One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[Kaz]

?

So why in your mind is a completely implausible for those letters to even be there?

[Sam Flynn]

You're saying it can't be so. I'm saying 'why not'?

I'm not saying it cant' be so... it could be so, but it just isn't. Those letters just aren't there; it's like seeing faces in the clouds. Sure, there are clouds that might look like faces, but that doesn't mean that there are really faces there.

[Kaz]

I'm not saying it cant' be so... it could be so, but it just isn't. Those letters just aren't there; it's like seeing faces in the clouds. Sure, there are clouds that might look like faces, but that doesn't mean that there are really faces there.

Suppose we can only agree to disagree?

I remain open minded on the whole subject. role on September, I want this new book to read!

[Iconoclast]

I'm not saying it cant' be so... it could be so, but it just isn't. Those letters just aren't there; it's like seeing faces in the clouds. Sure, there are clouds that might look like faces, but that doesn't mean that there are really faces there.

You're citing pareidolia again, Sam, like it's some handy catch-all retort to any argument you may face. Let me repeat mine, just because there is a condition of pareidolia does not mean that in every situation it could occur it does occur.

And please don't do the clouds thing. Again, I draw your attention back to my brilliant History vs Maybrick in which I discuss this Elvis in the Toast principle. Someone may say they see Che Guevara in the clouds but do they say they see his face in every cloud? Does Elvis appear in every piece of toast? Of course, the answer to both is No. They see Elvis and Che eventually because there are billions of clouds and billions of slices of toast. It's just what chance does when something happens so very often. If there was one cloud and one slice of toast, you would not see Che and you would not see Elvis.

Seeing F and M in the only example we have of Kelly's wall is statistically impossible unless they are there or unless they could have been discerned and a hoaxer wrote a Jack journal based upon them. This is the same as the GSG: there is only one official version of the GSG so you should not - even by bizarre chance - be able to discern James, Thomas, William, Ed'win', MM, and FM. Even if none of those names were intended to be there, you could not hope by chance to accidentally cryptically decipher any one name from that list never mind so many from the Maybrick clan. I have cited 800 male Victorian names which were not cryptically embedded in the GSG, and yet every one of the significant Maybrick players can be discerned. It's just too implausible to be mere chance alone.

And so are the letters F and M on Kelly's wall. If they are not there, then no-one should be able to see them. Many people do. Few believe the journal is the work of Jack the Spratt. So are they suffering from pareidolia too, or just those people who apparently want to see them?

Ike

[Henry Flower]

?

So why in your mind is a completely implausible for those letters to even be there?

The majority of people who study the photo think there are no letters there

The majority think it's a fifth generation copy of a dirty old photo of a dirty old room

I see marks all over that wall that resemble the marks that you interpret as FM

A belief in the Diary predisposes people to interpret marks as letters

F and M are simple forms consisting of short straight lines. Easier to 'discover' than R or G or B or J or O or Q or P or etc - luckily for you

The marks are very small

A man sitting on the bed would naturally make the marks much higher than that

If a man made those marks, he moved the bed and sat or crouched on the floor to make them

The detectives never noted the presence of those initials

Nobody did - until decades later, via a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy etc

And finally: I. Just. Don't. See. Them.

So given all of the above, when you or Ike say - sure, he was a psycho, why shouldn't he push the bed out of the way so that he could sit on the floor and write the initials unnaturally low down, instead of just writing them higher up to start with - I really do see them there and I promise it's not bias or wishful thinking and I somehow know it's not pareidolia- then I roll my eyes. I don't mean to be rude, it's just all so blinkered, Kaz.

If you're asking me - could the initials possibly be there, and would it defy the laws of physics for Maybrick to have sat on the floor to write them that low down? - then sure, I concede. It's possible.

But that's not really the question here.

[Iconoclast]

A highly erudite post from Simon Wood some time ago made a very strong case that Kelly's bed had been moved away from the wall - presumably to give the killer better access to both sides of the corpse. He demonstrated this by reference to the light and shadows from the window. All clever stuff which I didn't really follow but whose principle was deeply intriguing. If Jack the Spratt had moved Kelly's bed to gain access to her, the position of where he wrote the F and the M as he sat on the left side of her bed would have been about right for where we (some of we) now discern them.

And I never thought I'd be grateful to Simon Wood twice in this lifetime!

[Kaz]

A highly erudite post from Simon Wood some time ago made a very strong case that Kelly's bed had been moved away from the wall - presumably to give the killer better access to both sides of the corpse. He demonstrated this by reference to the light and shadows from the window. All clever stuff which I didn't really follow but whose principle was deeply intriguing. If Jack the Spratt had moved Kelly's bed to gain access to her, the position of where he wrote the F and the M as he sat on the left side of her bed would have been about right for where we (some of we) now discern them.

And I never thought I'd be grateful to Simon Wood twice in this lifetime!

Simon Wood who saw letters in '88 but then stared at toast and clouds for too long?

[Iconoclast]

Simon Wood who saw letters in '88 but then stared at toast and clouds for too long?

Indeed, my gratitude was first for when he first saw them, my frustration when he miraculously couldn't see them again, and then my gratitude again for his intriguing theory about the moved bed.

