One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[Iconoclast]

Come to think of it, I'm not even sure they mentioned a watch. I'll have to go back and check. I think it was just a ring and a book.

Either way, the whole thing is clearly a combination of urban folkore, bad interviewing techniques, and one bloke attempting to cash-in on Barrett's hoax. To their credit, Feldman and Harrison investigated the whole mess 25 odd years ago, saw the writing on the wall, and rejected the provenance as worthless.

So you didn't check the exact details before you gave your analysis, RJ?

Wow, and you were only addressing THREE items!

[Iconoclast]

For those of you who are likely to be kept awake by these things, I can confirm that RJ/LO are quite correct when they say that May 12, 1889 to March 9, 1992 consists of 37,557 days.

Intriguingly, their foray into day-counting managed to exclude the tricky inclusion in Excel (because it is based on an error in its predecessor Louts 1-2-3) of the non-existent leap year in 1900 (so there was no Feb 29, 1900, but there is in Excel).

My somewhat Heath Robinson analysis chucked in two months' worth of days due to my own cack-handed attempt to overcome Excel's date limitations by doing a simple Find & Replace for the equivalent dates in the 20th century and frankly arsing it up (and my slipshod inclusion of Feb 29, 1900).

I genuinely hope that everyone sleeps sounder tonight now that we have established that the p value of our analysis has been corrected by the crucial 0.0000001.

I know I said I couldn't be arsed to check. I'm starting to worry that I'm spending too much time around The Pedant Pair.

Ike

[rjpalmer]

My somewhat Heath Robinson analysis chucked in two months' worth of days due to my own cack-handed attempt to overcome Excel's date limitations by doing a simple Find & Replace for the equivalent dates in the 20th century and frankly arsing it up (and my slipshod inclusion of Feb 29, 1900)

Ah, I tried to warn you, but would you listen?

Now that you acknowledge your "slipshod" methods, and simple math errors, all that is left is to acknowledge your even worse error in basic logic.

You can then toss your imaginary "37,557 to 1" figure into the skip and move on.

But just do it without me, okay?

[caz]

Hi Caz,

You can analyse any data any number of ways so - yes - it would be legitimate to include post-March 9, 1992 dates, but you'd have to change the question you were asking (i.e., the 'hypothesis').

We have been discussing the probability of A) the floorboards coming up in Maybrick's study (as a known fact) on the same day that B) a mooted diary of Jack the Spratt McVitie (by James Maybrick) was offered to a literary agent by March 9, 1992.

As A & B happened for the first time on March 9, 1992, then our calculation is easy (starting and including May 12, 1889): it's 1/37,618. If either event had happened before March 9, 1992, then we would have had to increase our numerator. So, if the floorboards in Maybrick's study had definitely come up on, say, October 21, 1921, our odds would halve immediately to 2/37,618 that these two events would happen on the same day by chance alone by March 9,1992. Each time the floorboards were definitely raised and each time a diary of Jack the Spratt McVitie (purportedly written by James Maybrick) was offered to a literary agent before March 9, 1992, the numerator would go up so that - by March 9, 1992 - it might have been 2/37,618, or 3/37,618, or 4/37,618. All of these odds would still have been extremely unlikely when the 'coincidence' finally happened on March 9, 1992. As it happens, we know of only the one day so the odds on March 8, 1992 (if we are accepting Sundays) was 1/37,617. The next day, the odds were 1/37,618 and then the magic happened and the 'coincidence' occurred.

By the way, RJ/LO are right when they state that other events could have been included. I think there are similar events we could include in our analysis (John Over's outhouse finally being pulled down, for example; the day Knowsley Buildings were demolished is another), but that calculation is a different probability to analyse. Ours was simply 'What was the probability of A) the floorboards coming up in Maybrick's study (as a known fact) on the same day that B) a mooted diary of Jack the Spratt McVitie (purportedly written by James Maybrick) was offered to a literary agent by March 9, 1992?'.

So, in answer to your question, you could ask different probability questions post-March 9, 1992, but you can't ask the same question as it was done and dusted on March 9, 1992 whether it happened or not. That's how statistics work: they tell you how likely certain agreed facts might occur by chance alone, but they do not imply that those facts will happen at all.

So the issue is always 'What question am I asking?', and 'Do I have sufficient data to use statistical analysis to give me a probability for it happening by chance alone?'.

