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

[caz]

An amateurish hoaxer is quite likely to over-egg the pudding. Besides, the initials were there on the watch, so the point is somewhat moot.

I meant there really would have been no need for a hoaxer working in 1993, having to make an educated guess at the basic five victims. But I can see you are having difficulty considering any alternative scenarios.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

They could safely have included a pair of made-up initials on the watch, which would only have reinforced the idea that its owner was also the fiendish "James Maybrick" of the diary if, that is, they knew that the diary had put two "bonus" victims up for grabs. The fact that they didn't speaks volumes to me.

So you are posing as Sir Jim the Ripper, writing about two "bonus" victims whose attacks didn't make the papers - because you just invented them. Why on earth would you make up any old initials for these women, unless you were none too bright and hadn't thought this through properly?

Picture the scene again:

"Excuse me, my dear. Before I carve you up and serve you to the children, could you possibly tell me your real name - first name and surname if you please? I desperately need to carve your initials into my gentleman's dress watch afterwards and make everything more believable."

"You're clean off your rocker, you are."

"Yes, I rather think I must be."

Love,

Caz
X

[Sam Flynn]

In fact, why bother with engraving any initials in the watch? 'I am Jack' and the Maybrick signature would have been perfectly sufficient.

An amateurish hoaxer is quite likely to over-egg the pudding, which is why I'm inclined to think that an "over-egging" hoaxer with inside knowledge of the Diary would indeed have tried to include the extra victims, if not as made-up initials then as anonymous "Xs" or some other marks to record another couple of notches on the Ripper's knife.

[Sam Flynn]

Naturally, a hoaxer working on the watch in 1993 would have been guessing which victims to include, and took a risk with ES, for example, because for all they knew the diary author may have gone down the route of Stride not being one of his.

As I've suggested, I reckon any hoaxer sticking to the accepted five victims would have been on fairly safe ground. Besides, I believe it has already been pointed out that the newspaper coverage of the diary's discovery focused on the "five victims" angle, as had all of the most popular books and movies of the 1970s and 1980s.

[caz]

I see no reason at all why the watch hoaxer shouldn't have thrown in, for example, a "JJ" and an "MS" just for jolly, if they'd known that the diary indicated two extra victims. In the 1990s, it was unlikely that it could have been conclusively proven that no "EJ" or "MS" had been murdered; indeed, we'd struggle to do so now. On the other hand, they might have struck it lucky if the murders of an "Elizabeth Jones" and/or "Mary Smith" were - eventually - found, so it was practically a shot to nothing.

Hi Gareth,

Naturally, a hoaxer working on the watch in 1993 would have been guessing which victims to include, and took a risk with ES, for example, because for all they knew the diary author may have gone down the route of Stride not being one of his. In fact, why bother with engraving any initials in the watch? 'I am Jack' and the Maybrick signature would have been perfectly sufficient.

However, if the diary was created as a companion piece for the watch, or vice versa, there is at least some method in the madness, with no newspaper reports available to inform "Sir Jim" of the names of his first and last victims. He assumes the first 'whore is now with her maker', but he felt no pleasure as he 'squeezed', he felt 'nothing'. It takes quite a time to strangle someone to death, so one could read this as an attempt that didn't quite come off. He doesn't mention his nice shiny knife, so in theory she could have recovered after he ran off and not reported it because she'd been soliciting. You have to turn a couple of diary pages before he realises he will have to allow for 'gallons' of the red stuff drenching his clothes when his London campaign begins, which again implies no knife featured in the Manchester attack. When he does use one, on Polly Nichols, 'the pleasure was far better than I imagined'. With the last victim, again it can be read that he abandoned his knife and she may have survived. 'I could not cut like my last [MJK], visions of her flooded back as I struck...' 'I left her for dead, that I know. It did not amuse me. There was [no] thrill. I have showered my fury on the bitch [Florie]'.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Hi Caz,

Yes, you might well be right: at the end of the day, it's all about instinct and impressions. It's also worth pointing out that, in Mike's original affidavit, he not only claims that his wife wrote the Diary, she also purchased the red diary.

