One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[Iconoclast]

The writing is lame, formulaic and repetitious, with even the grammar leaving a lot to be desired - the author doesn't even know when to use "me" or "I" properly.

Seriously, Sam, I can't believe you have used the language's most common misunderstanding (possibly up there ahead of the grocer's apostrophe) as a case against authenticity. Why could James Maybrick not have misunderstood the 'You-and-I'-'You-and-me' distinction (or indeed any writer in the late 1980s, early 1990s) when more or less the entire English-speaking world makes the same mistake?

I once employed someone who insisted to me that - grammatically - you could use either form and you would be correct! It is so badly understood that you will find this error cropping up in all walks of life and in all social circles and therefore its misuse in the scrapbook simply has no relevance whatsoever.

And, Purkis, I think you are absolutely spot-on about the 'tone' of the scrapbook. It is the least likely hoax I could ever imagine and - in that regard - if it is a hoax it is a smply brilliant one.

Ike

[Purkis]

The writing is lame, formulaic and repetitious, with even the grammar leaving a lot to be desired - the author doesn't even know when to use "me" or "I" properly.

I disagree, but that aside, you're critiquing it as a work of creative fiction made for public consumption as opposed to the delusional ramblings of a disintegrating mind.

[Sam Flynn]

I disagree, but that aside, you're critiquing it as a work of creative fiction made for public consumption as opposed to the delusional ramblings of a disintegrating mind.

It works in neither capacity as far as I'm concerned, and I'm making no assumptions one way or another about its purpose. Whichever way I look at the text, it's sheer doggerel from start to finish - and I don't just mean the risible attempts at poetry.

[Iconoclast]

It works in neither capacity as far as I'm concerned, and I'm making no assumptions one way or another about its purpose. Whichever way I look at the text, it's sheer doggerel from start to finish - and I don't just mean the risible attempts at poetry.

Your position - once again - confuses me, Sam.

Are you saying that the "risible attempts at poetry" are too risible for a cotton merchant or not risible enough? You have mentioned this so often down the years that it must be more to you than simply 'risible' in its own right. If James Maybrick - a cotton merchant not otherwise known for his poetic skills, unlike his famous brother - wrote 'risible' poetry, what do you care? And if a hoaxer in the late 1980s wrote 'risible' poetry, what do you care? How does the risibility of the doggerel give us any insight at all into the authenticity (or not) of the work? Is it not the case that you so frequently cite irrelevancies such as the 'risibility' of the text in an attempt to flesh out what is deep down a very weak argument you keep putting forward? You know - more words must equal more fact?

By the way, I'm not attacking you here, Sam, merely the relevance of your oft-repeated argument.

Ike

[drstrange169]

>> ... as opposed to the delusional ramblings of a disintegrating mind.<<

Like Michael Barrett?

[harry]

The so called diary purports to be a confession of guilt,That is how we should treat it.Confessions to murder are investigated by police.They are the ones that give a decision as to whether the confession warrants further action. This would hold true whether the confessor was alive or dead.Have police authenticated the confession?Also,as it is a case of murder,then the' Proven beyond a reasonable doubt',should be the standard needed.

[Iconoclast]

The so called diary purports to be a confession of guilt,That is how we should treat it.Confessions to murder are investigated by police.They are the ones that give a decision as to whether the confession warrants further action. This would hold true whether the confessor was alive or dead.Have police authenticated the confession?Also,as it is a case of murder,then the' Proven beyond a reasonable doubt',should be the standard needed.

You think the police should arbitrate here - 130 years after the crimes? I think they closed their enquiries a while ago. So of course the police have not authenticated the confession. There is no need for a proven-beyond-reasonable-doubt as the case will never again be investigated by the police. The ‘so-called’ diary is a scrapbook and it reveals to the world that James Maybrick was Jack the Ripper. The scrapbook and the watch and the endless circumstantial evidence demonstrate this to be true beyond any reasonable doubt.

[Iconoclast]

I think I am going to take my leave of the Crazies Thread for a while. Their argument that the Victorian scrapbook was not written by James Maybrick is a perfectly reasonable one, though one hugely challenged by the sophistication and complexity of its contents, by the existence of the scrapbook itself and the watch which point so directly at James Maybrick, and - of course - all of the truly remarkable circumstantial evidence which time and time again seems determined to point to James Maybrick as Jack the Ripper. Just by way of example of how disconcerting the scrapbook-disbelievers' position is, when someone can write the word 'panic' twice (in separate places) in its archaic Victorian form ('panick') and this can be discarded (cf. 'Ol Big 'Ead Lord Orsam) as a simple error (I'm sure that - like me - you constantly make that mistake yourselves?), you absolutely know that you are never going to produce anything (whatsoever) that the disbelievers will ever consider even briefly before discarding. I think if Lord Shiva himself came down to earth and pronounced that James Maybrick was Jack the Ripper, these people would cuss and howl, splutter, bluff, and bluster long enough to wear the great Spirit's spirit down.

