One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[rjpalmer]

Haha... no worries.

Sorry I've been away from this board for a fair few years and still catching up. To save me going back over 720 odd pages, do some people still think the Maybrick Dairy is genuine and thus Maybrick was JtR? I thought it was 'proven' years ago the book was almost certainly a fake. Confused...

It's difficult to say why there are still believers. It's something I've pondered.

I'm no psychiatrist, but I think it must have something to do with the romantic lure of lost causes, or old-fashioned contrarianism---to swim against the current for the sheer joy of it...

...to thumb one's nose at the skeptics, or to stand in Speaker's Corner on a soapbox and announce a perpetual motion machine even though the physicists say that it cannot be done.

Maybe the world is even better for having a few such types running around. 'Inconoclast' would be in a better position to describe his motivations.

[StevenOwl]

Sorry I've been away from this board for a fair few years and still catching up. To save me going back over 720 odd pages, do some people still think the Maybrick Dairy is genuine and thus Maybrick was JtR? I thought it was 'proven' years ago the book was almost certainly a fake. Confused...

Nope - 31 years on and still nobody has found a single piece of evidence which 100% proves the scrapbook was a modern fake.

[Geddy2112]

Oh, dang. Sorry.

Let me rephrase that. "If a man falls down dead in Chicago..."

Haha... no worries.

Sorry I've been away from this board for a fair few years and still catching up. To save me going back over 720 odd pages, do some people still think the Maybrick Dairy is genuine and thus Maybrick was JtR? I thought it was 'proven' years ago the book was almost certainly a fake. Confused...

[rjpalmer]

I swear to good Godley & Cream if I fall down dead today I'm coming back to haunt the shi*e out of you..

Oh, dang. Sorry.

Let me rephrase that. "If a man falls down dead in Chicago..."

[John Wheat]

Yet, you still feel the need to read and comment.

Its still true its a fake though.

[Geddy2112]

A man in Sunderland grabs his chest and falls to the sidewalk dead.

I swear to good Godley & Cream if I fall down dead today I'm coming back to haunt the shi*e out of you..

[rjpalmer]

Isn't this where The Rule of Three comes in? That's what I go by. It's a simple rule that I don't think has ever really failed.

One is Happenstance. Two is Coincidence. Two could be more than a Coincidence but it doesn't prove it. You need Three. Two is not enough for proof. That's why I always said it could just be a coincidence, same as RJ. Until I found out the third thing that sealed the deal for me.

Ike's Three is, I believe, the players for One and Two probably going to the same pub at the same time--one going there every school day, and one living close to it, and knocking off work early that day. That didn't do it for me. I had to have a better factor to make Three or "Enemy Action".

Hi Lombro--

As I said, it's time to pull the plug on Ike's irrelevant and bizarre number crunching. It's possible that a few rubes will gape their mouths in wonder and be taken in by it, but I'm confident any intelligent person will see through it.

To understand Ike's folly, one only needs to conduct a similar exercise with any two random events that we know are not related. One would come up with similarly astronomical odds, but they would be similarly worthless.

For instance:

A man in Sunderland grabs his chest and falls to the sidewalk dead.

At the exact same moment, a public statue falls over on the next street over.

What are the odds?

Some deluded soul can crunch the numbers by calculating how often people fall down from heart attacks in Sunderland and how often public statues topple to the ground and come up with some meaningless astronomical odds--say 87,000 to 1--and shriek out EUREKA! THE PROBABILITIES ARE TOO IMPROBABLE FOR THE TWO EVENTS NOT TO BE RELATED---but all that has happened is that this self-deluded statistician has deluded himself.

In Ike's case, it's even worse than that, because he's decided to count backwards to the day Maybrick died--which is adding a further irrelevancy into the equation.

Millions of events happen at every moment. In this case, Barrett called a literary agent. He could have been calling literary agents every day for weeks. Indeed, according to Maurice Chittenden, Barrett had been pimping the diary to publishers for months before he got a nibble. We weren't there, so we don't really know.

The same day, Dodd was having some work done on his house. That's it.

It's not a wild coincidence unless one injects their imagination. People have work done on their houses. One can crunch numbers and come up with a meaningless set of odds, but it tells us exactly ZERO about whether Eddie Lyons found a diary and sold it to Mike Barrett.

As for your "rule of three"...

Bear in mind that Eddie may well have been singled out BECAUSE he sometimes drank at the same pub as Barrett.

Indeed, we are told that Rhodes specifically asked his employees if anyone did so, (two admitted they did) so that mental link to Barrett had already been made.

