One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[Iconoclast]

What's the significance of this supposed to be? You've been banging on about it since 2008 so you must think it's important.

Is it simply that a newspaper on 1st September 1888 mentioned a "Jim" and Maybrick's first name was James/Jim? And that's an amazing coincidence?

Or are you actually arguing that the "Jim" mentioned in the newspaper article was Maybrick?

Would it help if I posted the full newspaper article? It's explained in History vs Maybrick but I could bang it out and bang on again about it if it helps?

[David Orsam]

Would it help if I posted the full newspaper article? It's explained in History vs Maybrick but I could bang it out and bang on again about it if it helps?

It wouldn't help me because I've read it but I suppose it might help you to see that it can't possibly have been referring to Maybrick.

[Sam Flynn]

And that didn't just make my point, Sam?

Not really, Ike. The diary was obviously not written by James Maybrick, or anyone remotely like him... or remotely contemporary with him, either.

To still believe that it was written by James Maybrick, despite all the evidence to the contrary, is on a par with being a flat-earther. Sorry.

[Iconoclast]

It wouldn't help me because I've read it but I suppose it might help you to see that it can't possibly have been referring to Maybrick.

Coincidences. That's what we're talking about here. Of course, to the Naysayer, finding Jack's bloody knife under the floorboards of Battlecrease House would neither be proof nor coincidence. They'd dismiss it with something like "So, which house in the land doesn't have a bloody knife under the floorboards? To say anything otherwise is facile and unworthy". Et cetera.

The Naysayers critiscise EVERYTHING however tangentially-related to Maybrick and support NOTHING which may speak to Maybrick's possible candidature as Jack, and that is what utterly gives their game away. There is no attempt to assess, merely to suppress. There is no pause for breathe in the condemnation and the criticism, where a balanced mind would consider and reflect. Each casual dismissal of everything Maybrick-related gives me genuine belief that their opposition to Maybrick is founded upon sand not brick and that their little castles will collapse as easily as they were built.

Just my view, of course ...

[Iconoclast]

Not really, Ike. The diary was obviously not written by James Maybrick, or anyone remotely like him... or remotely contemporary with him, either.

To still believe that it was written by James Maybrick, despite all the evidence to the contrary, is on a par with being a flat-earther. Sorry.

All the evidence to the contrary, Sam?

You have to be joking, yes?

If it were never so well proven, none of us would be on here, believe me.

[David Orsam]

Coincidences. That's what we're talking about here.

Well that's exactly what I was asking you to tell me.

"Is it simply that a newspaper on 1st September 1888 mentioned a "Jim" and Maybrick's first name was James/Jim? And that's an amazing coincidence?"

The rest of your post is just irrelevant waffle because it doesn't answer my question.

But I assume that you have now considered the full article and realise that the "Jim" referred to can't possibly have been Maybrick, hence your silence on the issue.

[Sam Flynn]

All the evidence to the contrary, Sam?

You have to be joking, yes?

I'm afraid I'm not, Ike. The handwriting alone is enough, to say nothing of the anachronisms and other factors.

[Iconoclast]

Well that's exactly what I was asking you to tell me.
"Is it simply that a newspaper on 1st September 1888 mentioned a "Jim" and Maybrick's first name was James/Jim? And that's an amazing coincidence?"
The rest of your post is just irrelevant waffle because it doesn't answer my question.
But I assume that you have now considered the full article and realise that the "Jim" referred to can't possibly have been Maybrick, hence your silence on the issue.

No silence intended from me, my good Lord. Just awaiting the time required to respond appropriately. My response to your specific question lies at Point 6) below, but I was keen to also take this opportunity to assess the extent of coincidence which these points provide. Some are poor coincidences, and some are very strong coincidences. The point of doing this is ultimately not to create a coincidence scoring system (which will immediately be criticised anyway – even if the Naysayers didn’t read the post!), but rather to convey a sense of how genuinely unlikely it would be that these things would be on the record if the Maybrick journal were ever to be proved to be a hoax.

