Who was the author of the 'Maybrick' diary? Some options.

[Sam Flynn]

Naughty naughty, Gareth.

Why are you still peddling "topping oneself" as a problem for the diary, when this was shown beyond a shadow of a doubt to have been used - and recorded in a newspaper - back in the 1870s?

Again, there's a difference between appearing in print (or on a TV show), and a word/phrase reaching a point of saturation sufficient for it to crop up in widespread use, such as any member of the public (as opposed to a person of a certain class or calling) might include it in a stream-of-consciousness diary. And the fact of the matter is that this particular phrase really doesn't crop up commonly in print until late in the 20th century.

I have repeatedly said that we need to look at the picture as a whole, rather than picking things off individually. Who, before the latter third of the 20th century, is likely to have used all three phrases "top myself", "one-off instance" AND "spreads mayhem" in a comparatively short text?

[caz]

Naughty naughty, Gareth.

Why are you still peddling "topping oneself" as a problem for the diary, when this was shown beyond a shadow of a doubt to have been used - and recorded in a newspaper - back in the 1870s?

From September last year:

http://www.jtrforums.com/showthread.php?t=16515&highlight=topping&page=4

You even replied to Gary Barnett's post #36!

Love,

Caz
X

[Sam Flynn]

Hi Sam,

Thanks for this. David refers to a television programme called "one-off" , broadcast in 1969. Doesn't this suggest that by the 1960s the phrase was no longer confined to the rarefied world of engineering, but had entered the wider public domain?

Quite possibly, but I'd need to understand whether the reference was used to refer to an abstract concept or not. The diary refers to a "one-off instance/incident", after all. Also, there's a distinction to be drawn between "in the public domain" and being in widespread use. For example, the term "modem" might have appeared on the Tomorrow's World programme in the early 1980s, but it would take a while for it to be on everyone's lips, or the nibs of Joe Public's fountain pens, as the case may be. Ditto "spreading mayhem" and "topping oneself", of course.

[John G]

1970s, John, and in print specifically. The 1980s are significant, in that it's from this point onwards that the usage of "one-off [instance/incident/etc]", "top myself", and "spread/cause mayhem" really takes off in print:

Click on the link to the Attachment in order to see the graph. It's not the best graph in the world, but what it represents is, I believe, quite striking.

Hi Sam,

Thanks for this. David refers to a television programme called "one-off" , broadcast in 1969. Doesn't this suggest that by the 1960s the phrase was no longer confined to the rarefied world of engineering, but had entered the wider public domain?

[John G]

Hi Caz,

Sorry for the delay in my response to your latest posts. I haven't forgotten but need a bit more time to digest the information. At times I find this saga so complex and confusing-particularly as regards Capricious Mike's varying and complex accounts-that my brain starts to feel a little fuzzy!

[caz]

Moreover, as I've noted before, Mike seems to me to be simply too erratic, too ill-disciplined to have succeeded with such a project, at least without a great deal of help.

I would also refer to Caroline's recollection of her dad pestering Tony for information on the telephone. Now assuming Caroline's memory is correct, and further assuming that Mike hadn't set up some madcap fake telephone call for his daughters benefit, the implication is that Mike was unaware of the origins of the diary, at least at this stage.

Hi John,

Have you any further thoughts about Caroline's recollection in 1993, given that Tony died in August 1991, and in Mike's affidavit he claimed:

'Anne and I started to write the Diary in all it took us 11 days. I worked on the story and then I dictated it to Anne who wrote it down in the Photograph Album and thus we produced the Diary of Jack the Ripper. Much to my regret there was a witness to this, my young daughter Caroline.'

How would you reconcile the two accounts: the phone calls in 1991 as recalled by Caroline, and the 11 day creation - supposedly not until early April 1992 - which Mike claimed she witnessed?

Mike went on:

'During this period when we were writing the Diary, Tony Devereux was house-bound, very ill and in fact after we completed the Diary we left it for a while with Tony being severly (sic) ill and in fact he died late May early June 1990.'

