One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[Sam Flynn]

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.

Buy everyday, ordinary people? I doubt that very much. It would take quite some time for all four phrases to become so familiar that ONE PERSON would use them within a few pages of one another.

I also think you've got entirely the wrong end of the stick apropos "give her a call", but I'll leave it rest because I'm obviously failing to get the nuances of my point across in words.

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.

They do more than "sting a bit", Gary, and I'll thank you for not trivialising my honest and sincere arguments as "a handful of slaps". If you want to understand where I'm coming from, google "Drake Equation" or "Bayes' Theorem".

[Abby Normal]

Buy everyday, ordinary people? I doubt that very much. It would take quite some time for all four phrases to become so familiar that ONE PERSON would use them within a few pages of one another.

I also think you've got entirely the wrong end of the stick apropos "give her a call", but I'll leave it rest because I'm obviously failing to get the nuances of my point across in words.
They do more than "sting a bit", Gary, and I'll thank you for not trivialising my honest and sincere arguments as "a handful of slaps". If you want to understand where I'm coming from, google "Drake Equation" or "Bayes' Theorem".

Indeed sam
I dont know if its got a name, but there is a statistical method that shows that when you have several data points, even if individually they may be common (or not)the more you have together the liklihood or not goes up (or down)exponentially the more you have.

The example if i remember correctly was an ossuary that had the inscription: jesus, son of joseph, brother of james. Now all three names were very common back then, but taken together the number of jesuses it could have been was incredibly small. Much smaller than people originally thought just taken at face value.

[Graham]

Everything we're discussing here has been discussed and debated on this and other Forums ad nauseam for yonks, but I suppose the debate fuels itself and will continue. I hope it does, actually.

The first time I read a transcript of the Diary, my immediate reaction was that it seemed to have been penned by a modern person with not much in the way of literary ability, and who was trying to 'sound Victorian'. Like the duff script-writers in the early days of ITV when they were trying to match the quality of the BBC's classic serials (well, most of them, at any rate). And that feeling is still with me, I'm afraid.

I think it's a serious error to imagine that people in the Victorian era spoke very differently to ourselves here in the 21st century. Certainly, there were differences, bound to be, but I honestly believe that if we were able to time-travel back to 1888 we could understand, and be understood by, just about anyone we encountered, so long as neither they nor us used the jargon of the time. And this is where I feel the Diary falls down. Just one example: I took refreshment. OK, now be honest: has anyone used, or heard anyone else use, this phrase? One might say 'I went for a drink' or 'I had a drink', but not even I feel in 1888 would many folk have said or even written, I took refreshment. I'll be shot down over this, I know I will.

I have hand-written family correspondence going back to about 1885, and most of it could have been written by a modern person - except most 'modern persons' no longer have the same level of literacy shown in these family letters.

I think the Diary has to be regarded in a very, very cold light. Under which, in my view, it just doesn't strike real.

Graham

[MrBarnett]

Buy everyday, ordinary people? I doubt that very much. It would take quite some time for all four phrases to become so familiar that ONE PERSON would use them within a few pages of one another.

I also think you've got entirely the wrong end of the stick apropos "give her a call", but I'll leave it rest because I'm obviously failing to get the nuances of my point across in words.
They do more than "sting a bit", Gary, and I'll thank you for not trivialising my honest and sincere arguments as "a handful of slaps". If you want to understand where I'm coming from, google "Drake Equation" or "Bayes' Theorem".

Throughout the period butchers, bakers, candlestick-makers et al invited the public to 'give them a call' in the sense of pay them a visit at their business premises. Would their appeals have gone unnoticed by 'ordinary, everday people'? Perhaps you can explain what you mean by that.

You didn't answer my question about the mouse btw. Is it the case that the word would be used more today when most people have a few of the electronic gizmos in the house or in the past when many (most?) people shared their lives with vermin?

[Abby Normal]

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.

cmon Gary
the title of the thread is nonsensical. the only things in life that there is "One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact" to prove something one way or another are math/physics/science. In the realm were discussing theres DNA and photo evidence, but even that can be disputed depending on context. Its also history which throws in another level of uncertainty.

one has to in situations like these look at a number of factors to determine veracity and liklihoods. there will never be one thing.


Heres two things-the friggen forger admitted he did it and its not in maybricks handwriting and yet still here we are.


either one of these should seal the deal its fake-add to it tin matchbox empty and one off instance and its a dam unicorn.

[MrBarnett]

Indeed sam
I dont know if its got a name, but there is a statistical method that shows that when you have several data points, even if individually they may be common (or not)the more you have together the liklihood or not goes up (or down)exponentially the more you have.

The example if i remember correctly was an ossuary that had the inscription: jesus, son of joseph, brother of james. Now all three names were very common back then, but taken together the number of jesuses it could have been was incredibly small. Much smaller than people originally thought just taken at face value.

So here we have two phrases demonstrably used in the 19th century and two possibly not. And that proves irrefutably that the diary was not written in the 19th century?