Let’s say 0 out of 10 is no coincidence at all, and 10 out of 10 is a coincidence too far – one that simply should not happen. Here we go …

1) The spelling of Jack from Maybrick’s name

If you were a potential hoaxer of a Jack the Ripper journal, would you realistically hope to find a candidate whose name formed ‘Jack’ in this way? I’d say that that is a decent coincidence – let’s say a 5 out of 10.

2) Maybrick – despite being a hypochondriac whose second home was the doctor’s surgery – never being placed somewhere else at the time of any of the murders

Any hoaxer would need to check this first – was there any obvious event which precluded the possibility of his candidate being Jack. They would be hoping for very little background on Maybrick so that they had little to check, and they must have been disappointed to realise there was a fair amount of information on his whereabouts (the visits to the doctor) and then presumably amazed to find that none of this information precluded him from being in London on the weekends of the canonical murders. Another good coincidence – let’s say another 5 out of 10.

3) Maybrick’s now well-established addiction to arsenic

Maybrick’s addiction to arsenic provided the hoaxer(s) with the psychopathology of the murderer. A very convenient coincidence for the hoaxer(s) so a decent 6 out of 10 on the coincidence scale, I’d say.

4) Maybrick’s now well-established link with the east end of London (via his girlfriend/wife/lover Sarah Robertson, and possibly Mr. Witt and his ‘London business’)

Our hoaxer chose Maybrick as Jack in the absence – I believe – of any evidence that he had ever been to Whitechapel or its immediate neighbourhoods. Research by Feldman’s team, amongst others, uncovered the association with his long-term mistress Sarah Robertson and the London office of Gustav Witt. I don’t believe that any hoaxer could ever have hoped for such post-publication support for their hoax, and for that reason (unless confirmed otherwise) I’m giving that another 6 out of 10 on the coincidence scale.

5) A Whitechapel in both Liverpool and London

This is an easy one. I don’t know how many cities have a Whitechapel, but Liverpool and London do. Our hoaxer must have spilled their beer when they realised that was true. It’s a nailed-on 7 out of 10, that one. Our hoaxer could never have hoped for such luck.

6) The ‘Who is Jim?’ newspaper article after the first canonical murder

Okay, so here is my response to my good Lord Orsam’s request. From my own really rather brilliant History vs Maybrick:

The Liverpool Echo reported on Saturday, September 1 under the heading ‘Who is Jim?’:

There is another point of some importance on which the police rely. It is the statement of John Morgan, a coffee stall keeper, who says that a woman whose description answers that given him of the victim [Polly Nicholls], called at his stall, three minutes walk from Buck’s Row early yesterday morning. She was accompanied by a man whom she addressed as ’Jim’.

It appears that the description of the man named Jim given by Morgan to the authorities did not match that of Maybrick so we should not read too much into what may have been no more than a coincidence. Nevertheless, if ‘Jim’ had been Maybrick, he was clearly intending to kill Polly Nicholls at some point after the purchase of the coffee, so it may well have been the case that Maybrick was indeed ‘Jim’ and that he therefore intentionally avoided close contact with Morgan, thereby preventing a more accurate description being given. A calculating murderer is rarely also a fool.

Now, my Lord’s recent post suggests that he has read more than simply the above in my brilliant thread and – knowing him – he’s read the actual article in the actual newspaper so he may well have more than I to hand in dismissing this article as potentially related to Maybrick, but whether he has or not is not entirely the point. My point is simply this – no self-respecting hoaxer could possibly have hoped for such an article to be uncovered. And – when it was – they must have spilled even more of their beer. An article emerges which tells that a man was seen with Nicholls before her murder and his name was ‘Jim’ - and they'd already published their hoaxed journal! Extraordinary coincidence! Easily another 7 out of 10 (unless my Lord retorts that the rest of the actual article stated that the man called ‘Jim’ was patently not of European descent, I guess).

