Acquiring a Life

[The Baron]

Right then, you 'orrible lot.

Who is going to stick their neck out and give us a rundown of who the evidence actually points to, regarding who exactly did what, from the moment someone suggested Maybrick might be a good choice for a fake diary of the Whitechapel Murderer, to the last word penned in the finished abomination?

Answers here - not on a saucy postcard.

Then perhaps we can all do something more productive, like removing the fluff from our navel and collecting it in a jar.

Love,

Caz
X

No one yet gave dearest Caroline the fire she asked for, here it is, for it is too dangerous for them, not for I to return



Melvin Harris:


"In 1986 John Morrison began to claim that the Ripper was named JAMES AND CAME FROM LIVERPOOL.

He further claimed that the Ripper had posted the Liverpool letters at Liverpool's Whitechapel General Post Office, in that way creating a taunting link with Whitechapel, London. (a similar link is featured in the Diary)

Morrison further stated that he had seen A DIARY kept by Mrs Belloc-Lowndes with entries confirming that the killer was "James Kelly from Liverpool". But this diary has never been seen by anyone else.

Morrison's views were put in to pamphlet form and then featured in Peter Underwood's book of 1987. (This is the main Ripper book used by the hoaxers.)

In 1992 Edmund McCoy's "Blood of the Fathers" involved the present-day discovery of an 1888 diary which revealed the truth behind the killing of Kelly.

In 1988 'Sphere Books' published "THE MORMON MURDERS: A TRUE STORY OF GREED, FORGERY, DECEIT AND DEATH". This popular paperback gave details of the simple techniques used to artificially-age iron-gall inks. Just heating would suffice. (If a document went too brown through heating it could soon be whitened up with a domestic sun-ray lamp!) Sphere Books, it should be remembered, were the very publishers who issued the 'History of Literature' owned by Barrett and from which the Diary line "Oh costly intercourse of death" was lifted.

But were the fakers capable of arriving at the idea that the killer left his mark at the murder sites? Of course they were. That very idea is rammed home in the popular Dibdin book; while Underwood's text directs attention to the Ripper markings said to have been seen on Kelly's wall. Apart from that you have Fido's text which speaks of the Ripper "putting his personal mark on his victim's face". The victim, of course, was Eddowes and the only person to speak of these marks as forming an M was Mike Barrett. This does not mean that it was his personal discovery; it might have been Devereux's for all we know, but it was Mike, and Mike alone, who made the idea public. THIS IS ACKNOWLEDGED BY Mrs HARRISON IN HER HARDBACK (page 170). In writing of the alleged clues at the murder sites she says that an M "...was carved on the cheeks of the fourth woman to die, Catharine Eddowes- a fact that Mike Barrett was the first person ever to notice."






The Baron

[Scott Nelson]

Out of the mouths...

The diary of a nobody - which is what I thought of it back in 1998 and still do nearly twenty years later.

Has everyone got it the right way round?

Was the point of the diary to find someone who could fit the ripper's shoes and solve the Whitechapel Murders?

Or did it all stem from Maybrick himself, and the aftermath of the infamous trial of his missus for his murder by poisoning?

What to do about Jim? Wouldn't it be fitting to take this complete and utter nobody, and supposed victim of Mrs M, and make him the real villain of the piece. But how? Hmmm, let's think. Wasn't he a frequent visitor to the Capital, where his social climbing bore of a brother lived? He died just a few months after Jack the Ripper's most horrific murder.

That'll do nicely.

Love,

Caz
X

Harry Dam, George Grossmith and Michael Maybrick - hatching a plot or a spoof?

[caz]

No one yet gave dearest Caroline the fire she asked for, here it is, for it is too dangerous for them, not for I to return



Melvin Harris:


"In 1986 John Morrison began to claim that the Ripper was named JAMES AND CAME FROM LIVERPOOL.

He further claimed that the Ripper had posted the Liverpool letters at Liverpool's Whitechapel General Post Office, in that way creating a taunting link with Whitechapel, London. (a similar link is featured in the Diary)

Morrison further stated that he had seen A DIARY kept by Mrs Belloc-Lowndes with entries confirming that the killer was "James Kelly from Liverpool". But this diary has never been seen by anyone else.

Morrison's views were put in to pamphlet form and then featured in Peter Underwood's book of 1987. (This is the main Ripper book used by the hoaxers.)

In 1992 Edmund McCoy's "Blood of the Fathers" involved the present-day discovery of an 1888 diary which revealed the truth behind the killing of Kelly.

In 1988 'Sphere Books' published "THE MORMON MURDERS: A TRUE STORY OF GREED, FORGERY, DECEIT AND DEATH". This popular paperback gave details of the simple techniques used to artificially-age iron-gall inks. Just heating would suffice. (If a document went too brown through heating it could soon be whitened up with a domestic sun-ray lamp!) Sphere Books, it should be remembered, were the very publishers who issued the 'History of Literature' owned by Barrett and from which the Diary line "Oh costly intercourse of death" was lifted.