However, if his primary motivation was gaining revenge on Anne, why implicate TD as well? What had he done to offend him?

Then there's the matter of patterns of behaviour. Thus, in his affidavit he makes it abundantly clear that he was the creative brain behind the Diary, whereas as Anne was basically working under his direction. However, as I've pointed out, Mike had a long history of making wildly exaggerated claims about his achievements.

I also think that whoever was the real driving force behind the Diary must have been highly motivated: otherwise these hoaxes would surely be much more common. Does that sound like Mike to you? After all, he spent several years as a house-husband whilst his wife worked as a secretary.

You possibly don't share this view, but my overall impression is that the Diary was well-written, at least from a psychological point of view. And if it wasn't, why are we still debating its authenticity over a quarter of a century later?

Returning to Mike's affidavit, it's obviously written in an extremely sloppy style. I mean, just consider this one sentence: "At about the same time as all this was being discussed by my wife and I. I spoke to William Graham about our idea. This was my wifes father and he said to me its a good idea..."

Why the full stop after the first "I"? And, of course, "wifes" should be "wife's" and "its" should be "it's."

I therefore ask myself, could an individual, who appears to be only semi-literate and poorly motivated, have even of conceived of the Diary? Could he be responsible for the content-the real creative and driving force behind the hoax- even assuming Anne actually wrote the Diary whilst he dictated? Personally, I think it unlikeky.

Good points, John.

As far as I am aware, marital problems, drinking to excess - or even having a stroke - do not make someone semi-literate if they had left school with reasonable reading and writing skills. Besides, according to Anne, Mike's drinking had become heavy by 1988, so if alcohol was affecting his ability to write, think and keep a straight story in 1995, why not in 1992 or whenever he is meant to have been working on or helping with the diary in its planning stages?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Having listened again to the Tom Baker-narrated documentary on the Diary, this statement is made: "Inscribed very faintly on the inner cover of the Victorian watch was 'I am Jack', James Maybrick's signature and the initials of Jack the Ripper's victims, plus two more that the author of the diary had claimed he'd murdered in Manchester". Were there two additional sets of victims' initials after all? If not, how did that nugget of misinformation find its way into the script?

IIRC, it was originally thought there were other possible initials scratched into that surface, but this turned out not to be the case. [A bit like people thinking they see initials on Kelly's wall in the photo? ] As there was nothing in the papers before the diary was first published about any further possible victims in Manchester or anywhere else, and nothing either about how many victims 'Maybrick' was claiming or which ones, it was presumably just a coincidence and nobody was trying to make something out of random scratch marks that would have meant nothing at the time.

Misinformation like this tends to creep in from all sides unfortunately, and all too often takes hold - like the myth of it being a lady's watch, as if that would make any difference anyway.

Love,

Caz
X

[Sam Flynn]

Perfectly correct Gareth. And Turgoose felt that older was likelier

Was this the same Turgoose who, when confronted with corroded brass particles in the engravings, took them to be an indication of age, and not that they could have been left behind more recently by falling off a corroded inscribing tool? The same Turgoose who took the "polishing out" of the engravings as an indication of their "substantial age", rather than possibly the result of recent deliberate tampering? The same Turgoose who put caveats around his conclusions? I think it was.

[caz]

Quite, but if the surface remained unblemished for several decades, then it was obviously not an area that was subject to any wear. So there's no reason to suppose that it wouldn't remain unblemished for another century or so.

Aren't you confusing scratches with wear, Joshua? I'm talking about an inner surface that would not normally get scratched accidentally. The earliest markings - the Maybrick/ripper ones - were not made by accident, so I'm not sure what the superficial scratches that came later can really tell us, except that the back was opened at some point by someone, who may or may not have been the same person, and the surface got scratched again for whatever reason.

If it's an easy explanation you're after, the obvious one (not necessarily the correct one) is that Murphy lied about trying to polish out some unidentifieid scratches, in order to suggest that the engravings were there in 1992 but he didn't recognise them for what they were, and at the same time to give an explanation for the circular scratch marks, lest anyone think that they were the result of artificially ageing the supposed Maybrick markings.