7) The piece of muslin left with Annie Chapman’s corpse

Muslin is a form of cotton. Handy thing for our hoaxer to play on in the journal (his 'clue'). A reasonable 3 out of 10, I’d say.

8) The ‘M’ on the envelope also found with Chapman’s body

A low-level coincidence this one but still handy for the hoaxer. I’ll give it 2 out of 10.

9) V marks on Catharine Eddowes (‘left my mark’)

The ‘V’ marks on Eddowes’ cheeks were not public domain pre-journal, so this is a cracking coincidence for our hoaxer. 7 out of 10, I’d say.

10) The convenience of Juwes in the GSG appearing much like ‘James’, and – oh – as you know, ‘Thomas’, and ‘William’, and ‘Ed’ [I’ll excuse you the ‘win’ here], Michael and Florence Maybrick’s initials, and even the word ‘nothing’ written in the hand that wrote the journal [remember, the GSG we have on the record is a ‘duplicate’ of that which was washed so carelessly off the wall]

None of this should be possible by chance alone never mind all of it. It’s a stonewall 10 out of 10 coincidence for our hoaxer.

11) The discovery of the little-known September 17 ‘Jack the Ripper’ letter in whose hand the journal was written

10 out of 10 coincidence. Cannot be possible. Ever. The Sept 17 letter would also have to be a hoax and by the same person. If you check out the source of the Sept 17 letter, you’ll know that’s extremely unlikely to have happened.

12) The remarkable ‘photofit’ of Oct 6 which looked so much like Maybrick

Absolutely impossible coincidence. 10 out of 10. No arguments there.

13) The FM on the wall of MK’s room [unclear in many versions of the infamous photograph, but very clear indeed in the works of those two arch-journal detractors Sugden and Marriott]

10 out of 10 coincidence. Hoaxers cannot hope for this sort of stupid luck. If you look at the photographic plates in Sugden and Marriott, you can’t argue that something extremely like the letters ‘FM’ do not appear on Kelly’s wall (though certain posters will, of course). Our hoaxer had written “An initial here, an initial there, will tell of the whoring mother”. Impossible coincidence, clearly.

14) Florence’s comment in a letter to Brierley (‘The tale he told me …’)

7 out of 10. Florence has written her part in the Maybrick hoax with her remarkably-convenient line. Again, what hoaxer could ever hope to have such remarkable good fortune in their choice of subject for Jack?

15) The Diego Laurenz letter [arguably the biggest clue that Maybrick was indeed Jack]

11 out of 10. No hoaxer should dream of such good fortune – and after publication of their hoax too!

16) The extravagant swirl at the end of a sentence (see Feldman, ‘The Final Chapter’)

2 out of 10. The swirl was used by the hoaxer and a similar swirl is post-publication found made by Maybrick in a document. Again, just very convenient for our hoaxer.

17) The Maybrick watch and the incredibly-unlikely coincidence that Maybrick’s best pal George Davidson would die penniless and yet leave a gold watch under his pillow on the day he died – a fact which either inspired the watch’s hoax or else which supports the theory that the hoaxers put in a truly remarkable shift in the Liverpool libraries in creating their masterpieces (the journal and the watch)

These should really be two massive coincidences. First, the watch itself – unless our hoaxer created it too, they had almighty luck in its appearance. If the hoaxer didn’t create it’s a 10 out of 10.

The fact a gold watch was found under George Hutchinson’s pillow even though he died otherwise penniless is just crazy fodder for a statistician (to fully understand this coincidence, you need to reflect on the testimony given about Davidson's troubled behaviour in the run-up to his death). It’s another 10 out of 10 for me.

18) The provenance given by Anne Barrett which revealed that Elizabeth Formby (pal of the viper Alice Yapp) had a daughter Edith who was married to Anne’s grandfather (second marriage) thereby providing ‘apparent’ support for the hoaxer’s work

Coincidence scale hits the roof at 10 out of 10. Just should not have been true if the journal was a hoax.

