Sir John Williams - A Response From Tony Williams and Humphrey Price (recovered)

[Graham]

Sorry if I'm being a thick-o about all this, but I missed it first time round.

I read "Uncle Jack" quite a while ago, and thought it was a load of old bananas.

Am I correct in assuming that the lovely J Pegg is suggesting that the authors of said book forged documents, including the one Rob House has posted above, to make their case?

Graham

[robhouse]

I am no expert, but those 2 versions of the name "Mary Ann Nichols" see to be in very similar handwriting, and I wouldn't be surprised if they were both done by the same person. They both have the look of a very amateur forger... ie. someone who is trying to appear to write in a particular style (presumably matching the other handwriting) but not being very good at copying the style. It really looks to careful and forced to me. The style of the "M" in "Mary" seems to have been copied from the doctor's handwriting... but the rest is a very bad copy.

RH

[Archaic]

Hi Graham.

If you want a quick refresher course in the Williams matter, Wikipedia has a summary on its Sir John Williams page. It's titled 'Jack the Ripper Accusation', and seems to cover the basics. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Joh...City_of_London

If the book is being republished, I wonder what kind of changes might be included in the new version? Presumably the author isn't chucking his entire theory.

Best regards,
Archaic

[Chris]

Am I correct in assuming that the lovely J Pegg is suggesting that the authors of said book forged documents, including the one Rob House has posted above, to make their case?

Obviously Jenni showed that someone associated with the first edition of the book produced a doctored version of the document for publication. And I think it's clear that a rather crude addition has been made to the original document, and that this is far less obvious in the doctored version.

To my mind the inference is clear. Someone made a Ripper-related addition to the original document in the National Library of Wales, but because of the fear that they would be detected they made a very poor job of it. The person who produced the illustration for the book had the leisure to improve the fake. It was only through Jenni's diligence in obtaining a copy of the original that the fakery was discovered.

There are two interesting things about the new edition of "Uncle Jack." First, Williams's original co-author Humphrey Price, most unusually, is not credited as a co-author of this revised edition. And second, Williams has a new publisher, who may not be aware of the nature of his work:

http://pegasuspublishers.com/product_info.php?products_id=831

[prince]

I recently started reading the 2005 hardcover version. My intention was to complete the book before looking at "casebook" to see what you guys thought about it. By the time I got to page 125 I got tired of waiting for the authors to eventually pull out the "smoking gun" to prove it was Uncle jack who did it.

Too may things "proved" their case (in their opinion at least). Now it appears they may even have doctored documents to fit their case.

If this wasn't the cheapest of "Buy 2 get one free" I would ask for my money back. Although the book is probably worth more as "published nonsense" than the 3 Pounds the second hand bookshop wanted for it.

Well done Jenni.