One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[Iconoclast]

[Iconoclast]

[Iconoclast]

The underlining was from my original reading not for the purposes of posting this.

The weight of expert opinion may well have favoured some degree of anatomical knowledge (see my 'anatomy' post on my return from Scotland) but there is a huge area of doubt around whether Jack had to have surgical expertise and whether he just got lucky with Eddowes.

Ike

[Iconoclast]

PS Watch out, Wor Jacky's Ghost is about. We'll be out next season with an eye on the east end of London to strike you down and surgically remove your 7th-place spot. Is it still reet foggy down there, by the way?

[FISHY1118]

Dr Brown said the act of mutilation would have taken at least five minutes,

This is correct by dr brown .




But Don Rumblelow said this part .So im going with dr brown

Of course, if the removal of the kidney was not a deliberate act but simply a chance occurrence, the theories become idle speculation.




I think knight sums it up pretty spot on tho .



Why ,with such a limited amount of time would the killer go for the kidney if it wasnt his intention?. knowing how difficult it would be to remove , only someone with skill and knowledge would attempt it in near darkesss and very ,very little time . More importantly....... The killer left with the kidney .

So in summing up, its not 100% absolute proof [rarely if anything is regarding JtR] he intended to take the kidney . But this makes a damm good case for it . Thus all along as ive said, suspects like Druitt , Maybrick ,Lechmere ,Hutchinson are for me not even in the starting blocks for being JrR .

[caz]

RJ's latest theory [and he can correct me and provide clarification if I have misunderstood any of the following elements]:

Some background information first...

The Barretts have moved to Goldie Street so Anne can be close to where her elderly widowed father is living. She has a full-time job and a daughter at primary school. Mike is unemployed so he has taken on the role of 'house husband' and also does the school runs. His routine includes a pint or two at the Saddle before picking up Caroline from the school opposite. This is when he meets Tony Devereux, who also enjoys a lunchtime pint.

Now over to RJ...

During this period, when Mike is no longer contributing to Celebrity Magazine, his wife fancies a little writing for pleasure in her spare time, and settles on the idea of a 'novella', based on one of the sickest series of murders in criminal history, and decides that Jack the Ripper should be James Maybrick of Liverpool, writing his diary and composing flippant doggerel to describe the gruesome deeds.

So Anne sets to work using the word processor, which was bought in 1986 for Mike's abandoned efforts, and when she is finally happy with the result, Mike reads it and then has the brilliant idea of getting her novella transferred by hand into a suitably old book and trying to flog it as the true confessions of Jack.

RJ will no doubt clarify if it is Mike who prints off Anne's draft and causes the fight over it on the kitchen floor when he outlines his plans for it. She never intended it for publication and wants nothing to do with this crazy scheme, but Mike takes over and bullies her into submission, to the extent that she is not only fully aware of his efforts to obtain the raw materials for this fraudulent enterprise, but she actively assists him throughout the process. The last thing she wants is another row.

When Mike swears his affadavit on 5th January 1995, he gives an account of this process that is basically correct, apart from getting the year wrong because of his terrible memory for dates. He accuses Anne of transferring the fraud by hand into the photo album, while young Caroline looks on. He would hardly forget it if a third party did the handwriting, so he is either lying about his wife's involvement because she left him, or she really did all this, just to keep the peace at home, and he is now punishing her for doing what he coerced her into doing in the first place.

Which is it, RJ?

If you think Mike could have lied about whose handwriting is in the diary, what else was he lying about? Who was the real hoaxer in that case, and why would Mike protect him or her?

PS - I think I can see why RJ can't have the Barretts fighting over the physical diary. If it is only obtained from an auction on 31st March 1992, and Anne's novella is then transferred into it over the next few days, it just doesn't work, does it?

[Iconoclast]

Just a polite reminder from Ikemin that all posts on this thread must adhere to strict rules, chief amongst which is the acknowledgement that the James Maybrick scrapbook has never been proven a hoax and is almost certainly the genuine account of Jack the Spratt’s evil crimes.

Thank you

Ikemin

[FISHY1118]

Just a polite reminder from Ikemin that all posts on this thread must adhere to strict rules, chief amongst which is the acknowledgement that the James Maybrick scrapbook has never been proven a hoax and is almost certainly the genuine account of Jack the Spratt’s evil crimes.

Thank you

Ikemin

Yer good luck with that one

[rjpalmer]

[and he can correct me and provide clarification if I have misunderstood any of the following elements]

Yes, thanks. Indeed, you do have it completely wrong.

What I suggested is that you and Ike and Keith and the small smattering of people who still believe the diary is an old document should listen very carefully to what Anne Graham was saying in her long 'confessional' statement to Paul Feldman. I think she lays it out pretty plainly.

If you wish to ignore that advise, I certainly can't force you.