RJ/LO are welcome to find a thousand events which they feel we would have accepted as an amazing coincidence had they occurred on the same day a literary agent was contacted regarding a mooted diary of Jack the Spratt (supposedly written by James Maybrick), and by March 9, 1992 the probability would be 1,000/37,618 and the odds of that happening by chance alone by March 9, 1992 would be a measly 1/37. It's all in what question you are asking. In RJ/LO's case, they will find far more examples than just Maybrick's floorboards coming-up (in order to drive the numerator up), and that's fine, but we all just have to remember that that is a different question they are addressing.

I don't know why LO stopped at December 31, 1992. Of greater confusion for me was why he started on January 1, 1992! It was utterly arbitrary and based solely on the fact that the 'double event' happened to occur in 1992. If you play tricks like that, you can generate any probability you want, but no-one who understands statistics will take you seriously. Obviously, what LO wanted to do was to convince those who don't understand statistics, not those who do. Believe me, Caz, the former are the lucky ones.

If the events of March 9, 1992 had not unfolded as they did then - by December 31, 1992 - the odds of the floorboards coming-up on the same day as Maybrick's diary emerging had dropped significantly to around 14/38,000 (or 1/2,714) - still pretty unlikely odds but not as eye-watering as 1/37,618 which is what they were when it did happen.

Hope this helps, Caz!

Should we stick to the football for a while???

Ikey

Cheers Ike!
So what are the odds of England beating Italy on Sunday?

I wonder if LO's 1992 fixation was based more on his belief that Mike's diary was created that year, in the month following the double event? I haven't read all the latest posts yet, but I caught a glimpse of one with RJ's name attached to it, before reading yours, and he appeared to be scolding you for including dates for every year prior to 1992, going back to Maybrick's death, because you had yet to establish that the diary even existed before 1992, and had the potential to be found in any of those years.

I can't help thinking, if I understood that bit correctly, that this is missing the entire point. If you first have to establish that Mike's diary existed back in 1889, before you can include any date in 1889 as a theoretical floorboard lifting day for your statistical analysis, you would not need that analysis. Similarly, if LO could establish it really did begin life as a photo album in an auction sale at the end of March 1992, he'd be hugging himself instead of thinking of more and more ways to try and kill off the bloody thing, using statistics if necessary.

I thought the exercise would be to work out the chances of anyone, from 1889 to 1992 [when it finally happened], claiming to have the diary of someone who died in 1889, on the same day floorboards were lifted in the bedroom where that same someone had breathed their last, in which case I can't see the relevance of knowing whether the diary spoken about on that date turns out to be an old fake, a brand new fake, a fake in waiting, or the genuine article. It would simply be a question of calculating the odds of those two events coinciding by chance, and therefore being unconnected.

Love,

Caz
X

[rjpalmer]

So you didn't check the exact details before you gave your analysis, RJ?

Wow, and you were only addressing THREE items!

No, I did check, and neither Robert Smith, nor Orsam in his review of Smith's book, quoted any electrician claiming to have found a watch under Maybrick's floorboards when originally quizzed back in the 1990s. (Which is why I revised my post, if you wish to be 'pedantic' about it).

But the reason why I originally chose to include the 'watch claim' is that many years later--2016--there suddenly WAS a mention of a watch having been found along with a biscuit tin.

Which just goes to show how different interviewers, repeatedly quizzing the electricians over a period of many years, ended up with contradictory claims and polluted memories.

"Alan Davies told James Johnston in an interview on 15 February 2016, 'Yeah, I remember a gold watch I think, I never seen anything, but I remember it was Brian or someone telling me that it was in a tin under the floor'. As Johnston confirms, Brian - who was Brian Rawes - had no memory of this and no electrician was EVER found who knew anything about it. It's why I'm confident it came from Feldman and subsequently contaminated the mind of Alan Davies who remembers 'someone' TELLING him about a tin, even though he had no first hand knowledge of any such discovery." -- Lord Orsam, Lord Orsam Says, 18 July 2020.

So you see--the answer is complicated, hence my revision.

No claim of finding a watch was ever made in the 1990s.

The claim of finding a watch was first voiced in 2016.

Do you have it now?

But thanks for pointing it out, because it admirably demonstrates how a game of Chinese Whispers has polluted these conflicting accounts.

"A gold watch I think." Which sums up the whole provenance quite nicely.

RP

[Iconoclast]

Cheers Ike!
So what are the odds of England beating Italy on Sunday?

I think I need to refer you to my old friend William Hill for that statistical analysis, Caz.

