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

[Herlock Sholmes]

I'm still a bit worried that you seem to totally disregard plausibility and probability so easily, Herlock. The entire Maybrick saga is one long exercise in the study of probability.

To ignore one coincidence after another is disconcerting for anyone who is truly willing to seek the truth.

For me Mike, and I'm not being exact here, 4 x unexplained's / 2 x coincidences / 4 x unlikely' and a doubt do not constitute proof. I want to be as certain as I can be before I count something out.
Just because something is unknown it can't be hijacked for one side of an arguement. Just because something maybe unlikely behaviour to us it doesn't mean that it would have been unlikely behaviour for someone else. I don't see coincidences as proof0f anything except that it's possible that a coincidence occurred.

[Henry Flower]

Thanks, David, but that doesn't seem to be used in the same way. To me, this is saying that someone "did something more 'John Fox-ish' than John Fox himself", like someone might say "Prokofiev's Classical Symphony out-Mozarted Mozart".

Poor Haydn, being written out of history yet again....

[Sam Flynn]

Hi sam
Yeah and especially with englands long history of fox hunting I would find it hard to believe that out fox wasn't a rather common expression. Nice try though!

Thanks, Abby, but I was thinking more along the lines of Br'er Rabbit "outfoxing" Br'er Fox. It's not too difficult for a pack of twenty dogs and as many men on horseback to get the better of a wee fox: "the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable", as Oscar Wilde aptly described it

[Abby Normal]

That nails it, thanks.

Hi sam
Yeah and especially with englands long history of fox hunting I would find it hard to believe that out fox wasn't a rather common expression. Nice try though!

[Sam Flynn]

Yorkshire Evening Post, 2 March 1900:

"Military men in Italy now express unbounded admiration of the English Generals, who, they say, "have out-foxed the fox, Cronje." "

That nails it, thanks.

[David Orsam]

Yorkshire Evening Post, 2 March 1900:

"Military men in Italy now express unbounded admiration of the English Generals, who, they say, "have out-foxed the fox, Cronje." "

[David Orsam]

From the South London Press, 25 August 1866:

"In the foreground, too, Bismarck, the astutest of the astute, just laughing as he felt how he had turned the tables upon the cleverest monarch in Europe; how he had outfoxed the oldest fox; and with a single move on the chess-board of war and diplomacy checkmated the king and won all on the board."

[Sam Flynn]

Here's a new one!

Diary, p44: "Am I not a clever fellow. Out foxed them all, they will never know"

Earliest cited example for "outfox" in the Oxford English Dictionary is in 1962.

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All five examples came from American/Canadian publications or authors. I don't know when the expression first came into common usage in Britain, but I'd imagine it was rather later.

I've found an earlier unambiguous reference, namely a 1949 cartoon featuring Droopy called "Out-Foxed". Again, this is an American source.

[Sam Flynn]

Letter published in the Lincolnshire newspaper, the Boston Guardian of 9 December 1893, from a J.P. O'Donoghue (referencing the use of John Fox's 'Book of Martyrs'), contains the sentence:

"Yes, he has proudly, - in the last years of the XIXth century, - out-foxed Fox himself."

Thanks, David, but that doesn't seem to be used in the same way. To me, this is saying that someone "did something more 'John Fox-ish' than John Fox himself", like someone might say "Prokofiev's Classical Symphony out-Mozarted Mozart". I don't think it's being used to mean "outsmarted", in the modern meaning of the word.

I can't see that someone at the end of the 19th Century could have been said to "outwit" or "get the better of" John Foxe, who died 400 years earlier.

[Observer]

Read Mr Orsam's piece on the Diary, and I really must say it is excellent. It seems then that Mike Barrett was capable of stringing a few sentences together, a far cry from Caz's assertion that he wasn't capable of filling in a sick note! Far worse though, are those posters who did not get to meet Mike Barrett, and blindly led by the likes of Caz cry "Barrett was a drunken sot, not capable of producing the Diary". Or words to that effect. In my opinion, Mike Barrett boxed then up like so many kippers

[David Orsam]

Letter published in the Lincolnshire newspaper, the Boston Guardian of 9 December 1893, from a J.P. O'Donoghue (referencing the use of John Fox's 'Book of Martyrs'), contains the sentence:

"Yes, he has proudly, - in the last years of the XIXth century, - out-foxed Fox himself."

[Sam Flynn]

Here's a new one!

Diary, p44: "Am I not a clever fellow. Out foxed them all, they will never know"

Earliest cited example for "outfox" in the Oxford English Dictionary is in 1962.



All five examples came from American/Canadian publications or authors. I don't know when the expression first came into common usage in Britain, but I'd imagine it was rather later.

[Henry Flower]

Thanks. all, for the various suggestions as to the possible meaning of Battlecrease.

Come on folks, it's staring you in the face. 'Battlecrease' is an anagram

'Scalee Barett' - Barrett the Scally. The answer has been there all along, in scouse no less. Now the question we need to answer is, how did Mike Barrett manage to inveigle a clue to his own authorship into the name of a house that has existed since long before his birth, let alone his forgery?

And we still think he was just an untalented nobody? Come on, people! Dark forces are at work, wheels within wheels....

[Bridewell]

Thanks. all, for the various suggestions as to the possible meaning of Battlecrease.

[Observer]

PS. Barrett also wrote an unpublished novel for children, "Danny the Dolphin." I remember the P.I. Grey beating him up over it, as it was supposedly an example of Mike's lack of writing skill. "It was %$$@# Mike! It was #@$%%!" I felt sorry for the guy.

I'll bet it was no worse than "Budgie The Little Helicopter".