One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[Yabs]

Actually it would indicate Edwin apparently found a letter to Brierly by Florrie and this led to the information being passed to the Baroness on page 10 of the 1891 edition of the book "The Maybrick Case" by Alexander Macdougall. I don't have a copy and the online extract I can see is fairly limited.

Hi Erobitha

I believe Alice Yapp found the letter, it apparently fell from Mrs Maybrick’s dress at a time when she fainted and was either passed to Edwin, or its contents revealed to him.

Just to fill some other gaps..

Edwin returns from America on the 25th of April.

26th, Edwin visits James at his office and dines with him that evening.

27th, Edwin sees James briefly at the Wirral races.

28th, James becomes unwell, Edwin sleeps at Battlecrease at James’s request.

29th, James is feeling better, Edwin leaves Battlecrease and returns the next day

30th, Edwin accompanies Florence to a fancy dress ball and stays at Battlecrease for a few days.

1st & 2nd of May, Edwin delivers lunch to James at his office at the request of Florence.

Edwin was then away from Battlecrease for the weekend until his return on the 6th by which time James was fully attached to his deathbed.

[Yabs]

Just to add to my above post...

It may be the case that the story of the letter falling from Florence’s dress may have been a story Edwin concocted when confronted by the baroness.

According to Alice Yapp when questioned, the letter was given to her to post by Florence and she opened it because the original envelope became damaged after being dropped in mud, she claimed that she intended to ask the post office for a replacement.

[Mike J. G.]

Hi Mike,

If you recall, you told everyone you were going to attend the 2017 Liverpool Conference and put some difficult questions to Keith Skinner and set him right about the diary. I can't remember the excuse you gave for not staying to the end, but Keith didn't even know you had been there and I doubt that you chickened out because he was too intimidating.

Anyway, I don't suppose there is much point in anyone accepting your invitation for a pint if you are going to skedaddle before they can engage you in conversation.

Love,

Caz
X

Caz, I know you and Ike don't have much going on in your lives to the point where you sit on here jawing all day, nearly every day of the week, about possibly the least credible Ripper suspect imaginable, but I'm a busy guy. Out in the real world, people have genuinely immediate things to do with their time, I'm one of them. I know that Casebook and these little faux intellectual battles that you imagine you're involved in seem like life and death situations, but in reality, they're not.

This is a passing hobby for me, I've no books to write on the subject, and the prospect of Keith Skinner intimidating anyone is frankly cute, but you are an aging woman, so maybe you're confusing your crush on Keith with me, a former boxer and current premier league security person, being frightened of him. In case you didn't realize, Caz, as I've mentioned in the past, I work for Everton FC, I'm generally a busy guy and I travel a fair bit, which was why I didn't stay, not because I didn't fancy it, but because I'm up at all hours for work. I went along to honour the wishes of a friend I bought my ticket with, the plan being I'd have a natter and a pint and see how long I could stay for, I didn't expect the jawing to go on as long as it did and obviously my job in the real world is much more important to me than impressing middle-aged neckbeards with my Ripper knowledge. My offer for you, Keith or anyone, still stands, I'm a PM away, I'm a friendly guy, I'm in Liverpool, and if you, or Keith, were genuinely interested in having any kind of discussion should you happen to be about here any time soon, you'd be happy to take me up on the offer, but it's much easier to pretend that I, former boxer and current premier league security person, is somehow frightened of Keith bloody Skinner, lol.

Anyone here who finds themselves visiting Aigburth, feel free to hit me up, I know the best pubs to visit, or alternatively, we can grab a jar of ale in the local post office.

[Mike J. G.]

Anyway, it's been a while, and if anyone's commented on me directly, I'll try and reply when I can, but like I said, I'm usually fairly busy, and when I do get free time, I generally use it for other things, but I do try and devote and hour or two when I can to the Casebook, but it's generally spent reading various threads, and seldom posting, I don't have a horse in the race, really. I'll always have an interest in the Maybrick case, as I've mentioned and detailed before.

Here's the thing about the entire Maybrick saga:


True events don't usually tend to have several totally different origin stories, if something happens, it happens and is recorded as such. If "the diary" was indeed written by James Maybrick, then the proof is missing. It appears that the content written by Sir Jim was ironically the same content that could be written by Mike Barrett, a supposed halfwit, and this was rather expertly demonstrated by David Orsam, now I know this grinds people like Ike and Caz up something wicked, but it's just a basic fact. When you're promoting the idea that:

A) Maybrick was the Ripper/wrote the diary
B) the Diary is a much older forgery

then the simple fact is, you need to show some evidence to support your theory, Ike, nor Caz, have managed to do that whatsoever, which is why Maybrick currently still sits behind guys like Walter Sicket and Prince Albert in the list of viable suspects that are generally laughed about by practically every well-read reader of the Whitechapel case. Sorry if that hurts, but it's as true as the writing credits Mike Barrett has that Ike and Caz pretend don't exist or aren't sufficient enough to have come up with the very nonsensical story contained within the pages of the obviously dubious "diary".

