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

[Sam Flynn]

Possibly, Obs, but I'd have preferred to hear this from Drs Turgoose and Wild. No offence. They seemed to think that scratches made on that inner surface of soft metal would show signs of considerable age after many decades, and that it would be very difficult for anyone to add those signs artificially. But maybe they were in the wrong jobs.

You may have a point there, Caz. To my mind, the right people to make pronouncements on how much wear and tear one might expect to see on the inside of a watch case would be jewellers or horologists, not materials scientists.

[caz]

Hi Caz,

just checked the relevant pages of Feldman's book, and have to say that the whole Watch thing, certainly with regard to the part played by Mr Dundas, seems to be a right old dog's breakfast! It also seems that after Mr D effectively denied to Feldman that the watch he serviced was the Verity that Albert had bought off Mr Murphy, he then later goes on to swear an affidavit per investigation by Alan Grey, that the watch was the one Albert bought! Sorry, but I am easily confused......

Ref: P 218 of Ripper Diary there appears to be no correction, per your recent post, that Dundas' timing was erroneous. Does this mean, in effect, that the authors accepted Dundas's version of events at that time?

OK, no more chloroacetamide, then! I've kicked the habit!

Graham

Hi Graham,

Towards the bottom of page 218:

According to Dundas, Murphy ['Mr Stewart'] had contacted him just a month after he examined it in 1992. Someone had got their dates wrong.

We left it to the reader to work out who had got his dates wrong.

But I have to assume Murphy wasn't contacting Dundas in 1992 about any JtR markings.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

You're missing the point, purposely or not. There would be no wearing, or ageing to the inside back cover over the years, none. How could there be? The forger of the watch didn't have his thinking cap on when he set out to forge the marks on the watch, he would have best been served to have left the marks as they were immediately after he scratched them into the watch.

Possibly, Obs, but I'd have preferred to hear this from Drs Turgoose and Wild. No offence. They seemed to think that scratches made on that inner surface of soft metal would show signs of considerable age after many decades, and that it would be very difficult for anyone to add those signs artificially. But maybe they were in the wrong job and should have swapped places and been armchair detectives instead.

But first your forger must have polished out the existing scratches [which Murphy saw in 1992 - but the forger wouldn't have known that in 1993] so completely that even electron microscopy would fail to detect they were ever there. Then the forger must have carved the Maybrick signature and the JtR markings into the newly pristine surface. Then they must have added some superficial scratches on top, to mimic what was there when they started work on it, so nobody would notice anything different.

If you are saying the forger then made a fatal error, by trying to make every scratch look very old and worn, when you'd expect them all to have looked as sharp as a new pin, whether they'd been put there yesterday or in 1888, then you really should be writing to Drs Turgoose and Wild to tell them where they missed a trick. I'm sure they will both be grateful.

Love,

Caz
X

[Graham]

Hi Caz,

just checked the relevant pages of Feldman's book, and have to say that the whole Watch thing, certainly with regard to the part played by Mr Dundas, seems to be a right old dog's breakfast! It also seems that after Mr D effectively denied to Feldman that the watch he serviced was the Verity that Albert had bought off Mr Murphy, he then later goes on to swear an affidavit per investigation by Alan Grey, that the watch was the one Albert bought! Sorry, but I am easily confused......

Ref: P 218 of Ripper Diary there appears to be no correction, per your recent post, that Dundas' timing was erroneous. Does this mean, in effect, that the authors accepted Dundas's version of events at that time?

OK, no more chloroacetamide, then! I've kicked the habit!

Graham

[caz]

I would just point put that Mike, in his original affidavit, didn't claim to have written the Diary: he said his wife wrote it (somewhat oddly, he states this was because his own writing was too distinctive ), whilst he dictated.

Hi John,

I wouldn't be at all surprised if Mike was goaded into including his estranged wife as a co-conspirator because of her own 'in the family' story, told in the immediate wake of his original boast, back in June 1994, that the diary was all his own work.

Add to that the fact that she was now working with the hated Feldman on a family connection back to the Maybricks, and Mike's original claim had been quickly retracted, and received with much incredulity by diary researchers on all sides, and you have a recipe for an angry and humiliated abandoned husband to drop Anne in it, to get some revenge as well as some much needed credibility back into his forgery claim. A neat trick really, considering all the times he had needed her to polish up his act before the diary came along to put the mockers on everything.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Darryl,

I believe that report has been posted on this Forum, but a long time ago. I've seen it before. One small point: the report states that chloroacetamide is a relatively modern development as a preservative; however, it's listed in the Merck Catalogue of 1857. I think its main early use was as an insecticide, and I don't know if it was used in inks or paper around the late 1880's. I would guess not.