But cui bono? What did Murphy possibly have to gain from lying about any of this? Was he aware of the order in which all the scratches were made, or that the Maybrick/ripper ones came first? If he wasn't sure, he could simply have denied seeing anything at all that might have benefited from some jeweller's rouge [the scratches really are barely visible] and who could have challenged him?

It could only have hindered a hoaxer if Murphy had been able to state categorically that the surface he was now being shown had been entirely smooth and scratch free, just as he had expected it to be, when he opened up the back to clean it in 1992. How could a hoaxer in 1993 have been confident that Murphy would not say that, if the surface had indeed been totally untouched and unblemished before they set out to make it look, at much closer inspection, like Streatham ice rink at the end of a busy session?

Love,

Caz
X

[Herlock Sholmes]

Nothing to do with the scientist, but in the interpretation of what the scientist said. Of course it was possible that the engravings could have dated back to 1888; all I'm saying is that, given the inertness of gold, they could have been much older, or much younger.

Perfectly correct Gareth. And Turgoose felt that older was likelier

[Sam Flynn]

What a shame Albert didn't pay you for a third opinion then, Gareth. What do these stupid scientists know, eh?

Nothing to do with the scientist, but in the interpretation of what the scientist said. Of course it was possible that the engravings could have dated back to 1888; all I'm saying is that, given the inertness of gold, they could have been much older, or much younger.

[caz]

I wouldn't read much into that, Caz. Gold doesn't readily tarnish or wear down of its own accord for a long, long time. An engraving, however shallow, made in the 20th century would look pretty much like one made in the 19th, and probably earlier for that matter.

What a shame Albert didn't pay you for a third opinion then, Gareth. What do these stupid scientists know, eh?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Indeed, but the Murphys just said 'scratches' and not 'scratches that could have been writing'. If they'd said the latter, then that would have been impressive. Or did the Johnsons during their visits tell the Murphys that there was lettering on the watch?

Graham

Hi Graham,

Oh I'm sure that's why the Johnsons returned to the jewellers with the watch - to show them the scratch marks, explain what they had revealed under the microscope and ask what they knew about the watch, if anything. That's how the Murphys were able to say they had tried to clean up the scratches because they didn't realise what they were. They had the advantage of being able to compare the barely visible scratch marks shown them in the summer of 1993, with the barely visible ones they remembered trying to buff out in early 1992, unlike Dundas, who never saw the watch after the discovery was made, and had to rely entirely on his faulty memory of when he repaired the watch Albert went on to buy, and what this one looked like.

Love,

Caz
X

[Joshua Rogan]

Yes, Joshua, but the argument has been that the inner surface in question would not become scratched at all in the normal course of events, not even superficially, which would explain the lack of any scratches beneath the Maybrick/ripper markings. Whoever did that was working on a totally unblemished surface at the time. If this was in 1993, the watch was already nearly 150 years old by then.

Quite, but if the surface remained unblemished for several decades, then it was obviously not an area that was subject to any wear. So there's no reason to suppose that it wouldn't remain unblemished for another century or so.

There would seem to be no easy explanation for Murphy's scratch marks - now you see them, now you don't - in 1992. How did they get on that inner surface, if the hoaxer wasn't let loose on it for another year?

If it's an easy explanation you're after, the obvious one (not necessarily the correct one) is that Murphy lied about trying to polish out some unidentifieid scratches, in order to suggest that the engravings were there in 1992 but he didn't recognise them for what they were, and at the same time to give an explanation for the circular scratch marks, lest anyone think that they were the result of artificially ageing the supposed Maybrick markings.

[Sam Flynn]

Robert Smith phoned Dr Wild in the wake of his report to ask for his off-the-record opinion on whether the engravings could date back as far as 1888, and he happily confirmed that they could.

I wouldn't read much into that, Caz. Gold doesn't readily tarnish or wear down of its own accord for a long, long time. An engraving, however shallow, made in the 20th century would look pretty much like one made in the 19th, and probably earlier for that matter.