This thread is all about one incontrovertible, unequivocal, undeniable fact which refutes the scrapbook and - to date - we have all of the evidence pointing at authenticity, and only a single proffered categorical disproof, 'Ol Big 'Ead's 'one off instance', an expression which apparently could not be used in 1888/89 because Lord Orsam couldn't find the equivalent expression used again until the early 1980s. This early 1980s instance was in a published work, therefore in print. Evidently, the good Lord had reviewed every single written document and letter from 1888 to the early 1980s to check that the expression had not been used colloquially or informally in the years in and around the late Victorian period. Apparently he could exclude even those which had long been destroyed (I'm not sure how he did that, but I'm sure he researched it somehow in the dark recesses of the internet in the dark recesses of his dilapidated Chigwell semi). So we have to accept that for now his claim has not been contradicted.

In contrast, we have the overwhelming case against James Maybrick which I detailed so brilliantly in my brilliant Society's Pillar. I shall soon be reviewing OBH's thoroughly catty response to my brilliant work soon enough, but I feel that I can confidently say now that it will be full to the brim of cussing and howling, spluttering, bluff, and bluster to keep me occupied until the early 2080s with just the same tired story at the end of it - that 'one off instance' proves the scrapbook to be a hoax. Yawn yawn.

But even if it were a hoax, it was never ever at the hands of Michael Barrett, sometime semi-literate scrap metal dealer who somehow or other got some celebrity interviews and crosswords in to the Sparky comic during the 1980s. Or was it Buster? I myself in the 1970s (when I was about 13) got a letter published in an edition of the Sparky. I can still remember my joy at realising that my status in society had suddenly escalated so high. Ever since that day, this has rightly given me grounds to announce myself a published author even though I wasn't as an ambitious adult even able to become a semi-literate ex-scrap metal dealer. I know that so many of the insightful commentators on the Crazies Thread would agree with me on this critical point, for they have escalated Mad Mike Barrett to the same pedestal on the strength of his Pulitzer contributions which his secretary wife apparently 'had to tidy up' for him (an act which apparently gave her the same Pulitzer status as her hubby).

Graham, my favourite tipple at present is a wonderful beer called 1698 so perhaps you'll raise a glass of it to me tonight (sorry I missed your question yesterday), especially so if the Villa see off the Hammers tonight.

I can't (for now) keep up the pretence that the Crazies Thread has any merit, so I shall leave it for you all to squabble over. If you ever get tired of it too, you will always know where to find me ...

Your Leader, Inspiration, and Comforter,

Ike Iconoclast
Man of the People
Cleverness Architect

[Graham]

Ike,

indeed I shall scour our local booze emporium for a bottle or so of Shepherd-Neame 1698, and down it or them to you memory and honour. I can't convince myself that Maybrick wrote the Diary, but I'm damn certain the Barretts didn't. You have defended yourself (and others) splendidly and with devotion and courage against the two-dimensionalism which is so prevalent on these boards, and you have stuck to your beliefs.

Actually, I think I'll make that three bottles of 1698.

ATB,

Graham

[Iconoclast]

As I say, I have dispensed with commenting on the Crazies Thread, but I cannot ignore this strangest of citations by someone quoting from 'Ol Big 'Ead himself on the subject of the letter which contained the only written reference to Gladys' regular ill health which a hoaxer could have used when constructing their hoax. The argument is dealt with as follows:

Gladys Unwell Again

Robert Smith notes a number of features of the Diary which he thinks that a modern forger could not have known which, according to him, shows the Diary is a genuine document. I won't deal with all of them but will select the most important examples for comment.

Probably the most important is the entry in the Diary that says:
'My dearest Gladys is unwell yet again.'

Smith refers us to Shirley Harrison who tells us that the only source for Gladys being unwell 'again' is a letter from Margaret Baillie to Florence Maybrick dated 13 April 1889 which contains the sentence 'I'm sorry that your little girl has been unwell again'. Thus, Harrison says confidently in her 2010 book, 'The Diary of Jack the Ripper - The Chilling Confessions of James Maybrick':
'There is no other source for the information that Gladys was repeatedly sick.'

The Margaret Baillie letter is in a file in the National Archives and, it is claimed, was never made public or published prior to March 1992 apart from by J.H. Levy who, we are told (by Harrison), 'transcribed' the sentence incorrectly so that it reads 'I am sorry about your little girl'.

In point of fact, Levy transcribed nothing because that Margaret Baillie letter of 13 April 1889 was read out in its entirety by counsel for the prosecution at Florence's trial on 31 July 1889, and the exact same line, i.e. 'I'm sorry about your little girl', was published in both the Liverpool Echo of 31 July 1889 and the Liverpool Daily Post of 1 August 1889 when reporting the opening speech. As we shall see, the error was not made by the prosecution counsel but by the reporter for the Liverpool Echo and Daily Post (who appears to have been the same person). Levy was simply repeating this error when he published a transcript of the trial, as did H.B. Irving in his own reproduction of the trial transcript in 1912 within the Notable Trials series.

...

You can read the rest of this information here: https://www.orsam.co.uk/maybrickthefalsefacts.htm It covers the "Sir Jim" issue and many others, but like I said, maybe some would prefer to simply ignore it.

How anyone can ignore the fact that the diary contains factual errors, both literary and historical, is beyond me, but I guess I'm not a policeman, so what would I know? I'm just a bloke applying critical thinking, something I thought they did in the police, Occam's Razor, and all that. There's an abundance of evidence pointing towards hoax, and virtually none pointing to "genuine," but hey-ho, whatever floats your boat, innit.

Where I am struggling (and struggled when I glanced briefly at Orsam's original) is understanding what relevance the source of Levy's error provides. So James Maybrick writes "My dearest Gladys is unwell yet again" in the scrapbook in 1888 and this is NOT supported in the transcribed newspaper versions after the Baillie Knight letter is read out during the trial. Levy then correctly copies the newspapers' errors a few years later (when he ends the transcription 'I'm sorry about your little girl') and that is an end to it until a hundred years later when the original document is accessed (by Shirley Harrison or Keith Skinner or whomsoever) and it turns out that what she actually wrote ("I'm sorry that your little girl has been unwell again") is EXACTLY what James Maybrick implied in 1888 when he wrote "My dearest Gladys is unwell yet again" and which no common or garden hoaxer from Goldie Street could have realistically accessed when constructing their brilliant hoax one wet weekeknd post-1987.

Let's just do that one again:

1888 - Maybrick writes "My dearest Gladys is unwell yet again" in his Victorian scrapbook (because - as it turns out - she is unwell a lot)
1889 - Baillie Knight writes in a letter to Florrie "I'm sorry that your little girl has been unwell again"
1889 - The Baillie Knight letter is read out at Florrie's sham trial
1889 - Two newspapers transcribe the key line as "'I am sorry about your little girl"
1894 - Levy publishes the Baillie Knight letter but uses the newspapers' erroneous version (which states "I am sorry about your little girl")
1992 - The Victorian scrapbook turns up
1992 - Someone researches the Baillie Knight letter and find that it actually stated "I'm sorry that your little girl has been unwell again"
1992 - Someone who needs as little as a tenth of a brain (but presumably has considerably more) realises that this supports the notion that the Victorian scrapbook is actually James Maybrick's scrapbook and publishes the fact
2019 - Certain individuals think that the above somehow supports the notion that the Victorian scrapbook is a hoax

Honestly. This is why I need to review 'Ol Big 'Ead's internet artcles to see how many more non sequiturs are out there confusing certain people.

Ike

[rjpalmer]

1889 - Two newspapers transcribe the key line as "'I am sorry about your little girl"

Hi Ike. Excuse me for asking, but did you even read Lord Orsam's essay?

He posted excerpts from both the Liverpool Courier and the Liverpool Mercury for 1 August 1889, and both papers reprinted the letter in its entirety, stating

"I am sorry your little girl has been ill again."

Please, go look again.

As devastating as this is to Smith's argument, Lord O's main point was that this actually suggests that the diarist had the chronology wrong!

The only known instance of Gladys being ill for a second time (ie, after her dose of whooping cough in infancy) dates to March 1889 (alluded to in the afore mentioned letter, in Ryan, 1977, and elsewhere) whereas Maybrick is already stating this as a fact in an entry at the beginning of the diary (ie., spring 1888)!

All of which leaves Lord O to ponder Maybrick's psychic abilities.

(I, too, have pondered these strange powers, for Maybrick also seems to have the remarkable ability to accurately quote statements that wouldn't be made until several months after his own death, during his widow's murder trial)

I have a humble suggestion. Have a cool drink, gather your wits, and re-read the essay...slowly. I'm confident your struggles will subside. If you can make heads and tails out Feldy's bizarre and complex genealogical musings, you can follow this. cheers.

[Iconoclast]

Hi Ike. Excuse me for asking, but did you even read Lord Orsam's essay?
I have a humble suggestion. Have a cool drink, gather your wits, and re-read the essay...slowly. I'm confident your struggles will subside. If you can make heads and tails out Feldy's bizarre and complex genealogical musings, you can follow this. cheers.

Nope, I haven't read it yet - not properly anyway - but certainly plan to do so and plan to respond where appropriate in the brilliant Society's Pillar, just to flesh the latter out a bit.

