One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[Iconoclast]

Firstly on that, logic I do not have to prove anything as I am agnostic to it being genuine. What I do truly believe is we have an actual document that could be important in one shape or another, but we can only know that if all theories around it are explored and eliminated accordingly. The Barrett hoax theory is not viable, which means it must be something else. If it was viable then why have we not seen a proper timeline against this theory of how events unfolded?

I have not seen one cohesive timeline from anyone including RJ that genuinely supports the Barrett hoax theory, just lots of picking at details to create as much uncertainty as possible. In understanding who actually wrote this, there needs to be a better understanding of how it came to be.

I guess it's far easier to place the burden of truth, whatever that may be, on others' shoulders. It's much easier. To get to the truth, well that actually requires commitment. Those accused of being diary defenders are ultimately seekers of truth. This document has not been properly dismissed as a hoax, only by various opinions. So it should be subjected to all theories robustly and those theories should come with timelines and source references.

There are at least three provenance stories for example, they can't all be right. Rather than saying because of that fact it is clearly a hoax. No, that is an opinion. One of those provenance stories might be true. All could be wrong.

It really is a cop out to say those who believe must prove it. No-one actually knows how important or not this document is because we still do not collectively understand HOW it came to be, WHEN was it written, WHO wrote it and WHY.

Chris Jones may have the killer blows in September, we shall see. My guess is he has at best made some kind of case for HOW references from different source materials may have been used, but I strongly suspect he hasn't answered WHEN, WHO or WHY? I wait to be proven wrong.

Until then, I am in the camp of trying to discover the truth.

What he said ...

[Iconoclast]

hey john
If almighty God came down from heaven and told the diary defenders that the barretts hoaxed the diary they still wouldnt beleive it. tjere should be a sign hung over this thread like the one over the gates of Hell "abandon all hope, ye who enter here"

tje only mystery left is why people keep arguing with them ad nauseum. youd have better luck with a rock.

If almighty God came down from heaven and told the diary critics that James Maybrick hoaxed the diary they still wouldnt beleive it. tjere should be a sign hung over this thread like the one over the gates of Hell "At least you'll get an all-year tan ..."

[Iconoclast]

It was certainly easier for Mike to fool his band of believers than for anyone to convince them that they were fooled by this clown.

I mean, how thoroughly idiotic would they feel, if they ever had to admit that in a public setting? I bet they couldn't admit it even to themselves.

The burden of proof is on those who insist that the Barretts knowingly committed fraud back in 1992 with a diary they faked between them.

An equal burden, but not a greater one, is on anyone who insists that Maybrick's handwriting is in the diary and he committed murder back in 1888.

Going back to January 1995, and Mike's best shot at convincing the fools that the diary is a Barrett/Devereux fraud, he makes a twat of himself by claiming to be 'certain' that Maybrick was not the ripper.

A similar childish giveaway moment comes when Mike is talking to Alan Gray, who is played for quite some time before finally seeing the light. Mike explains to Gray that Bernard Ryan got something or other right in his book, because Maybrick confirms it in his diary! You couldn't make it up. It's not as if Mike is pulling a subtle bluff, because he is meant to be giving Gray evidence that the diary is a Barrett fake.

There are enough clues like this to make anyone with an enquiring mind smell a rat whenever Mike opens his trap.

In 1999 at the infamous Cloak & Dagger meeting, Mike claims the opposite of what he did in his affidavit. He now says he believes Maybrick was the ripper, and that was why they wrote the diary!

If RJ thinks any of this makes me 'angry', he couldn't be more wrong. Anyone who still allows themselves to be taken in by Mike's various claims to inside knowledge of the diary's creation is probably more deserving of sympathy than condemnation. It's a burden they evidently find increasingly hard to shake off.

What she said ...

[Iconoclast]

The worst possible of all stupid beliefs is that Mike Barrett had any role whatsover in the creation of the James Maybrick scrapbook.

All other theories pale in the sunset of sanity which accompanies that madness. Sic transit gloria mundi and what have you.

And RJ and Lord Orsam are to blame.

Ike

[caz]

Going back to refresh my memory of what precisely RJ was claiming about Anne's supposed 'confession', I found the following:

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...

I'm having trouble locating where and when, in her own words, Anne said she had wanted Mike to write a story about Maybrick being the Ripper.