19) The implausibly-convenient fact that on her release from gaol in 1904, Florrie Maybrick took the surname ‘Graham’ (Anne Barrett’s maiden name, of course)

Same principle as 18, above. 10 out of 10 coincidence. No hoaxer could have hoped for such stupendous good fortune.

20) Latterly, the stunningly-implausible coincidence that work had been done on the floorboards in Maybrick’s old room on the very day (March 9, 1992) that Michael ‘Master Forger’ Barrett first attempted to gain interest in his Ripper journal

Not content with good fortune in 18 and 19, above, our hoaxer gets yet another crazy break with the floorboards story on the same day Barrett rings Montgomery with the journal. 10 out of 10 coincidence. Should never have happened given that we are told that the journal is a hoax.

21) The geoprofiling data which placed Middlesex Street at the very heart of where the Ripper should have been found [the GSG was ignored so Flower and Dean Street was focused on as his most likely lair, but the case for Middlesex Street was just as strong and if Rossmo had added in the GSG, Middlesex Street it undoubtedly would have been]

This one will be quickly rubbished by the journal-detractors so I shan’t overplay it. 5 out of 10 on the coincidence scale.

22) As time will show, That I’m society’s pillar

Honestly, we are told that the journal is a hoax so therefore it can’t be Maybrick who committed the crimes, and yet our hoaxer gets yet another break when a Ripper rhyme is sent with a line which contains a reference to Maybrick’s family motto (‘Time Reveals All’) and to his surname (‘brick’). It just shouldn’t be true given that we are told that the journal is a hoax. Let’s give it an 8 out of 10 on the coincidence scale.

So there we go. An answer to Lord Orsam and an interesting review of the coincidences which are apparent to me. Spider says (in an earlier post) that he knows of more so I look forward to reviewing those at some point, but for now you will need to settle for my one score and more.

Of course, we will now face the barrage of criticism from the Maybrick Naysayers who will belittle every single one of these 22 points – usually with a rather painful ‘That’s just garbage’ sort of response, and almost-certainly not an adequate review of all 22 points made. Those readers who have no axe to grind may take a different, silent view that no hoaxer in the history of hoaxing has ever had even a fraction of the good fortune this one apparently did.

Coincidences do happen, of course. They happen randomly and without connection – that is effectively what makes them coincidences. Twenty-two don’t happen by chance, and it would be refreshing if we could consider this fact as a compelling reason to question that the Maybrick journal was a hoax at all. Knowing the mentality of those who post on this site, I’m afraid my glass is currently very much half empty on that one, sadly.

Ike

[David Orsam]

Okay, so here is my response to my good Lord Orsam’s request. From my own really rather brilliant History vs Maybrick:

The Liverpool Echo reported on Saturday, September 1 under the heading ‘Who is Jim?’:

There is another point of some importance on which the police rely. It is the statement of John Morgan, a coffee stall keeper, who says that a woman whose description answers that given him of the victim [Polly Nicholls], called at his stall, three minutes walk from Buck’s Row early yesterday morning. She was accompanied by a man whom she addressed as ’Jim’.

It appears that the description of the man named Jim given by Morgan to the authorities did not match that of Maybrick so we should not read too much into what may have been no more than a coincidence. Nevertheless, if ‘Jim’ had been Maybrick, he was clearly intending to kill Polly Nicholls at some point after the purchase of the coffee, so it may well have been the case that Maybrick was indeed ‘Jim’ and that he therefore intentionally avoided close contact with Morgan, thereby preventing a more accurate description being given. A calculating murderer is rarely also a fool.

Now, my Lord’s recent post suggests that he has read more than simply the above in my brilliant thread and – knowing him – he’s read the actual article in the actual newspaper so he may well have more than I to hand in dismissing this article as potentially related to Maybrick, but whether he has or not is not entirely the point. My point is simply this – no self-respecting hoaxer could possibly have hoped for such an article to be uncovered. And – when it was – they must have spilled even more of their beer. An article emerges which tells that a man was seen with Nicholls before her murder and his name was ‘Jim’ - and they'd already published their hoaxed journal! Extraordinary coincidence! Easily another 7 out of 10 (unless my Lord retorts that the rest of the actual article stated that the man called ‘Jim’ was patently not of European descent, I guess).

