One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[Bridewell]

I still think 'Maybrick' writing the diary in someone else's handwriting is something of a stumbling block in the path of any claim for authenticity. Also the fact that he wrote what purports to be a diary of 1888 events in an old scrapbook/album rather than, say, an 1888 diary, something not exactly difficult to get hold of at the time. I can see why a 20th century forger might have to resort to an old scrapbook/album, but I've seen no credible explanation for Maybrick himself being in such a predicament.

[Graham]

The only point that I’d make is that ‘cog-ayver’ is a colloquialism using words that don’t exist in any dictionary

It's not a colloquialism at all, SH. 'Cog' is self-explanatory, a gear-wheel, and 'ayver' is merely a local pronunciation of the word 'heaver'. Which around the old West Midlands meant not merely pulling at something, pardon the expression, but also hitting, or whacking, something. As in, "E day orf gie the bugger a bloody good ayver, day 'e?" Meaning, he didn't half hit him hard.

As an aside, I'm a Brummie, not Black Country, and there is a huge difference in accents between those parts of the world. In fact, Black Country is, or was, more of a dialect than an accent. Don't know if you ever read 'The Canterbury Tales' in the original, SH, but there are some similarities between Chaucer's language and Black Country. I still get a real kick listening to, preferably, an older person speaking Black Country. Or, as it used to be called years ago, 'Up Um', meaning 'Up Home' - the way of speaking in the general area of the South Staffs coal-field.

As a further aside, SH, where in the Midlands do you hale from?

Graham

[MrBarnett]

It's not a list, but an equation, Gary - i.e. we need to take these in combination, not in isolation - and I reiterate the importance of bearing in mind when these phrases became commonly used by ordinary people. Some scumbag in the mid-19th century offering to "top himself" is one thing, but somebody purporting to be a late-19th century businessman being familiar with, and using, that phrase in an offhand manner is quite another.

Similarly, there was an explosion in the use of the phrase "give [someone] a call" in the 20th century with the advent of cheap, widespread telephony; a condition which did not apply in the late 19th. Of course, some people would occasionally "give someone a call" back then, but vastly more would be using the phrase on a daily (or even more frequent) basis, in the latter half of the 20th century, after phones had become ubiquitous.

Gareth,

Are you arguing that 'give (someone) a call' in the sense of pay them a visit was not in (very) common usage throughout the 19th century?

It seems it was very common. How something in common usage in a period can be considered anachronistic because it subsequently assumed a different and possibly more popular meaning is beyond me.

As for the scumbag, I doubt he coined the term himself. Clearly not a term bandied about in the drawing-rooms of polite society, but we have no idea how widespread its use was or whether a cotton merchant is likely to have come across it.

Gary

[Graham]

Sam, I'm sorry, but the expression 'give him a call' did not originate with the widespread use of the telephone. To 'call' on a person meant to visit him or her personally; i.e., to 'call' at his or her house, or office. As in, "Listen, I'll call you tomorrow", in other words I'll be tapping at your door in the morning.

The telephone in Britain came into widespread usage a good few years before one may think. After about 1884, prior to which telephones were more or less limited to business, government offices, the wealthy, and so forth, they expanded greatly into the 'private' sector. In fact, probably well before that: In Gilbert & Sullivan's operetta 'HMS Pinafore', produced in 1878, there is the line 'No telephone communicates with his cell'. And in fact W S Gilbert was one of the first private users of the telephone. Anyway, this is all by the by: I am sure that the phrase 'give me/him a call' was well established in the popular usage well before 1888, and did not originally have much to do with the telephone.

Graham

[MrBarnett]

This is what I get when I type 'give him a call' into FMP's newspaper archive.

The usage meaning 'pay him a visit' is far from occasional.



I did dig into the detail a little while back and satisfied myself that give me/him/her/them/us meaning to pay a visit was extremely common prior to the advent of the dog and bone.

[Iconoclast]

It's not a list, but an equation, Gary - i.e. we need to take these in combination, not in isolation - and I reiterate the importance of bearing in mind when these phrases became commonly used by ordinary people. Some scumbag in the mid-19th century offering to "top himself" is one thing, but somebody purporting to be a late-19th century businessman being familiar with, and using, that phrase in an offhand manner is quite another.

Similarly, there was an explosion in the use of the phrase "give [someone] a call" in the 20th century with the advent of cheap, widespread telephony; a condition which did not apply in the late 19th. Of course, some people would occasionally "give someone a call" back then, but vastly more would be using the phrase on a daily (or even more frequent) basis, in the latter half of the 20th century, after phones had become ubiquitous.