You instead launched into an exercise in creative writing.

Who said anything about Anne 'fancying a bit of novel writing'?

That is not what she alluded to in her statement. She said--in her own words--that she wanted Mike to write a story....a story about Maybrick being the Ripper.

That was the plan, wasn't it, when her father funded Mike's purchase of a word processor in the mid-1980s? That, since Mike was on disability and had health problems and couldn't work, that he would pursue a writing career--evidently with her support and her help?

But we know how that would have went, don't we?

Anne also admitted that she had to 'tidy up' Mike's various writing projects, and I see no reason why it would have been any different this go-round, and, indeed, I suspect she ended up doing 85-95% of the work.

Your argument has always been that Anne was too smart or too ethical to have assisted Barrett in a scam. But your assumption is that she began with the knowledge that it was going to be a hoax.

I don't think this is true. She said she wanted Mike to write A STORY (ie., she assumed this). She had no intention of having the 'diary' published. It was supposed to be a story.

This is the essence of her own statement.

Thanks to David Barrat, we have now seen several samples of Barrett's published articles and they are entirely competent, but I think it is reasonable to take Anne's word for it that she, on some level, helped Mike in their creation.

It also doesn't take a Sherlock Holmes or a Dr. Freud to realize that Anne had writing aspirations of her own and had encouraged Barrett to seek this line of employment. It was her father who apparently funded the purchase of the word processor. So why on earth wouldn't she have helped him?

I want to make one thing plain.

I don't think Anne is any more morally or ethically guilty of helping Barrett create this fraud, if that is indeed what she did and was alluding to, than the artists that Barrett tricked into submitting their drawings for his non-existent children's book. ("The Loot Magazine" scam). They were coerced and tricked, and I suspect Anne Graham was as well.

Ultimately, she was deeply upset by Barrett's scheme, as confirmed by the accounts given by her friend Audrey and her little daughter Caroline.

Shirley Harrison noted in her book that Irish Roman Catholic women are taught that they must stick with their husbands, and Anne kept her head down, terrified, but also placing hope in the very reasonable assumption that the literary agent would eventually come to her senses and Mike's hoax would implode.

Anne said as much. She believed Doreen would send Mike packing. Why would she not humor her abusive husband's whims, if she believed the whole project would implode? No, Anne wasn't thinking clearly, perhaps, but do emotionally and physically abused women think rationally and clearly? Or do they just try to cope from day to day?

But have it your way. If you want to believe the fantasy that Fat Eddy the electrician found the diary under Maybrick's floorboards and sold it to a man he didn't know in a pub for twenty-five pounds, by all means, do so. It still leaves you with the 'man in the pub' provenance--just a variation on Bongo Barrett's own malarky.

Meanwhile, the laws of chemistry and the use of the police inventory list and the use of modern idioms tell us the diary is a modern fake, so you're merely transferring the suspicion from two known writers (Graham and Barrett) to a man with no known history of writing (Lyons). That doesn't strike me as very rational, nor productive.

Personally, I am confident that Anne (or her daughter) will eventually admit to what happened and it won't be far removed from what she was implying in her original statement to Feldman, except that the diary never existed in her youth, nor did it come down through the family. Whether she first came up with the idea of Maybrick-as-Ripper, who knows? Maybe there was an element of truth to Steve Powell's ever-evolving memory of an Australian nurse who liked to talk about Jack the Ripper. Harrison seems to have given it some credence.

Finally, if Anne thinks I have misunderstood her or are misrepresenting what she implied in her statement, she can, of course, correct me.

[rjpalmer]

I'm curious why you would think that is odd or humorous that Anne would "fancy a bit of writing."

When she finally left Barrett and joined the diary "team," what did she do? Didn't she write a report that so impressed Martin Fido that he concluded that she could have written the diary with "one hand tied behind her back"?

Didn't she also fancy writing a full-length biography of Florence Maybrick--and did so---with her co-author, who was apparently a photographer?

And didn't Keith Skinner inform us that Anne fancied writing another true crime book, that was going to be about Victorian baby farming?

It sounds like a woman who had writing aspirations of her own, but--having a full-time job--projected these aspirations onto her less talented husband, who needed an occupation.

As a don at Oxford University, how many dozens if not hundreds of student papers would Martin Fido have read?

I'm guessing Martin was a pretty good judge of people's writing abilities.

[caz]

Yes, thanks. Indeed, you do have it completely wrong.

Glad to hear it. It would have been rather preposterous, wouldn't it?

What I suggested is that you and Ike and Keith and the small smattering of people who still believe the diary is an old document should listen very carefully to what Anne Graham was saying in her long 'confessional' statement to Paul Feldman. I think she lays it out pretty plainly.

If you wish to ignore that advise, I certainly can't force you.

