25 YEARS OF THE DIARY OF JACK THE RIPPER: THE TRUE FACTS by Robert Smith

[Herlock Sholmes]

A good question, HS, but we don't know. When McNeil invented the test - in 1984 or thereabouts - he used a few documents (circa 10 in all; I can't recall the precise figure off the top of my head) spanning several centuries. Personally, I wouldn't invest much confidence in a technique that had been developed against such a small sample size.

Be that as it may, what we can say is that, when tasked with dating a recently-forged Mormon document that had (so it transpired) been artificially aged, the sensitivity of the McNeil test was shown to have been compromised. I'm not suggesting that the "Maybrick" diary had been artificially aged, but I would observe that the McNeil ion-migration test had by no means been proven to be definitive at the time it was applied to the diary.

Thanks for that Sam.

It just seems strange that a scientific test could be so inaccurate. As a layman it's not an issue for me to understand that a newly developed test could be found to be inaccurate when it comes to a document which was alleged to be 100 years old but I'd tend to assume that if the tester was presented with an object written around a year or so previously that the alarm bells would immediately go off?

[Sam Flynn]

Thanks for that Sam.

It just seems strange that a scientific test could be so inaccurate. As a layman it's not an issue for me to understand that a newly developed test could be found to be inaccurate when it comes to a document which was alleged to be 100 years old but I'd tend to assume that if the tester was presented with an object written around a year or so previously that the alarm bells would immediately go off?

The way the test works, in broad terms, is to determine how far along a paper fibre the ink has travelled, and the longer the ink has been in contact with the paper, the further it will have seeped in. This can in theory be used to suggest a likely date-range for when the ink was applied to the paper. That all makes sense. However, different types of paper are made of different types of fibres, with different properties such as density, porosity and absorbtiveness. McNeil developed his test by sampling about a dozen historical documents of known date, mostly on paper and some on parchment, covering a span of 700 years. I'd suggest that a bigger sample size, using a much wider range of paper types, would be needed before such a test could be said to be accurate in most, if not all, circumstances.

As the diary is actually a scrapbook/photo-album, it won't be made of the best-quality writing paper, in stark contrast to the kinds of paper on which most of McNeil's sample documents would have been written. I'm sure that the test works well enough on such writing materials, but unless it had been calibrated against a range of other substrates, including the "B" or "C" grade paper that gets used in scrapbooks and photo albums, I can't see how we can have any confidence in its accuracy in this specific case.

[Herlock Sholmes]

The way the test works, in broad terms, is to determine how far along a paper fibre the ink has travelled, and the longer the ink has been in contact with the paper, the further it will have seeped in. This can in theory be used to suggest a likely date-range for when the ink was applied to the paper. That all makes sense. However, different types of paper are made of different types of fibres, with different properties such as density, porosity and absorbtiveness. McNeil developed his test by sampling about a dozen historical documents of known date, mostly on paper and some on parchment, covering a span of 700 years. I'd suggest that a bigger sample size, using a much wider range of paper types, would be needed before such a test could be said to be accurate in most, if not all, circumstances.

As the diary is actually a scrapbook/photo-album, it won't be made of the best-quality writing paper, in stark contrast to the kinds of paper on which most of McNeil's sample documents would have been written. I'm sure that the test works well enough on such writing materials, but unless it had been calibrated against a range of other substrates, including the "B" or "C" grade paper that gets used in scrapbooks and photo albums, I can't see how we can have any confidence in its accuracy in this specific case.

Agreed Sam

[David Orsam]

I don't know if this will be in any way helpful but here are some notes I made about McNeil's 1984 report some time ago:



It should be noted that McNeil says that the scientific process of ion migration is not understood. Only that it seems to have been observed.

He says that to initially test his hypothesis - that documents could be dated from the ion migration of the ink - he took seven paper documents from his own private collection. These were dated 1972, 1904, 1857, 1747, 1457, 1354 and 1272. He took five characters from each document and subjected them to scanning auger microscopy which appears to involve exciting the electrons of the characters written on the documents with the use of an electron beam. The ink on the paper must contain iron for the test to work. He says that "If the area count is normalized to 100% at the capillary shoulder, a "tail" becomes evident". I have no idea what the actually means but he tells us that the "area integration of this tail was found to vary with time". The tail appears to be measured by micron intervals. For the 1972 document there was a low number of micron intervals, more micron intervals for the 1904 document, more from the 1857 document and so on until the 1272 document which had the highest level of micron intervals.