I wonder if LO's 1992 fixation was based more on his belief that Mike's diary was created that year, in the month following the double event? I haven't read all the latest posts yet, but I caught a glimpse of one with RJ's name attached to it, before reading yours, and he appeared to be scolding you for including dates for every year prior to 1992, going back to Maybrick's death, because you had yet to establish that the diary even existed before 1992, and had the potential to be found in any of those years.

I can't help thinking, if I understood that bit correctly, that this is missing the entire point.

I would say that you understand that bit correctly, Caz.

If you first have to establish that Mike's diary existed back in 1889, before you can include any date in 1889 as a theoretical floorboard lifting day for your statistical analysis, you would not need that analysis. Similarly, if LO could establish it really did begin life as a photo album in an auction sale at the end of March 1992, he'd be hugging himself instead of thinking of more and more ways to try and kill off the bloody thing, using statistics if necessary.

Correct in every respect.

I thought the exercise would be to work out the chances of anyone, from 1889 to 1992 [when it finally happened], claiming to have the diary of someone who died in 1889, on the same day floorboards were lifted in the bedroom where that same someone had breathed their last, in which case I can't see the relevance of knowing whether the diary spoken about on that date turns out to be an old fake, a brand new fake, a fake in waiting, or the genuine article. It would simply be a question of calculating the odds of those two events coinciding by chance, and therefore being unconnected.

I honestly don't think I could have put it better myself, Caz. In that respect, I think you should prepare yourself for some mindless pedantry and obfuscation coming your way any day now.

Ike

[Iconoclast]

No, I did check, and neither Robert Smith, nor Orsam in his review of Smith's book, quoted any electrician claiming to have found a watch under Maybrick's floorboards when originally quizzed back in the 1990s. (Which is why I revised my post, if you wish to be 'pedantic' about it).

But the reason why I originally chose to include the 'watch claim' is that many years later--2016--there suddenly WAS a mention of a watch having been found along with a biscuit tin.

I think what we all got from that was "I said THREE things, turns out it was TWO things, so I corrected my slipshod analysis, but when I realised I'd just confirmed how easy it is to be 'slightly out' with my statistics, rather than simply admit to it my ego had to go scurrying off looking for some sort of logic that would have justified my initial error'.

The problem with that - you may need to inform your ego - is that you had already acknowledged the miscount yourself.

You miscounted by misremembering. I miscounted by arsing-up my pre-Excel count. Hey - it makes us human (other than Lord Orsam obviously)!

By the way, RJ/LO, how did you calculated the 15,557 without recourse to Excel and all of its inherent weaknesses? Please don't tell me old Valve-Based Processor himself - the aristocratic artisan of arithmetic - worked it out in his head?

Scatological joke for you:

How did the mathematician fix his constipation? He worked it out with pencil and paper.

Ike

[Al Bundy's Eyes]

Scatological joke for you:

How did the mathematician fix his constipation? He worked it out with pencil and paper.

Ike

Scatological reality for you: I was once requested to work it out with a spoon. I didn't. Time and encouragement did the trick. Just goes to show our elders don't always know better.

(In his defence, the spoon technique might have been significantly quicker, but there's a plethora of reasons why that wasn't happening)

That's why they pay us minimum wage!

[Iconoclast]

Scatological reality for you: I was once requested to work it out with a spoon. I didn't. Time and encouragement did the trick. Just goes to show our elders don't always know better.

(In his defence, the spoon technique might have been significantly quicker, but there's a plethora of reasons why that wasn't happening)

That's why they pay us minimum wage!

Dear Lord! Which end of the spoon were you expected to use, Abe?

This image is going to put me right off Love Island now ...

Ike

[rjpalmer]

I think what we all got from that was "I said THREE things, turns out it was TWO things, so I corrected my slipshod analysis, but when I realised I'd just confirmed how easy it is to be 'slightly out' with my statistics, rather than simply admit to it my ego had to go scurrying off looking for some sort of logic that would have justified my initial error'.

Weak analogy, Ike, but if it makes you feel better....

This conversation is beyond petty, but the difference is that I corrected my own statement quickly, and without prompting, when I realized the myriad of misstatements by Diary supporters over the years may have clouded the issue further than I originally anticipated. I'm glad to have set the record straight; no shame in that.

By contrast, I corrected your mistake, after unsuccessfully trying to alert you to your various errors for a week, and having received nothing but a barrage of insults for my efforts.

But I am sorry to say that my former opinions of 'Iconoclast' are starting to resurface. Currently I calculate the odds of Ike being a wind-up merchant vs. Ike simply being a guy unaccustomed to statistical analysis to be exactly 50/50. Please put an end to my doubts. Which is it, Ike?

By the way, RJ/LO, how did you calculated the 15,557 without recourse to Excel and all of its inherent weaknesses? Please don't tell me old Valve-Based Processor himself - the aristocratic artisan of arithmetic - worked it out in his head?

I cannot speak for LO, with whom I am not currently in contact, but yes, Ike, as strange as it sounds, there are people who can actually solve these problems with relative ease using crayons.

It's no great mystery to add and to multiply.

Although I sometimes fall back on spelling phonetically, especially after pint (but thank Golly I have Caz to correct me!), I take pride in the fact that I can still do math at a 4th grade level.

Cheers.

[Iconoclast]

[QUOTE=rjpalmer;n762014]

By contrast, I corrected your mistake, after unsuccessfully trying to alert you to your various errors for a week, and having received nothing but a barrage of insults for my efforts.

In fairness, you deserved anything you got. You can't correct a teensy-weensy accounting error and think you've thereby rewritten the rulebook on statistical analysis.

But I am sorry to say that my former opinions of 'Iconoclast' are starting to resurface. Currently I calculate the odds of Ike being a wind-up merchant vs. Ike simply being a guy unaccustomed to statistical analysis to be exactly 50/50. Please put an end to my doubts. Which is it, Ike?

It is Roger Irrelevant which one I chose (you offered me a false dichotomy, by the way, but what would I know about logic???). Care don't I, in any order you like, my dear old friend.

I cannot speak for LO, with whom I am not currently in contact, but yes, Ike, as strange as it sounds, there are people who can actually solve these problems with relative ease using crayons.

Damn - of course - you used your crayons!

Although I sometimes fall back on spelling phonetically, especially after pint (but thank Golly I have Caz to correct me!), I take pride in the fact that I can still do math at a 4th grade level.

Don't your classmates not think it's a bit weird having a grown man in shorts, carrying his box of crayons, and doing maths with them?

Ike

(I accidentally typed 'OIke' there - almost as funny as 'Icke', no?)

[caz]

I think what we all got from that was "I said THREE things, turns out it was TWO things, so I corrected my slipshod analysis, but when I realised I'd just confirmed how easy it is to be 'slightly out' with my statistics, rather than simply admit to it my ego had to go scurrying off looking for some sort of logic that would have justified my initial error'.

The problem with that - you may need to inform your ego - is that you had already acknowledged the miscount yourself.

You miscounted by misremembering. I miscounted by arsing-up my pre-Excel count. Hey - it makes us human (other than Lord Orsam obviously)!

By the way, RJ/LO, how did you calculated the 15,557 without recourse to Excel and all of its inherent weaknesses? Please don't tell me old Valve-Based Processor himself - the aristocratic artisan of arithmetic - worked it out in his head?

Scatological joke for you:

How did the mathematician fix his constipation? He worked it out with pencil and paper.

Ike

Funny how RJ makes basic human errors in most of the posts I have been reading lately [still got some serious catching up to do] over dates and events, all of which can be put down to understandable slips of memory, less than perfect attention to the fine details, or simply omitting other information which could have saved him from going down one blind alley after another. We all do it to a greater or lesser extent, including electricians trying to remember events, or what a colleague told them, from weeks or years before, without any records or paperwork, or message board posts, to remind them. But it's easier to see why it happens even when the information is available, if the will is simply not there, as RJ's posts demonstrate, to put one's long entrenched beliefs through a sufficiently rigorous testing process.

Another weird coincidence: I was thinking last night of recycling a similar old joke:

What's black and crispy and hangs from the ceiling? A handyman pretending to be an electrician.

How do we know he was a handyman? Because he lived round the corner from his local pub.

Off to do some shopping now, so I'll be back for the Tour de France, to see if Mark Cavendish can equal the record for stage wins set by the great Eddy Merckx.

Another Eddy. And another question for RJ to wrestle with. Did this Eddy really make a career out of winning bicycle races, or was he just a bicycle repair man?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

And anyway, there is a further distinction. If you are correct, Eddy KNEW the diary came from under the floorboards of an old, Victorian house in Aigburth. By contrast, anyone who 'wasn't a moron,' only knew that the diary was an object being peddled by Mike Barrett who had previously contacted his agent under the alias 'Williams,' and had no better explanation than that he got it from a dead guy in a pub.