He wasn't only getting his dates in a mucking fuddle here. If the diary was only written after the little red one was received and rejected and the guardbook obtained at the very end of March 1992, and this was in London 13 days later, they must have 'left it' for all of two days, with poor old Tony being severely ill and what have you. Granted, you can't get much more severely ill than dead, but having died 8 months previously he probably wasn't going to recover in time to see the fruits of their combined labours making it onto the London train and ordering a slice of British Rail coffee.

Anyway, Caroline's memory seems to have differed significantly from her father's, if she only recalled his telephone calls supposedly to Tony, pestering him about the diary now in Goldie Street, apparently because he had refused to say how he got it, while Mike claimed she actually witnessed its creation nearly a year later.

All in all, it's a very murky, and complex case, and I would therefore advise myself to submit only provisional conclusions!

Very wise, John.

Love,

Caz
X

[Sam Flynn]

I believe Sam, in an earlier post, said that the earliest example he could find of the phrase being used in common parlance, so outside of the strictly technical engineering context, was the 1980s (apologies if my recollection is incorrect).

1970s, John, and in print specifically. The 1980s are significant, in that it's from this point onwards that the usage of "one-off [instance/incident/etc]", "top myself", and "spread/cause mayhem" really takes off in print:

In 2008/9, I used Google Books searches to count how frequently certain diary phrases turned up, and when those phrases first appeared in print. From that, I was able to produce graphs like the one below, which should speak volumes about when the diary was most likely to have been written:

[ATTACH]18282[/ATTACH]

The details will have changed slightly since I did my original survey, but I would expect the overall findings to be broadly the same. Namely, that if we see the three phrases "one off", "top myself" AND "spreads mayhem" occurring in the same document, the likelihood is that it was written in the latter third of the 20th Century.

Click on the link to the Attachment in order to see the graph. It's not the best graph in the world, but what it represents is, I believe, quite striking.

[caz]

Hi Caz,

Perhaps I've misunderstood your point. My understanding is that you had postulated that Mike had doubts about the diary he allegedly received from TD. He therefore decided to see how easy it would be to obtain a suitable Victorian diary- the maroon diary-and, following his failed effort, concluded that it wouldn't be easy at all. Ergo, the TD diary was probably genuine. Is that correct?

Not quite, John, no. Let me try again and apologies for not being clearer!

I do think that anyone being shown this old book for the first time would have been sceptical to say the least. "Jack the Ripper?? You have got to be kidding me". However, this is Mike we are talking about. And if he had nothing to do with its creation, but was first shown it either in 1991 by TD or, far more likely IMHO, on March 9th 1992 by EL, we can only imagine what his immediate reaction might have been.

Well we know exactly what he did on or around March 9th 1992: he rang a literary agent and made the first known and documented mention of JtR's diary. He also made the telephone enquiry about diaries with blank pages from the 1880s. If this was his way of investigating the likelihood of EL [or A.N.Other] having pulled his leg with an easily obtainable unused or partly used Victorian diary, we can only guess what his reaction was when the little red diary arrived. But he wasn't sent half a dozen items that would all have been a forger's dream, and by then he had already interested Doreen to the point that she wanted him to bring his diary to London, so he decided to take the plunge and was rewarded when all went well on April 13th.

The alternative, that the Maybrick diary had been a work in progress for up to two years previously, and Mike was only just now, on or around March 9th 1992, tasked with ascertaining if anyone might be interested in publishing such an artefact [??], and then trying to find a suitable 'diary' [which is what he asked for] in which to house the prepared text, strikes me as stretching things to breaking point in an attempt to make things fit with Mike's shaky old affidavit from January 1995.

Provisionally assuming that it is, I will refer to you to Mike's original sworn statement on the subject. Here is the salient part:

"About January 1990 Anne purchased a diary, a red leather back diary for £25...through a firm in the 1986 Writers and Artists Year book...when it arrived it was no use, it was too small..."

Now, in Post #1 of the Acquiring A Victorian Diary thread, David reproduces an advert, placed on behalf of Mike, requesting a "unused or partly used diary dating from 1880-1890, must have at least 20 blank pages".