Ike

[Henry Flower]

You're citing pareidolia again, Sam, like it's some handy catch-all retort to any argument you may face.

Ike, it's not a catchall retort to any argument you may face, but it IS a plausible explanation for people claiming to see letters where others see vague formless marks

Seeing F and M in the only example we have of Kelly's wall is statistically impossible unless they are there or unless they could have been discerned and a hoaxer wrote a Jack journal based upon them.

The convolutions of this 'or unless' argument kind of give away the fact that this has nothing to do with statistics or probability at all, but hey, it was a cute effort. And now you guys are seeing Fs and Ms not only on her wall, but smeared in blood on her leg, and carved into her arm.... Anywhere else? I mean, there are plenty of places on that photo where you haven't found and F or an M yet. I'd be willing to bet that if you really tried, you could do it! Come on chaps, pull yer fingers out!

I have cited 800 male Victorian names which were not cryptically embedded in the GSG

How much time have you spent trying to find every one of those 800 names, Ike? Not much, I'll bet. And if the excruciating contortions of 'four nothing' are anything to go by, you could 'find' many more names if you tried.

And so are the letters F and M on Kelly's wall. If they are not there, then no-one should be able to see them.

The faultiness of this logic is rendered almost artistic by the degree of confidence with which you wield it. By the same token, Ike, there ARE Sickert sketches higher on the wall. People have seen them. If they aren't there then no-one should be able to see them. So I guess Maybrick and Sickert were in cahoots...

[Joshua Rogan]

The killer need not have squeezed between the bed and the wall...besides, there was a large puddle of blood there which he would have got all over his shoes...but if he'd lent across the bed it would be a reasonably natural height to write if he was stretching.

[Henry Flower]

A highly erudite post from Simon Wood some time ago made a very strong case that Kelly's bed had been moved away from the wall - presumably to give the killer better access to both sides of the corpse. He demonstrated this by reference to the light and shadows from the window. All clever stuff which I didn't really follow but whose principle was deeply intriguing. If Jack the Spratt had moved Kelly's bed to gain access to her, the position of where he wrote the F and the M as he sat on the left side of her bed would have been about right for where we (some of we) now discern them.

And I never thought I'd be grateful to Simon Wood twice in this lifetime!

Wrong. Look at the photo again.

As I already said, if he sat on the edge of her bed the writing would be higher. People write on a vertical surface at more or less chest height or thereabouts. It's completely awkward and unnatural to write something down at knee height. That's why I say he was on the floor. Or else the letters aren't there.

[Sam Flynn]

A highly erudite post from Simon Wood some time ago made a very strong case that Kelly's bed had been moved away from the wall - presumably to give the killer better access to both sides of the corpse. He demonstrated this by reference to the light and shadows from the window.

It was clever stuff indeed, but Simon's aim was to account for apparent discrepancies between the two MJK photographs, i.e. "did the photographer move the bed a bit between shots?", and not "did Jack move the bed so he could squeeze between it and the wall, get down on his haunches and paint indistinct, small letters in blood on a dirty and already blood-splashed wall with a thin brush?".

And I never thought I'd be grateful to Simon Wood twice in this lifetime!

I think your no-claims bonus is safe, Ike.

[Iconoclast]

The faultiness of this logic is rendered almost artistic by the degree of confidence with which you wield it. By the same token, Ike, there ARE Sickert sketches higher on the wall. People have seen them. If they aren't there then no-one should be able to see them. So I guess Maybrick and Sickert were in cahoots...

The issue is not that letters or Sickert drawings can be discerned by some people. The issue is that a journal predicts that we could find F and M if we looked. Fair enough, it's then a question of how plausible those letters are when we find them, but for me the measure of this would be whether only pro-journalists saw them, and we know that agnostics and anti-journalists alike have also admitted to discerning them. Discerning is not the same as their being there, but Lord the implausibility of it if they weren't there is staggering (at least to a statistician).

Show me the journal which hints at Sickert drawings being on Kelly's wall and I will agree that they shouldn't be discerned if they aren't there. There is no such journal so whatever we feel we can see may well be pareidolia or just good old-fashioned wishful thinking, but it's not significant without a reference point elsewhere predicting it. The Maybrick journal predicts that F and M may be discernible at Kelly's death scene, and lo and behold they appear to be. That's not chance. It's just not.

Ike

[Henry Flower]

The killer need not have squeezed between the bed and the wall...besides, there was a large puddle of blood there which he would have got all over his shoes...but if he'd lent across the bed it would be a reasonably natural height to write if he was stretching.

Yes, he wouldn't want blood on his shoes: much better to simply lie across the ripped up human carcass on the bed and stretch to write that low down.

A puddle of blood on the floor between the bed and the wall? So it's likely that some blood might have splashed on the partition by the bed? Leaving..... marks? Vertical marks, perhaps?

Marks that might - on a fifth generation copy of a scratchy Victorian photo - be misread as.... letters.....?

[Iconoclast]

The killer need not have squeezed between the bed and the wall...besides, there was a large puddle of blood there which he would have got all over his shoes...but if he'd lent across the bed it would be a reasonably natural height to write if he was stretching.

I agree entirely Joshua - I thought to post it but assumed I'd be ridiculed so let it go (for now) whilst developing other themes.

I like your thinking, son.