Based on this, it was theorized that Eddie might have worked in Battlecrease that day. The time sheets don't actually put him there--he was there later that summer.

In fact, no one seems to know where Eddie was working over the next few weeks. His old job started back up, but he wasn't there, either.

The conversation is drifting sideways, though, so I'm out.

I was more interested in hearing why--if Barrett got the diary down the pub--Anne Graham led everyone on a wild goose chase for years.

There's no rational reason she would have done so and praising her dishonesty (as Ike has done four time now) does not cut the mustard with me.

[Iconoclast]

Ike, your analysis is entirely bogus, but at least it’s good for a laugh. Cheers.
For some bizarre reason, you’ve decided that it is appropriate to factor in the days when the floorboards were not lifted.
Think it through, Old Man. That, in a nutshell, is the flaw in your mathematical malpractice.
It’s still the same two events. No amount of double-talk or jiggery-pokery changes that.
The floorboards are lifted for the first time (supposedly)/a man goes to a literary agent with the diary.
Same two events, the same coincidence.
Whether this happened on May 17, 1889, or March 9, 1992 the two events are exactly the same and the coincidence is exactly the same.
Yet, for some unexplainable and illogical reason, you’ve decided to give credit to all the intervening days when the floorboards weren’t lifted, and nothing happened, and the earth was merely drifting its way around the sun.
Somehow, this meaningless non-factor that would be avoided by any competent statistician takes center stage in your analysis.
In your mind, the same exact coincidence is greater and more profound because it happened in 1992 rather than in 1889---and you’ve convinced yourself of this (and apparently convinced Markus and Jay and perhaps others) by simply counting backwards to when the subject of the hoax died.
It’s the epitome of allowing irrelevant data to cloud one's thinking.
That you can’t grasp the flaw is startling, but sometimes one must let it go.
If the children are going to run with scissors, they’ll do so. One can’t police them 24/7.
But thank you.
It’s been illuminating. Your analysis convinces me that Mike and Anne never fooled anyone.
Truly, it has always been a matter of believers fooling themselves.

I do so hope you aren't fooling anyone, RJ. Your ignorance of simple statistics is starting to sound rather contrived (like a wind-up merchant would do). Feedback is a gift, though, so it's up to you whether you unwrap it.

And we must all stop calling the double event of March 9, 1992, a 'coincidence'. Simple probability theory tells us it has almost no chance whatsoever of being simply a coincidence.

Mind you, most of us would not even require statistics to understand the rather obvious: a Jack the Ripper scrapbook purportedly written by James Maybrick gets talked about on the very day that workmen have been raising the floorboards in Maybrick's old house and one of the electricians drinks in the same pub as the bloke who talked about the scrapbook (who could have been living in Singapore or Australia or wherever but - surprise surprise love! - wasn't) and there are people in this world who don't think that alone is an incredibly obvious non-coincidence? Well, there's one born every day, as they say ...

[FISHY1118]

Yet, you still feel the need to read and comment.

Which is my poragative.

[erobitha]

10846 post , Its still a fake .

Yet, you still feel the need to read and comment.

[FISHY1118]

10846 post , Its still a fake .

[Lombro2]

Same two events, the same coincidence.

Whether this happened on May 17, 1889, or March 9, 1992 the two events are exactly the same and the coincidence is exactly the same

Isn't this where The Rule of Three comes in? That's what I go by. It's a simple rule that I don't think has ever really failed.

One is Happenstance. Two is Coincidence. Two could be more than a Coincidence but it doesn't prove it. You need Three. Two is not enough for proof. That's why I always said it could just be a coincidence, same as RJ. Until I found out the third thing that sealed the deal for me.

Ike's Three is, I believe, the players for One and Two probably going to the same pub at the same time--one going there every school day, and one living close to it, and knocking off work early that day. That didn't do it for me. I had to have a better factor to make Three or "Enemy Action".

[Lombro2]

It doesn't matter what I believe, Markus.

You wrote that "they textually put it in a serial killer stash in Battlecrease."

From previous postings, it is clear that by "stash" you mean a horde of trophies, etc.

As evidence, you quote the following line:

"I place this now in a place where it shall be found…”

The meaning of "this" is changed to "these" as you bring in the textually unmentioned watch (and presumably the equally unmentioned crucifix and biscuit tin?) while "in a place" becomes an undeniable reference to Battlecrease, or even the floorboards of Battlecrease, when the text doesn't specify either of these and throughout the diary there are passages suggestive of Maybrick writing while at work (the meddling Lowry, etc) and even once while on a trip to London, as he contemplates his train trip home.

