One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[David Orsam]

Shirley Harrison was quite correct.

Shirley Harrison, or rather Traynors, said that the phrase "one off" was used in 1860 when a new building material was ordered as a 'special'.

Is that what you are saying?

[David Orsam]

Equally, if it transpires that it was in use in 1888 then it must surely count for a great deal in favour of the journal's authenticity?

I can't agree for one second with that statement but this thread is about finding one fact to refute the diary so I'm not going to be drawn into it.

So far we have zero confirmed documentary evidence that the phrase "one off" was ever used in the building trade in the nineteenth century to indicate a special order of new building material.

Then we don't even have a suggestion that anyone in the 19th century had ever taken that rather technical expression and used it in normal speech to describe something as as a one off instance or occasion etc.

[c.d.]

Hello Iconoclast,

The fact that the initials appear in Kelly's room is irrelevant. You are describing the phenomenon known as pareidolia. It is the same concept regardless of whether it is a face on Mars or Jesus in a cheese sandwich.

You keep mentioning the journal but does the journal specifically state "I wrote the initials FM in blood on the wall in the room of the last victim Mary Kelly" or is that simply your interpretation of what is written?

c.d.

[Iconoclast]

You keep mentioning the journal but does the journal specifically state "I wrote the initials FM in blood on the wall in the room of the last victim Mary Kelly"?
c.d.

No, c.d., the journal categorically does not state that. I'm slightly surprised you needed to ask. It might have been quicker to have checked your copy?

It's not just me making this interpretation, by the way!

Hope this helps.

Ike

[Iconoclast]

I can't agree for one second with that statement but this thread is about finding one fact to refute the diary so I'm not going to be drawn into it.

Okay, duly noted - but surely it must count for something when a thing (in this case, the journal) just keeps surviving the things which are said to condemn it?

People on this site boasted for years about the reference to Michael Maybrick writing lyrics as being a fundamental error on the part of the hoaxer and one which ultimately 'revealed' the hoax. And then that belief was blown out of the water by some excellent research on the part of Livia Trivia.

In a similar vein, the belief that 'one-off' is a hoaxer's error - if disproven - should surely make us sit and think?

Sam had a similar take on the use of the word 'mayhem'. I'm not sure if that ever got resolved.

The journal does have a truly extraordinary ability to never quite be shaken.

Ike

[Simon Wood]

Hi All,

Not that it really matters, but I was the first to spot the initials on the wall in the Millers Court photograph.

It was in 1989.

Here's part of a letter I wrote to Nick Warren, Editor of Ripperana, on Friday 10th November 1995—

"When Messrs. Begg, Fido (and Skinner?) say that I am the only other person even to know of the initials on the wall (at Millers Court), their memories betray them, for I was the person who first alerted them to the initials.

"It happened at a City Darts 'Jack the Ripper Seminar'. I was probably talking to just Martin and Keith (Paul, living in Leeds at the time, made only occasional visits to London) about turning a black and white photograph into colour. I had seen this demonstrated on TV and thought it might be an idea to experiment with the Kelly photograph. During this, or a subsequent conversation, I pointed out the initials on the wall, reasoning in true Grand Guignol style that Kelly had finger-painted the murderer's initials on the partition wall beside her bed.

"Depending on which printed copy (Rumbelow, Farson, Begg etc.) of the Kelly photograph is examined, the initials appear more or less distinct, and for my money the best exposure is in the Sphere paperback edition of Dan Farson's book.

"My discovery was pounced on with enthusiasm, but try as we may none of us could decipher the initials, let alone fit them to a suspect. And there, as far as I am concerned, the matter was dropped."

Four years later, in Shirley Harrison's book, this became—

"In 1976 Stephen Knight's "Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution" reproduced the picture with enough clarity to show that there appeared to be some initials on the wall partition behind Mary Kelly's bed, although they were not pointed out until 1988. The crime researcher Simon Wood mentioned them to Paul Begg."

Now you know the story of the initials on the wall.

BTW. Most seem to agree that "one off" dates back to a 1934 quotation from the Proceedings of the Institute of British Foundrymen: "A splendid one-off pattern can be swept up in a very little time."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/magazine/04FOB-onlanguage-t.html

Regards,

Simon

[Graham]

BTW. Most seem to agree that "one off" dates back to a 1934 quotation from the Proceedings of the Institute of British Foundrymen: "A splendid one-off pattern can be swept up in a very little time."

Who are 'most'? Amazingly, I was a member of the Institute of British Foundrymen, and as such I had access to engineering drawings dating back to the latter half of the 19th century, and I can assure you (not that you actually want to be assured) that the terms "one off", "two off", etc., etc, were and still are commonplace engineering parlance. If you can't accept this, then tough ****.

And I repeat, I still believe that the Diary is an old forgery.....

Graham

[Iconoclast]

Hi All,

Not that it really matters, but I was the first to spot the initials on the wall in the Millers Court photograph.

...

Now you know the story of the initials on the wall.