You instead launched into an exercise in creative writing.

Who said anything about Anne 'fancying a bit of novel writing'?

Sorry, but I thought you suggested only recently that you now accept that Mike didn't write the diary, but may have contributed a little of the doggerel to what you believe was Anne's novella. If she didn't fancy it, nobody - certainly not Mike - could have forced her to try her hand at it.

That is not what she alluded to in her statement. She said--in her own words--that she wanted Mike to write a story....a story about Maybrick being the Ripper.

But when did she tell Mike what she wanted him to do? You suggested only recently that it was Mike who gave the orders in Goldie Street, which she meekly followed to keep the peace.

How about this? Mike brings the diary home one day in March 1992 and Anne gets wind of his plan to interest a publisher in it. She doesn't believe Mike got it from a reputable or legitimate source and can't get a straight answer out of him. [She knows him only too well.] So she strongly advises him against doing anything rash with the book itself, suggesting instead that he writes a story based on what's in it.

That was the plan, wasn't it, when her father funded Mike's purchase of a word processor in the mid-1980s? That, since Mike was on disability and had health problems and couldn't work, that he would pursue a writing career--evidently with her support and her help?

But we know how that would have went, don't we?

Indeed. So when, how and why do you suppose the plan evolved to become a story about Maybrick being Jack the Ripper, which Anne wanted Mike to write, but which she inevitably ended up writing for him? Whose bright idea was that?

Your argument has always been that Anne was too smart or too ethical to have assisted Barrett in a scam. But your assumption is that she began with the knowledge that it was going to be a hoax.

I don't think this is true. She said she wanted Mike to write A STORY (ie., she assumed this). She had no intention of having the 'diary' published. It was supposed to be a story.

This is the essence of her own statement.

So we are back to when, how and why you think Anne allowed this wholly innocent fictional story to morph into a cynical fake, handwritten into an adapted photo album shortly before Mike's appointment in London. How much trickery and coercion would it have taken on Mike's part to persuade her to participate in what she must surely have realised Mike was going to try and pass off as a genuinely old document? Did she seriously imagine he went to London to interest Doreen in a work of fiction, which they had dressed creatively for the occasion in faux Victorian clothing, just for jolly?

I want to make one thing plain.

I don't think Anne is any more morally or ethically guilty of helping Barrett create this fraud, if that is indeed what she did and was alluding to, than the artists that Barrett tricked into submitting their drawings for his non-existent children's book. ("The Loot Magazine" scam). They were coerced and tricked, and I suspect Anne Graham was as well.

But those artists didn't know Mike from Adam, any more than you did. They weren't complicit in a scam; they were the victims. If they'd known Mike like Anne did, they'd have had no dealings with him. Anne knew Mike better than anyone on the planet, so it comes down to whether she was more likely to be coerced and tricked into helping him to create a fraudulent document out of a fictional treatment, or whether you are more likely to have been coerced and tricked into helping him to create a credible confession out of a fraudulent affidavit.

Shirley Harrison noted in her book that Irish Roman Catholic women are taught that they must stick with their husbands, and Anne kept her head down, terrified, but also placing hope in the very reasonable assumption that the literary agent would eventually come to her senses and Mike's hoax would implode.

When did Shirley become your bible on how Anne would have been brought up? Whatever 'values' she was taught, she didn't stick with her husband, did she? When she left him, in January 1994, the diary had already been published and become a best seller. She was just beginning to receive a share of the royalties in her own right. Any hope she may initially have had that Doreen would 'eventually come to her senses' would have vanished as early as July 1992, with the publishing deal. She had plenty of time, before the police arrived in Goldie Street, for her Catholic conscience to prick her into revealing how she had been coerced by her husband's trickery. If she couldn't face it while still under his roof, what stopped her doing so after leaving the marital home? Who would have blamed her, if she had only revealed the truth after breaking free from an abusive relationship? Not you, apparently. So who would have blamed her, and why did she not cleanse her soul properly with the truth? Why the blatant lie to Feldman about the diary being in her family for years, if what she was actually doing was confessing to something entirely different?

Anne said as much. She believed Doreen would send Mike packing. Why would she not humor her abusive husband's whims, if she believed the whole project would implode? No, Anne wasn't thinking clearly, perhaps, but do emotionally and physically abused women think rationally and clearly? Or do they just try to cope from day to day?

Every woman reacts differently, RJ. Men can be emotionally and physically abused too, of course, and they too will all react differently. Until you can get inside Anne's head, you are no better qualified to judge the situation in March/April 1992 than anyone else, myself included. You are presuming what was going on with the diary during that time, and then speculating how an abused wife would have dealt with it, to make it all fit with subsequent events and statements on the published record.

If you were already 100% satisfied that the diary was a Barrett fake, it beats me why you are now trying to see inside Anne's soul and what was making her tick when Mike was meant to be tricking her into committing fraud.