Clearly, Feldman's imagination ran along different lines, Markus, because he became quite excited on learning that Anne Graham had worked on the former site of the Knowsley Buildings, where Maybrick's old office once stood. We are even told that Feldman made an attempt to trace what happened to the furniture, knowing that the textually vague "in a place" could equally apply to any number of locations, including the Cotton Exchange, etc. The hoaxer Mike Barrett pushed the Knowsley Buidlings provenance theory, pointing out that the diary's last line, and only date, 3 May 1889--was the last day the real James Maybrick had attended work.

There was a certain logic to it that is more palatable than a vomiting Maybrick leaping from his death bed, pulling a crowbar out of his pajama bottoms, and going at the floorboards in earnest, hoping the whole while not to alert Yapp.
;

That’s a fascinating observation, RJ.

So we actually have Maybrick writing most of the diary at work and then we have him going there on his last day at work on May 3rd, presumably retrieving it and making his last entry before being bedridden at Battlecrease his last week of life where he died on the 11th.

There were no entries while he was lying in bed dying and presumably under observation. Well thought out! Fascinating detail!

[rjpalmer]

It's simples statistics, mate.

Ike, your analysis is entirely bogus, but at least it’s good for a laugh. Cheers.

For some bizarre reason, you’ve decided that it is appropriate to factor in the days when the floorboards were not lifted.

Think it through, Old Man. That, in a nutshell, is the flaw in your mathematical malpractice.

It’s still the same two events. No amount of double-talk or jiggery-pokery changes that.
.
The floorboards are lifted for the first time (supposedly)/a man goes to a literary agent with the diary.

Same two events, the same coincidence.

Whether this happened on May 17, 1889, or March 9, 1992 the two events are exactly the same and the coincidence is exactly the same.

Yet, for some unexplainable and illogical reason, you’ve decided to give credit to all the intervening days when the floorboards weren’t lifted, and nothing happened, and the earth was merely drifting its way around the sun.

Somehow, this meaningless non-factor that would be avoided by any competent statistician takes center stage in your analysis.

In your mind, the same exact coincidence is greater and more profound because it happened in 1992 rather than in 1889---and you’ve convinced yourself of this (and apparently convinced Markus and Jay and perhaps others) by simply counting backwards to when the subject of the hoax died.

It’s the epitome of allowing irrelevant data to cloud one's thinking.

That you can’t grasp the flaw is startling, but sometimes one must let it go.

If the children are going to run with scissors, they’ll do so. One can’t police them 24/7.

But thank you.

It’s been illuminating. Your analysis convinces me that Mike and Anne never fooled anyone.

Truly, it has always been a matter of believers fooling themselves.

[Iconoclast]

Hi Ike,

So, using your methodology, if a journalist contacted the Liverpool Echo on May 18, 1889, announcing that he had the Diary of Jim Maybrick aka Jack the Ripper and we learned that the floorboards at Battlecrease had gone up that same day, we would have to place the odds of those two events randomly coinciding at mere 7 to 1?

So not really all that impressive? Barely enough to even tickle our suspicions?

But if the same events happened a year later, the odds of those events coinciding would now be 372 to 1? So, we are now--based on the mere passing of time-- supposed to be more impressed?

But because Barrett didn't think to hoax the diary until 1992, the exact same two events coinciding is now aprox. 37,000 to 1?

And if these events didn't coincide until the year 3092, they would now be at an astronomical 767,000 to 1, even though they are basically still the same two events?

I'm truly interested in your thought process here. What exactly do you think this mathematical jiggery-pokery is supposed to tell us about whether Eddie Lyons found the diary and sold it to Barrett?

With every passing breath, RJ, you reveal that you do not understand statistics. What we are debating is - and I'll break it down:

If we know that since Time X two events have definitely occurred and we believe that they occurred entirely by chance alone, then the simple probability (avoiding any statistical upselling around ages of houses or what have you) that they would occur on the same day is simply 1 (the number of times that had happened) over the number of days they could have happened in.

So that's your 1-in-7 or your 1-in-372 or your 1-in-37,000+ or your 1-in-767,000. So, if two events definitely happened and there were only seven days they could have occurred in, then their coinciding on the same day purely by chance alone is self-evidently significantly more likely than if, say, a million years had passed before they both happened and yet still they happened on the same day.

It's simples statistics, mate.