Regards,

Simon

Hi Simon,

Many thanks for the update. As a matter of interest, did you actually determine that the letters were 'F' and 'M' or was your interpretation more ambiguous than that?

Still, come on, you must be secretly quite proud of the fact that you spotted them when no-one before you had?

Cheers,

Ike

[David Orsam]

Okay, duly noted - but surely it must count for something when a thing (in this case, the journal) just keeps surviving the things which are said to condemn it?

Well what I'm asking is has it survived the issue of the "one off instance"?

At the moment, I'm thinking it has not and this is where the forger made a mistake.

[Iconoclast]

Well what I'm asking is has it survived the issue of the "one off instance"?

At the moment, I'm thinking it has not and this is where the forger made a mistake.

And as far as I am aware, you are right, it has not been resolved. If it cannot be resolved, it is indeed a massive problem for the journal.

Ike

[Simon Wood]

Hi Iconoclast,

No, we did not determine the initials as 'F' and 'M'.

That came later.

It's not a matter of feeling proud. But I do have a feeling that the diary would never have happened had it not been for my observation.

Regards,

Simon

[David Orsam]

And as far as I am aware, you are right, it has not been resolved. If it cannot be resolved, it is indeed a massive problem for the journal.

Fair enough.

[Iconoclast]

It's not a matter of feeling proud. But I do have a feeling that the diary would never have happened had it not been for my observation.

Which makes me think it must be one or t'other:

Maybrick was Jack and the journal is his actual account, or
The hoaxer saw the initials and the hoax was inspired by them.

I'm sure there was a thread on the Casebook ('Imagine'?) which claimed to support the latter of these two possibilities, including the claim that 'Damn Michael Barrett' had been identified in the text.

Strange times, strange time ...

Ike

[John Wheat]

Hi John,

Not sure which side of the argument you're on here, but keen to address any obfuscation which so frequently creeps into these discussions.

If you feel that the 'FM' on Kelly's wall could represent 'fake mother', why would you be so categorical that they don't stand for 'Florence Maybrick'? There is an overwhelmingly strong reason why they would represent 'Florence Maybrick' (their existence for this purpose is predicted in the Maybrick journal) but not - to my knowledge - any logical reason whatsoever why they would represent 'fake mother' nor indeed any other combination of two words starting with an 'F' and an 'M'. If you are suggesting that Maybrick meant 'fake mother' rather than 'Florence Maybrick', then it's all irrelevant anyway as the issue is not what the letters mean but that they link Maybrick (or at least the journal in his name) directly to the crime. If you feel that someone else wrote the initials 'FM' and meant - perhaps - 'fake mother', that is an event beyond the bounds of statistical probability (it cannot be reasonably asserted given that someone else has clearly linked them to Maybrick and his wife).

If, as you also contend, they could be blood splatters then they are also way beyond the bounds of statistical probability as they would have fallen in such a way that they unequivocally spell two letters of the alphabet. I don't know how often that happens at murder scenes but I suspect it's astonishingly rare (and by that, of course, I mean 'never'). Nevertheless, if this were possible, then the only explanation for the Maybrick journal is that our writer saw the initials 'FM' created by the random blood splatters (or by someone writing 'FM' on Kelly's wall for some other reason now long lost in time) and then concocted this elaborate back story of 'FM' representing 'Florence Maybrick', and then thought to write a hoax journal in the name of James Maybrick - a relatively affluent cotton merchant from Liverpool (of all places!).

If this is what happened with the journal then bravo to our hoaxer - that is a piece of genius, to think of such an audacious trick, to write in a style which convinces modern psychiatrists of its veracity, to choose someone about as implausible as it was possible to get, and then to find that history and the known movements of James Maybrick never once ruled him out as a candidate for Jack. Astonishing is undoubtedly the word.

Of course, it is far simpler to argue that the letters don't exist. That way, you don't have the problem of what the consequences imply. It's how the human mnd works - seeing things it wants to see and not seeing things it doesn't want to see in absolutely equal measure. A fundamental attribution error on a fairly grand scale.

The letters aren't random blood splatters, though. Blood just doesn't articulate itself in that way. They are real letters highlighted in a dimly-lit room by the phospherous of the camera's momentary flash which gave us a fleeting moment of insight into a crime scene which fundamentally reveals to the world that the author of the Ripper's crimes was James Maybrick, Liverpool cotton merchant and egotistical monster.

Cheers,

Ike

Hi Ike

The FM if it even exists could mean various things. It could mean Free Mason's as some have suggested. I don't really see how it could be proven that the FM stands for Florence Maybrick.

Cheers John

[Caligo Umbrator]

Which makes me think it must be one or t'other:

Maybrick was Jack and the journal is his actual account, or
The hoaxer saw the initials and the hoax was inspired by them.

I'm sure there was a thread on the Casebook ('Imagine'?) which claimed to support the latter of these two possibilities, including the claim that 'Damn Michael Barrett' had been identified in the text.

Strange times, strange time ...

Ike

Hi, Iconoclast.

That thread you mentioned is here - http://forum.casebook.org/showthread.php?t=3121

Yours, Caligo