One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[Phil Carter]

I think you are misunderstanding the point c.d. was making there, Phil. Read his post again.

With all due deference,

I suggest it is you that is missing the point, or avoiding it...

MJK1 and MJK2.. The ORIGINAL printed versions, please note, (I think they are shown somewhere on Casebook, btw) show no initials.

So.. If that be the case... Your question.. "which version.... Etc etc" answers your problem. And blows apart the Maybrick Diary theory. Because, quite simply, the initials "seen" are not from the original versions of the photograph.

You won't like it... But that's how it is.

Now I'm back off to sleep.


Phil

[Harry D]

You can only deal with what you've got.

Practice what you preach.

[c.d.]

I know that this is a forum and not a court of law. But saying that the initials F. and M. appear on the wall would never be allowed to stand in a court of law. Any attorney worth their salt would be all over that saying it assumes something as true for which no evidence has been shown. A judge would concur.

So you have two hurdles here. First you have to show with a substantial amount of evidence that that the initials F. and M. do in fact appear on the wall. That is a tough hurdle. But assuming that that burden can somehow be met you face the second hurdle in which you now have to demonstrate that it was Maybrick who put those initials on the wall. A very tough road to hoe. A prudent person might just say ah screw it and go get a beer.

c.d.

[Iconoclast]

Here's a little exercise, dear readers.

If you can't see what is contained in this Magic Eye picture, does that mean there's nothing to see or that you are simply not seeing what others clearly see?

Ike

[Iconoclast]

With all due deference,

I suggest it is you that is missing the point, or avoiding it...

Avoiding the point??? Do you honestly think you're the first person to ever claim they can't see Florence's initials therefore they aren't there? I've addressed this a thousand times and am not one usually given to shirk a challenge.

MJK1 and MJK2.. The ORIGINAL printed versions, please note, (I think they are shown somewhere on Casebook, btw) show no initials.

Many people do see them, including respected commentators such as Martin Fido, Paul Begg, and really briefly Simon Wood.

I'll bet you can't do my Magic Eye either, can you?

You won't like it... But that's how it is.

It's not how it is, Phil - it's how you see it (or actually don't see it), that's all. I never thought I'd say this, but I'm with Martin Fido on this one ...

[Iconoclast]

Practice what you preach.

I've got a scrapbook predicting I'll find Florence Maybrick's initials in Mary Kelly's room and I've got a photograph of Mary Kelly's room with Florence Maybrick's initials appearing to be on the wall.

So, yes, I will thank you.

[erobitha]

I know that this is a forum and not a court of law. But saying that the initials F. and M. appear on the wall would never be allowed to stand in a court of law. Any attorney worth their salt would be all over that saying it assumes something as true for which no evidence has been shown. A judge would concur.

So you have two hurdles here. First you have to show with a substantial amount of evidence that that the initials F. and M. do in fact appear on the wall. That is a tough hurdle. But assuming that that burden can somehow be met you face the second hurdle in which you now have to demonstrate that it was Maybrick who put those initials on the wall. A very tough road to hoe. A prudent person might just say ah screw it and go get a beer.

c.d.

Just to break that down c.d - the first point is a fair one.

But if point 1 can be proven, then point 2 suddenly becomes rapidly valid too. The circumstantial evidence within the book becomes incredibly valuable.

The hoaxer would have to had some close ripperologist knowledge to know of the thoughts of Woods, Fido, Begg et al. There was no internet.

We are told Mike Barrett is the master hoaxer - so either the men who spotted the F (arm / wall) & M (wall) told Mike of this or he came across it somewhere? Was it mentioned in a book or newspaper during 1989-1992? If not, the hoaxer must know someone who thought there were initials therefore the hoaxer is a ripperologist. If this is the case - who, why and how did it end up in the hands of Mike Barratt?

The alternative answer is it is indeed genuine.

Point 1 can be explored with access to the original prints.

[Harry D]

I've got a scrapbook predicting I'll find Florence Maybrick's initials in Mary Kelly's room and I've got a photograph of Mary Kelly's room with Florence Maybrick's initials appearing to be on the wall.

So, yes, I will thank you.

You keep believing that, sweetheart.

