One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[caz]

Yes, I believe it's probable that the writer(s) genuinely believed they were creating a believable text. Why go to all that trouble otherwise? It's rather a long document, parts of it evidently researched, and it is - after all - written on genuine Victorian paper. Perhaps it was a creative writing project that got out of hand, or perhaps it was deliberately intended to be a hoax from the outset. Either way, I believe that whoever wrote it did their best to make it as authentic-sounding as possible.

But if it sounds to you about as authentic as a vampire diary written by Piers Morgan, why do you assume that whoever wrote it was doing their best not to give you that impression?

I don't think it got out of hand. I do think it was deliberately intended to be a hoax from the outset - a jolly wheeze if you will. Is there anything in the diary that doesn't sound to you like that could have been the case?

Love,

Caz
X

[Herlock Sholmes]

Ha! Weirdly, it did not! I was merely musing on things that appear in texts that shouldn't have been there. Like the FM, based on dodgy reproductions in books of a certain era, but clearly not there in more faithful recent reproductions.

Aaaaargh!

(BTW - what is number 1 if Holy Grail is no.2?)

You may sense a pattern here but it's 'The Life Of Brian' for me

[Sam Flynn]

But if it sounds to you about as authentic as a vampire diary written by Piers Morgan, why do you assume that whoever wrote it was doing their best not to give you that impression?

Would they be doing a double-bluff or a triple-bluff with a double Salchow and a triple Lutz in a white wine sauce?

My brain hurts, Caz. I really don't know how to answer that question. Maybe I'll come back to it later after a nap.

[Sam Flynn]

I don't think it got out of hand. I do think it was deliberately intended to be a hoax from the outset. Is there anything in the diary that doesn't sound to you like that could have been the case?

Don't get me wrong, Caz; I think it far more likely that it was always meant to be a hoax, but I don't see why it couldn't have started out as a creative writing exercise.

[Henry Flower]

a Turin Shroud/Time Team sort of perspective,.

This is the single greatest concept ever introduced on the boards. A glorious marriage of the sublime and the ridiculous. Thank you Gareth. I think people sometimes miss how wonderfully dry your sense of humour is.

[Iconoclast]

There's no reason why a hoax cooked up in 1972 couldn't have surfaced 20 years later. As I say, I'd incline to a later date, but 1972 is the absolute earliest I believe it was written; it was only in 1972 and afterwards that all the necessary "ingredients" could have been feasibly assembled.

How tedious, but here we go: Or at the time of the murders, of course. What are we doing now, just assuming that it was a hoax, proven and nailed?

A diary confessing to the murders was a forgery, et cetera ...

I need to re-enter this debate, it is clear to me. I'm away for about 12 hours and all manner of bollocks goes unchecked. Absurdities, one might say.

Ike

[John G]

How tedious, but here we go: Or at the time of the murders, of course. What are we doing now, just assuming that it was a hoax, proven and nailed?

A diary confessing to the murders was a forgery, et cetera ...

I need to re-enter this debate, it is clear to me. I'm away for about 12 hours and all manner of bollocks goes unchecked. Absurdities, one might say.

Ike

Well, it's obviously a hoax. What I really want to know is: who wrote it? What's your thoughts Ike?

Actually, I've suddenly got a strange feeling that I've said something rather controversial. Oh dear...!

[Sam Flynn]

How tedious, but here we go: Or at the time of the murders, of course.

One of the key ingredients to any diary are the words used. Several phrases in the diary were not in common circulation (in the sense in which the diary uses them) until several decades after the time of the murders. One could explain away one such instance as an "early coinage" on Maybrick's part, but the presence of at least three such phrases ("top myself", "spread mayhem" and "one off") occurring in the same comparatively short text, decades before they came into common use, stretches credibility.

Another important ingredient to any diary are the events described. I'll refer you back to the recent discussion on "an initial here, an initial there" in this thread, and how this could be seen to indicate that the diarist had in mind the MJK1 photograph. Caz doesn't see it that way and, as ever, does so based on sound reasoning; however, I still believe that there's a strong probability that the "FM" in MJK1 inspired the "initials" referred to by the diary.

Thus we have at least three words/phrases used in a 20th century sense, and at least one event (the planting of initials at the scene) which could reasonably be seen to have been based on the awareness of an artefact which only gained wide public circulation in 1972. Neither of these could have been known at the time of the murders.

[Darryl Kenyon]

Sorry if this has been brought up before but from World Wide words - One-off -
A one-off was just a single item, used in particular to refer to a prototype. The first known example appeared in the Proceedings of the Institute of British Foundrymen in 1934: “A splendid one-off pattern can be swept up in very little time.” (The reference is to a casting mould formed in sand.)
Almost fifty years after Maybrick allegedly wrote it in his diary.

[John G]

Maybrick would have been fifty in 1888. Is there another example in world criminological history of a serial killer beginning their life as a multiple murderer at such an age?

[Kaz]

Maybrick would have been fifty in 1888. Is there another example in world criminological history of a serial killer beginning their life as a multiple murderer at such an age?

Just recently Michael Danaher at 50 stabbed a book dealer 16 times.

You're also surmising James 'started' at the age of 50...

[Henry Flower]

Maybrick would have been fifty in 1888. Is there another example in world criminological history of a serial killer beginning their life as a multiple murderer at such an age?

I don't know of one.

Maybe it was a one-off instance.

[Henry Flower]

I'm glad Ike the Humble is back to sort out some of these errors. Here's an example of his ruthless logic:

"the likelihood of finding Elvis in the toast by chance alone only holds for toast, snowy mountains, cloud formations, and all other endlessly-repeated phenomena. The principle cannot be adopted for single incarnations, and clearly that is what the photograph is. There are not a hundred, thousand, million, or billion examples of photographs of Kelly and her bedroom wall. Excluding the ill-lit pile of viscera on the table, there is just the one. Elvis isn’t in the toast here, but James Maybrick is very firmly in the frame, and therefore rightly in the dock."

And that is why nobody is too worried about the Return of Ike: Faulty logic.

There is one sky. On a given day a large number of clouds form, change, and pass away in that one sky.

There is one MJK2. But the question is not how many photos MJK2 is, but how many interpretable marks are there in that one photo. Your comparison is entirely faulty and illogical. The Casebook copy of MJK2 is made up of over 6 million pixels. Two of us on this thread have already demonstrated that we can look at these vague marks and honestly discern the presence of what look like letters or initials in those marks. There are more, but I stopped because I felt I'd made my point. Each of these letters is at least as discernible as the supposed F. I honestly cannot see the F, though I can see how a criss-cross of vertical and diagonal blood marks can be interpreted by the willing as an M.

But hey, even with your faulty logic, welcome back Ike x

[Sam Flynn]

however, I still believe that there's a strong probability that the "FM" in MJK1 inspired the "initials" referred to by the diary.

Initials which, I might add, are explicitly said to "tell of the whoring mother", namely Florence Maybrick. So, clearly, the diarist is telling us that he left an "FM" at the crime scene. Come in, MJK1, your time is up! (And your time, incidentally, is post-1972)

[GUT]

Just recently Michael Danaher at 50 stabbed a book dealer 16 times.

You're also surmising James 'started' at the age of 50...

And Danaher wasn't a serialist was he????