What a confusing use of the quote function and an equally confusing merging of a response to my post with a repetition of the 21 "coincidences" which are not properly coincidences at all nor convincing as evidence in support of Maybrick's authorship of the diary.

As for the "Who is Jim" article, it is telling that you have failed to reproduce the entire article. So let us look at the whole thing:

WHO IS JIM?

There is another point of some importance upon which the police rely. It is the statement of John Morgan, a coffee-stall keeper, who says that a woman, whose description answers to that given to him of the victim, called at his stall-three minutes' walk from Buck's-row-early yesterday morning. She was accompanied by a man whom she addressed as Jim. They appeared as if they had had a quarrel. The woman did all she could to pacify him. This morning our reporter had an interview with Mr. John Morgan, at the house where he lodges, 62, Oxford-street, near Bethnal-green-road. He said: It was half-past three or a quarter to four o'clock yesterday morning, when a woman, whom I knew was an immoral character, came to my stall and a man was with her. I am to-day to go to the mortuary before the inquest and see if I can identify her as the one who came there. Well, she was with a man, like a labourer, between 5ft. 4in. and 5ft. 6in. in height, with dark hair and short beard. He and the woman had words. Having had a cup of tea the woman said, "Come on, Jim, let's get home." Then they went away, and I did not think anything more of the occurrence until I heard of this dreadful affair at Buck's-row, near where it was. My stall is at the corner of Cambridge Heath-road. I have seen the woman several times, and could therefore identify her if she is the one I fancy it is. I did not hear any screams-at least, nothing to speak of.

So a man called Jim who does not resemble the description of Maybrick has an argument in public with a prostitute who clearly knows him well and it ends up with her saying "let's go home", suggesting that they live together. That's it. The witness has not identified the prostitute as Polly Nichols and, from his absence from the inquest and from any mention in police reports, it must be obvious that she was not Nichols. He simply saw a prostitute arguing with her partner.

So did a hoaxer get lucky that there was such a newspaper story? No, he didn't. He got unlucky. Because the Jim in the story clearly wasn't the murderer and clearly wasn't Maybrick.

It's barely more than there was a man called Jim living in the East End. Big deal.

[David Orsam]

Maybrick – despite being a hypochondriac whose second home was the doctor’s surgery – never being placed somewhere else at the time of any of the murders

How many doctors' surgeries are open in the middle of the night?

[Iconoclast]

How many doctors' surgeries are open in the middle of the night?

I'll give you the Jim article (I did rather predict it in my text). But I can't give you the doctor one. They visited more often in those days, I suspect. No-one's surgery needed to be open.

Do you know what, you've got another 20 coincidences (and they are coincidences) to go so let's see how you unravel them all.

[David Orsam]

Maybrick’s now well-established addiction to arsenic

Are you saying that Maybrick's addition to arsenic has only been established since 1992?

[Iconoclast]

What a confusing use of the quote function

You are having a laugh, mate!

[Iconoclast]

Are you saying that Maybrick's addition to arsenic has only been established since 1992?

As far as coincidences are concerned, his arsenic-taking was very convenient for the hoaxer's plot.

I think it's safe to use the term 'well-established' post-1992. I wasn't so certain that term would have applied before 1992. I have no doubt that you will put us all right, however.

[David Orsam]

I'll give you the Jim article (I did rather predict it in my text). But I can't give you the doctor one. They visited more often in those days, I suspect. No-one's surgery needed to be open.

But I mean if Maybrick had gone to the doctor during the afternoon of 30 August he could then have caught the train to London and murdered Polly at 3.30am. He could then have gone back to Liverpool on the morning train and visited the doctor again on 31 August.

So this whole claim that the hoaxer got lucky is ridiculous.