Really? You can't bring yourself to even admit that Eddie's "provenance" would have been FAR AND AWAY more compelling--which is precisely why you are championing it? And yet he was still willing to hand it over to Barrett?

Hang on - you are assuming several unknowns here: that Eddie knew about the Maybrick story before he was sent to the house on Riversdale Rd; knew this was where Maybrick had lived briefly; and would have worked out that the person who wrote in an "old book" he found under a floorboard was apparently Maybrick himself, presumably from reading the name Battlecrease and knowing this was the name of the house when Maybrick died; and all this before he considered how he could safely sell it on, and how much he could expect to get for it.

I suspect Eddie only learned what he had sold on to Mike, when Mike identified Battlecrease as a house on Riversdale Rd, and Maybrick as its former occupier, and went back to Eddie with news of his exciting discovery - and more questions about where he got the damned thing. I can just imagine Eddie's reaction, and I doubt he was feeling Mike's excitement. Crapping himself more like, in case Mike found out he had been working in that house on the very day he first showed him the old book.

I really must go shopping now - might even ask for some blank Victorian paper while I'm at it. If they only have a pack of 2021 toilet paper on offer, I'm sure I can do something with it.

[Iconoclast]

Hang on - you are assuming several unknowns here: that Eddie knew about the Maybrick story before he was sent to the house on Riversdale Rd; knew this was where Maybrick had lived briefly; and would have worked out that the person who wrote in an "old book" he found under a floorboard was apparently Maybrick himself, presumably from reading the name Battlecrease and knowing this was the name of the house when Maybrick died; and all this before he considered how he could safely sell it on, and how much he could expect to get for it.

I suspect Eddie only learned what he had sold on to Mike, when Mike identified Battlecrease as a house on Riversdale Rd, and Maybrick as its former occupier, and went back to Eddie with news of his exciting discovery - and more questions about where he got the damned thing. I can just imagine Eddie's reaction, and I doubt he was feeling Mike's excitement. Crapping himself more like, in case Mike found out he had been working in that house on the very day he first showed him the old book.

I really must go shopping now - might even ask for some blank Victorian paper while I'm at it. If they only have a pack of 2021 toilet paper on offer, I'm sure I can do something with it.

Yes, I agree, Caz. To iterate (as certain posters love to exaggerate the simple so I'll get in before they do):

Mar 9:
Eddie is under-utilised and filling a chair at Portus & Rhodes' office.
So he gets sent over to the nearby job at Riversdale Road to help out if he can.
In the course of 'helping out' he 'helps himself' to an old scrapbook which he has either found or someone else has found (possibly without reading).
Eddie's bored so he flicks through it. Nothing leaps out to him except the signature page.
'Jack the Ripper'? he thinks to himself, 'I'll slip this into my haversack for now and have another look once I get out of this old house'.
At some point that day he meets Mike Barrett. Probably in The Saddle (as it turns out he lives eight miles away from Riversdale Road - right next to the pub Mike Barrett likes to have an afternoon pint in).
For whatever reason, they discuss the old scrapbook. Eddie assumes it's a piece of old, worthless tat (or else he doesn't but he knows he can't do anything else with it as it's knocked-off). Mike is interested in it so Eddie says he can have it for £25 (or whatever).
Mike says he'll come back to him on that.
Mike makes a call to Rupert Crew and he finds that they - unexpectedly - take him seriously.
Mar 10 or 11
Mike buys the scrapbook from Eddie for £25.
Concerned the scrapbook may be knocked-off and not wanting to have to return it if the bizzies storm 'round at dawn in a fleet of black SUVs, Mike seeks out a potential replacement - a Victorian diary from 1880-1890, ideally, but it must have at least twenty blank pages in it otherwise he couldn't possibly pass it off as the document he bought from Eddie. Why 1890, though? Well, he knows it needs to be from around the time of the crimes but he doesn't care if it could be real or not because all he wants to say is 'Oh yes, that document Eddie sold me? Here it is'.

And the rest - as everyone always says (so predictably) - is history ...

Ike

[rjpalmer]

Hang on - you are assuming several unknowns here: that Eddie knew about the Maybrick story before he was sent to the house on Riversdale Rd; knew this was where Maybrick had lived briefly; and would have worked out that the person who wrote in an "old book" he found under a floorboard was apparently Maybrick himself, presumably from reading the name Battlecrease and knowing this was the name of the house when Maybrick died; and all this before he considered how he could safely sell it on, and how much he could expect to get for it.

Well, it’s my own fault. I should have realized I’d never receive a direct answer from the diary-friendly crowd.