It was from this test that he appears to have worked out a formula of how many micron intervals relate to each year. In other words, he evidently calculated the increase in the intervals by every period of about 30 years. Just by way of pure hypothetical example using numbers I have invented for simplicity, on a test carried out in 1984, a document written in 1972 might show 5 micron intervals in the area count, with a document written in 1952 showing 15 micron intervals and a document written in 1922 showing 30 micron intervals. From that we could work out that a document with an area count of 47 micron intervals might have been written in 1888.

That's the kind of thing and I must stress that I have greatly simplified it there with those numbers, in reality it's more complicated than this.

So having got his basic data to allow him to calculate dates of composition, McNeil then began the actual test by using 22 paper documents loaned to him from three private libraries dated "unequivocally" between 1272 and 1972. He appears to have only used one or possibly two documents from the twentieth century. Most of them were earlier than 1800. Sadly he doesn't tell us what date he estimated for each individual document, only that "A statistical analysis of the 110 points sampled on paper indicates a correlation coefficient of 0.90 for the regression analysis". I must say that I find this confusing because in the abstract there is mention of a 0.95 correlation coefficient with a 0.90 correlation coefficient for vellum documents. But in the paper itself he says that a "significantly different curve fit for vellum and parchment as well as the far smaller number of samples [8 parchment and 7 vellum] does not allow any statistically valid assumptions to be made regarding the accuracy of SAM [Scanning Auger Microscopy] as a dating technique for those supports". He also says that "the number of points sufficiently available is insufficient to adequately define the area versus time relationship". To me, therefore, there appears to be a disconnect between the abstract and the paper itself.

The problem with vellum and parchment, McNeil tells us, was that "the presence of hair follicles and anomalies in surface texture introduced more sampling error".

McNeil then tells us that he conducted a "double blind" test using four documents from the Bishop Collection (being scientific and cartographic documents). Here things seem to go a bit wrong because he tells us that he estimated the following dates of composition for these four documents:

1730
1680
1630
1450

For the first three, he did quite well, as the actual dates were 1751, 1692 and 1637 respectively. For the fourth document, however, the actual date of the document was supposed to be circa 1275, so he was 175 years out!!

He does have an excuse though. Perhaps the dating of 1275 was wrong! Thus, he says that this document was "supposedly from ca. 1275 based on the script and handwriting analysis" adding "It is not known at this time which date is more accurate".

Aside from the fact that it makes a bit of a mockery of this part of the test if the document dates were not "unequivocal", how do we know if the other three documents had been correctly dated?

Regarding the error range, McNeil says that "The use of the current technique on paper should allow an absolute accuracy of +/- 30 years back to 1050 BP" (BP means years before the present).

He also notes that for the three documents he dated "correctly" in the double blind test he was within +/- 22 years so that I think this is one area where there has been confusion as to the margin of error being 22 years or 30 years.

Also worth mentioning is that he said that controls were maintained at 20, 100, 150 and 200 degrees centigrade at varying degrees of atmospheric saturation and that "Ten months into the control period there has been no detectable area increase dependent on temperature or humidity". He adds that "Thus far, no environmental conditions have been found that could produce the tailing effect described".

His conclusion is this:

"The measurement of ion migration by SAM seems to allow accurate dating of manuscripts using iron-based inks. The use of this technique may be valid for vellum and parchment, but insufficient data are currently available to allow statistical confidence in the results."

Ultimately, it's all very well but there is no indication that different types of paper were tested (he only mentions using Whatman Elephant Grade writing paper as a control) nor whether the absorption effects of different paper would provide different results, which is probably the key criticism of Harris. It's also not clear to me if the application of UV light on the ink would have any effect on this test.