So that's still two out of four out of the equation, Sam.

Someone with a phone back in a time when the expression "give her a call" was a known possibility could clearly have used the expression in his journal to mean either definition that we are now familiar with and really shouldn't be slipped into an equation, however fanciful that equation may ultimately be.

Talking about equations, the Maybrick case is full of utterly unlikely eventualities should Maybrick have been innocent so I'd avoid resorting to any sort of maths to back up the case against him, I really wouldn't.

[Herlock Sholmes]

It's not a colloquialism at all, SH. 'Cog' is self-explanatory, a gear-wheel, and 'ayver' is merely a local pronunciation of the word 'heaver'. Which around the old West Midlands meant not merely pulling at something, pardon the expression, but also hitting, or whacking, something. As in, "E day orf gie the bugger a bloody good ayver, day 'e?" Meaning, he didn't half hit him hard.

As an aside, I'm a Brummie, not Black Country, and there is a huge difference in accents between those parts of the world. In fact, Black Country is, or was, more of a dialect than an accent. Don't know if you ever read 'The Canterbury Tales' in the original, SH, but there are some similarities between Chaucer's language and Black Country. I still get a real kick listening to, preferably, an older person speaking Black Country. Or, as it used to be called years ago, 'Up Um', meaning 'Up Home' - the way of speaking in the general area of the South Staffs coal-field.

As a further aside, SH, where in the Midlands do you hale from?

Graham

Wednesbury originally then West Bromwich.

My grandad was a real Black Country man from Tipton. I took a girlfriend home to meet him once. She was from Slough. I had to interpret. It was quite funny. His accent was about as broad as you can get.

[Graham]

Wednesbury originally then West Bromwich.

My grandad was a real Black Country man from Tipton. I took a girlfriend home to meet him once. She was from Slough. I had to interpret. It was quite funny. His accent was about as broad as you can get.

My wife, whose family originated in Ireland, was from West Bromwich. Her mother still had a broad Dublin accent. Working as I did in the foundry trade for a number of years, I knew Wednesbury quite well. It's much the same as it ever was. I always thought that the absolutely typical and top Black Country accent was from around Sedgley. I was born in Handsworth, and lived in the area until I got married.

Even though I lived and worked overseas for a good few years, I never lost my Brummie accent, and don't care who knows!

Graham

[Sam Flynn]

This is what I get when I type 'give him a call' into FMP's newspaper archive.

The usage meaning 'pay him a visit' is far from occasional.

I daresay, but it's not unlikely that the diarist was reflexively using a phrase which we wouldn't think twice about using because we're the Nth generation to use telephones to "give someone a call" several times a day.

The use of the casual expression to "give someone a call" became more familiar and frequently used in the age of telephony than previously before; in a similar manner in which the words "keyboard" and "screen" became more widely used by ordinary people since the advent of the home computer. Hell, even though the word's been used for about a millennium, I'll bet you that "mouse" is more frequently on the minds - and lips - of ordinary people these days, for the same reason.

Please bear in mind that I'm talking about probabilities, not absolutes - and, as I keep pointing out, we have to consider the compound likelihood of more than one such phrase occurring in the same short text. Singling out one phrase is missing the point.

[Herlock Sholmes]

My wife, whose family originated in Ireland, was from West Bromwich. Her mother still had a broad Dublin accent. Working as I did in the foundry trade for a number of years, I knew Wednesbury quite well. It's much the same as it ever was. I always thought that the absolutely typical and top Black Country accent was from around Sedgley. I was born in Handsworth, and lived in the area until I got married.

Even though I lived and worked overseas for a good few years, I never lost my Brummie accent, and don't care who knows!

Graham

I was a foundry man myself for years.

A have a couple of Brummie mates, from Yardley and Erdington. I’ve tried for years to explain that the word ‘year’ isn’t pronounced ‘yer’ but with no luck

[MrBarnett]

I daresay, but it's not unlikely that the diarist was reflexively using a phrase which we wouldn't think twice about using because we're the Nth generation to use telephones to "give someone a call" several times a day.

The use of the casual expression to "give someone a call" became more familiar and frequently used in the age of telephony than previously before; in a similar manner in which the words "keyboard" and "screen" became more widely used by ordinary people since the advent of the home computer. Hell, even though the word's been used for about a millennium, I'll bet you that "mouse" is more frequently on the minds - and lips - of ordinary people these days, for the same reason.

