Acquiring A Victorian Diary

[David Orsam]

This just goes on and on and on.

There is really only one question.

Caz do you beleive that Maybrick wrote the diary?

If the answer is yes then carry on. If however the answer is no ( and I have read all these tideious posts, so have a good idea about the answer) then all this is an irrelevance.
If James Maybrick did not write the document it is by definition A FAKE.

It does not matter at all if it is modern or old, it's will still have no factual bearing the Whitechapel killer.

I am aware of about 3 regular posters who still beleive it is genuine, several others are still sitting on the fence. That should be the only debate.

I happen to entirely agree with you Steve. I'm fully aware that I am a participant in this tedious and completely pointless discussion and my only defence is that there is so much disinformation that I feel needs correcting. It seems to just go round and round in circles with points I thought had been disposed of a long time ago just being repeated after a certain amount of time and we go round and round again.

There is obviously a complete stalemate and without any new information the discussion is going nowhere. Occasionally we get snippets of what seems to be new evidence but no source is ever provided and it's unclear if what we are being told is a fragment of some misremembered conversation or accurate information. I had high hopes of James Johnston but, for reasons best known to himself, he point blank refused to post transcripts of his interviews with the electricians, having posted some selective and possibly downright misleading snippets. Keith Skinner has thankfully posted some real new information but he seems to have disappeared and I'm not sure if the documents that we were promised are now going to materialise.

But, yes, this never ending argument (in which I find myself involved) about whether it was Person A who forged the diary or Person B is beyond satire!

[David Orsam]

The latest post on the Antiques Roadshow strikes me as garbled and incoherent. As far as I can make out there seems to be some suggestion that I have changed my position or something, which is not the case.

Here's what I said about the Antiques Roadshow in my first post on the subject (#1418):

"If, therefore, someone did actually claim to have seen a feature on gold watches on the Antiques Roadshow at some point in the weeks prior to 3 June 1993, or indeed any episode of Antiques Roadshow in that period, they cannot possibly have been telling the truth."

Then to RJ Palmer shortly afterwards I said (#1421):

"So it was absolutely impossible for them to have been chatting about a recently seen television programme which led Albert to bring the watch in."

Those points are as true today as when I first made them. To repeat: The discussion about the watch could not have been "triggered" by a recent episode of Antiques Roadshow.

That strikes me as a very important point. It's natural for work colleagues to discuss a programme they saw on television the previous evening, or perhaps even a few days earlier, especially over the weekend, but odd and unnatural for them to be discussing a programme that must have been broadcast at least six weeks earlier (and possibly much, much, earlier than that, who knows?)

The point is that this long gap is entirely consistent with my theory that the discussion in the college about 18 carat gold watches was a blatant pretext to induce Albert to bring his watch into work. It will be recalled that the initial response to this was that the BBC people must have somehow been involved! But they could only have been involved if there had been a recent broadcast of Antiques Roadshow involving a gold watch. That was what we were being told although now, having learnt that there was no such programme, that line of attempted mockery is abandoned.

But if not a recent programme when was it broadcast? And why were the security guards discussing it on that day?

It surely goes without saying that one of the reasons I am suggesting Albert was induced to bring the watch into work was because it was known by the scamster that there was a microscope available. It was part of the plan!

[David Orsam]

I have no idea what the significance of the observation that Caroline went down to London in June 1992 is supposed to be. Nor what response to that is awaited. Caroline going to London in 1992 seems to me in no more need of explanation than her parents allowing her to speak to researchers.

[David Orsam]

My goodness, the Caroline thing is not difficult.

If she genuinely has a memory of her father pestering Tony Devereux about the Diary then it must be obvious that the Diary was in existence before Tony died. It would mean that I am wrong about Mike's reason for buying a Victorian diary (unlikely) and it would equally mean that the Diary was not lying under the floorboards of Battlecrease for 125 years until 9th March 1992 (likely).

So my theory doesn't fit in any way with what Caroline remembered.

But what I have been saying is that it is a nonsense to argue that Caroline's memory is genuine AND also to say that she confused Eddie Lyons with the late Tony Devereux. Absolute and pure nonsense.

[David Orsam]

I honestly don't know how many times I have to say that the wording of the advertisement was perfect for forgery purposes but that this is qualified by the fact that it was never guaranteed to produce a perfect diary. In other words, it was perfect if the perfect diary was available in the bookdealing community (which in fact it wasn't). I also made clear that the wording could have been improved but only by explaining why the diary was needed. That explains why I wrote that it wasn't so much the wording of the advertisement that was the problem and I haven't moderated any previous statements because they were already clearly moderated.