A couple of other points:

I believe I have got to the bottom of why McNeil used a margin of error date range of plus or minus 30 years in his 1984 paper whereas he used a date range of plus or minus 12 years when providing a date (of 1921) for the writing of the Maybrick diary in September 1993. I consulted a 1991 book called 'The Judgment of Experts: Essays and Documents about the Investigation and the Forging of the Oath of a Freeman' edited by James Gilreath. This book contains an undated article by McNeil entitled 'Scanning Auger Microscopy for Dating Two Copies of the Oath of a Freeman'. When discussing his scanning auger microscopy technique McNeil says (bold added):

"The past eight years have greatly expanded the database for this technique and have eliminated some sampling errors associated with its early development. The use of computerized inflection detection with the Golay fused peak technique has improved the sensitivity of the technique to provide accurate relative dates from seventeen years B.P. to 1200 B.P. If a third-generation Auger instrumentation is available, the standard error can be reduced to twelve years".

My deduction from this is that when McNeil carried out his tests on the Diary in 1993 he did so using third-generation Auger instrumentation and was thus able to reduce the margin of error down from 30 to 12 years. It was a deliberate change, therefore, not some kind of mistake as some people seem to imagine. In other words, anyone who tries to apply an error range of plus or minus 30 years to McNeil's date of 1921 to bring it down to close to 1889 (as has been done on Casebook), on the basis that McNeil had used a 30 year margin of error in his 1984 paper, are probably performing an illegitimate dating calculation.

Secondly, according to Joe Nickell in 'Forensic Investigation of Documents', McNeil tested an original draft of the Gettysburg Address which had supposedly been discovered folded up in a second hand book in late 1990. the Gettysburg Address was delivered by Abraham Lincoln in 1863. McNeil concluded that the document was dated 1869, plus or minus 10 years, and was thus genuine. Nickell, however, tells us that (from other tests) the document is "obviously forged".

The really interesting thing is that the failure of McNeil to correctly date the document might have been because it had (according to Nickell) been,"treated in some way so as to artificially age the document", something which was revealed by the document's "bright fluorescence under ultraviolet light". Nickell quotes McNeill as saying to 'Manuscript Society News', "It is unfortunate that I had a situation before me where there was no adequate coordination of all the information. I did not have access to other information I wish I had that the paper fluoresced". McNeil also said there were "grounding problems" when performing the tests because the owner did not want the document to be harmed in any way.

This suggests that there is a technique which causes fluorescence on paper which can possibly fool McNeil's test. I don't know what that technique is although, immediately after mentioning the existence of it, Nickell quotes a forensic expert referring to the possibility of treating documents with hydrogen peroxide and ammonium hydroxide in order to "artificially age the appearance of iron-gall ink". Nickell says that an ink's age migration "occurs naturally over time, but it may also be produced by chemical treatment."

[Herlock Sholmes]

Thanks for that piece of work David. Thorough as ever

[Observer]

Thanks for that Sam.

It just seems strange that a scientific test could be so inaccurate. As a layman it's not an issue for me to understand that a newly developed test could be found to be inaccurate when it comes to a document which was alleged to be 100 years old but I'd tend to assume that if the tester was presented with an object written around a year or so previously that the alarm bells would immediately go off?

I don't know if you've read the link provided by John G regarding the scientific tests which have been carried out on the Diary, but here is the link again.

https://medium.com/boston-university/the-maybrick-hoax-da49e1287d5e

Now, when it comes to the testing of ink to determine it's age, I am as much a layman as you are. However, I can appreciate that the longer the ink has been in contact with the paper it will become less likely to be dissolved by a suitable extraction solvent. The ink in the Diary dissolved too easily in Dr Baxendale's opinion, he stated that in his opinion it was laid down sometime after 1945. What problem have you with this procedure HS? Don't get me wrong here, I'd be obliged if anyone could enlighten me should Dr Baxendale's result be in question. You questioned earlier about the possibility that the creator of the Diary attempted to artificially age the Diary. I would suggest that if Dr Baxedale's test is reliable then this answers your question.

If you look at the article provided above you will see that other tests have been carried out to try and determine the age of the Diary. Now, I'll not go into all the various tests which were carried out, but do read the article. What I will say though is it reveals an awful lot to me that Mr's Harrison decided not to use AFI Laboratory's, services when they found that the ink contained chloroacetamide. Instead, in order to determine whether chloroacetamide, was present in the ink, she had tests carried out by Leeds University, and surprise surprise, they were contradictory to the findings of AFI Laboratories.