Graham

Not sure it really matters, Graham, since no chloroacetamide has been found in the diary ink in anything like the quantity needed to act as a preservative. The minute trace found by one outfit - AFI - and not repeated by anyone else, has been put down to contamination from poor testing methods and controls.

Be nice to have something fresh to debate - I thought this was dead and buried years ago.

Love,

Caz
X

[Sam Flynn]

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?

[caz]

Thanks Caz. I'll check the books! Am part way through a re-read of Ripper Diary, but keep getting side-tracked. I haven't read Feldman's tome for years, so that's next on the list.

Graham

One other thing that possibly gets missed is that Dundas, unlike the Murphys, never saw Albert's watch again after he repaired it, which was in early 1992.

So if Murphy calls him over a year later, in the summer of 1993, to ask if he saw the JtR marks, but Dundas remembers this call coming just a month or so after his repair, it's little wonder he was so sure the marks weren't there. Albert's watch wasn't there either!

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

I think the problem with that is you’re debating with posters who aren’t prepared to accept normal arguments, who use supposition as fact and who have personal interests in prolonging the discussion.
The bottom line is that some people are not prepared to accept that it’s possible to draw conclusions about the diary, the watch etc. indeed, it’s hard to imagine the kind of proof that would not be discounted - a video recording of Barrett writing the diary would be dismissed instantly!

It’s classic conspiracy theorist-techniques: question every little discrepancy in the sources, assume the most far fetched scenarios on the basis that they can’t be ruled out, discount sources not to your liking and cast doubt over every little detail. That way, there’s always more to discuss, and if one is hoping to sell books or be invited as guest speaker to a conference, then more discussion is good, right?

So Steve Elamarna is right: there’s little point in continuing. You and David Orsam are doing stellar work trying to keep arguments empirically based, but I just think you’re up against people whose only objective, for whatever reason, is to continue the discussion far beyond reason.

Hi Kattrup,

You sound like a very wise person, so may I ask you just a couple of questions?

Firstly, how would you explain the order in which all the scratches and markings were made inside the watch, if the hoax was created in 1993, on the back of the yet to be published diary, more than a year after Murphy had tried and failed to buff out several scratch marks on the same inner surface? The Maybrick and JtR markings were made first, before all the other scratches. So what happened to the scratches Murphy saw?

Secondly, how would you explain Mike Barrett's angry reaction when Paul Feldman tells him, around May/June 1993 [again, before the diary or its description has been published], that an electrician is prepared to confess that he found the diary while working in Battlecrease House? If Mike forged or helped forge it, why doesn't he simply laugh and say to Feldman: "If this electrician says he seen the diary, ask him what it looks like and what's inside. I bet you a million pounds he won't be able to tell you a sodding thing about it, because it never came out of that house and he's never seen it". Instead, Mike goes straight round to where the electrician is living at the time, to threaten him with solicitors if he says he found it and passed it on to Mike. What has Mike got to fear, if Eddie Lyons really does know sod all about the physical diary?

Love,

Caz
X

[Graham]

Thanks Caz. I'll check the books! Am part way through a re-read of Ripper Diary, but keep getting side-tracked. I haven't read Feldman's tome for years, so that's next on the list.

There is absolutely no doubt that the watch Mr Johnson bought from us is the watch you have seen with the scratches in the back".

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

[caz]

Hi Caz,

I believe that Dundas described the Watch as a lady's watch doubtless because of its small size, a mistake which I understand has been made by other persons involved and interested. But it seems that you're saying Dundas provided a physical description of a watch which could not have been the Johnson Watch. This so far as I can tell doesn't seem to be highlighted in Ripper Diary.

Tangled, innit?

Graham

Hi Graham,

Pages 240-242 of Feldman's 1998 paperback go into detail regarding Dundas's description of the watch he thought he was being asked about, and how this differed from Albert's watch in so many respects that it couldn't possibly have been the same one.

What's more, on page 218 of Ripper Diary, Dundas is so out in his timing of events that it would appear that he was thinking of a watch he had repaired only 'a month or so' before Murphy [Dundas thought his name was Stewart] telephoned him to ask if he had seen any marks on it relevant to JtR. This telephone call would have been made to Dundas more than a year after he had repaired Albert's watch, so it's a complete dog's breakfast.

People have argued that it doesn't matter because Dundas was certain there had been no such marks inside any watch he had worked on. But according to the Murphys, his certainty was misplaced. Here's what I posted on the Acquiring thread:

Hi David,

In answer to your question about direct quotes from the Murphys, see pages 243, 248 and 249 of Shirley Harrison's 1998 paperback:

'Later, before it was finally placed in their own shop window, Ron himself cleaned the watch and it was then that he noticed the scratches in the back. "I tried to buff them out with jeweller's rouge", he recalls ruefully.'