[Iconoclast]

I know that this is a forum and not a court of law. But saying that the initials F. and M. appear on the wall would never be allowed to stand in a court of law. Any attorney worth their salt would be all over that saying it assumes something as true for which no evidence has been shown. A judge would concur.

c.d.

c.d., any decent attorney is not going to equivocate over this issue. He or she is going to say "Those initials are there on the wall, and here's a list of the eminent commentators who have agreed with this".

So you have two hurdles here. First you have to show with a substantial amount of evidence that that the initials F. and M. do in fact appear on the wall. That is a tough hurdle.

Come on, c.d., I could do that bit in my sleep (as Phil is probably doing right now). They do appear to be on Kelly's wall! Sufficient numbers of people have concurred that I would have no problem calling witnesses to support this.

But assuming that that burden can somehow be met you face the second hurdle in which you now have to demonstrate that it was Maybrick who put those initials on the wall. A very tough road to hoe.

Whether Florence's initials are 'actually' on Kelly's wall is a huge existentialist conundrum which Bishop George Berkeley himself would struggle to answer. Does a tree falling in a forest make a sound if no-one is around to hear it? (Obviously, the critical bit here is always "What do you mean by 'sound'?").

As I said in a previous post, all you can do is infer from other evidence whether the probability is high that those marks that look so very much to so many people as 'FM' were ever meant to mean 'FM'. Personally, the prediction of them which we find in the Maybrick scrapbook allows me to infer that the 'FM' so many people can see on Kelly's wall is actually Florrie's initials.

A prudent person might just say ah screw it and go get a beer.

And now we can get back to concurring again ...

ike

[Iconoclast]

With all due deference,

I suggest it is you that is missing the point, or avoiding it...

MJK1 and MJK2.. The ORIGINAL printed versions, please note, (I think they are shown somewhere on Casebook, btw) show no initials.

So.. If that be the case... Your question.. "which version.... Etc etc" answers your problem. And blows apart the Maybrick Diary theory. Because, quite simply, the initials "seen" are not from the original versions of the photograph.

You won't like it... But that's how it is.

Now I'm back off to sleep.


Phil

I appreciate that you are now probably asleep but ...

A) Have you seen the original photographs yourself, and
B) Do you know whether Martin Fido and Paul Begg were examining the originals when they were comparing notes in the early 1990s?

An easy way for you to answer B) would be to ask Paul on the message boards, by the way. If they were and they clearly could see those initials, would that not utterly cork you?

Ike

[Iconoclast]

To be clear about the quality of MJK1 and MJK2 and whether or not neither of them depict the 'FM' on Kelly's wall that so many people strangely seem to have no problem in seeing, I should note here that the first edition copy of Shirley Harrison's original book shows the 'FM' as clearly as any and this is from an original which is now in the National Archives in a protective sleeve and has been removed from the album page it was initially contained in.

It's not a particularly clear rendition and yet the 'M' is comfortably clear enough. As ever, the 'F' is far less pronounced but - again - it's 'there' at least in principle.



Mrs I and I were watching the UK Manhunt Series 1 last evening and I was struck by one particular scene which speaks very effectively about the interpretation of evidence. The two detectives timed themselves walking from the murderer's previous home, through a cut in the houses, onto a main road, and they stopped at the bus stop that his young victim had last been seen at. The walk took them just 55 seconds.

So, the poor young blonde-haired girl was last seen - in the whole of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland - just 55 seconds walk away from the previous home of the man who (at that point) was the prime suspect for a series of other attacks and murders on blonde-haired ladies.

Now, the questions the detectives obviously had to ask themselves included:

A) Does this prove that this twat murdered this young girl? The answer they would have to admit would be 'No'.
B) Is it likely that a girl fitting this twat's victimotology would be last seen so close to his previous home (where he was living when she went missing, by the way)? The answer they would have to conclude would also be 'No'.
C) So can we infer that any reasonable jury would put these two facts together (where she was last seen and where he lived) and draw the conclusion that the two events simply had to be linked? The answer they would have to admit (one assumes) would be 'Yes'.

Now, this is the same principle as we are discussing here.

A) Does the apparent presence of Florence Maybrick's initials on Mary Kelly's wall prove that that twat murdered this young lady? 'No'.
B) Is it likely that those initials would be apparent on Mary Kelly's wall given that they had been predicted by a diary discovered supposedly written by that twat? 'No'.
C) So can we infer that any reasonable jury would put these two facts together (the prediction in the diary and the apparent fulfilment on Mary Kelly's wall) and draw the conclusion that the two events simply had to be linked? The answer they would have to admit (one assumes) would be 'Yes'.

If a jury said 'No' to either conclusion then they would effectively be saying that such coincidences are commonplace and well within the bounds of plausibility, and I find it hard to believe that any jury would be so gullible as to agree with any defence lawyer attempting that argument.

Of course, those facts alone would not convict the murderers. The police would need to compile a body of other evidence - direct and circumstantial - with which to properly convict in a court of law, but these examples (given above) would provide central planks to the prosecution's case. We no longer have the luxury of hoping for direct evidence in the case of Jack the Ripper so everything for every candidate has to be built upon a circumstantial platform. That's just the way it is. If we are ever to conclude that we have solved the case, we have to accept that circumstantial evidence will be our strongest weapon. In the case of Florence Maybrick's initials on Mary Kelly's wall, predicted as they were in the James Maybrick scrapbook, we could hardly hope for more damning circumstantial evidence.

Unless, of course, someone can provide us with an adequate and believable account of how a hoaxer could have drawn our attention to those initials which had been missed by commentators of the case for just over a hundred years until - ironically - Maybrick's arch-critic Martin Fido inadvertently carried the flag into battle on our behalf.

Ike

[Iconoclast]

Here's a little exercise, dear readers.

If you can't see what is contained in this Magic Eye picture, does that mean there's nothing to see or that you are simply not seeing what others clearly see?

Ike

I wasn't codding dear old readers when I said there's an image to be found here. If you can't see it, does that mean categorically there's nothing to be seen?

For years, I thought that Magic Eyes were a sort of global joke played on the gullible - that, in fact, there was nothing there (because I couldn't see 'through' any of them). Once I saw what was there, I realised there was no global joke and actually there's a wonderful world of clarity and understanding apparently hidden there.

The analogy could hardly be more apposite, I feel.

PS Okay, you've all forced me to give you a clue. The festive season is soon upon us!

Ike

[Iconoclast]

My regular correspondent (FDC) has emailed me with some interesting points (remember, not his first language):



I found on the net a link to a handbook on photography from the Victorian period, from the year 1909.
There is a possibility that the crime scene photos were tampered with on some of the negatives, as well as the photos on paper. This even at a much later date? Possibly when the images were published for the first time in magazines and books? Probably to make the sight a little less gruesome, or to get rid of things that weren't supposed to be seen? In this way it is therefore a small trick to make limbs disappear or draw in, or have details change shape!
I knew that photo 'retouch' was used early on, but I had absolutely no idea that one could go so far as to remove or re-draw entire objects or body parts.
The result is absolutely stunning and equivalent to today's photoshop!
This may put the C5 photos of Kelly and other victims, (literally) in a completely different light.
This could explain the differences in detail on Kelly's wall that I am referring to and make it difficult to judge the photos "by sight".
Because "retouching" could be performed on the negatives as well as on the photos, it is for us becoming difficult to know with certainty what a crime scene, or a corpse, really looked like on the spot?

Complete self-instructing library of practical photography; : Schriever, J. B. (James Boniface), 1868

Link: An Old Instructional Photography Book Shows ... - Daily Advent https://www.dailyadvent.com

Now, remember, dear readers, FDC is pointing-out that details can be removed. He's not saying that they are necessarily added (though, by implication, this is clearly just as possible).

My thanks to FDC for the insight ...

Ike

[Kaz]

PS Okay, you've all forced me to give you a clue. The festive season is soon upon us!

Ike

A pair of bollocks tied in a bow?

[Iconoclast]

A pair of bollocks tied in a bow?

And there goes the first prize to Kaz which is appropriately an all-expenses trip to SpecSavers!

I suspect you know it's not bollocks, but it made me laugh nevertheless as it is certainly open to interpretation ...