Anyway, read the article. I do realise that the article may be somewhat biased, as the title of said article is "The Maybrick Hoax", but reagarding the scientific testing of the Diary it speaks volumes to me.

[Herlock Sholmes]

I don't know if you've read the link provided by John G regarding the scientific tests which have been carried out on the Diary, but here is the link again.

https://medium.com/boston-university/the-maybrick-hoax-da49e1287d5e

Now, when it comes to the testing of ink to determine it's age, I am as much a layman as you are. However, I can appreciate that the longer the ink has been in contact with the paper it will become less likely to be dissolved by a suitable extraction solvent. The ink in the Diary dissolved too easily in Dr Baxendale's opinion, he stated that in his opinion it was laid down sometime after 1945. What problem have you with this procedure HS? Don't get me wrong here, I'd be obliged if anyone could enlighten me should Dr Baxendale's result be in question. You questioned earlier about the possibility that the creator of the Diary attempted to artificially age the Diary. I would suggest that if Dr Baxedale's test is reliable then this answers your question.

If you look at the article provided above you will see that other tests have been carried out to try and determine the age of the Diary. Now, I'll not go into all the various tests which were carried out, but do read the article. What I will say though is it reveals an awful lot to me that Mr's Harrison decided not to use AFI Laboratory's, services when they found that the ink contained chloroacetamide. Instead, in order to determine whether chloroacetamide, was present in the ink, she had tests carried out by Leeds University, and surprise surprise, they were contradictory to the findings of AFI Laboratories.

Anyway, read the article. I do realise that the article may be somewhat biased, as the title of said article is "The Maybrick Hoax", but reagarding the scientific testing of the Diary it speaks volumes to me.

The first thing that I noticed to be honest is that it was written by a Computer Science Major and not an expert in the relevant field. I am definately not in a position to argue with the various scientists involved in analysing the diary. The disputes and contradictions are difficult to decipher by a layman. This is hardly likely to happen now but an entirely new series of tests need to be done, overseen by both sides, to prevent any talk of bias. After all Robert Smith in his recent book suggests that Melvyn Harris and Nick Warren were being rather 'selective' in the results that they asked for.
For all that I know the results attained could indeed show the diary to be a modern forgery. I certainly cannot contradict Baxendale's results. Unfortunately for me I'm also unable to contradict any of the other scientists.

[rjpalmer]

McNeil also said there were "grounding problems" when performing the tests because the owner did not want the document to be harmed in any way.

Ditto, the Maybrick Diary? Smith has stated elsewhere that he didn't like the document being damaged by testing. Meanwhile, to repeat:

"[Smith] cited respected auger microscopist Robert Wild’s tests that couldn’t obtain a result because when the machine bombarded the paper with electrons, it created a static charge which distorted the signals...Dr. Wild and Dr. Eastaugh were skeptical that McNeil would be able to explain to the scientific community how he used the microscope to date manuscripts with any degree of useful accuracy."

Sounds like the same "grounding problems."

Herlock--Fortunately, you don't need to contradict McNeil; you have Drs. Wild and Eastaugh doing it for you. The whole point of science is that the results of one experiment can be independently verified and repeated by other scientists. Do you see that happening in this instance? It appears that McNeil couldn't even conduct his experiment under the necessary conditions, so the date he came up with is highly dubious. And since the Diary makes use of a police inventory list that was not available to the public until 1984 (and not widely published until 1988), I reckon I would tend to side with Baxendale. But that's been pointed out befoe.

[Observer]

The first thing that I noticed to be honest is that it was written by a Computer Science Major and not an expert in the relevant field.

What difference does that make? The author of the article is merely commenting on the various test that have been carried out.

I am definately not in a position to argue with the various scientists involved in analysing the diary. The disputes and contradictions are difficult to decipher by a layman. This is hardly likely to happen now but an entirely new series of tests need to be done, overseen by both sides, to prevent any talk of bias. After all Robert Smith in his recent book suggests that Melvyn Harris and Nick Warren were being rather 'selective' in the results that they asked for.
For all that I know the results attained could indeed show the diary to be a modern forgery. I certainly cannot contradict Baxendale's results. Unfortunately for me I'm also unable to contradict any of the other scientists.