You're gonna have a harder time trying to pin the Whitechapel crimes on Maybrick, especially if you consider the Torsos to be a part of that series, but if you want to merely prove that James wrote the diary yet wasn't the man behind the crimes, then a simple handwriting match would suffice, yet his hands don't match, and that's a pretty glaring issue if you champion the notion that Jim wrote it.

If you favour an older date for the diary than what would accommodate a Barrett origin, then you need a viable suspect for having written it, and there are none, nor are there any genuinely valid motives offered up for why someone would bother to attempt to pin a series of crimes on an arsenic addict from Liverpool when literally nobody who has studied the Whitechapel case even considers James as a suspect.

If, however, you favour the most obviously correct answer, that the Barretts, either Mike and/or Anne wrote it, then it's hard for someone who is supposed to be impartial to ignore the amount of evidence that suggests that this most obvious of solutions is the correct one.

If Mike and Anne genuinely came into possession of a genuinely old tome which could very well (conveniently and dramatically, like a piece of fiction, I might add) solve one of the biggest riddles in the annals of crime, then there'd be literally, and I mean literally, be no reason whatsoever for a series of ridiculous provenances.

If you discover an artefact of interest, unless you half-inched it from a museum or a prominent person's home, you need not give at least three different explanations for how you came into possession of it. That's the tell-tale sign of a hoax straight away that people (rubes) are only too willing to ignore because they want to be fooled, consciously or subconsciously, they allow themselves to make that first mistake.

It's not unusual, either. When you begin studying hoaxes and the people who willingly commit them, you instantly see the mechanics of the trick and the manner in which people are suckered in by them. The simple truth is that many people willingly go along with silly hoaxes merely because they want to believe. We see a similar issue when people assess the Whitechapel crimes in general, they go along with a certain tired theory because it better supports their preferred idea of what happened, it's the entire reason why we see so many books on so many silly suspects. Well, as far as silly suspects go, Maybrick takes the arsenic-laced cake.

It's not enough that the provenance of said "diary" has multiple, awful, unverifiable versions. It's not enough that Mike, the bloke who introduced you to the diary, admitted to having aided in forging it, backed by him seeking out a Victorian diary, seeking out the correct ink, actually having been a writer, been in possession of books on Maybrick and the Ripper case, etc. It's not enough to already have examples of hoaxed diaries available for us to study, books which were rather amateurishly produced and aged yet still managed to fool people until the hoax was foiled. It's not even enough that the idea that Maybrick is the Whitechapel murderer, and potentially may have been killing since the early 1870's (if you really want to get technical regarding the supposed victims of the enigma known as "the Ripper") is a totally silly non-starter, nor that the diary reads like a piece of dramatic fiction masquerading as a convenient tell-all tale that nicely wraps up a complete mystery that has confounded more intelligent people than bloody Ike, which isn't saying an awful lot.

Then there's the red flags within the pages of the diary itself, again, well detailed by Orsom in his article, using actual facts and information, not merely conjecture and suggestion as in the hilarious creative-writing piece offered by Ike. When you've got an already dodgy diary, a red flag is the icing on the cake, and there's a few of them, but obviously, if you can ignore a dodgy provenance or three, you can ignore the odd red flag as well.

Now, Caz, you never really seem to explain your position regarding the diary, for some reason, but you always maintain it must be an older artefact merely because you cannot believe Barrett had anything to do with it. That, to me, and to anyone who is actually interested in solving anything in a logical manner, is plainly ridiculous, and it just shows why this entire case has so many ridiculous, crackpot "investigators" pulling out painters, princes, Indian military men, and everything in between as supposed suspects. There is no evidence that the diary is an old hoax, there is no viable suspect for having written it, why they'd bother to write it, or why, if it was an old artefact, that the Barretts would bother to pretend that they'd been behind it, then they hadn't, then it'd been in Anne's family, then it wasn't...etc.

All logical signs, assuming one is actually going through a somewhat scientific, but more importantly, impartial process, lead one to believe that the diary isn't any older than the 80's. It had something to do with the Barretts. It didn't come out of Battlecreese, that particular origin story is frankly hilarious, makes zero sense, and is about as believable as the idea that Maybrick was an adept butcher, capable of deconstructing women in the near-black environs of the East End of London between 1873-1889, lol.