I've got a book about the 'Jesus ossuary', I'll dig it out.

[MrBarnett]

cmon Gary
the title of the thread is nonsensical. the only things in life that there is "One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact" to prove something one way or another are math/physics/science. In the realm were discussing theres DNA and photo evidence, but even that can be disputed depending on context. Its also history which throws in another level of uncertainty.

one has to in situations like these look at a number of factors to determine veracity and liklihoods. there will never be one thing.


Heres two things-the friggen forger admitted he did it and its not in maybricks handwriting and yet still here we are.


either one of these should seal the deal its fake-add to it tin matchbox empty and one off instance and its a dam unicorn.

Abbey,

I don't believe for a minute that the diary was written by Maybrick the Ripper. But when the Victorian newspapers are awash with the phrase 'give xyz a call' I just don't get how the use of that phrase argues against it having been produced in that period.

You could use that logic to claim that Shakespeare's plays were written in the late 20th century.

Gary

[rjpalmer]

Icon: The Maybrick Diary failed the biggest test of all: the smell test. Impossible to define, but you know it when you smell it.

If Mr.Barnett or someone else wants to try and find an example of "one off" in the Outer Mongolian Journal of Engineering for 1877, good enough, but it won't help.

Mere suspicion...even one or two 'slaps'...is often good enough for historians/collectors to give a questioned document a wide berth. There's a draft copy of the Gettysburg Address that was rejected because the paper was folded in an odd manner, suggesting it may have been cut from a larger sheet. Other than that, the handwriting, the ink, etc., look pretty good.

That single strange little fold was enough to fail the smell test. That and the fact that the bloke bought it off a guy that died shortly afterwards and thus couldn't be questioned (sound familiar?)

Seems unfair, don't it? A little fold seems quaint compared to the many oddities we see in the Maybrick Diary.

And to Herlock: an expert was already consulted. Her name was Dr. Kate Flint, a lecturer in Victorian and modern literature at Oxford. She didn't think the language of the Diary sounded Victorian. She cited 'one off,' but I suspect it was the whole package, not this or that particular phrase.

Anyway, Icon is just winding us up. The idea of this thread is to frame the conversation so we have to come up with just one single argument. Icon can then try to gnaw a moth-hole in that argument.

No thanks. It's the whole dreaded holistic presentation, the hard-to-define 'smell test' that is what truly delivers the knock-out punch. And smelling salts won't get the boxer back on his feet.

[Abby Normal]

Abbey,

I don't believe for a minute that the diary was written by Maybrick the Ripper. But when the Victorian newspapers are awash with the phrase 'give xyz a call' I just don't get how the use of that phrase argues against it having been produced in that period.

You could use that logic to claim that Shakespeare's plays were written in the late 20th century.

Gary

Hi Gary
you totally sidestepped the main gist of my post.

I agree-give her a call was used back then. I was wrong about that one-I admit it.

re Shakespeare-what? uh--no.

[MrBarnett]

Icon: The Maybrick Diary failed the biggest test of all: the smell test. Impossible to define, but you know it when you smell it.

If Mr.Barnett or someone else wants to try and find an example of "one off" in the Outer Mongolian Journal of Engineering for 1877, good enough, but it won't help.

Mere suspicion...even one or two 'slaps'...is often good enough for historians/collectors to give a questioned document a wide berth. There's a draft copy of the Gettysburg Address that was rejected because the paper was folded in an odd manner, suggesting it may have been cut from a larger sheet. Other than that, the handwriting, the ink, etc., look pretty good.

That single strange little fold was enough to fail the smell test. That and the fact that the bloke bought it off a guy that died shortly afterwards and thus couldn't be questioned (sound familiar?)

Seems unfair, don't it? A little fold seems quaint compared to the many oddities we see in the Maybrick Diary.

And to Herlock: an expert was already consulted. Her name was Dr. Kate Flint, a lecturer in Victorian and modern literature at Oxford. She didn't think the language of the Diary sounded Victorian. She cited 'one off,' but I suspect it was the whole package, not this or that particular phrase.

Anyway, Icon is just winding us up. The idea of this thread is to frame the conversation so we have to come up with just one single argument. Icon can then try to gnaw a moth-hole in that argument.

No thanks. It's the whole dreaded holistic presentation, the hard-to-define 'smell test' that is what truly delivers the knock-out punch. And smelling salts won't get the boxer back on his feet.

The diary fails my smell test, too. But so does Gareth's equation.

BTW, my point about 'give a call' was not based on an obscure reference in an Outer Mongolian technical journal, but to multiple references in newspapers throughout the country. Gareth's point seems to be that the term would have been even more familiar to someone used to using the telephone. I'd like to see the stats on that.

[Abby Normal]

Icon: The Maybrick Diary failed the biggest test of all: the smell test. Impossible to define, but you know it when you smell it.

