has any further questions, he can come on here and ask them himself.

No start again!

CITE BEGG: Anderson is a complex character and no doubt subject to all the failings and foibles that beset all human beings. But after reading Andersons secular and theological writings, and with a knowledge of the morals and mores of the times, as well as an understanding of Anderson’s complicated religious beliefs and how they would have influenced his thinking and actions, the author Martin Fido completely rejected any idea that Anderson would lie in self-interest.”

“The likes of Gladstone and Lord Salisbury have been examined by successive historians in considerable detail and almost every nuance of meaning has been drained from thorough examination of published and unpublished material. It is therefore possible to say with some degree of probability what either man may or may not have said or done in a given situation. That is not the case with Sir Robert Anderson, who as far as Ripper revelations is concerned, has really only been assessed by Author Martin Fido, a professional Academic and specialist in the Victorian period who blessed with interest in and understanding of eccentric religious beliefs of Anderson and their influence on his character, and who has a general knowledge of the morals and mores of late Victorian society. His assessment of Anderson was made during the research for a book about the Ripper for the centenary of the crimes and led him to conclude that Anderson was one of the more reliable, if not the most reliable, of police commentators.”

BEGG “He also rejected the until then widely accepted theory that Anderson’s suspect was John Pizer, convincingly suggested in the 1970’s by author Donald Rumblow in his book The Complete Jack the Ripper, and concluded that Anderson’s suspect was ‘kosminski’ referred to by Sir Melville MacNaughten in a memorandum written in 1894. Fido observed that bothmen provided corresponding detail- both appeared to refer to the suspect’s masterbation (it being a silly notion common in late Victorian period that masterbation led to madness), Anderson calling it ‘unnatural vices’ MacNaughten “solitary vices” and noted that both alluded to an identification, this Fido deducing in the case of MacNaughten from reference to Kosminski resembling a man seen by a city PC (a claim itself not without problems!) Fido concluded, ‘sinse neither Anderson nor Macnaughten was given to lying or boasting their joint testimony ought long ago to have been given the highest priority”


“MARTIN FIDO WOULD ANDERSON HAVE LIED?

In the chapter ‘the man who knew to much’ in his book. The Crime, detection and death of Jack the Ripper (1987) Martin Fido devoted a couple of pages to an analysis of Anderson, who he described as an ‘evangelical fundermentalist’ and how his religious beliefs would have influenced his thinking and behaviour. He concluded that one thing is certain about the dedicated and scrupulous Christian: he is not a vainglorious liar or boaster..and (Anderson) would never have lied about his professional life to enhance either his own or his police force’s reputation.”

“Fido’s conclusion has been questioned and doubted and even ridiculed, but sad to say, I have yet to see anyone challenge the assessment on which it was based. Historians and biographers particularly study all they can about life and times of a person they are writing about in an effort to get inside their skin, to understand them, to know what they would not have said, written or done, What ever one may feel about the vagaries of human behaviour and the uncertainty inherent in forecasting any human action, it is or should be- obvious that a conclusion based on a knowledge of the times, on study of the sources and on a though knowledge and understanding of the influence on a person- how in this case other ‘evangelical fundamentalists’ thought about truth and how Anderson himself expressed his thoughts about truth- can not be dismissed on nothing more than ones own life experiences accompanied by a dollop of common sence”

BEGG “Whether or not we can trust what a source tells us is probably the first and most fundamental question a historian must ask, and in many cases, we cannot know with absolute certainty that it can be. We can, however, draw a conclusion based on the sort of considerations used by Martin Fido.

More seriously, it was pointed out by Stewart Evans and Donald Rumbelow in jack the Ripper: Scotland Yard Investigates that “Given all the secret service work Anderson was involved in over the years, it is hard to imagine that he did not frequently resort to deception and untruths of one sort or another” Fido had, however, already considered and responded to that important point, stating that Anderson ‘had occasion to make his attitude to mendacity quite clear. He said in his memoirs that he perceived an obvious Christian duty nevr to lie to ones brothers : but denied that murderous terrorists and subversives were brothers, entitled to hear the truth they would only misuse” Fido went on to cite ab anecdote told by the writer Hargrave Adam about Andreson lying to a suspected murderer in the hope of extracting a confession. Anderson was guilty of making a hair splitting distinction about acceptable and unacceptable lies, and in Fido’s view Anderson’s opinion of acceptable lies did not include ‘publishing lies in books for a wide audience”

[Jeff Leahy]

I understand Ally some people just cant take the heat.

A good run will do you good

[Ally]

Does he give you a cookie and pat you on the head every time you perform to his standard?

Just thought i'd point out, there wasn't a question in any of that passage. Except of course for the rhetorical header.

[Jeff Leahy]

Your beginning to flap Ally. You are losing your cool!

you cant keep it up???

[Ally]

you cant keep it up???

......


Nah too easy. It's like he just handed me that one.

[Jeff Leahy]

No your correct. Even you have excelled yourself in pointless stupidity and failing to see or understand what they were talking about.