If you find an antique book, you don't pretend you wrote it, you only admit to writing it if you did, indeed, write it, or know who did and can confidently pretend that it was yours. If you pretend you wrote it, and then you have a bust up with your partner in crime, I'd guess that there'd be a tussle, and the partner in crime would attempt to make up their own origin story, such as the one Anne gave about the book having been in her family for decades, which is exactly what happened.

People who generally find genuinely antique artefacts don't go through the type of shenanigans that the Barretts went through, even if they're trying to make a few quid on it. It doesn't happen.

The diary has absolutely nothing going for it other than it being an interesting footnote in the entire JtR saga, it's basically akin to all of the fiction posters on this page write about the crimes, a hobby I've never understood, myself, kind of like writing Ian Huntley fiction or Jeff Dahmer fiction, lol, but to each his own, I guess.

Another note, to Caz, your earlier suggestion that Maybrick's case isn't known in this city is absolutely fictitious, as I've already explained. In the period that the Barrett's came out with the "diary", the story of Sir Jim was indeed as known as it is today among people who are actually capable of knowing about it. There's a Maybrick mural in Aigburth Vale for a reason, he's a local person of interest who is regularly included in books about the city and its crimes and mysteries, it's as indented in the lore of the city as much as the Cameo murder and the Menlove Gardens murder, as much as the tales of Spring-Heeled Jack standing atop the spiral of SFX church. To suggest otherwise shows a distinct lack of knowledge about the city, almost as if you don't live here! lol.

Anyway, it's been a while, so I'm gonna post my brilliant relevant poem again for y'all to enjoy, much like Maybrick enjoyed that half a kidney he stole that time while out on one of his many adventures in Whitechapel while in reality he was likely taking refreshment in the local post office where everyone in Liverpool apparently drank cos all post offices apparently served beer.

The Fabled James Maybrick

The good Sir Jim,
he wasn't dim,
he invented expressions,
such as "one-off," he did.

He had two types of hand,
with which he would fool all the land.
A walking enigma, that you'd never understand.

Tin match-box empty, he may well have listed.
He even drank in the Poste House before it ever existed!

He was the Torso Man, and Saucy Jack,
he knew his way around London in the bitter pitch black.

The good Sir Jim,
Jack of all trades,
arsenic, strychnine and a butcher's blades.

A diary he wrote,
to explain all his deeds,
satisfying the questions and quelling the needs.

So a salute to Sir Jim,
please raise a toast,
to the fabled James Maybrick,
and his blotchy-faced ghost

[Abby Normal]

Anyway, it's been a while, and if anyone's commented on me directly, I'll try and reply when I can, but like I said, I'm usually fairly busy, and when I do get free time, I generally use it for other things, but I do try and devote and hour or two when I can to the Casebook, but it's generally spent reading various threads, and seldom posting, I don't have a horse in the race, really. I'll always have an interest in the Maybrick case, as I've mentioned and detailed before.

Here's the thing about the entire Maybrick saga:


True events don't usually tend to have several totally different origin stories, if something happens, it happens and is recorded as such. If "the diary" was indeed written by James Maybrick, then the proof is missing. It appears that the content written by Sir Jim was ironically the same content that could be written by Mike Barrett, a supposed halfwit, and this was rather expertly demonstrated by David Orsam, now I know this grinds people like Ike and Caz up something wicked, but it's just a basic fact. When you're promoting the idea that:

A) Maybrick was the Ripper/wrote the diary
B) the Diary is a much older forgery

then the simple fact is, you need to show some evidence to support your theory, Ike, nor Caz, have managed to do that whatsoever, which is why Maybrick currently still sits behind guys like Walter Sicket and Prince Albert in the list of viable suspects that are generally laughed about by practically every well-read reader of the Whitechapel case. Sorry if that hurts, but it's as true as the writing credits Mike Barrett has that Ike and Caz pretend don't exist or aren't sufficient enough to have come up with the very nonsensical story contained within the pages of the obviously dubious "diary".

You're gonna have a harder time trying to pin the Whitechapel crimes on Maybrick, especially if you consider the Torsos to be a part of that series, but if you want to merely prove that James wrote the diary yet wasn't the man behind the crimes, then a simple handwriting match would suffice, yet his hands don't match, and that's a pretty glaring issue if you champion the notion that Jim wrote it.

