One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[Mike J. G.]

Ah - the old Mike doesn't fall far from the tree, it would seem.

How it's working out for ma is that I've just endured the rehash of a pile of scrapbook clichés which have no basis in the truth-of-things. The that-which-is-categorically-established.

I draw your attention to my brilliant Society's Pillar. I really must get around to dealing with Lord Orsam's critique - if only I had the opportunity to be home for a reasonable period of time doing little else! - but until then my finest work reflects my genius. If you've read it, it must have shaken your tree at least a little. Doesn't sound like it, does it? And yet was it not you yourself who said I had so much to say on the subject that I should write a book myself?

You don't sound as though you even recall any of that.

Ike
Still Your Pal But Drinking Buddies Once Lockdown is Over, Probably Not

What has no basis in the truth-of-things is your baseless assertion that the author of the diary made a typo when they very clearly were referring to a non-existent pub. That's the funny thing about hoaxes, they're often, despite the detailed attempt of their creators, imperfect. They fall apart on the most basic of things, Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin famously couldn't even get a fabricated story about their whereabouts straight, often contradicting one another's stories to the point of hilarity. I can list a stream of hoaxes that follow this pattern of basic human error, but somehow, I'm certain you'll ignore it, because you want the diary to be true. It's not a problem, some people believe that Coronavirus is a man-made hoax, and that the world is flat. In the grand scheme of things, believing the "diary" to be the true, written confession of James Maybrick admitting to his secret life as JtR is rather small potatoes compared to some of the absolutely ridiculous beliefs out there. So, you've always got that going for you, mate!

[Mike J. G.]

Still Your Pal But Drinking Buddies Once Lockdown is Over, Probably Not

In all seriousness, anyone who contacts me via PM on here is more than welcome to come and have a pint with me if they ever visit Liverpool, I've mentioned this before when Caz said Bruce Robinson gave me the willies with his amazingly imaginative stories about Michael Maybrick. I'm only a PM away. We can even visit my local post office for a jar!

[Iconoclast]

In all seriousness, anyone who contacts me via PM on here is more than welcome to come and have a pint with me if they ever visit Liverpool, I've mentioned this before when Caz said Bruce Robinson gave me the willies with his amazingly imaginative stories about Michael Maybrick. I'm only a PM away. We can even visit my local post office for a jar!

And similarly, anyone visiting the Poste House pub here in Whottlington-on-the-Whottle is welcome to join me in a flagon (sp?) of Maybrick's Old Peculiar.

If they're paying, obviously.

[Iconoclast]

Ike, as someone who has read some of the posts you have typed on here in the direction of others, all I can say is, don't be one of those fellas who can dish it out, but can't take it. Don't take it so seriously, Ike, we're, after all, simply chin-wagging over a piece of hilariously bad fiction.

Hey - Johnny-Come-Lately - there is no-one on this site who has faced the opprobrium and hostility that I have faced so your advice is of limited utility to me.

I've never posted while drunk, although that's a good idea, come to think of it. As someone who followed these threads for a long time before joining and posting, I just got tired of reading so much drivel, in every thread, not merely the Maybrick threads.

At least not that you can remember in the morning ...

I don't dislike anyone on here, I just sometimes find it hard to contain my genuine disbelief in some people's opinions... It's all perfectly natural, though. We're all human. Perfectly imperfect and prone to buffoonery.

We should tolerate fools gladly because - in truth - we are tolerating their foolish advice (which we don't act on) but which we all mirror at moments in most days. One of the defining features of foolishness is to disregard with slender evidence, something which I strive each day to avoid but which I have no doubt I fall pray to.

Maybe you do too in your perfectly imperfect way?

[Iconoclast]

The goal posts of this saga are forever being moved, it seems, but like in another thread, I'd like to offer a pretty glaringly obvious, incontrovertible, unequivocal, undeniable fact which refutes the "diary." It's nothing new, it's been mentioned many a time, by myself, and many other posters.