There's not a chance in the World that the Diary will be subjected to new tests. They've had twenty years to subject it to new tests. Technology has moved on, there's even more chance now using scientific scrutiny, of it being condemned as a hoax. There's also plenty of evidence, apart from the the scientific examination of the Diary to prove it a hoax anyway. As someone said in this thread recently, it's a dead duck.

[Herlock Sholmes]

What difference does that make? The author of the article is merely commenting on the various test that have been carried out.

Well I'm sure that if a Food Hygiene Scientist assessed the tests and came to a different outcome I'm certain that people would say, what does a Food Hygeine Scientist know. I'm not doubting the results. I'm not saying that the diary is genuine. I'm just saying that when trying to assess a series of scientific tests with often conflicting results I'd feel more confident if the assessing was done by someone with the requisite scientific training/knowledge.


There's not a chance in the World that the Diary will be subjected to new tests. They've had twenty years to subject it to new tests. Technology has moved on, there's even more chance now using scientific scrutiny, of it being condemned as a hoax. There's also plenty of evidence, apart from the the scientific examination of the Diary to prove it a hoax anyway. As someone said in this thread recently, it's a dead duck.

I suspect that you are correct about there being no more testing undertaken. Most feel that it's a modern forgery, some don't. So I don't think that the subject will be going away just yet.

[Observer]

I suspect that you are correct about there being no more testing undertaken. Most feel that it's a modern forgery, some don't. So I don't think that the subject will be going away just yet.

The tests were done by scientific personnel. The article in question was merely an assessment of their work. The computer major didn't profess to have taken part in the scientific tests. For his part he is no different to say David Orsam providing his opinion here in this forum, of which you have posted the following

Thanks for that piece of work David. Thorough as ever

And I'm not knocking your praise, David Orsam's input into the forum is on the whole excellent. Isn't it a case of doubler standards though to praise one, and deem insignificant the other.

[Herlock Sholmes]

The tests were done by scientific personnel. The article in question was merely an assessment of their work. The computer major didn't profess to have taken part in the scientific tests. For his part he is no different to say David Orsam providing his opinion here in this forum, of which you have posted the following



And I'm not knocking your praise, David Orsam's input into the forum is on the whole excellent. Isn't it a case of doubler standards though to praise one, and deem insignificant the other.

I'm not knocking any test results because I don't have enough knowledge of the subject to do so. I'm also not knocking the article writers assessment as I don't have enough knowledge of the subject to do so. I was appreciative of David's posting because I respect his research and opinions. But if an expert in the examination and testing of historical documents and inks posted here with an opinion that contradicted David's assessment I would have to give it more weight for obvious reasons.
All I'm saying is that it would be interesting to hear an assessment from an expert in the relevant fields who has no previous involvement (and that would mean from reading the actual test results.)

[Observer]

David Orsam, just like the article's author are both assessing the scientific opinion of the various testers. If an expert were to contradict David Orsam's assessment, he would in effect be contradicting another scientific expert, not David Orsam as such. The difficulty with the scientific testing of the Diary lies with the different types of scientists who have been consulted. As I said Dr Baxendale was in actual fact an experienced document examiner, and I'd say his solubility test is the one I'd tend to take notice of. Just my opinion of course.

[Herlock Sholmes]

I agree of course. I'm not saying for a minute that an expert in those fields would dispute the results or the conclusions drawn from them but just that it would be interesting if an expert or two were given all relevant information/methods used/results etc to give us an overview. As you said the 'confusion' comes from test done by different scientists/labs/universities. Scientific stuff is usually judged by peer review. I definately wouldn't dispute that if a layman had to place more weight on one scientist over another David is correct in going for Baxendale as a specialist.
I suppose that these issues were bound to arise when you had two 'camps' commissioning the tests; both with outcomes that they were hoping for?

[Observer]

I agree with you regarding a fresh look at the all the results by an independent specialist or two. You hit the nail on the head with the last sentence of your post above. Two sides drawing their own conclusions from the various tests they commissioned. One pro Diary, the other proclaiming a modern hoax. As you say this stand off will no doubt roll on.