One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[Graham]

David,

has it ever occurred to you that other people just might hold opinions that differ from your own, and that some of these opinions may actually be correct and justified? Perhaps if you adopted a rather less lordly and overbearing attitude then your posts might be better appreciated. Please do not accuse me of being 'wrong' simply because I missed a post of yours and therefore assumed that my original post was not picked up by anyone. But then, I forgot: splitting hairs is your real forte, isn't it?

And to say that I "just like the idea of connecting bone black with arsenic" is utterly ridiculous and unworthy of you. Don't you like the idea of connecting your beliefs to certain aspects of the case?

Graham

[David Orsam]

David,

has it ever occurred to you that other people just might hold opinions that differ from your own, and that some of these opinions may actually be correct and justified? Perhaps if you adopted a rather less lordly and overbearing attitude then your posts might be better appreciated. Please do not accuse me of being 'wrong' simply because I missed a post of yours and therefore assumed that my original post was not picked up by anyone. But then, I forgot: splitting hairs is your real forte, isn't it?

I'm having difficulty following the logic Graham. You said yesterday that your post about black bone wasn't picked up by anyone. Was that right or wrong?

I'm saying wrong.

It's not a matter of opinion, it's one of fact.

Yesterday you complained that no-one responded to your post and I corrected you.

You concede that you "missed" my post but you also tell me that if my posts were less "lordly" and "overbearing" they might be better appreciated. But if you are referring to yourself, how is that possible if you don't even read them?

Anyway, I don't care about being appreciated nor do I even care about being read. But you were complaining about no-one responding to your post, which wasn't the case, so I corrected you. That's it.

And to say that I "just like the idea of connecting bone black with arsenic" is utterly ridiculous and unworthy of you. Don't you like the idea of connecting your beliefs to certain aspects of the case?

It's not ridiculous at all Graham. You said "I'll stick with the arsenic antidote, thank you very much" without giving any reason for doing so. It sounded like you just want there to be an arsenic connection. Even worse, you say you don't think that the diary was written by Maybrick. So why would there be any arsenic antidote on the diary?

[Graham]

David Orsam,

at my age my time is too precious to waste conversing with you. Post all you like, but you won't draw me into your hair-splitting exercises.

Graham

[Iconoclast]

So a person who wasn't addicted to arsenic (the forger) sprinkled the diary with an arsenic antidote?

Seriously, peeps, there's a blindingly obvious shift of of focus needed here. Maybrick, the known arsenic addict, is linked to a Victorian journal fessing-up to his being Jack the Spratt McVitie, and in the spine is bone black, a known antidote to arsenic poisoning (or something like that - I can't be bothered to get my facts right here, nor do the facts matter in this context).

Coincidence is possible, it really is (just ask anyone who works for Topman right now), but it's a rare beast in the jungle. This is either coincidence or it points to Maybrick as author of the journal.

Soothsayer's Razor says Keep it Real: Cut out the unnecessary middleman - the much-elusive hoaxer - and just get down and jiggy with it, everyone. Maybrick's your man.

[David Orsam]

at my age my time is too precious to waste conversing with you. Post all you like, but you won't draw me into your hair-splitting exercises.

Oh, I wasn't aware that the difference between right and wrong, true and false, was "hair-splitting". It's good to know that your time is too precious to read responses to your posts but not too precious to moan (wrongly) about no-one responding to your posts.

[Iconoclast]

Oh, I wasn't aware that the difference between right and wrong, true and false, was "hair-splitting". It's good to know that your time is too precious to read responses to your posts but not too precious to moan (wrongly) about no-one responding to your posts.

You know, I'm sensing it was time I came back to tread the boards, boys and girls, because we need a real thread back on the go not one of those Crackerjack box plastic toy versions designed to tempt in the foolhardy.

I can feel the digital quill twitching, folks. Anyone got an old bottle of ink I could borrow?

[Iconoclast]

Even worse, you say you don't think that the diary was written by Maybrick. So why would there be any arsenic antidote on the diary?

Melvin Harris presumably believed that the bone black fell out of one of the hoaxer's "2-3" mythical sources for the journal and thus lodged themselves into the spine of his shoddy confessional. That could explain it all quite nicely.

We can go around the houses on this forever, and I have no doubt that some do plan to, but the simple fact remains that James Maybrick wrote a journal documenting his late-Victorian killing spree and we should be grateful that we are the first generation since those times to be able to know who Jack the Ripper actually was, why he did what he did (including why he chose Goulston Street for his graffito), why he chose to kill where he chose to kill, why he got away with it, and some of his thoughts from that series of dastardly murders.

[David Orsam]

Bone black had a number of uses in the 19th century, medicinal and otherwise. There is no record that the real Maybrick used or possessed an arsenic antidote and the Maybrick of the diary makes no reference to using it. And why would he? He was an arsenic addict so surely an antidote is that last thing he would have wanted or needed. In his journal he makes no mention of being poisoned so why did he sprinkle an antidote over the guardbook? It really makes no sense.

While blind faith is always impressive, there is unfortunately no way that James Maybrick could ever have used the expression "one off instance" in his lifetime. Consequently he cannot possibly have written the Diary.

[David Orsam]

And not a single living person has ever seen a documented use of "one off" to mean something unique in the 19th century.

[Iconoclast]

And not a single living person has ever seen a documented use of "one off" to mean something unique in the 19th century.

You know my position on this, my good Lord O. As stretchy tenuous as you will interpret it, it is perfectly possible that Maybrick intended to write "a one off-instance" rather than "a one-off instance". Had he been inclined to use hypens (or indeed apostrophes), we may not have to debate what he intended. "An off-instance" which - in the moment he wrote it - became "a one off-instance" or - more accurately given his apparent disinterest in or ignorance of grammar - "a one off instance", and the issue goes away quite nicely thank you.