James Maybrick didn't write the diary. Simple as that. There's literally no way James Maybrick would mention having a pint in a pub that didn't exist. James Maybrick had been dead 5 years by the time the "Poste House" came into existence under that name, yet Sir Jim apparently drank there about 6 years beforehand.

I think we have resolved the 'Poste House' problem for you which I trust you are grateful for.

All of the evidence for a hoax is there before your eyes. The nonsense about nobody knowing or having access to certain information in the "diary" was absolutely rubbished by David Orsom, yet again this was brushed aside. The "diary" isn't old, and we already know that hoaxed diaries have been faked, and falsely aged, the Mussolini diaries, for example.

Is this the same Lord David Orsam who dismissed the letters 'F' and 'M' which can be seen by so many of us so clearly on Kelly's wall as simply not being there?

In his response to my brilliant Society's Pillar, he states that he - and for all we know he alone! - has seen the original photograph and - lo and behold - the letters aren't there. To this he adds something along the lines of "So there you have it".

Well, if only science were so straightforward. I don't appear to have any symptoms of that coronavirus thing so it mustn't exist. "So there you have it" - everyone off to the beach!

By the way, is that the same fellow who argued that - although some 35,000+ days had passed since Maybrick's death during which there was not a single piece of evidence that the floorboards in Battlecrease House had been lifted - the odds of their being lifted on March 9, 1992 (the same day that Mike Barrett contacted Doreen Montgomery about his still-wet manuscript) were just 1 in 18!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!?????????

For the record (and ignoring Sundays for convenience), the odds of that happening are 1 in however-many-days-had-passed-since-he-died - which would be 1 in 35,000+, then. Most statisticians have wet dreams about such evidence.

[Iconoclast]

I'm not sure where you're getting this information regarding the pub not being known as the Muck Midden from, but it's simply not grounded in any form of reality. The pub became known as the Poste House in 1894.

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. (Thank you Martin Fido, Maybrick video.)

The rather desperate interpretation of what you think the author actually meant is nothing short of silly, Ike.

Ouch. That really hurt.

[Iconoclast]

In the grand scheme of things, believing the "diary" to be the true, written confession of James Maybrick admitting to his secret life as JtR is rather small potatoes compared to some of the absolutely ridiculous beliefs out there. So, you've always got that going for you, mate!

I agree with you that there are some seriously inane beliefs out there which frequently fly right in the face of reason:

1) All supernatural beliefs including egotistical beliefs in personal gods who talk directly to believers inside their heads - said regarding any other context, a guaranteed room in Bedlam for the duration but somehow still tolerated (many times lauded!) in this Age of Reason ("Welllllll, what else COULD it be??? Shoot that darn raccoon Martha!", said in southern drawl);
2) Belief that the Earth is flat, mainly because it feels flat in places;
3) Belief that a tree falling in an Oxford quad still makes a noise on impact even though there are no observers to hear it;
4) Belief that Sunderland AFC could ever be described with any seriousness as "the greatest team the world has ever seen/had" (do check out Series 2 of Netflix's 'Sunlan 'til I Cry' - it is the funniest six episodes of any TV since Series 1).

But - hold on a second - you seem to be arguing that crazy beliefs such as these are evidence that all beliefs you don't believe in are crazy too!

Wow.

[Harry D]

What would there be to link Maybrick to the Ripper case without the diary/watch?

[Iconoclast]

What would there be to link Maybrick to the Ripper case without the diary/watch?

Not a jot, I suspect (this has been stated before by me on this - or some associated - thread).

[caz]

All of the information regarding Maybrick drinking in the "Poste House" comes from the diary, nowhere else. Did Jim have a pint in the Muck Midden? Maybe, who knows? Did he have a pint in the Poste House? No, he was dead in 1889, 5 years before the Muck Midden became the Poste House. The pub on School lane, the Post Office Tavern, was never known locally or anywhere else as "the Poste House," literally never, unless you're desperate to keep this hoax alive, that is, and some of you are.