Although the dates don't match, this advertisement was placed in 1992, Mike could have got mixed up. I'd therefore assumed that you were arguing this advertisement resulted in the red diary.

Yes, you assumed correctly. I have no doubt whatsoever that the advert placed in 1992 resulted in Mike being sent the little red diary.

Okay, if that's the case, the reason, of course, that this diary was unsuitable was because it was too small, as noted by Mike in the aforementioned affidavit. However, in these circumstances, Mike's failure to obtain a suitable diary on this occasion wasn't because it was such a difficult endeavour, but because he'd omitted to stipulate minimum and maximum size requirements in the advertisement. And, unless he was having a really bad day at the office-as this is Mike we're talking about, it's possible!-I don't think he could have come to any other reasonable conclusion.

But this supposes that Mike was telling the truth in 1995, when claiming that the little red diary was evidence of an attempt to find a suitable book to house the forged diary. He was using its small size to explain why the attempt obviously failed, when anyone with two brain cells to rub together would have specified a minimum page size to begin with if they were really hoping to use it for that purpose. It's a point I've made more than once and all I got were excuses for why Mike might have been unable to get this crucial detail included in the advert, even supposing he thought to ask.

Trying to ascertain the general availability to a potential prankster of 1880s diaries with blank pages would have been one thing; trying to obtain one suitable for housing the prepared Maybrick diary text would have been quite another. If Mike had had up to two years for this task, and the text was now ready to go, barring any last-minute amendments, one has to ask what he was thinking of with that advert, assuming it was worded roughly in line with his request.

None of the entries are dated [apart from the final one], but they cover a period from early 1888 to May 1889 and 63 pages of the guardbook measuring approx 11 x 8.5 inches, so by asking for a 'diary' - singular and any size - dating from 1880 to 1890, Mike would already have been lessening his chances significantly of getting anything a forger could have used for the text as we know it.

Is that any better?

Love,

Caz
X

[John G]

I should just provide an update to Post #207. David informs me, on another a thread, that there was a Thames TV programme called "one-off" broadcast in September 1969; the programme was about unique individuals. Therefore the phrase must have been in common usage during the 1960s.

[John G]

I'll get back to you on this tomorrow, John, if I may.

My better half is running me a bath - so he must think I need one!

Love,

Caz
X

No problem Caz. I'm about to start my own process of relaxation by reading a crime thriller, whilst drinking a cool beer, as my brain is starting to feel fuzzy!

[John G]

Well doesn't that tell you that some of us want the truth, regardless of whether it's more inconvenient than convenient? If there is no reliable supporting evidence for one story [Anne/Devereux], and not enough - yet - for the others [Barrett hoax or Maybrick's floorboards], and none of them makes perfect sense alongside all the information we have to date, it's not a case of 'latching on' to the one we would most like to be true, but trying to find support for, or evidence against, each of the possible alternatives.

Love,

Caz
X

Hi Caz,

Yes, I absolutely agree. However, the starting point for me has to be the "one-off" problem. For instance, I believe Sam, in an earlier post, said that the earliest example he could find of the phrase being used in common parlance, so outside of the strictly technical engineering context, was the 1980s (apologies if my recollection is incorrect).

Therefore, on this basis, I consider it highly unlikely that The Diary could have been written prior to this period, or whenever the phrase entered common parlance. I would therefore conclude that The Diary was probably forged by either Mike, or someone known to him, or a combination of the two (although my views are not set in stone, and I have been known, on more than one occasion, to change my mind on important issues!)

Could Mike have been the forger. Well, unlike some I do believe The Diary was well-written. In fact, in the preface of Shirley's book, the highly respected criminologist, Professor David Canter, refers to the writing in glowing terms, concluding that if it was written by a forger, that individual would be a "...shy, but emotionally disturbed genius, who combined the novelist's art with an intelligent understanding of serial killers, the agreed facts of Jack the Ripper and James Maybrick." (Harrison, 1994).

Does this sound like Mike? Well, no-one who interviewed him seems to think him capable of the forgery, and they certainly don't refer to him in the way Professor Canter describes the character of a possible forger.

