One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[Iconoclast]

Shirley Harrison did not do her homework?

Would you prefer we give the diarist a pass for getting important facts wrong?

I think most readers of Caz's comment would have spotted with little effort that she was drawing a parallel. Not proving anything, not even suggesting she might be - just offering a little bit of reasoned perspective.

I applaud her for it.

[Iconoclast]

I also believe it to be an old hoax.

Go on, Caz - you must have thought this one through over the years? If the 'Poste House' was an anachronism, how could an old hoaxer have committed it?

And - if an old hoaxer can be reasoned to have referred to it - whyever not James Maybrick too?

Ike

[David Orsam]

I dont have the time but perhaps someone might like to create a time line chart showing all the events from when the diary first came to light, along with all the main players and the dates of their involvements, that might give us a few more clues, an exercise for David Orsam perhaps ?

The only chronology of events that I find interesting is one I posted earlier in the thread but repeat here:

9 March 1992 - Barrett (using the name 'Williams') contacts Doreen Montgomery to find out if she would be interested in "Jack the Ripper's Diary".

19 March 1992 - Barrett's advertisement requesting a diary dating from 1880-1890 containing at least blank 20 pages appears in trade mag.

26 March 1992 - A red 1891 diary is acquired by Barrett (and probably received by him 2 days later).

[N.B. Barrett says in his affidavit that it took 11 days to create the Diary]

13 April 1992 - After an unexplained delay, Barrett finally presents the Diary to Doreen Montgomery.

As I mentioned in my earlier post: Those are the known facts and a curious story they tell. If Barrett went to an O&L auction on or about 28 March 1992 to purchase a scrapbook it would be even curiouser.

[Iconoclast]

The only chronology of events that I find interesting is one I posted earlier in the thread but repeat here:

9 March 1992 - Barrett (using the name 'Williams') contacts Doreen Montgomery to find out if she would be interested in "Jack the Ripper's Diary".

19 March 1992 - Barrett's advertisement requesting a diary dating from 1880-1890 containing at least blank 20 pages appears in trade mag.

26 March 1992 - A red 1891 diary is acquired by Barrett (and probably received by him 2 days later).

[N.B. Barrett says in his affidavit that it took 11 days to create the Diary]

13 April 1992 - After an unexplained delay, Barrett finally presents the Diary to Doreen Montgomery.

As I mentioned in my earlier post: Those are the known facts and a curious story they tell. If Barrett went to an O&L auction on or about 28 March 1992 to purchase a scrapbook it would be even curiouser.

Very true, if indeed true. Like so much of this case, probably never now to be proven one way or t'other.

I'm confident that Barrett wanted to take a copy of Maybrick's journal to Montgomery (for fear of losing it and/or losing control of it). I think he said that. Though, of course, I can't have it both ways. Even if he said it, it wouldn't change much.

Ike

[Harry D]

Darn it - Caz beat me to the punchline on the long-solved Michael-as-musician 'glaring error'!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Let me address your others. If you had done any reading, you would have already known the answers to your own questions, but here goes anyway (I'll do the thinking for you):



How I cried at this joyful lack of research. In Sugden's very same work, he refers to a body found some years later in which coins had been found in the women's pocket and that this had mirrorred the Chapman case. James Maybrick (Jack the Ripper) correctly failed to state that he left the coins at Chapman's feet. It was simply the eager 'glaring error fishermen' like you who would draw this unworthy conclusion to suit your dismissal of his candidature.

Right, what's next?



The obvious first response to this is that we have another example of Argument from Personal Incredulity here. One man's disbelief should not form the views of others. Only the known facts. Or else the possible facts, as in this case. You are assuming that the match box was Eddowes'. What if it was Maybrick's? What if he used his own box of matches to light the scenes, and on this occasion the box was empty? It was murder No. 2 that night, after all, and both were committed in the relative dark. Why would the match box be more Eddowes' than Maybrick's? Maybrick himself tells us that the red leather cigarette case found at the murder scene was actually his not Eddowes' so there's a theme going on there which seems to me to be perfectly possible.



So why mention them in your post? As 'glaring errors' go, you have a very low threshold for the defining of them, in my opinion ...



All long-since removed from the increasingly-shortening list of 'glaring errors' in the journal. This 'glaring error' - granted - was a 'glaring error' longer than most, but the good news is that Maybrick (who wrote the journal) in 1888 naturally knew more than those people researching the journal in 1992. Phew - what a relief for us all, eh?



I don't buy this 'glaring error' theory that Maybrick should have planted something in his journal that would be beyond the means of a hoaxer one wet weekend. Nevertheless, there are some details in the journal which tally with Maybrick's life without being necessarily easily accessible to a hoaxer. I suggest you try reading one of the Harrison books or Feldman's because I don't have a photographic memory, but what springs to mind includes:

• The reference to Gladys being ill again
  The knowledge that Maybrick's source of arsenic expanded unexpectedly due to his business dealings with someone who had a ready supply
  Maybrick's reference to his brother Edwin being away in America until not long before Maybrick himself died
  I love the reference to the 1889 Grand National being the fastest he had seen, though I accept that this could have been found in a book
  I really love the reference to his parents' grave (singular) - that was genius
  He claims 'Eddowes'' red leather cigarette case as his own. If we could find it and test it for arsenic, that would more or less end the debate.