Hi Mike,

Wow! Hats off to your research, mate. How did you manage to determine that the original post house, which had stood on School Lane up to 1839, when Liverpool's main Post Office got relocated, leaving just the inn behind, which, by 1888, was officially listed in the directories as the Post Office Tavern, had 'literally never' been referred to by anyone in conversation as the "post house" [which sounds identical to the 'Poste House']? What, not even by anyone living round the corner in the 1830s, such as JM's father? What did you use, a ouija board?

Also, the relevant directories show that the pub once referred to in conversation as the Muck Midden, did not become the Poste House in 1894, as you stated above. It was renamed the New Post Office Hotel, in honour of the Liverpool Post Office's latest relocation, to Victoria Street, at which point the tavern on the site of the old post house on School Lane changed its name again to The Old Post Office Hotel [now simply The Old Post Office - no Tavern on the end as you stated above]. The watering hole on Cumberland Street would not acquire an e on the end of its Post, to become The Poste House, for some considerable time to come. So of course, if the diarist was referring to this one, they made a stupid and rather elementary mistake by not doing their pub names research thoroughly enough. You'd think they would have consulted the directories, wouldn't you?

People are still discussing the handwriting, why? It ain't Jim's hand, and by suggesting he was inebriated at the time of writing and thus the hand was noticeably different, all you're doing is showing how little you actually understand a person's handwriting to begin with. Any expert could spot your handwriting whether you were drunk on Special Brew, high on glue, or stone-cold sober. You still give away your identity, because you're forming words, applying pressure and committing detail in ink that you don't even realize. James didn't write the "diary,"...

It ain't Jim's hand, Mike, but it ain't Mike Barrett's hand either. Nor Anne's, nor Devereux's, nor Billy Graham's. So if anyone is suggesting one of these people was inebriated at the time of writing, or ambidextrous, or suffering from multiple personality disorder, and thus the hand was noticeably different, you can put them right, eh Mike? All they'd be doing is showing how little they actually understand a person's handwriting to begin with. 'Any expert could spot your handwriting whether you were drunk on Special Brew, high on glue, or stone-cold sober. You still give away your identity, because you're forming words, applying pressure and committing detail in ink that you don't even realize.' That sounds perfectly reasonable to me, but I've never claimed any expertise on the subject. So I suggest you trot along and tell it to Orsam, and see if he agrees with you.

Love,

Caz
X

[Graham]

Welcome back, Caz! Great to see you on here again.

Graham

[caz]

When I see Caz posting about how nobody in Liverpool is familiar with the Maybroick story...

When you see Caz posting that, you know it's time to go to Specsavers. All I said was that in my experience of several trips to Liverpool over the last twenty years, I have hardly ever come across anyone familiar with the Maybrick story or the diary - apart from when we were interviewing people for the book of course. How do you think I could have established that 'nobody' in Liverpool was familiar with the subject? I'll grant you it would be a marginally less difficult task than contacting all of Liverpool's early Victorians and establishing that 'literally' none of them ever referred to a post house as a post house.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

In all seriousness, anyone who contacts me via PM on here is more than welcome to come and have a pint with me if they ever visit Liverpool, I've mentioned this before when Caz said Bruce Robinson gave me the willies with his amazingly imaginative stories about Michael Maybrick. I'm only a PM away. We can even visit my local post office for a jar!

I don't recall that one either, Mike, although it does sound like something I might have written in fun. I haven't read any of Bruce's stories actually - the length of his book gave me the willies so I never bought it. I'd sooner stick with Withnail & I, which I like to watch on a regular basis.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Welcome back, Caz! Great to see you on here again.

Graham

Cheers, Graham. It's like old times.

[Iconoclast]

Cheers, Graham. It's like old times.

Putting the band back together!



PS I'm still on triangle, by the way - but strangely there wasn't a smiley for that.