Besides I need something to eat and Ally Ryder has made it quiet clear that she does not intend a logical and reasonable debate to take part on her watch!

yet again

I salute your first victory in utter pointlessness

You are indeed the master of banality and idol rhetoric.

Ally will be king of the castle for the next twenty minutes

what a...............

[Ally]

hahahah He's storming off in a huff, I win! I win!

Of course I won a loong time ago after the fifth time Jeffy said he wouldn't respond to the personal insults and the fifth time I goaded him into doing it.

[Natalie Severn]

Do not be afraid ....

Begg has a question? He showed up here and posted a question?

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

Tom we are not quite sure what is going on re Paul . He is around "somewhere" and Pirate is "ghosting" for him --and sometimes he gets his wires crossed and a lot of completely irrelevant stuff gets shouted at Stewart ,Ally or me from someone .None of us is sure when Paul is switched on or off !

[Ally]

Have you all thought of this...Leahy keeps making claims that he is posting stuff from Begg, but how do we know that's true? I mean for all we know, he's a liar as well as stupid. Maybe he's got Begg locked in a basement somewhere, forcing him to write drivel.

Or and here's the real argument. If Leahy is indeed posting private correspondence from Begg on the boards...in the past this has been considered verboten and people have NOT been allowed to do it. For one it's tacky. And for two, how do we know that Leahy isn't posting these things without Begg's permission.

So has Begg given Leahy his permission to post these emails, which makes Leahy de facto sock puppet (against the rules). Or is Leahy posting these emails without permission (against the rules). Either way the ventriloquist's dummy act is tacky at best and shady at worst.

[Stewart P Evans]

The Way I See It

The way I see it is that laughing boy has made up his mind as far as the case is concerned, and has at his disposal (living not far away I believe) the world's leading expert on Jack the Ripper who is advising him.

Add to this the fact that his two favourite authors, his near neighbour and Fido, never get it wrong (in fact Fido is the world's best assessor of the character of religious people). So there really is no need to put anything to us unscholarly, non-academic, proletariat, as whatever we may say will be wrong if it is at odds with his pre-formed ideas or anything that has been pronounced by his two top-notch advisers.

He really should be getting on with making the 'best ever documentary on Jack the Ripper' and not wasting time on these boards with people who simply do not understand and are wrong anyway.

It really is a puzzle as to why he is here at all. Kosminski obviously 'dunit' (although Fido may disagree there), no one else has anything constructive to add, and he keeps repeating himself so he must have run out of ideas as to what to say. Get that documentary made I am sure there is an eager audience waiting to see it.

[Supe]

Ally,

With all due respect, I think it is clear that Fido's statement in the book was applied to all scrupulous evangelical Christians and not just Andrerson. Having edited Martin's work on occasion, I came away thinking he was a careful writer and the use of the rather than this was used with precision.

Moreover, his immediate clarification in regard to another professed evangelical Christian, Barnardo, would seem to bear this out. That is, that the inability to lie for vainglorious purposes applied to only the scrupulous among evangelical Christians. Unfortunately, Martin leaves himself in the position of determing scupulousity and this weakens the objectivity of his analysis. "What is scrupulous?" said jesting Fido . . . and all that.

What he may have said later doesn't enter into what he wrote in the book. In the book, in my opinion, he was speaking of evangelicals in the abstract, though obviously suggesting Anderson fit his definition. And even then he is attempting to divine the character of someone's inner soul at all times based on a modernist's reading of an earlier age. Really doesn't work for Freudians or for other disciplines and also would seem to run into a variation of the "uncertainty principle." What may work in general for a designated class of people can never be applied to a single individual at all times.

At best, we are left with it being Fido's opinion--learned as it may or may not be--that Anderson did not lie about Jack the Ripper. Accept his word as one wishes, but clearly Paul Begg has embraced it with the fervor of a born-again. The question that needs be asked, however, is whether Begg has done so because of his unwavering faith in Fido's ability to plumb the character of the long dead or because accepting it buttresses his own opinions about the identity of JtR?

Even as only Anderson could answer if he was capable of a vainglorious lie, so can only Paul answer that last question about his motivation--and I shan't hold my breath waiting.

Don.

[Tom_Wescott]

Begg's an interesting guy. He seems to seek out and nurture grudges, such as against Stewart, myself, and who knows who else. In Stewart's case it's clearly because he holds views on Anderson that don't jibe with his own, and in my case it must be because I used to have a lot of fun at the expense of Ripperologist magazine. Small matter I've also sent them a buttload of subscribers and contributors over the years. According to Leahy, I'm persona non grata there now, which I think is a huge, massive mistake on their part. I guess it doesn't occur to some people that you can professionally disagree and still enjoy a personal relationship.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[Tom_Wescott]

Maybe he's got Begg locked in a basement somewhere, forcing him to write drivel.

Beggy puts the lotion on his skin or else he gets the hose again!

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott