One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[David Orsam]

Therefore there is absolutely no reason to believe that he couldn't be discussing a unique item.

Yes there is because he says: "it is different with your requirements of only one or two off at a time".

See that? one OR two off.

Two off can't mean unique can it?

So that does suggest, doesn't it, that he was using the expression in some way to denote quantity here?

[Herlock Sholmes]

No it's not nitpicking at all, it's fundamental to what I am saying. Just like the muppets in JTR Forums you seem to think that adding a word after "one off" is sufficient to create a metaphorical meaning. It doesn't. The same one would be true if Garscadden had referred to, say, a "one off example".

For my information David what is the fundamental difference between the phrase 'one off example (of whatever)' and 'one off instance (of something)?

As you appreciate, Garscadden is always talking about a pattern for a part. When he refers to "one off standpoint" he is not comparing his pattern to anything else, thus using the pattern as a metaphor.



If Maybrick wrote the diary, and I'm not saying that he did, and he'd heard the phrase 'one off' somewhere (let's say, someone had said 'a one off batch.') Maybrick therefore wouldn't have been aware of the origin of the phrase and so wouldn't have been using at a metaphor for a pattern. He would just be using it as a phrase to mean something that happened once (something unique)

But look at the example from the Bee Journal that you mentioned earlier. In that quote, a person called Paddy was being called "a one off". We had reached a stage in 1976 where something (a one off) that was once only ever thought of as a pattern, a design, a manufactured item etc. is now being used to describe a human being.

In the Diary, it is being used to refer to an incident, the hitting, which will never happen again.

You cannot substitute "instance" for "standpoint" in the Diary. If the author had said, "sorry, it was a one off standpoint", it wouldn't work. It has no meaning. That's because the word "standpoint" does not create a metaphorical meaning for "one off".

Garscadden was using 'one off' in the environment where the phrase originated. No doubt. But if someone else used the phrase after hearing it from an engineer, say, and then used it simply to mean one of something or a unique something, in conversation; and he was unaware of any context or anything of its original usage then surely Maybrick wasn't using it as a metaphor. Because he was unaware of its origin.

That's the thing that didn't happen until the mid-twentieth century.

We will definately disagree here but I can't see how it's totally impossible for a phrase, used conversationally, by not many people, have no surviving example in writing.


Apologies that the layout of this post is poor. My own technological deficiencies.

[David Orsam]

We will definately disagree here but I can't see how it's totally impossible for a phrase, used conversationally, by not many people, have no surviving example in writing.

A small group of tightly knit people using their own sort of slang language maybe but that's not what we have in the Diary. The author of the Diary was, apparently, writing in normal English. You have to understand how language works and is used.

Even Feldman understood the point. "I was always prepared to accept that any linguistic anomalies would prove this diary a fake", he said, "...if it could be proved that certain catchphrases or words were not known in common usage at the time, I would accept the inevitable and go after exposing the forger." (Jack the Ripper, The Final Chapter, 1997, p. 23).

He was, however, fooled by Harrison's purported find of the term in what he described as "engineer's records belonging to Trayners of Kent and dated 1860" (even though Harrison had referred to Trayners as builders not engineers) which, he said, "proved the Oxford English Dictionary wrong".

[Herlock Sholmes]

Ok David.

I think that we are where we both stand (if that makes sense).

I still just have that 'wriggling worm of doubt,' in my tired brain. I accept, and I don't think that I've ever stated otherwise, that the weight of evidence is overwhelmingly in your favour. I feel a little like my hero Sherlock Holmes here. I think that it was in The Norwood Builder where he said something like: 'all the facts are one way but my instinct is in another.' Trouble with that is that, as ever, Holmes was proved correct in the end.

David, if I had a hat I'd take it off to you. You've been very 'Holmes-like.' Maybe secretly you'll award me a few points out of ten, if only for effort and doggedness?

If we meet, as is likely, on another thread I can only hope that we're on the same side of the debate!

All I want know is to find out who this chap Pierre's suspect is.

Please don't let it be Maybrick!

Regards
Herlock

[David Orsam]

I'm just going to add one more thought.

In 1993 when the Diary was revealed to the world I don't suppose there was such a thing as a digital database. All we had were language/dictionary experts who said that the term "one off" was not recorded in print before the second quarter of the twentieth century.

Now we have a large number of searchable databases. The British Newspaper library has over 20 million pages from the 1700s, the entire historical set of the Times is also digital, Google books has scanned more than 25 million books and there are plenty of other nineteenth century databases.

Yet, while the existence of "one off" in print has been pushed back a little earlier, we still have not one single recorded example of the phrase from the nineteenth century. Isn't that amazing? Not even to mean a one off job.

And where we do have it in the first quarter of the twentieth century it is always without exception in the obscure and technical context of manufacturing (i.e. patternmaking, foundrymen etc. journals or speeches), never showing as part of common usage.

For me, it's job done.

[John G]

I'm just going to add one more thought.

In 1993 when the Diary was revealed to the world I don't suppose there was such a thing as a digital database. All we had were language/dictionary experts who said that the term "one off" was not recorded in print before the second quarter of the twentieth century.

Now we have a large number of searchable databases. The British Newspaper library has over 20 million pages from the 1700s, the entire historical set of the Times is also digital, Google books has scanned more than 25 million books and there are plenty of other nineteenth century databases.

Yet, while the existence of "one off" in print has been pushed back a little earlier, we still have not one single recorded example of the phrase from the nineteenth century. Isn't that amazing? Not even to mean a one off job.

And where we do have it in the first quarter of the twentieth century it is always without exception in the obscure and technical context of manufacturing (i.e. patternmaking, foundrymen etc. journals or speeches), never showing as part of common usage.

For me, it's job done.

I agree, David. James Maybrick can now be extinguished as a JtR candidate. Case closed.

[Herlock Sholmes]

I stand by my previous post.

[John Wheat]

The diary is totally true apart from one aspect. The words.

[Iconoclast]

I agree, David. James Maybrick can now be extinguished as a JtR candidate. Case closed.

Good luck with that one!

[GUT]

The diary is totally true apart from one aspect. The words.

I'm not even sure that is right.

[caz]

Ive worked in industry, not Victorian industry I admit, but I've known many people who would use it in speech like that. I can recall a Production Conroller who I can almost hear now using a sentence like ' right we need 4 off manifolds.' Or 'we've got all the manifolds that we need but we still need 4 off sumps.' That's genuinely not an isolated peculiarity of speech. Not 'average man on the street talk' of course. I know that it doesn't really work when you are using good English but people don't always follow the rules of language when they speak' especially in certain environments.

Yep, my late father-in-law, who had worked in a foundry during World War II [in a reserved occupation, casting ships' propellers], was always using the expression 'one [or another number] off' in normal everyday conversation. As far as I recall this was my first exposure to the expression and was in the 1970s, but the context made it clear what he was talking about.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

When we look at all the known facts and chain of events surrounding the dear diary we know deep down in our hearts that the diary was a fake written sometime after 1988.

Why are you using the royal 'we', Pinky, and speaking of hearts while talking out of your bottom?

Love,

Caz
X

[Mike J. G.]

Allo, all. I'm new here, and have just typed out a massive post, only to have Casebook log me out, despite me asking for my log-in details to be "remembered," so that was rather annoying.

Anyway, I'll start my second attempt at my first post by telling you that I've always been interested in Maybrick, being that I live within spitting-distance of Battlecrease house. As I write this, I can see over the gardens and houses to Riversdale road.

My interest in Maybrick has nothing to do with him being a Ripper suspect, as I personally don't believe he's even remotely close to being a good candidate, and obviously, without the link to the "diary", he really isn't a good suspect at all.

Maybrick is a well-known character in Liverpool's history, due to his "interesting" life, his success in the cotton-trade and his untimely death. No doubt, the poisoning tale was a very much discussed story in Victorian England, not least of all in this city. There's a mural on the wall in a subway down in Aigburth Vale, a very nice one of James and Florence, so you know that this story is still firmly rooted in our local lore, but not much mention of him being the Ripper, and that's because you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone in this city who thought James Maybrick was Jack the Ripper.

This is taken from the OP: The use of ‘Poste House’ is uncomfortable for diary believers but is not in itself unequivocal proof of a hoax. The text does not say which ‘Poste House’ the author is referring to. We simply cannot know for certain that the reference was not to a ‘Poste House’ somewhere other than in Liverpool. Indeed, the context of its use in the diary seems to favour London rather than Liverpool.