Please bear in mind that I'm talking about probabilities not absolutes - and, as I keep pointing out, we have to consider the compound likelihood of more than one such phrase occurring in the same short text. Singling out one phrase is missing the point.

So, using your logic, if the diarist had mentioned a mouse, that would have been further evidence of the diary being modern?

You have provided us with just 4 examples of what you believe are anachronisms. Two were demonstrably in use in the LVP - one so common in print that it was probably used orally thousands of times a day across the country. The use of topping to mean hanging appears in dictionaries of Victorian criminal slang. Perhaps our alleged diarist moved in such refined circles that such street language never came to his ears.

Let's not forget the question in the title of this thread. We are looking for a single knock-out blow, not a handful of slaps that in combination might sting a bit.

[Iconoclast]

So, using your logic, if the diarist had mentioned a mouse, that would have been further evidence of the diary being modern?

You have provided us with just 4 examples of what you believe are anachronisms. Two were demonstrably in use in the LVP - one so common in print that it was probably used orally thousands of times a day across the country. The use of topping to mean hanging appears in dictionaries of Victorian criminal slang. Perhaps our alleged diarist moved in such refined circles that such street language never came to his ears.

Let's not forget the question in the title of this thread. We are looking for a single knock-out blow, not a handful of slaps that in combination might sting a bit.

Excellently put, Mr MrBarnett!

Sam, the lack of firm evidence to support the use of the four linguistic 'anachronisms' you cite should not be categorically confused with clear evidence of a modern authorship. They simply are not strong enough in themselves.

Other than that, there is no deluge of evidence to support the journal as hoax. Passers-by come on here and mention that the handwriting isn't Maybrick's, as though we have a back catalogue of handwriting of those alive in the LVP who happen to be writing for their own eyes, whilst high on arsenic and pumped-up with the shedding of innocent blood.

Some part-timers come on briefly and mention that they don't like that it was written in a 'scrapbook' (it was leather-bound, for goodness sake - let's drop the scrapbook illusion), that it had pages torn out at the front, that Maybrick would have used a proper diary, etc..

You get people who persistently - wilfully? - mention the Poste House non-issue, and the fact that the author got Kelly's breasts wrong. You get people saying that 'tin match box empty' showed that the author copied from Fido and others in 1987.

But none of it has stickiness. None of it ever cripples the journal.

The reality is that science places both the journal and the watch at a point in history where a modern forger was not even a gleam in their father's eye. The ink was laid down as early as 1909 under normal conditions, and it is a Victorian ink. The scratches in the watch were made 'many tens of years ago' even in 1992. So we cannot have a modern forger. The technology and the technical skills required to create the illusion of great age in these documents would mean that the forger would have to be highly-skilled at their art and anyone so skilled would already be known to the police (in any age).

Then so much of Maybrick's life just neatly fits with the known facts around the case, the journal makes reference to details which either were not known pre-1987 or which would never have been researched before being wrtten.

The journal fits with the rhymes sent to the police, with the letters, with the photofits, with the postcards, with the GSG. The person whose family is said to have owned the journal just happened to have links right back to the Maybrick household and they had the same name which Florrie used on her release from prison.

Honestly, I could go on, but for now I shall leave it at that.

The journal is the real deal, and no amount of bleating and naysaying is going to change that. It's a one-off. It's Jack the Ripper's journal.

[Graham]

Hi Ike,

Then so much of Maybrick's life just neatly fits with the known facts around the case, the journal makes reference to details which either were not known pre-1987 or which would never have been researched before being wrtten

.

What details precisely?

And I think you are wrong to accept the handwriting as Maybrick's; it is simply nothing like the genuine examples of his handwriting that have come down to us, no matter what Anna Koren might have thought.

As to the watch, has it ever been proved that there is a definite connection between this and the Diary? Kind of like chicken and egg.....

Graham

[Harry D]

The journal fits with the rhymes sent to the police, with the letters, with the photofits, with the postcards, with the GSG.

...or they're in keeping with the long line of hoaxers who wrote to the police & media claiming to be the killer.

[Sam Flynn]

Sam, the lack of firm evidence to support the use of the four linguistic 'anachronisms' you cite should not be categorically confused with clear evidence of a modern authorship. They simply are not strong enough in themselves.

My argument, which I stand by, is that they are more than strong enough in combination.