If Mr.Barnett or someone else wants to try and find an example of "one off" in the Outer Mongolian Journal of Engineering for 1877, good enough, but it won't help.

Mere suspicion...even one or two 'slaps'...is often good enough for historians/collectors to give a questioned document a wide berth. There's a draft copy of the Gettysburg Address that was rejected because the paper was folded in an odd manner, suggesting it may have been cut from a larger sheet. Other than that, the handwriting, the ink, etc., look pretty good.

That single strange little fold was enough to fail the smell test. That and the fact that the bloke bought it off a guy that died shortly afterwards and thus couldn't be questioned (sound familiar?)

Seems unfair, don't it? A little fold seems quaint compared to the many oddities we see in the Maybrick Diary.

And to Herlock: an expert was already consulted. Her name was Dr. Kate Flint, a lecturer in Victorian and modern literature at Oxford. She didn't think the language of the Diary sounded Victorian. She cited 'one off,' but I suspect it was the whole package, not this or that particular phrase.

Anyway, Icon is just winding us up. The idea of this thread is to frame the conversation so we have to come up with just one single argument. Icon can then try to gnaw a moth-hole in that argument.

No thanks. It's the whole dreaded holistic presentation, the hard-to-define 'smell test' that is what truly delivers the knock-out punch. And smelling salts won't get the boxer back on his feet.

Bingo RJ

Its not in Maybricks handwriting
No provenance before Barret
he admitted forging it
he tried to acquire a Victorian Diary with blank pages
its got some of Annes writing quirks
The anomolies tin matchbox empty and one off instance


its a dead duck and people still pushing it obviously have some vested interest in keeping it going and or just want to beleive it for some crazy reason.

[MrBarnett]

Hi Gary
you totally sidestepped the main gist of my post.

I agree-give her a call was used back then. I was wrong about that one-I admit it.

re Shakespeare-what? uh--no.

So I did, I was hoping you hadn't noticed.

Now, if the diarist had referred to his wife as Miss Piggy, the Muppet, that would be a knock-out blow. The use of a term (give her a call) that was probably used millions of times in the LVP seems somewhat gentler. Even 'one-off' isn't a knock out. All we can say is that despite much searching by many talented researchers we haven't (yet) discovered it being used back in the day.

I'm sure old Will used the word 'Punk', didn't he?
We have far more examples of that term being used in the 20th century, so his usage presumably qualifies as anachronistic. Help me dig out few more like that and we can made a bid for the royalties.

[Abby Normal]

So I did, I was hoping you hadn't noticed.

Now, if the diarist had referred to his wife as Miss Piggy, the Muppet, that would be a knock-out blow. The use of a term (give her a call) that was probably used millions of times in the LVP seems somewhat gentler. Even 'one-off' isn't a knock out. All we can say is that despite much searching by many talented researchers we haven't (yet) discovered it being used back in the day.

I'm sure old Will used the word 'Punk', didn't he?
We have far more examples of that term being used in the 20th century, so his usage presumably qualifies as anachronistic. Help me dig out few more like that and we can made a bid for the royalties.

LOL-you got it!

[Sam Flynn]

The use of a term (give her a call) that was probably used millions of times in the LVP seems somewhat gentler.

It was used a million, million times more in the 20th century with the advent of cheap, ubiquitous telephones. It was thus a phrase which would more readily be called to mind and slipped into a sentence (or verse) by a 20th century author.

I'd contend that a Liverpool Victorian would have been unlikely to consider "giving a call" to Queen Victoria unless they were thinking in telephonic terms. I just don't think that the diarist used "give her a call" in the sense of "pay her a visit", in which sense it would almost invariably have been used in the 1880s, by simple virtue of the fact that Her Majesty lived hundreds of miles away behind heavily guarded walls. To casually mention giving her a call implies that the writer was thinking in terms of an easier mode of communication which needed to overcome neither walls nor guards; one which any 20th century author would have taken for granted, and written about without a second thought.

[MrBarnett]

It was used a million, million times more in the 20th century with the advent of cheap, ubiquitous telephones. It was thus a phrase which would more readily be called to mind and slipped into a sentence (or verse) by a 20th century author.

I'd contend that a Liverpool Victorian would have been unlikely to consider "giving a call" to Queen Victoria unless they were thinking in telephonic terms. I just don't think that the diarist used "give her a call" in the sense of "pay her a visit", in which sense it would almost invariably have been used in the 1880s, by simple virtue of the fact that Her Majesty lived hundreds of miles away behind heavily guarded walls. To casually mention giving her a call implies that the writer was thinking in terms of an easier mode of communication which needed to overcome neither walls nor guards; one which any 20th century author would have taken for granted, and written about without a second thought.

Ah, yes, I'd forgotten how easy it is to contact the monarch on the old dog and bone.

Perhaps the writer intended to give her Maj a coo-ey over the palace wall next time he was in town. That's another usage which would have been common in the LVP - to hail someone. I wonder how often it would have been used in that sense - trillions, I'd guess.