If you favour an older date for the diary than what would accommodate a Barrett origin, then you need a viable suspect for having written it, and there are none, nor are there any genuinely valid motives offered up for why someone would bother to attempt to pin a series of crimes on an arsenic addict from Liverpool when literally nobody who has studied the Whitechapel case even considers James as a suspect.

If, however, you favour the most obviously correct answer, that the Barretts, either Mike and/or Anne wrote it, then it's hard for someone who is supposed to be impartial to ignore the amount of evidence that suggests that this most obvious of solutions is the correct one.

If Mike and Anne genuinely came into possession of a genuinely old tome which could very well (conveniently and dramatically, like a piece of fiction, I might add) solve one of the biggest riddles in the annals of crime, then there'd be literally, and I mean literally, be no reason whatsoever for a series of ridiculous provenances.

If you discover an artefact of interest, unless you half-inched it from a museum or a prominent person's home, you need not give at least three different explanations for how you came into possession of it. That's the tell-tale sign of a hoax straight away that people (rubes) are only too willing to ignore because they want to be fooled, consciously or subconsciously, they allow themselves to make that first mistake.

It's not unusual, either. When you begin studying hoaxes and the people who willingly commit them, you instantly see the mechanics of the trick and the manner in which people are suckered in by them. The simple truth is that many people willingly go along with silly hoaxes merely because they want to believe. We see a similar issue when people assess the Whitechapel crimes in general, they go along with a certain tired theory because it better supports their preferred idea of what happened, it's the entire reason why we see so many books on so many silly suspects. Well, as far as silly suspects go, Maybrick takes the arsenic-laced cake.

It's not enough that the provenance of said "diary" has multiple, awful, unverifiable versions. It's not enough that Mike, the bloke who introduced you to the diary, admitted to having aided in forging it, backed by him seeking out a Victorian diary, seeking out the correct ink, actually having been a writer, been in possession of books on Maybrick and the Ripper case, etc. It's not enough to already have examples of hoaxed diaries available for us to study, books which were rather amateurishly produced and aged yet still managed to fool people until the hoax was foiled. It's not even enough that the idea that Maybrick is the Whitechapel murderer, and potentially may have been killing since the early 1870's (if you really want to get technical regarding the supposed victims of the enigma known as "the Ripper") is a totally silly non-starter, nor that the diary reads like a piece of dramatic fiction masquerading as a convenient tell-all tale that nicely wraps up a complete mystery that has confounded more intelligent people than bloody Ike, which isn't saying an awful lot.

Then there's the red flags within the pages of the diary itself, again, well detailed by Orsom in his article, using actual facts and information, not merely conjecture and suggestion as in the hilarious creative-writing piece offered by Ike. When you've got an already dodgy diary, a red flag is the icing on the cake, and there's a few of them, but obviously, if you can ignore a dodgy provenance or three, you can ignore the odd red flag as well.

Now, Caz, you never really seem to explain your position regarding the diary, for some reason, but you always maintain it must be an older artefact merely because you cannot believe Barrett had anything to do with it. That, to me, and to anyone who is actually interested in solving anything in a logical manner, is plainly ridiculous, and it just shows why this entire case has so many ridiculous, crackpot "investigators" pulling out painters, princes, Indian military men, and everything in between as supposed suspects. There is no evidence that the diary is an old hoax, there is no viable suspect for having written it, why they'd bother to write it, or why, if it was an old artefact, that the Barretts would bother to pretend that they'd been behind it, then they hadn't, then it'd been in Anne's family, then it wasn't...etc.

All logical signs, assuming one is actually going through a somewhat scientific, but more importantly, impartial process, lead one to believe that the diary isn't any older than the 80's. It had something to do with the Barretts. It didn't come out of Battlecreese, that particular origin story is frankly hilarious, makes zero sense, and is about as believable as the idea that Maybrick was an adept butcher, capable of deconstructing women in the near-black environs of the East End of London between 1873-1889, lol.

If you find an antique book, you don't pretend you wrote it, you only admit to writing it if you did, indeed, write it, or know who did and can confidently pretend that it was yours. If you pretend you wrote it, and then you have a bust up with your partner in crime, I'd guess that there'd be a tussle, and the partner in crime would attempt to make up their own origin story, such as the one Anne gave about the book having been in her family for decades, which is exactly what happened.

People who generally find genuinely antique artefacts don't go through the type of shenanigans that the Barretts went through, even if they're trying to make a few quid on it. It doesn't happen.

The diary has absolutely nothing going for it other than it being an interesting footnote in the entire JtR saga, it's basically akin to all of the fiction posters on this page write about the crimes, a hobby I've never understood, myself, kind of like writing Ian Huntley fiction or Jeff Dahmer fiction, lol, but to each his own, I guess.

Another note, to Caz, your earlier suggestion that Maybrick's case isn't known in this city is absolutely fictitious, as I've already explained. In the period that the Barrett's came out with the "diary", the story of Sir Jim was indeed as known as it is today among people who are actually capable of knowing about it. There's a Maybrick mural in Aigburth Vale for a reason, he's a local person of interest who is regularly included in books about the city and its crimes and mysteries, it's as indented in the lore of the city as much as the Cameo murder and the Menlove Gardens murder, as much as the tales of Spring-Heeled Jack standing atop the spiral of SFX church. To suggest otherwise shows a distinct lack of knowledge about the city, almost as if you don't live here! lol.

Anyway, it's been a while, so I'm gonna post my brilliant relevant poem again for y'all to enjoy, much like Maybrick enjoyed that half a kidney he stole that time while out on one of his many adventures in Whitechapel while in reality he was likely taking refreshment in the local post office where everyone in Liverpool apparently drank cos all post offices apparently served beer.

The Fabled James Maybrick

The good Sir Jim,
he wasn't dim,
he invented expressions,
such as "one-off," he did.

He had two types of hand,
with which he would fool all the land.
A walking enigma, that you'd never understand.

Tin match-box empty, he may well have listed.
He even drank in the Poste House before it ever existed!

He was the Torso Man, and Saucy Jack,
he knew his way around London in the bitter pitch black.

The good Sir Jim,
Jack of all trades,
arsenic, strychnine and a butcher's blades.

A diary he wrote,
to explain all his deeds,
satisfying the questions and quelling the needs.

So a salute to Sir Jim,
please raise a toast,
to the fabled James Maybrick,
and his blotchy-faced ghost

brilliant post and poem Mike. the whole diary saga is just silly. it amazes me that an apparent idiot could pull the wool over the eyes of so many respected ripperologists with this half arsed hoax, which continues to this day. and yes Lord Orsam has once and for all dismantled ALL the nonsense that it was written by anyone other than the Barretts- using facts, research and analysis and not conjecture and hunches as you say. theres no more mystery to this silly saga ...although some want to continue to make a Heisenberg Matrix out of a ham sandwich.

there once was a man named Barrett
whose nose was as long as a ferret
he said, I found Jack!
then took it all back.
And flew away an a giant green parrot

[c.d.]

Yes, nice write up there, Mike. Very well reasoned and lots of good points.

c.d.

[c.d.]

The posters on these boards see things through Ripper colored glasses (myself included) so that it can be hard to be objective about things. But imagine this scenario -- someone takes the diary to Sotheby's or Christies's claiming they have the diary of Jack the Ripper. "Incredible" they say. "Nothing like this has ever been seen before." "We'll start the bidding at half a million at least." "Of course we will need to verify its provenance." "What is it?" The diary's purported provenance is explained. Laughter erupts all around. Security is called and you are thrown out on your butt.

You have to wonder why Barrett didn't go this route. Wouldn't he have made a lot more money (and immediate money at that) than attempting to get the book published?

c.d.

[caz]

Diaries have no inherent, stable worth, do they? They can be worth half pound or they can be priceless relics worth thousands or millions.

And how would asking for "at least twenty blank pages" help someone reference the worth of the Diary of Jack the Ripper?

It doesn't seem to be the least bit credible.

No one has ever answered why 'twenty blank' pages were needed by Barrett.

Caz uses the figure '63 pages' for the diary, but the typescript found on the Barrett's word processor was 29 pages.

And this is ex-post facto reasoning. The Diary Barrett eventually produced was indeed 63 pages, but it text has been elongated. We don't know how long the diary would have been, if Barrett had found a different ledger.

If I try to put myself in the Barretts' position, in March 1992, as you see things, RJ, I come up with a draft of the diary, typed on the word processor, over the equivalent of 29 sides [not pages] of A4 paper. It has been there since early 1990, according to Mike's affidavit, but now requires a new home on old paper, and to be handwritten by Anne.

If I were Anne, I would want to give Mike some idea of how much old paper I will be needing for this task, and I'd have had plenty of time to work this out, while practising my disguised hand. I would only need to handwrite the first page of the typescript, onto a blank sheet of A4, to get a good estimate of the minimum number of sides of A4 paper I would need to accommodate the 29 sides of A4 text. In fact, the first page of the typescript ends at the same place as the second page of the diary itself [where the handwriting is small compared with later entries], so it couldn't have been simpler for Anne to work out that she would need roughly twice as many sides of A4 for the handwritten version: that's 58 sides of paper, or 29 pages, blank on both sides. So this is great for your argument that Mike asked for at least 20 blank pages, so that Anne could use whatever the advert produced to create the diary itself.

But - and it's an A4 sized but - why would Mike have assumed that all Victorian diaries came in a handy A4 size, when asking Martin Earl to locate one for 1880-1890? Why did he not even ask about page size? You give Bongo way too much credit, on the one hand, for being capable enough to dream up this whole forgery scheme and take the finished product to London with no immediate mishaps, yet you take it all away with the other hand, by making him a clown of the first order, for not thinking size mattered more than quantity, and would render the number of blank pages he asked for totally irrelevant, if their size didn't measure up.

This is why I can only conclude that size didn't matter to Mike when he made his enquiry in March 1992, and played no part in his reasoning. If size had been a consideration at all, would he have asked Martin Earl to go ahead and supply him with a diary he knew was going to be impossibly small for his 29 sides of text?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

The posters on these boards see things through Ripper colored glasses (myself included) so that it can be hard to be objective about things. But imagine this scenario -- someone takes the diary to Sotheby's or Christies's claiming they have the diary of Jack the Ripper. "Incredible" they say. "Nothing like this has ever been seen before." "We'll start the bidding at half a million at least." "Of course we will need to verify its provenance." "What is it?" The diary's purported provenance is explained. Laughter erupts all around. Security is called and you are thrown out on your butt.

You have to wonder why Barrett didn't go this route. Wouldn't he have made a lot more money (and immediate money at that) than attempting to get the book published?

c.d.

I think you answered your own question, c.d.

Mike would have been thrown out on his butt, for claiming a dead mate had given him the diary, but refused to say how he came by it.

And that would be before anyone parted with thruppence for his "old book".

And what if Mike suspected the bloody thing was nicked? Would you take it to Sotheby's or Christie's on either basis?

Love,

Caz
X

[erobitha]

Out of curious interest, I wonder if Eddie Lyons was offered immunity from potential prosecution of theft and had protection against any potential legal proceedings for "loss of earnings" by the correct and legal owner of the Maybrick document, would he be more forthcoming on telling the full truth? Even then I fear the detractors simply state he's "coming clean" would be for some other motive.

There will always be something. Damned if you do, etc.

[Kattrup]

Anyway, it's been a while, and if anyone's commented on me directly, I'll try and reply when I can, but like I said, I'm usually fairly busy, and when I do get free time, I generally use it for other things, but I do try and devote and hour or two when I can to the Casebook, but it's generally spent reading various threads, and seldom posting, I don't have a horse in the race, really. I'll always have an interest in the Maybrick case, as I've mentioned and detailed before.

Here's the thing about the entire Maybrick saga:


True events don't usually tend to have several totally different origin stories, if something happens, it happens and is recorded as such. If "the diary" was indeed written by James Maybrick, then the proof is missing. It appears that the content written by Sir Jim was ironically the same content that could be written by Mike Barrett, a supposed halfwit, and this was rather expertly demonstrated by David Orsam, now I know this grinds people like Ike and Caz up something wicked, but it's just a basic fact. When you're promoting the idea that:

A) Maybrick was the Ripper/wrote the diary
B) the Diary is a much older forgery

then the simple fact is, you need to show some evidence to support your theory, Ike, nor Caz, have managed to do that whatsoever, which is why Maybrick currently still sits behind guys like Walter Sicket and Prince Albert in the list of viable suspects that are generally laughed about by practically every well-read reader of the Whitechapel case. Sorry if that hurts, but it's as true as the writing credits Mike Barrett has that Ike and Caz pretend don't exist or aren't sufficient enough to have come up with the very nonsensical story contained within the pages of the obviously dubious "diary".

You're gonna have a harder time trying to pin the Whitechapel crimes on Maybrick, especially if you consider the Torsos to be a part of that series, but if you want to merely prove that James wrote the diary yet wasn't the man behind the crimes, then a simple handwriting match would suffice, yet his hands don't match, and that's a pretty glaring issue if you champion the notion that Jim wrote it.

If you favour an older date for the diary than what would accommodate a Barrett origin, then you need a viable suspect for having written it, and there are none, nor are there any genuinely valid motives offered up for why someone would bother to attempt to pin a series of crimes on an arsenic addict from Liverpool when literally nobody who has studied the Whitechapel case even considers James as a suspect.

If, however, you favour the most obviously correct answer, that the Barretts, either Mike and/or Anne wrote it, then it's hard for someone who is supposed to be impartial to ignore the amount of evidence that suggests that this most obvious of solutions is the correct one.

If Mike and Anne genuinely came into possession of a genuinely old tome which could very well (conveniently and dramatically, like a piece of fiction, I might add) solve one of the biggest riddles in the annals of crime, then there'd be literally, and I mean literally, be no reason whatsoever for a series of ridiculous provenances.

If you discover an artefact of interest, unless you half-inched it from a museum or a prominent person's home, you need not give at least three different explanations for how you came into possession of it. That's the tell-tale sign of a hoax straight away that people (rubes) are only too willing to ignore because they want to be fooled, consciously or subconsciously, they allow themselves to make that first mistake.

It's not unusual, either. When you begin studying hoaxes and the people who willingly commit them, you instantly see the mechanics of the trick and the manner in which people are suckered in by them. The simple truth is that many people willingly go along with silly hoaxes merely because they want to believe. We see a similar issue when people assess the Whitechapel crimes in general, they go along with a certain tired theory because it better supports their preferred idea of what happened, it's the entire reason why we see so many books on so many silly suspects. Well, as far as silly suspects go, Maybrick takes the arsenic-laced cake.

It's not enough that the provenance of said "diary" has multiple, awful, unverifiable versions. It's not enough that Mike, the bloke who introduced you to the diary, admitted to having aided in forging it, backed by him seeking out a Victorian diary, seeking out the correct ink, actually having been a writer, been in possession of books on Maybrick and the Ripper case, etc. It's not enough to already have examples of hoaxed diaries available for us to study, books which were rather amateurishly produced and aged yet still managed to fool people until the hoax was foiled. It's not even enough that the idea that Maybrick is the Whitechapel murderer, and potentially may have been killing since the early 1870's (if you really want to get technical regarding the supposed victims of the enigma known as "the Ripper") is a totally silly non-starter, nor that the diary reads like a piece of dramatic fiction masquerading as a convenient tell-all tale that nicely wraps up a complete mystery that has confounded more intelligent people than bloody Ike, which isn't saying an awful lot.

Then there's the red flags within the pages of the diary itself, again, well detailed by Orsom in his article, using actual facts and information, not merely conjecture and suggestion as in the hilarious creative-writing piece offered by Ike. When you've got an already dodgy diary, a red flag is the icing on the cake, and there's a few of them, but obviously, if you can ignore a dodgy provenance or three, you can ignore the odd red flag as well.

Now, Caz, you never really seem to explain your position regarding the diary, for some reason, but you always maintain it must be an older artefact merely because you cannot believe Barrett had anything to do with it. That, to me, and to anyone who is actually interested in solving anything in a logical manner, is plainly ridiculous, and it just shows why this entire case has so many ridiculous, crackpot "investigators" pulling out painters, princes, Indian military men, and everything in between as supposed suspects. There is no evidence that the diary is an old hoax, there is no viable suspect for having written it, why they'd bother to write it, or why, if it was an old artefact, that the Barretts would bother to pretend that they'd been behind it, then they hadn't, then it'd been in Anne's family, then it wasn't...etc.

All logical signs, assuming one is actually going through a somewhat scientific, but more importantly, impartial process, lead one to believe that the diary isn't any older than the 80's. It had something to do with the Barretts. It didn't come out of Battlecreese, that particular origin story is frankly hilarious, makes zero sense, and is about as believable as the idea that Maybrick was an adept butcher, capable of deconstructing women in the near-black environs of the East End of London between 1873-1889, lol.

If you find an antique book, you don't pretend you wrote it, you only admit to writing it if you did, indeed, write it, or know who did and can confidently pretend that it was yours. If you pretend you wrote it, and then you have a bust up with your partner in crime, I'd guess that there'd be a tussle, and the partner in crime would attempt to make up their own origin story, such as the one Anne gave about the book having been in her family for decades, which is exactly what happened.

People who generally find genuinely antique artefacts don't go through the type of shenanigans that the Barretts went through, even if they're trying to make a few quid on it. It doesn't happen.

The diary has absolutely nothing going for it other than it being an interesting footnote in the entire JtR saga, it's basically akin to all of the fiction posters on this page write about the crimes, a hobby I've never understood, myself, kind of like writing Ian Huntley fiction or Jeff Dahmer fiction, lol, but to each his own, I guess.

Another note, to Caz, your earlier suggestion that Maybrick's case isn't known in this city is absolutely fictitious, as I've already explained. In the period that the Barrett's came out with the "diary", the story of Sir Jim was indeed as known as it is today among people who are actually capable of knowing about it. There's a Maybrick mural in Aigburth Vale for a reason, he's a local person of interest who is regularly included in books about the city and its crimes and mysteries, it's as indented in the lore of the city as much as the Cameo murder and the Menlove Gardens murder, as much as the tales of Spring-Heeled Jack standing atop the spiral of SFX church. To suggest otherwise shows a distinct lack of knowledge about the city, almost as if you don't live here! lol.

Anyway, it's been a while, so I'm gonna post my brilliant relevant poem again for y'all to enjoy, much like Maybrick enjoyed that half a kidney he stole that time while out on one of his many adventures in Whitechapel while in reality he was likely taking refreshment in the local post office where everyone in Liverpool apparently drank cos all post offices apparently served beer.

The Fabled James Maybrick

The good Sir Jim,
he wasn't dim,
he invented expressions,
such as "one-off," he did.

He had two types of hand,
with which he would fool all the land.
A walking enigma, that you'd never understand.

Tin match-box empty, he may well have listed.
He even drank in the Poste House before it ever existed!

He was the Torso Man, and Saucy Jack,
he knew his way around London in the bitter pitch black.

The good Sir Jim,
Jack of all trades,
arsenic, strychnine and a butcher's blades.

A diary he wrote,
to explain all his deeds,
satisfying the questions and quelling the needs.

So a salute to Sir Jim,
please raise a toast,
to the fabled James Maybrick,
and his blotchy-faced ghost

My nomination for Post of the Year, Mike, a pleasure to read. when I get to Aigburth I’ll shout you a pint

[caz]

As for Caz's point, about people not keeping appointments, the Diary states:

Thomas was in fine health. The children enjoyed Christmas.

Are we suppose to believe the diary isn't implying that Maybrick met Thomas at Christmas? Why would the diarist write that Thomas was in fine health, if he hadn't seen him? And link it with the children's Christmas?

Apologies, RJ, I wasn't thinking about Thomas, exclusively, when I wrote about plans not always coming to fruition. It can happen the other way round just as often, when one believes they won't be seeing a certain relative over Christmas, but then that relative turns up after all. This is the wording I was thinking of, and it applies to Michael, not Thomas:

'Michael is well... I regret I shall not see him this Christmas.'

That is only what 'Sir Jim' believed before Christmas. It doesn't tell us that Michael didn't change his mind and pay a festive visit after all.

Similarly, we can't know that Thomas didn't invite James to visit him in the run up to Christmas 1888, despite what is known about their relationship. 'Sir Jim' decides to accept his offer, but is scathing about his brother's motives, so at that point he could still decide not to go after all.

In fact, if you change 'Thomas' to 'Michael' being in fine health, and the children enjoying Christmas, the two events would sit better together, because James would hardly have dragged the kids off to see their miserly Uncle Thomas, for a jolly game of Strictly Business. But Michael could have come to Battlecrease House with his fine health and merry tunes and Christmas goodies for the little ones. Could our hoaxer not have made a simple slip of the pen over which brother 'Sir Jim' was referring to here? All parents do this, when needing the attention of one of their offspring. "Richard! I mean Caroline! Have you done your homework yet?" I used to be quite affronted that Mum would forget whether I was her daughter or her son, when calling me from the next room.

But I realize the Diary's accuracy is an article of faith with some...

Now that's strange, because nobody - not even Maybrick himself - could write 63 pages without introducing the odd inaccuracy here and there. We know the accuracy of the spelling and grammar wasn't the diary author's strongest point, but I'd have thought Mike Barrett would have made so much more of a pig's ear of everything else, had he attempted to write the memoirs of JM from 1888-9.

Love,

Caz
X

[Iconoclast]

... masquerading as a convenient tell-all tale that nicely wraps up a complete mystery that has confounded more intelligent people than bloody Ike, which isn't saying an awful lot.

Well, who are you and what have you done with Mike J.G.?

I obviously don't agree with the vast majority of your post, and your poem was absolutely crap, but I have to give credit where credit is due: a very good post, well-argued and cogent, if let down slightly by the occasional rush of blood to the bias gland.

Cheers,

Ike

[Al Bundy's Eyes]

there once was a man named Barrett
whose nose was as long as a ferret
he said, I found Jack!
then took it all back.
And flew away an a giant green parrot

Erm. Not quite as good as Mike's effort.

I'll have a crack...

There once was a geezer named Bongo
Who everyone thought was a drongo
He said I'll show you a trick
I call it Maybrick
And his "diary" might buy me a condo.

I tried to fit "vehiculo longo", I really did.

[Al Bundy's Eyes]

There once was a Geordie called Ike
Who ( THE REST OF THIS LIMERICK HAS BEEN REMOVED FOLLOWING LEGAL ADVICE)