Moreover, as I've noted before, Mike seems to me to be simply too erratic, too ill-disciplined to have succeeded with such a project, at least without a great deal of help.

I would also refer to Caroline's recollection of her dad pestering Tony for information on the telephone. Now assuming Caroline's memory is correct, and further assuming that Mike hadn't set up some madcap fake telephone call for his daughters benefit, the implication is that Mike was unaware of the origins of the diary, at least at this stage.

All in all, it's a very murky, and complex case, and I would therefore advise myself to submit only provisional conclusions!

[caz]

I'll get back to you on this tomorrow, John, if I may.

My better half is running me a bath - so he must think I need one!

Love,

Caz
X

[John G]

If Mike had the diary at that point, yes. But what if he made his preliminary telephone enquiries before he had actually taken the diary off his electrician mate's hands for £25?



Not sure I grasp this, John. Why would size matter unless he needed this Victorian diary to forge JtR's? If he had already seen JtR's, judged it to be a diary from the date at the end, and just wanted to know how easy it would have been for a scallywag to obtain any diary from the 1880s with enough blank pages for a leg pull, the size of those pages need not have seemed an important consideration.



You're just beginning to get the hang of how Mike operated. If you can do that you'll have to give the rest of us lessons.

Love,

Caz
X

Hi Caz,

Perhaps I've misunderstood your point. My understanding is that you had postulated that Mike had doubts about the diary he allegedly received from TD. He therefore decided to see how easy it would be to obtain a suitable Victorian diary- the maroon diary-and, following his failed effort, concluded that it wouldn't be easy at all. Ergo, the TD diary was probably genuine. Is that correct?

Provisionally assuming that it is, I will refer to you to Mike's original sworn statement on the subject. Here is the salient part:

"About January 1990 Anne purchased a diary, a red leather back diary for £25...through a firm in the 1986 Writers and Artists Year book...when it arrived it was no use, it was too small..."

Now, in Post #1 of the Acquiring A Victorian Diary thread, David reproduces an advert, placed on behalf of Mike, requesting a "unused or partly used diary dating from 1880-1890, must have at least 20 blank pages".

Although the dates don't match, this advertisement was placed in 1992, Mike could have got mixed up. I'd therefore assumed that you were arguing this advertisement resulted in the red diary.

Okay, if that's the case, the reason, of course, that this diary was unsuitable was because it was too small, as noted by Mike in the aforementioned affidavit. However, in these circumstances, Mike's failure to obtain a suitable diary on this occasion wasn't because it was such a difficult endeavour, but because he'd omitted to stipulate minimum and maximum size requirements in the advertisement. And, unless he was having a really bad day at the office-as this is Mike we're talking about, it's possible!-I don't think he could have come to any other reasonable conclusion.

Does this make sense? Or have I totally misunderstood your argument?

[caz]

Hi Caz,

Yes, the very first line of text.

Yep, I thought of that one. Thanks Cris.

Any more?

I wonder how many last-minute amendments to the prepared text would become apparent if one assumes the physical book was only acquired, as David Orsam theorises, at the very end of March 1992, with just 12 days to go before the ink was blotted on the finished forgery and it was presented to Doreen and Shirley, and taken to the British Museum and Jarndyce for its first close inspections?

Much less problematic, I'd have thought, to cut one's garment according to one's cloth, by first acquiring the book and then tailoring the contents to suit it. But then, did Mike ever do things the easy way?

I do think much of the text fits rather conveniently with the guardbook containing it, as an item more at home in an office environment than someone's personal diary would have been. In theory it could once have contained business cards and such, and been adapted to accommodate jottings too private for prying eyes.

Love,

Caz
X

[Abby Normal]

Starting in mid sentence, mid thought and apparently mid journal suggest that part of the journal itself was torn out for some reason rather than pages used to mount photographs in. This indicates working around what the book actually was and its condition when procured.

Hope this is understandable?

like a modern hoaxer trying to muddle the fact that pages had been ripped out and acting like it was done after the writer had started writing?

clever... not.