In the meantime, riddle me this one: If Gladys was born in July 1885, did she not have almost three whole years of vulnerable life in which to occasionally be ill in order for her father to write in his scrapbook in approximately April 1888 "My dearest Gladys is unwell yet again"? And if you would agree that that were so, would Margaret Baillie Knight not therefore have almost a whopping four years to have decided to comment "I am sorry your little girl has been ill again" in what was presumably a reply to a letter from Florrie in which she absolutely must have said that Gladys was unwell again? Probably just like that in fact.

Trying to make sniping gains from false suggestions that Maybrick had to be psychic in roughly March 1888 to pre-empt Baillie Knight's comment of April 1889 is beneath us, though so little seems to be on this Casebook.

Let's just do that one again:

1885 - Gladys is born (July 20)
1888 - Gladys has been regularly unwell but no-one thinks to tell her mother's biographers in a time capsule to be opened in around 1957 by Nigel Morland
1888 - Maybrick writes "My dearest Gladys is unwell yet again" in his Victorian scrapbook (because that's what's been happening)
1889 - Florrie mentions in a letter to Margaret Baillie Knight that little Gladys has been unwell again (is there any other way she might have said it???)
1889 - Baillie Knight writes in a letter to Florrie "I'm sorry that your little girl has been unwell again"
1992 - James Maybrick finally gets around to revealing to us that Gladys was a regularly unwell child
1992 - Margaret Baillie Knight finally gets around to confirming it for us
1992 - The ghosts of Morland, Christie, and the other bloke turn in their graves and say "Bollocks - no-one told us"
2019 - Lord 'Bonkers to the Last' Orsam imagines that this makes Maybrick psychic
2019 - I pretty much give up the will to live

Ike

[Mike J. G.]

Nope, I haven't read it yet - not properly anyway
Ike

Says it all, really. Claims to be able to refute the information, yet hasn't even actually read said information. And some people think you're not taking the mick? lol.

[Iconoclast]

Says it all, really. Claims to be able to refute the information, yet hasn't even actually read said information. And some people think you're not taking the mick? lol.

It was astonishingly easy to 'refute the information'. You posted it, for goodness sake!

In the highly unlikely event that Orsam has posted anything which resonates, I will incorporate it into Society's Pillar. I'm not expecting to find anything new from him so I doubt I am missing anything earth-shattering. I have much else to review before I get around to Orsam. I read about 20+ books when writing SP (or was it more?, I've lost count - don't know why I appear to be asking you though, you haven't read it, and little else about Maybrick besides I believe) so I shan't be taking any lessons in erudition (nor indeed in mickey-taking) from you any time soon. The good news for me is that I'm better at both than you are. When I have the time to read Orsam's internet articles, I will do so. I'll do it at my own pace, when I feel like it, even if the time I take provides really cheap ammunition for characters like you whose principal argument is that pro-scrapbookers are wind-up merchants, trolls, and mickey-takers. Water off a duck's back, mate, but it would be wonderful one day if you could contribute something useful to the Casebook rather than your caustic unpleasantness.

[Mike J. G.]

It was astonishingly easy to 'refute the information'. You posted it, for goodness sake!

In the highly unlikely event that Orsam has posted anything which resonates, I will incorporate it into Society's Pillar. I'm not expecting to find anything new from him so I doubt I am missing anything earth-shattering. I have much else to review before I get around to Orsam. I read about 20+ books when writing SP (or was it more?, I've lost count - don't know why I appear to be asking you though, you haven't read it, and little else about Maybrick besides I believe) so I shan't be taking any lessons in erudition (nor indeed in mickey-taking) from you any time soon. The good news for me is that I'm better at both than you are. When I have the time to read Orsam's internet articles, I will do so. I'll do it at my own pace, when I feel like it, even if the time I take provides really cheap ammunition for characters like you whose principal argument is that pro-scrapbookers are wind-up merchants, trolls, and mickey-takers. Water off a duck's back, mate, but it would be wonderful one day if you could contribute something useful to the Casebook rather than your caustic unpleasantness.

No, I merely posted a couple of paragraphs, which you've not actually refuted, seeing as how you've not seen the bulk of the information which the couple of paragraphs were taken from.

You create a thread asking for One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary, David Orsam actually gave you not one, but several, and you blather on about how you're too busy to read it, because you're ironically and admittedly too busy reading 20+ books with which you seek to reinforce your beliefs in the diary being genuine. Funny, that.

You've created so many threads on this subject, and boldly ask for evidence for the hoax, yet when you're offered it you totally dodge it and smugly act like you know what is contained therein when you demonstrably do not, lol. Again, funny, that.

You've proudly read many books on the subject, yet you still believe it to be genuine, and you act like that's somehow admirable. It's like saying you've investigated leprechauns for a decade and you believe them to be real. One needs only an afternoon to understand how the "diary" is a complete mess of errors, but like I've said before, ignorance is bliss, and fantasy seems to be the only goal here.