Then on page 249:

'The Murphys were indignant. "He [Dundas] was asked only to repair the movement, not clean the watch - he would not have been needed to look inside the back at all. He would not have noticed the scratches, anyway. After all, we tried to clean them and simply because they were so faint we didn't realise what they were! There is absolutely no doubt that the watch Mr Johnson bought from us is the watch you have seen with the scratches in the back".

Love,

Caz
X

[Sam Flynn]

Not "even after" that qualification, but in the same breath as it.

To illustrate the implications of this, let's just swap the two sentences in the relevant paragraph:

"I would be of the opinion that the engravings are likely to date back more than tens of years, and possibly much longer, [but given the qualification that] the actual age would depend on the polishing regime employed, and any definition of number of years has a great degree of uncertainty and to some extent must remain speculation."

That's honestly not saying anything different to what Turgoose wrote, but it makes quite a difference, doesn't it? Besides, as I've hinted at (albeit not explicitly stated, out of politeness) Turgoose does seem to suffer something of a lapse in logic when he says that "the wear apparent on many of the engravings, evidenced by the rounded edges of the markings and the 'polishing out' in places would indicate a substantial age for the engravings". Apparent wear is emphatically no guarantee of age. As I've said, how much effort would it have taken to round/polish-out some engravings which were, after all, superficial in nature?

In this context, it's interesting to note that some of the micrographs show a veritable ice-rink of scratches, which is suggestive of someone having had a real go at deliberately distressing the watch in a short space of time. This could have happened years previously, of course, but until the wave of publicity surrounding the diary, why would anyone have been in a particular rush to "prepare" the watch for its debut in the public eye? (Bear in mind, also, that until the diary came out, there was no feasible reason to suppose that Maybrick was linked to the Whitechapel Murders in any capacity.)

[Graham]

Hi HS,

I very much hear what you say, and have to tell you that in the early days of the Diary I was also pretty well (but not totally - always leave room for error) that the identity of Jack The Ripper had been finally established. However, as I'd also read a little about the Maybrick Case, I began to wonder. And when the Watch came to light so soon after the Diary, I thougt, Ello, Ello, what's going on 'ere, then? If you've never read Feldman's book I recommend it, not because it sorts out the whole mystery for us - because it doesn't, far from it - but as an illustration of where a fervent belief in the Diary (and the Watch) can lead someone who has the resources to follow up his own convictions. For all that, it's an entertaining read (although some on here would I'm sure disagree).

I also quite liked Melvin Harris - he also had convictions, to put it mildly. I wouldn't have wanted to fall out with him, though.

At this stage of the game, I don't feel as the claimed origin of the Diary has been established beyond doubt, nor do I feel that its claimed Battlecrease provenance has been proved. I also feel (and have always felt) that there is something rather dodgy going on with the Watch.

Just the random jottings of a rank amateur, but all good fun.

Graham

[Sam Flynn]

Turgoose: "The actual age would depend on the polishing regime employed, and any definition of number of years has a great degree of uncertainty and to some extent must remain speculation. Given these qualifications I would be of the opinion that the engravings are likely to date back more than tens of years, and possibly much longer."

This paragraph pretty much sums up my point. Turgoose accepts the uncertainty as to the exact age due to the polishing regime. He uses the phrase ‘to some extent must remain speculation. But even after that unbiased qualification he still says that the engravings are likely to date back more than...

Not "even after" that qualification, but in the same breath as it.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Analytical chemists and other analytical scientists don't couch their findings in such language, HS. I know it's difficult to get one's head around science-speak, but what you quote would probably be regarded by those paying for tests as no answer at all.

As Sam correctly says, the SEM and SAM tests don't challenge the possibility that the engravings were relatively new when tested.

The fact that the Watch appeared so soon after the Diary raised quite a few highly-sceptical eyebrows at the time, believe me.

Graham

Hi Graham,

I’m not doubting the fact that the engravings could have been intentionally aged or the fact that Turgoose said this. All I’m saying is what I thought would be obvious and uncontroversial, that Turgoose said “likely.” Which, however way you look or analyse, can only be taken in one way; that Turgoose felt that it was likeliest that the scratches were more than tens of years old. That’s all

I do remember the original controversy Graham as I’d already been interested in the case for about 5 or 6 years. I have to admit that Melvyn Harris got up my nose a lot . I also remember being ‘surprised’ at how many dismissed the diary before they’d even had chance to read it. I’m still, very, very slightly on the fence, whilst accepting that the evidence is very heavily weighted in favour of forgery. I’d describe myself as ‘not being absolutely convinced yet.’

The problem is for me, when I make the above statement about not being totally convinced, and when I’ve played ‘devil’s advocate’ for the sake of debate on other threads I’ve felt like a holocaust denier in a synagogue.