But were the fakers capable of arriving at the idea that the killer left his mark at the murder sites? Of course they were. That very idea is rammed home in the popular Dibdin book; while Underwood's text directs attention to the Ripper markings said to have been seen on Kelly's wall. Apart from that you have Fido's text which speaks of the Ripper "putting his personal mark on his victim's face". The victim, of course, was Eddowes and the only person to speak of these marks as forming an M was Mike Barrett. This does not mean that it was his personal discovery; it might have been Devereux's for all we know, but it was Mike, and Mike alone, who made the idea public. THIS IS ACKNOWLEDGED BY Mrs HARRISON IN HER HARDBACK (page 170). In writing of the alleged clues at the murder sites she says that an M "...was carved on the cheeks of the fourth woman to die, Catharine Eddowes- a fact that Mike Barrett was the first person ever to notice."






The Baron

Excellent post, dear Baron!

So two things: 1) how long might the completed diary have had to be left after heating, to know if it might need the sun lamp treatment before it could be taken to London?

This is a reminder of what Mike himself claimed in his affidavit of January 5 1995:

'When I got the Album and Compass home, I examined it closely, inside the front cover I noticed a makers stamp mark, dated 1908 or 1909 to remove this without trace I soaked the whole of the front cover in Linseed Oil, once the oil was absorbed by the front cover, which took about 2 days to dry out. I even used the heat from the gas oven to assist in the drying out.'

[This was before any ink was applied to the paper, so Mike has already accounted for 'about' two days.]

'I then removed the makers seal which was ready to fall off. I then took a 'Stanley Knife' and removed all the photographs, and quite a few pages.

I then made a mark 'kidney' shaped, just below centre inside the cover with the Knife.

This last 64 pages inside the Album which Anne and I decided would be the Diary. Anne and I went to town in Liverpool and in Bold Street I bought three pens, that would hold fountain nibs, the little brass nibs. I bought 22 brass nibs at about 7p to 12p, a variety of small brass nibs, all from the 'Medice' art gallery.

This all happened late January 1990 and on the same day that Anne and I bought the nibs we then decided to purchase the ink elsewhere and we decided to make our way to the Bluecoat Chambers, in fact we had a drink in the Empire Pub in Hanover Street on the way.

Anne Barrett and I visited the Bluecoat Chambers Art shop and we purchased a small bottle of Diamine Manuscript ink. I cannot remember the exact price of the Ink. I think it was less than a pound.

We were now ready to go and start the Diary. We went home and on the same evening that we had purchased everything, that is the materials we needed, We decided to have a practise run and we used A4 paper for this, and at first we tried it in my handwriting, but we realised and I must emphasie (sic) this, my handwriting was to (sic) disstinctive (sic) so it had to be in Anne's handwriting, after the practise run which took us approximately two days, we decided to go for hell or bust.'

[So another 'approximately' two days accounted for by the practice run.]

'I sat in the living room by the rear lounge window in the corner with my word processor, Anne Barrett sat with her back on to me as she wrote the manuscript. This pose was later filmed by Paul Feldman of MIA Productions Limited.

Several days prior to our purchase of materials I had started to roughly outline the Diary on my word processor.

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.

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.'

[So applying the ink to the paper took eleven days in all, by Mike's calculations, in addition to around four days taken to prepare the scrapbook and use A4 paper for their practice run.]

Leaving aside the small matter of Tony not dying until August 1991, but too soon to have still been around, if the creation process is moved forward to early 1992, perhaps we could revisit Orsam's awesome auction date of March 31 1992, when Mike is meant to have obtained the unprepared scrapbook, and April 13 1992, when we know he took the finished product to London.

I seem to remember Orsam was impressed with Mike's 11 days, because they could be squeezed in neatly between the above two dates, but he is left with not enough days for the four-day preparation process and no time at all for whitening up the 63 pages of writing if heating the ink left the paper a tell-tale brown. I would have to assume this measure was not needed, or else Mike would surely have had to postpone his meeting in London. And yet, the argument has been made at various times that a sun lamp was used to produce certain effects noted by Alec Voller in 1995.

Whichever way we look at Mike's dates and times, they don't make it easy for anyone trying to shoehorn the entire process into such a brief interval of time.



2) Was Simon Wood wrong to think he was the first person to see potential ripper markings on Kelly's wall, because Peter Underwood already directed attention to these in 1987? Simon quickly decided he was mistaken and there wasn't anything there after all, but if he and whoever Underwood's source was came up with the idea independently, then presumably so could anyone else, including the diary author? Why would Mike or Anne, or anyone else for that matter, have been dependent on Simon's word - so quickly retracted - for any of the diary's funny little rhymes?

But thank you, Baron, for reminding us that two or more individuals can come up with the same thoughts independently of one another, while we can all offer very different interpretations of the words used in the diary.

Love,

Caz
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