This, to me, is the only information you really need to put the diary to bed. The Poste House, as we know, did not exist under that name at that time, and I find it odd that we feel the need to stretch reason to assume that this Liverpool man was talking about a different Poste House in London when there's very famously been one in Liverpool for many years. Imho, this was an obvious error on the part of the diary's writer. The Poste House is well-known by people in this city as being an old and historic pub; it seems likely that the writer of the diary didn't do much research at all, and they didn't have to, and I'll expand on that.

People have spoken about the diary's mention of the Grand National, and the fastest horse/time for the relevant years, and funnily enough, all of that information can be obtained in a book called "Liverpool Soundings," by our old mate, Richard Whittington-Egan. IIRC, the book was published in the late late 60's, but that's just off the top of my head. Many of the stories contained within that book where then republished into a popular series on Liverpool by Richard Whittington-Egan in the 1980's, curiously around the time of the diary's emergence. Liverpool Soundings contained all of that relevant info on the Grand National in a chapter entitled the "Great Race," IIRC, or something along those lines, I have the book, but it's not to hand. That chapter also makes mention of the heated argument between James and Florence.

Also, in the 1980's series of republished works; the Tale's of Liverpool series, there is a good deal of information on James Maybrick and the entire saga at Battlecrease house. This series of books was very popular among readers in Liverpool, including my dad and my uncle, to name but two. Imho, I don't find it that hard to believe that a local person with a vivid imagination would read these books and conjure up a good story about James being a murderer, but not just any murderer... Jack the Ripper!

The relevant information that was needed was readily available in the 80's for anyone who was bored enough to do a bit of a Dan Brown and mix a bunch of fiction up with small facts.

Back to the Poste House, I've never met anyone in this city, not even at the wonderful library in the city-center, who has heard of a Poste House pub being around during those years. There are some splendid Gore's Directories that you can check, and the gents at the library will be happy to help, but you won't find any Poste House pub.

Now, people will believe what they want, and no amount of reasoning will change their minds. To me, if you can look past the errors contained in the diary, then you simply want Maybrick to be the Ripper, and will continue to attempt to hammer a square peg into a round hole.

Interestingly, Richard Whittington-Egan also thought James was a silly suspect for the crimes, and I wonder if he also had an inkling that his various writings about Liverpool were the catalyst for an imaginative Scouser to connect dots that weren't there and make James become a Jack.

This thread, imo, is asking for some definitive proof of a hoax, and yet at the same time is actively throwing any proof out of the window by making absurdly nonsensical excuses for things like the Poste House pub.

Anyway, cheers. It's nice to be here.

Mike.

[Mike J. G.]

Good luck with that one!

I think that any actual "luck" is needed by the supporters of the diary and Maybrick as a suspect.

There's simply no getting away from the striking similarity of the details contained in the diary with things that were already available in print at the time.

It's literally as though the diary's writer was sitting at his/her desk with these books open beside them.

Odd how the diary makes mention of details that are found in Liverpool Soundings in a chapter on the National, a book published in 1969.

It's also very telling that the writer would mention a Poste House pub, making an uneducated assumption that it was known by that name at that time, when it wasn't.

So, James Maybrick was actually just talking about a Poste House pub in London? That, to me, is a bout of mental gymnastics.

I don't really think that the writer of the diary was especially savvy, I think they made some obvious errors that anyone with a clear head can see.

A Scouser was having a laugh at the expense of a bunch of Ripper fans, and it worked. Saucy Jack, indeed!

[Mike J. G.]

4) I never believed that the Diary was penned by James Maybrick (sorry, Ike) but I do believe that it is old, and not a modern hoax. For what purpose it was written I can't say, but could make a reasonable guess. Well, a couple of guesses, actually.

I can't say I put much stock into the idea that the diary was found at Battlecrease, or that two electricians would think to take what they found to the Liverpool Uni, as opposed to literally anywhere else. Where any names given for these electricians or the company they worked for?

I also don't put much stock into the idea that the diary is an old hoax. I think it's probably an 80's forgery, but it could have been penned in the 70's, I suppose.