The biggest fault

[marloes]

Forgive me for being a bit slow, but I was wondering what in your eyes would be the biggest fault in the whole diary thingy.
What would be the nr1 thing that proves the diary to be a fake?
If you could just point out one thing that would convince a newbie (like moi) that it indeed is nothing more then a fake, what is it?

[Sam Flynn]

The totally forced and melodramatic writing - the sort of "voice" one might adopt after watching too many Tod Slaughter or Hammer movies. Every copy of the diary should come with a free CD of Bach's D Minor Toccata and Fugue, if you ask me.

[downonwhores]

Sam

Hi Sam,

I agree with you as well. it seems to me that the writing is fiction as it reads a lot like A Study in Scarlet and that the writer got his information from newspapers or books on jtr that have errors. I got the feeling that whoever wrote it, Not Jack, was under the delusion that they themselves were jack the ripper which is why is reads so much like fiction. I also felt that some parts were forced.

[Dan Norder]

The main problem with the diary is that the person who wrote about Maybrick and the Ripper only referred to things that had already been written in books that were readily available around the time it was found, including common errors in the books widely available at the time. You'd think an author writing from personal involvement in either a famous person's life or a famous series of crimes would have something new to say, but no, there's nothing. It's the kind of thing a 13 year old could put together in a weekend.

[Sam Flynn]

It's the kind of thing a 13 year old could put together in a weekend.

...an observation reinforced by the fact that the diary is so darned thin - in a physical sense as well as in its content. Even then, it's padded out and riddled with repetition. Were it real, or had it been written by someone with a longer attention-span than a 13 year old, we might have expected something more substantial.

[miss marple]

scrapbook

Even if one ignores the contents and just looks at the book itself that would confirm it as a fake surely?
Is not the diary written in a Victorian scrapbook with the first few pages torn out?
In my time I have worked for an antiquarian book dealer. I have handled victorian scrapbooks, keepsake annuals, diaries and ledgers by the dozen.You develop a feel for them after a while. I would make this observation.The Victoria era was the great age of stationary, and they produced blank books of every variety including every kind of diary from leather bound, cloth bound hard covers to tiny paper pocket books. The quality of paper in scrapbooks for sticking is of a different quality from blank books designed for writing, Many victorian scrapbooks have a few filled pages at the front, the rest blank.
The easiest fake is to acquire one of this scrapbooks at auction or from a dealer [ there are much commoner than you think] and pull out the first few pages and get writing.
The same techiques was used in the Hilter diaries[ the first few pages missing.
If Maybrick wanted to keep a diary he would have bought one of the many diaries available at the time, not a scrapbook.
Any way the diaries are not in his handwriting,not clever.
Miss Marple

[Jeff Leahy]

The same techiques was used in the Hilter diaries[ the first few pages missing.
Miss Marple

The key to the Hitler Diaries was similar to the paper trail left by Hoffman for the Salamander letters.

The hand writing was compared to letters supposedly written by Hitler but in fact earlier forgeries created by the forger.

So a fairly sophisticated forgery.

Its is much harder to Gain-stay the sophistication of the Diary as we still dont know by whom or when, it was forged.

Pirate

[Sam Flynn]

As to the "Maybrick" diary's sophistication - there's so little of it, indeed it contains nothing that suggests that its author could have passed the Eleven Plus (Grammar School) entrance exam without a great deal of effort or luck.

This, allied to the possible stylistic influences alluded to earlier, points to someone who received a bog-standard education in the 1960s or early 1970s, and didn't do particularly well at it. To my eyes at least, the diary's author was likely an average/below average educated, working-class Brit who saw the odd B-movie or melodrama on telly. There's possibly even a hint of the voice of Roger Delgado's "Master", of the Doctor Who of the Pertwee years (early 70s) in the diary as well, come to think of it.

As the great surge of popular interest in the Ripper case didn't really happen until after Knight's Final Solution came out in 1976, it would be the late 1970s, if not the early 1980s, that would be the earliest years during which the idea for a "Ripper Diary" might have occurred to an author of the type I envisage. If my thinking is correct, then we'd be looking at the mid-1980s onwards as the likeliest date for the diary's composition.

[Jeff Leahy]

I guess it depends what you mean by the word 'sophistication' but that way may lay samantic's...

you have to admit its had a lot of people puzzling for a long time.

Sometimes the best solutions are brilliant in there simplicity.

Pirate

[Sam Flynn]

Sometimes the best solutions are brilliant in there simplicity.

To my eyes the content of the diary isn't just simple, Jeff - it's almost infantile.

[Jeff Leahy]

I'll leave it there Sam...I dont wish to get into a diary argument with anyone.

I always thought it would be interesting visually to reconstruct a forgery and see how long it takes...

I once put idea together for a series called 'the Hoax' and tried to get Jeremy Beadle to be an Allan Sugar..big X character....master minding a secret organization...

Another one that bit the dust

Funny enough they did try something similar with the lock ness monster that sunk...

Its not as easy as it looks

Still thought it would make fun TV..

Catch you later...buzzing off...

[Sam Flynn]

I'll leave it there Sam...I dont wish to get into a diary argument with anyone.

Sensible chap Like the idea for a TV programme about fakes/hoaxes, though - a bit like "Call My Bluff", but on a grand scale. Of course, "Faking It" has visited similar territory - albeit with people trying to hoodwink the judges that they're something they're not, but that's slightly different from your idea.

[Jeff Leahy]

Yeah, a little off thread..sorry, but a team you follow from the inside who perpetrate a series of hoax's on the media...crop circles, UFO's, escaped polar bears, forged letters/diaries, well anything..

The winner is the one with most publicity..all is revealed at the end of the series, filmed over two three months...

As I said died a death...

I really am gone this time....buzzzzzzzz

[miss marple]

hoffman

When I mentioned the Hitler diaries I was referring to the artifacts used,not the method. That of course is the big problem with Maybrick, lack of provenance. That is the cleverness of the Hitler diaries and the forgeries of Hoffman. Mark Hoffman, one of the greatest forgers of the written word ever, should be an object lesson to anyone who is naive enough, to believe in Maybrick.
I recommend 'The Poet and the Murderer by Simon Worrall as good background reading on Hoffman and the art of forgery
Miss Marple

[Steve S]

One thing for the Diary......Wouldn't have found this board if I hadn't wondered what others thought of it.......
Steve