In the introduction to her own book, The Last Victim, Anne states that her hope had been for Mike to use the diary's contents 'as a basis for a fictional book'.

In Feldy's book, he quotes Anne saying about Mike and the diary: "I thought he would try to write a novel around it."

In Inside Story, we quote this from Anne's recorded statement: "I was hoping he would be able to write a fictional story about the Diary."

Whether you believe her or not, Anne is consistently saying that the diary came first, followed by what she hoped Mike would use it for. If you have found her alluding anywhere to the diary being the end result of her hopes for Mike's writing ambitions, you will be able to provide your source and this time quote her actual words, so nobody can accuse you of putting your own spin on it to put the cart before the horse.

In any case, if Anne wanted this to be Mike's 'story', and ended up doing all, or nearly all of the work herself, you have yet to explain how and when the original idea for an innocent 'novella' evolved into a serious attempt to blend factual information from both infamous cases, in the hope of passing it off as authentic.

It's weird, because most people think of the diary as anything but a 'novella'. They see a series of deliberate attempts throughout the text to make it read like the genuine thoughts of James/Jack, with varying degrees of success and failure. If that's what we have here, your sympathy for Anne as a relatively innocent victim of her husband's coercion and trickery sounds a hollow note, because it would mean it wasn't written as a piece of fiction, and she'd have had to be aware of this from the earliest stages. If she'd been writing it as fiction, based on a single Maybrick book and a couple of ripper books, so that Mike could pass it off as his own work of fiction, she'd have made this clear to Mike when he first voiced his intention to pass it off as Maybrick's work, in the form of a Victorian diary. It would have required her to do a complete re-write, knowing she was embarking on a fraudulent enterprise that would demand she remove all provably 'creative' elements of the story.

I could far more easily imagine the diary being written as a literary exercise - the blending of fact and fantasy, tragedy and comedy, the prose, verse and word play - by an author who placed more importance on such factors, however poorly executed we think they were, than on producing a wholly credible, factually accurate account of the real James Maybrick's final year. In fact, it strikes me as faintly absurd to expect a hoaxer who had researched their subject matter more thoroughly to have felt it 'appropriate' for Jack the Ripper to mention a walking holiday in Wales, or a portrait sitting, in the middle of recording his deepest, darkest thoughts about the secret double life he was then leading. The period covered by the diary is dedicated to Sir Jim's supposed alter ego, his motivation to murder and mutilate and the medicines he takes to enable him; the men and women he blames for meddling in his affairs, messing with his mind and making him mad; the mysterious and unknown Mrs Hammersmith; the mysterious and unreported Manchester murders; the mysterious and seemingly inconsequential mole bonnet.

I think, RJ, you will eventually need to define and refine your theory about Anne as the researcher and composer of this strange text, and decide if she originally intended it to be a fictional story. What 'look' do you believe she was going for, and how does this compare with how the diary reads to you? Was she kicking herself by 1995, when she learned so much more about the Maybricks while doing research financed by Feldy?

[John Wheat]

Firstly on that, logic I do not have to prove anything as I am agnostic to it being genuine. What I do truly believe is we have an actual document that could be important in one shape or another, but we can only know that if all theories around it are explored and eliminated accordingly. The Barrett hoax theory is not viable, which means it must be something else. If it was viable then why have we not seen a proper timeline against this theory of how events unfolded?

I have not seen one cohesive timeline from anyone including RJ that genuinely supports the Barrett hoax theory, just lots of picking at details to create as much uncertainty as possible. In understanding who actually wrote this, there needs to be a better understanding of how it came to be.

I guess it's far easier to place the burden of truth, whatever that may be, on others' shoulders. It's much easier. To get to the truth, well that actually requires commitment. Those accused of being diary defenders are ultimately seekers of truth. This document has not been properly dismissed as a hoax, only by various opinions. So it should be subjected to all theories robustly and those theories should come with timelines and source references.

There are at least three provenance stories for example, they can't all be right. Rather than saying because of that fact it is clearly a hoax. No, that is an opinion. One of those provenance stories might be true. All could be wrong.

It really is a cop out to say those who believe must prove it. No-one actually knows how important or not this document is because we still do not collectively understand HOW it came to be, WHEN was it written, WHO wrote it and WHY.