Anyway, it's been a really long day and that's the best I've got for now.

Was that the best you'd got, by the way, or were you keeping your powder dry?

Cheers,

Ike

I've asked you for one insight into the murders that only the killer could've known and you've failed to provide one. That alone should be enough to cast doubts over its authenticity but in your eyes the diarist has nothing to prove, and the preponderance of evidence rests with its critics. Even though anyone with half an imagination and access to external sources about Maybrick's life and the Ripper murders could've slapped this together.

[ChrisGeorge]

I've asked you for one insight into the murders that only the killer could've known and you've failed to provide one. That alone should be enough to cast doubts over its authenticity but in your eyes the diarist has nothing to prove, and the preponderance of evidence rests with its critics. Even though anyone with half an imagination and access to external sources about Maybrick's life and the Ripper murders could've slapped this together.

As a Liverpudlian, I have had doubts about the "Maybrick Diary" from the beginning. The fact that the writing in the Diary does not match that of James Maybrick should give anyone pause -- similar, of course, to the fact that Met policeman Sgt. Amos Simpson, the man who had allegedly had Catherine Eddowes' "shawl," was never provably in Mitre Square. In other words, that the shawl story and the Diary story are both complete nonstarters at the outset.

Best regards

Chris

[StevenOwl]

I've asked you for one insight into the murders that only the killer could've known and you've failed to provide one. That alone should be enough to cast doubts over its authenticity but in your eyes the diarist has nothing to prove, and the preponderance of evidence rests with its critics. Even though anyone with half an imagination and access to external sources about Maybrick's life and the Ripper murders could've slapped this together.

Of course if The Battlecrease Provenance ever comes to light then the question becomes "...one insight into the murders that only the killer could've known in 1888". I'd imagine the Diary contains quite a few insights that were not common knowledge back then.

[Iconoclast]

I've asked you for one insight into the murders that only the killer could've known and you've failed to provide one.

What are you asking? That I give you something out of the journal that only the killer would have known?

How would I demonstrate that to be true?

If I could show that, then you could say "Ah, but a hoaxer could also have shown that".

Think long and hard about what you ask for.

Oh, and read the title of the thread.

[caz]

Even though anyone with half an imagination and access to external sources about Maybrick's life and the Ripper murders could've slapped this together.

Hi Harry,

I must have read this claim scores of times over the years, but nobody yet has matched it and 'slapped' one together themselves, either featuring Maybrick or some other real person as the ripper.

So forgive me while I remain entirely unconvinced.

Love,

Caz
X

[Iconoclast]

Hi Harry,

I must have read this claim scores of times over the years, but nobody yet has matched it and 'slapped' one together themselves, either featuring Maybrick or some other real person as the ripper.

So forgive me while I remain entirely unconvinced.

Love,

Caz
X

It's the whole 'one wet weekend' brigade, isn't it? It's so prevalent that Bruce Robinson even mentions it by that very name in 'They All Love Jack' (suggesting to me that he is at least a reader - if not a contributor - to this site). Melvin Harris claimed it could have been 'slapped together' using just two books on Jack and one on Maybrick, but when asked he failed utterly in naming those three books. I suspect that the reality is that you possibly could write it from those three books - but which ones? I'd love to be told so that I could check!

And even then we'd have to consider the little details which won't be in those books (Gladys being ill again, etc.) and wonder how they came to appear in the journal.

And then we'd have to consider 'Diego Laurenz' and Florence's initials on Kelly's wall. Oh and then James, Thomas, William, Edwin, FM, MM, and 'nothing' written exactly as in the journal appearing in the Goulston Street Graffito.

That was one heck of a wet weekend, is all I can say.

[Harry D]

Did the diary get facts about the case wrong? Yes.

Does the diary contain an anachronism? Yes.

Does the diary match Maybrick's handwriting? No.

So, what basis is there for believing it? Oh, the pareidolia from a grainy black and white photograph that shows the initials of Maybrick's wife. Alrighty then!

[Iconoclast]

Did the diary get facts about the case wrong? Yes.

Does the diary contain an anachronism? Yes.

Does the diary match Maybrick's handwriting? No.

So, what basis is there for believing it? Oh, the pareidolia from a grainy black and white photograph that shows the initials of Maybrick's wife. Alrighty then!

Okay Harry D, you've solved the mystery.

This thread and the Maybrick (most popular candidate for Jack the Ripper in a recent poll, as I recall) aspect of the site will inevitably now dry up and die under the piercing scrutiny of your analysis.

Or maybe it won't?

I can't quite decide.

[paul g]

Thread title

I really enjoy threads on the diary and also Bury my favourite suspect.
This thread has been enjoyable so far and am sure it will roll on and on, hopefully.
I have no idea weather the diary is a forgery or genuine ,I am not that clever.
However so far no one has posted one incontrovertible fact that the diary is not genuine which is the title of the thread .

[David Orsam]

However so far no one has posted one incontrovertible fact that the diary is not genuine which is the title of the thread .

Apart from the fact of the inclusion in the diary of the expression "one off instance" which didn't exist in 1888.

[Iconoclast]

Apart from the fact of the inclusion in the diary of the expression "one off instance" which didn't exist in 1888.

Oh dear ...