As I've said before, people do say "a one" when they more correctly mean "a" or "an". What they say today, they could have said in 1888/89. As he wrote those words, he was presumably not following a pre-thought-out script (unless you count the brain's pre-articulatory loop which is clearly not the same thing) so as his thoughts flowed, the words came, and maybe they were not well thought-through but what would he care given that he was writing for his own eyes and general perverted delectation?

The journal is the scribbling of an apparently fairly immature fifty years old with a modest education whose aim throughout the text seems to be to variously titilate himself or attempt to explain and justify himself. Maybe if he'd submitted it to an editor before it tragically found its way into the hands of Mike Barrett he would have corrected any linguistic inexactitudes, and ironed-out any possibility of unintended anachronism ("Post House", "one off instance") but of course he didn't because it was never intended to be read until the very end loomed so unexpectedly in front of him.

No-one (living) knows who "Mrs Hammersmith" was. It's another aspect of the journal which smacks both of wonderful authenticity and equally dreadful hoax in the same moment. Like "a one off instance", we cannot know if Maybrick met (and therefore meant) "Mrs Amersham" (or "Mrs Amberton" or whatever) and just didn't know her correct name. I'm looking out of my office window (at home) and looking at Grant and Ruth's house which is next door to John and Jo's on their left and Ron and Emily's on their right. We've all lived here for years. Three wonderful couples who I see most days and chat away with regularly. If I thought long and hard about it, I could probably remember Ron and Emily's surname, but I have no idea what John and Jo's is nor Grant and Ruth's (indeed, I'm not even sure if they share the same surname). I might - if writing of Ron and Emily - call them "The Prestwicks" and I might be wrong or I might be right (I think that's wrong, for the record) but it wouldn't really matter for - as long as I was writing it for my eyes only and I would remember who I meant - it doesn't matter if I get it right or not.

There's a couple in our village who we call Pinky and Perky. We don't know their names but they wore similar coats ages ago and we childishly started calling them Pinky and Perky (it doesn't make sense, but we didn't care and still don't). We have no idea what their names are. We might - if writing about them privately - refer to them as "Mr and Mrs Pigg". Wouldn't make it their names - at least not to anyone other than us. Certainly not to a census. When my own brilliant journal is discovered and published in 2192, it will of course be branded a cheap and shoddy hoax because the local census from 2010 or 2020 would clearly show that there were no Prestwicks and no Piggs living in Lower Whottlington on the Whottle in those two years. And no other parish council record would be unearthed which bore those names. And thus my devilish crimes would go unrecognised even though my confession was out there for all to read. I haven't committed them yet, by the way (and doubtless never will), but I trust you take my point.

The journal was written by a man living in the dust and dirt of the actual 1888. Despite how bizarre it seems now in the cold retrospect of ages past, it is not for us to say that James Maybrick did not go to Anfield and follow the nascent Everton FC, thereby acquiring a basic footballing knowledge which he then may well have used to hide his brother Edwin’s name in the Goulston Street Graffito (History vs. Maybrick). Many things in the journal may seem to us as unacceptable, but we cannot say categorically from our modern incredulity what Maybrick definitely intended. We can surmise, and we may be right and we may be wrong. Doesn’t mean the journal isn’t authentic, in the same way as Maybrick getting “Mrs Amberley” mixed-up as “Mrs Hammersmith” in any way speaks more to the likelihood of a hoax except in the harsh black and white light of the here and now.

So Maybrick wrote “a one off instance” and he could not (it appears) have meant by this ‘a one-off instance’. It’s simply not enough to dismiss the journal as a fake. Until we have one incontrovertible, unequivocal, undeniable fact which refutes the journal – and I’m sorry but it isn’t that one Lord Orsam - the debate continues.

Iconoclast
All-Round Smartarse

[Sam Flynn]

What, pray, is an "off-instance"?

[Iconoclast]

What, pray, is an "off-instance"?

It is when you are "off" something. Like "off my game". Slapping Florrie (if slap her he did) was simply one 'off' instance that would never be repeated.

You might not like it, Sam, but someone heroic has to put it out there for the nations to consider otherwise Lord Orsam will take over the world with his Very Large Encyclopaedia. It's like a civic duty.

[David Orsam]

It is when you are "off" something. Like "off my game". Slapping Florrie (if slap her he did) was simply one 'off' instance that would never be repeated.

But you've just made that up. Very amusing of course but a fiction. There is no such thing as an "off instance".

[Iconoclast]

Bone black had a number of uses in the 19th century, medicinal and otherwise. There is no record that the real Maybrick used or possessed an arsenic antidote and the Maybrick of the diary makes no reference to using it. And why would he? He was an arsenic addict so surely an antidote is that last thing he would have wanted or needed. In his journal he makes no mention of being poisoned so why did he sprinkle an antidote over the guardbook? It really makes no sense.

Okay, you can own that one, I'll grant you.

While blind faith is always impressive, there is unfortunately no way that James Maybrick could ever have used the expression "one off instance" in his lifetime. Consequently he cannot possibly have written the Diary.

Looketh before ye leapeth, sayeth Ecclesiastes. Possibly.

I think my extraordinary previous post (not the one to Sam, obviously) has probably left you reeling from the alcoholic excesses of my brilliant insight?

[David Orsam]

I think my brilliant previous post (not the one to Sam, obviously) has probably left you reeling from the alcoholic excesses of my brilliant insight?

I can honestly say it didn't.