Chris Jones may have the killer blows in September, we shall see. My guess is he has at best made some kind of case for HOW references from different source materials may have been used, but I strongly suspect he hasn't answered WHEN, WHO or WHY? I wait to be proven wrong.

Until then, I am in the camp of trying to discover the truth.

Ridiculous

[John Wheat]

That's not how it works either (at least that's not fully the case). It's up to those who state any proposition on any subject to prove that proposition.

Ike

The Provence of the diary is appalling therefore it's up to those who believe it the genuine article to prove it. So put up or shut up.

[caz]

I meant to add...

If the diary author concentrates on the events of Maybrick's final year that are appropriate in the context of him committing the ripper murders in 1888, is it really beyond coincidence to find Bernard Ryan recounting the same or similar details, in the context of what led up to Maybrick's mysterious death in 1889?

Love,

Caz
X

[Iconoclast]

The Provence of the diary is appalling therefore it's up to those who believe it the genuine article to prove it. So put up or shut up.

The ridiculous comments of someone who does not understand the simple principles of burden of proof.

There you go, I've put up.

Ike

[erobitha]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoepistemic_logic

[John Wheat]

The ridiculous comments of someone who does not understand the simple principles of burden of proof.

There you go, I've put up.

Ike

No you haven't. The burden of proof lies with those who believe the diary is genuine.

[Abby Normal]

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”


― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

[Iconoclast]

No you haven't. The burden of proof lies with those who believe the diary is genuine.

You'll notice that absolutely no-one is posting in agreement with you so you might just want to "shut up" (to quote you) on this point as you are making yourself look foolish in the extreme.

People who "who believe the diary is genuine" do NOT have any burden of proof whatsoever. Not even vaguely. As long as all they do is hold a belief, they have no obligation to demonstrate the proof of that belief to anyone if they choose not to. Burden of proof begins when one of those people make a pronouncement on the scrapbook that it is the authentic record of James Maybrick's crimes in Whitechapel in 1888. The moment they do that, they have acquired a burden of proof. Why is this? Well, in the service of investigative science, we must back up our public claims. Why is that? Well, because there are a large number of very stupid people in this world who are unable to distinguish what's real and what's not. They tend to err on the side of what they like so they believe those things they hear or read which they happen to like. It's called psychology. It's a trick that tyrants like to play.

Of course, this principle then expands more widely so that anyone holding a belief does NOT have prove their belief is true until such time as they make their belief or beliefs public. When they do that, they immediately acquire a burden of proof. This - as I said above - protects us as best science can against tyrannical untruths. Therefore, if you or anyone else posts on here to the effect of "The scrapbook is a hoax" then they immediately acquire a burden of proof to establish the veracity of the claim.

Honestly, Wheatie, unless you are seeking to make yourself appear very foolish, I'd shut up (to use your cliche).

Ike

[Iconoclast]

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”


― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

Posted as if proof of some point or other? Or just posted to convey a smug vacuousness on this point?

Ike

[John Wheat]

You'll notice that absolutely no-one is posting in agreement with you so you might just want to "shut up" (to quote you) on this point as you are making yourself look foolish in the extreme.

People who "who believe the diary is genuine" do NOT have any burden of proof whatsoever. Not even vaguely. As long as all they do is hold a belief, they have no obligation to demonstrate the proof of that belief to anyone if they choose not to. Burden of proof begins when one of those people make a pronouncement on the scrapbook that it is the authentic record of James Maybrick's crimes in Whitechapel in 1888. The moment they do that, they have acquired a burden of proof. Why is this? Well, in the service of investigative science, we must back up our public claims. Why is that? Well, because there are a large number of very stupid people in this world who are unable to distinguish what's real and what's not. They tend to err on the side of what they like so they believe those things they hear or read which they happen to like. It's called psychology. It's a trick that tyrants like to play.

Of course, this principle then expands more widely so that anyone holding a belief does NOT have prove their belief is true until such time as they make their belief or beliefs public. When they do that, they immediately acquire a burden of proof. This - as I said above - protects us as best science can against tyrannical untruths. Therefore, if you or anyone else posts on here to the effect of "The scrapbook is a hoax" then they immediately acquire a burden of proof to establish the veracity of the claim.

Honestly, Wheatie, unless you are seeking to make yourself appear very foolish, I'd shut up (to use your cliche).

Ike

What a load of bullshit.