But have it your way. If you want to believe the fantasy that Fat Eddy the electrician found the diary under Maybrick's floorboards and sold it to a man he didn't know in a pub for twenty-five pounds, by all means, do so. It still leaves you with the 'man in the pub' provenance--just a variation on Bongo Barrett's own malarky.

I will have it any way the evidence takes me. Why would I need fantasy? In case you forgot, Bongo Barrett never said he got the diary from a man in the pub. There is a very good reason why he didn't say that. It was Mike's variation - and deviation from the truth - to say he got it from a man in his own home, who was conveniently dead before he could be asked any questions about it.

Meanwhile, the laws of chemistry and the use of the police inventory list and the use of modern idioms tell us the diary is a modern fake, so you're merely transferring the suspicion from two known writers (Graham and Barrett) to a man with no known history of writing (Lyons). That doesn't strike me as very rational, nor productive.

Why on earth would you think Eddie Lyons needed a known history of writing, in order to come across an old book while working in an old house? That is certainly not rational, and combining the testimony of the electricians and various other witnesses could hardly be less 'productive' than the years you have already spent on your suspicion of the Barretts.

Finally, if Anne thinks I have misunderstood her or are misrepresenting what she implied in her statement, she can, of course, correct me.

And if Anne doesn't 'correct' you, because if she read your thoughts she would recognise another fantasist, like Steve Powell, that would make you more confident in your own abilities to understand this woman's true relationship to the diary?

[caz]

I'm curious why you would think that is odd or humorous that Anne would "fancy a bit of writing."

Not odd or humorous, if this had been anything other than a collection of thoughts and dodgy poetry by a man who specialised in murdering and mutilating women.

That's what Anne had to fancy writing about, for your theory to get off the ground. She knew Mike would have been hopeless, left to his own devices, so she would also have known it would be down to her to do the writing for him, and if she decided she didn't fancy it, he might abuse her emotionally and physically until she gave in. Not the best start, I'd suggest.

Before the diary emerged, do you have any evidence that Anne had written anything - fact or fiction - for herself and in her own right?

When she finally left Barrett and joined the diary "team," what did she do? Didn't she write a report that so impressed Martin Fido that he concluded that she could have written the diary with "one hand tied behind her back"?

Didn't she also fancy writing a full-length biography of Florence Maybrick--and did so---with her co-author, who was apparently a photographer?

And didn't Keith Skinner inform us that Anne fancied writing another true crime book, that was going to be about Victorian baby farming?

It sounds like a woman who had writing aspirations of her own, but--having a full-time job--projected these aspirations onto her less talented husband, who needed an occupation.

As a don at Oxford University, how many dozens if not hundreds of student papers would Martin Fido have read?

I'm guessing Martin was a pretty good judge of people's writing abilities.

But not, apparently, such a good judge of his own abilities to identify the diary's author.

Martin later contradicted himself about Anne when he decided that she could not have written the diary after all, because of the spelling errors and solecisms - which is why he said it was impossible for James Maybrick to have written it because, like Anne, he would have been incapable of bad grammar.

I think only a full and frank confession from Anne herself, explaining how and why she wrote Jack the Ripper's diary, and chose Maybrick as the killer, will change anything now. Either that, or a full and frank admission of what she really knows about it - which IMHO is little more than when Mike brought the thing home with him.

[caz]

For anyone who actually believes Anne wrote the diary for Mike...

Any ideas why she didn't think to consult a dictionary while drafting and transferring it into the photo album?

Did she have a lot more confidence in her writing ability than she should have had? Or did she appreciate that most people writing in their own private diary would naturally make a few mistakes, either in their spelling, grammar, punctuation or vocabulary, so she tried to reflect that?

Love,

Caz
X

[rjpalmer]

That's what Anne had to fancy writing about, for your theory to get off the ground.

Jesus.

It was Anne herself who said she wanted Mike to write 'a story' about Maybrick as the Ripper.

Anne herself!

As for the rest of it--I don't particularly care whether you accept it or not.

You have a rather bad habit of twisting what is said or written into some strange interpretation of your own and then critiquing it.

This makes any further discussion a pointless endeavor, so I'm more than willing to terminate this discussion until at least September 12th.

I'm also happy to give you the last word.

Ciao.

By the way, Shirley's discussion of Anne's 'horror' at her divorce can be found on page 280 of the "American Connection."

It's unclear to me why you think Harrison was lying about it.

[rjpalmer]

It's unclear to me why you think Harrison was lying about it.

Of course, Caz, I fully realize that you never said that Harrison was lying--instead, you cast doubt on why I (or anyone else?) should believe Harrison's highly believable account.

Can you see how annoying it is when someone changes the meaning of words?