Actually, I’m not “assuming” anything, Caz. I’m not even assuming that Eddie was at Dodd’s house on March 9th, let alone that he sold the Diary of Jack the Ripper to Barrett for a song and a dance. Those are your assumptions, musings, thoughts, feelings, hopes, etc.

I’m just seeking clarification as to why you think this would explain Barrett’s need to buy, some two weeks later, a genuine, blank Victorian Diary with the help of Martin Earl.

Please don’t tell me that you’ve lost the plot again, because that’s what we were discussing, isn’t it?

How can I give your theory a fair shake if you can’t even explain it?

If my understanding of your evolving theory is (finally) correct, Barrett’s transaction with Martin Earl was a sort of cost analysis--an attempt to ascertain the going price for a blank Victorian diary, so he could wrestle the infinitely more valuable Diary of Jack the Ripper from Eddie’s mitts (not a hopeless task, evidently, since Eddie was blissfully ignorant of what he had ripped-off from his client, which may or may not have also included a watch and a ring and a biscuit tin and a pillow slip containing dog vomit). And once Mike learned--sometime after March 26th --that a tiny and worthless but intricately described red memo book sold for £25, he then handed over this money to Eddie Lyons.

Or wait..no…you are now saying that that transaction had already taken place…?!?

For that’s where my confusion rests, Caz.

You now you seem to acknowledge in your theory that Ignorant Eddie had already handed over the Diary to Mike back on March 9th. For how else could Mike know what he had—Eddie being blissfully ignorant—unless he had gained ownership? And it was only after Mike gained ownership that he could quickly read & absorb the diary’s contents, pick up young Caroline, race home, flip through the phone book, or the Writer’s Yearbook, or some such guide, and—within the hour, or within minutes--call a literary agent in London with the announcement that he had the Diary of Jack the Ripper.

It doesn’t really work, does it?

All the while Barrett was selling the hoax to London, Eddie was patiently waiting for Martin Earl to come up with a suitable price for a transaction that had already taken place some seventeen days earlier? A trusting chap, our Eddie. And—according to you--dumb as dirt. (And I’m still not entirely sure why Mike needed to actually BUY the red diary from Earl, since I am now to understand that it wasn’t for trading purposes. If Eddie was this thick & trusting, wouldn’t he have simply accepted the quote Mike had received from Earl? Mike actually had to purchase the bloody thing, too??!? No wonder Anne was at her wit's end).

So, if I may, let me I ask one final time—just for clarification—do I now correctly understand you? Are you suggesting that Eddie handed over the physical ownership of the Diary of Jack the Ripper to Barrett on credit—even though you now seem to suggest that Mike and Eddie were complete strangers--trusting him to later give a fair market price? Which he already had, anyway, fifteen days earlier???!?

Doesn’t it seem a little…how do I put it?…desperate, convoluted, grasping? More the musings of a gin-soaked special pleader than a rational and objective theorist?

But please don’t answer. I no longer need an answer, and I can sense that I will never get one. This is beyond silly twaddle.

First “catch up” with the thread (though “catching up” with Ike’s mathematical musings always seems to be a few promised days away). For, to be clear, I’m now far more eager to read your reactions to Ike’s brilliant statistical analysis. For surely this is now the all-important question, and the rest is trivia by comparison. For if the odds of the Diary of James Maybrick coming from anywhere other than Dodd’s floorboards are an astonishing 37,557 to 1, then why the heck is no one screaming this from the rooftops? Has Ike alerted Donald Rumbelow and Stewart Evans and Paul Begg and the editors of the Ripperologist and the Whitechapel Society’s Journal to his discovery? Or maybe even The Journal of Forensic Science and Criminology, where—now that Ike’s arithmetic error has been corrected—(no need to thank me, Ike)—it will be published after a “rigorous peer review”? For it is scandalous to think that Ike’s unimpeachable analysis is to languish in a distant corner of the internet. And who am I—mistake-prone and foolish as I am-- to suggest that Ike is simply guilty of junk statistics?

Enjoy your weekend, Caz, and I won’t bother to reply further until you catch up. I await further developments...

P.S. By the way, in this old newspaper clipping below, Mr. Rhodes seems to acknowledge that his employees would have known the identity of this ‘house famous for its murder.’ But, of course, Rhodes’ “assumptions” need not detain us; Eddie’s ignorance is a pre-requisite if your theory is to work, and we must have that, mustn’t we, even if there is no credible evidence for any of it?