One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[Al Bundy's Eyes]

the thought crossed my mind if it is a similar crucifix to the headstone that was vandalized .

You may find that Crucifixes tend to bear more than a passing resemblance to each other...

[milchmanuk]

You may find that Crucifixes tend to bear more than a passing resemblance to each other...

so you don't think sun light soap rip him up /bit of a night vigilante like that of the hive kind.

[rjpalmer]

Hi. I am not aware of any crucifix (which I assume is what you mean by Cross?).

I am aware there were some rumours of various items found with the book such as a key, a suede bag and even some rings.

You never heard of the crucifix?

I suppose this will strike you as a little embarrassing now, since it dates to a time when the diary supporters were pushing an entirely different provenance than the one you now believe in.

Here is the low-down.

Anne Graham produced a crucifix sometime in 1994, saying it was with the diary when she first saw it in an old trunk in the late 1960s. At the time, she kept the crucifix but ignored the diary until later.

Melvyn Fairclough took the crucifix to the Sisters of Mercy, originally in Crispin Street, Whitechapel, who supposedly said it was unique to their order, with Fairclough theorizing that Mary Kelly had stayed in a shelter run by the nuns and had taken it, and that Maybrick subsequently stole it from Kelly's room after the murder, and thus it ended up with the diary and with the Billy Graham. Thus, the crucifix was supposedly physical evidence that Graham's "in the family for years" story was true.

How Graham managed to see the diary and the cross in 1968 when it had been under Dodd's floorboards has not yet been explained by the diary's supporters.

Chris George discusses this in a post in the archives, 9 August 1999, though I hesitate to repost it as Ike tends to get excited when blasts from the past resurface and he is unaware of them. It apparently sends him into fits of laughter.


In the "Mammoth Book of JtR," pp. 161-62, Melvyn Fairclough writes that Anne Graham said that when she first saw the Diary "in 1968 or 1969" she found a crucifix with it. Fairclough maintains that "It has been established [by whom I ask?] that the design of the crucifix was apparently exclusive to the Sisters of Mercy who ran the Women's Refuge in Crispin Street" where Mary Jane Kelly is said to have stayed. When visited by Fairclough in 1996, the sisters at their new location confirmed that the crucifix is like the crucifix of their convent but they were unable to tell Melvyn if it was unique to them, as has been alleged. Fairclough states, "The inference is that Kelly took the crucifix with her when she left the Women's Refuge and that Maybrick took it from her room after murdering her. Before his death he left it with his diary." (Mammoth Book, p. 162)

Melvyn goes on to say that "If the same type of crucifix is used by another establishment one would have expected, by now, that the diary's detractors would have discovered it. As far as I am aware no one has." (Ibid)

A photo of the crucifix was also uploaded in the archives by someone calling herself Nicky. If you go to Howard's old site, I see that Robert Clack has uploaded another photo of it.

Regards.

[rjpalmer]

P.S. Just as Ike now believes he can see 'FM' on the backwall in Miller's Court, some people believe they can see two crucifixes hanging on Kelly's wall.

Of course, as one poster pointed out, if they were still nailed to Kelly's wall at the time of the infamous crime scene photograph, it is difficult to understand how Maybrick managed to steal them at the time of the murder.



The original thread can be found here:

Archive through August 12, 1999 (casebook.org)

[rjpalmer]

PPS.

Melvyn Fairclough took the crucifix to the Sisters of Mercy, originally in Crispin Street, Whitechapel, who supposedly said it was unique to their order

I worded this poorly. Someone told Fairclough the cross was unique to their order (who?) but, as you can see from Chris George's post, the nuns were not able to confirm this.

[erobitha]

You never heard of the crucifix?

I suppose this will strike you as a little embarrassing now, since it dates to a time when the diary supporters were pushing an entirely different provenance than the one you now believe in.

You do seem to worry about my embarrassment much more than I do RJ. It's rather touching, but you need not fret. I am not or ever have been embarrassed in the slightest by anything I have written. Occasionally incorrect and at time perhaps churlish, but never embarrassed.

We have very little common ground when it comes to matters concerning the diary, but the tiniest shred of land we do share is that neither of us believe the Billy Graham provenance story and neither of us believe Anne has been entirely honest. It doesn't mean however, that we both could still be wrong.

However, I struggle to believe crucifixes were made to order with bespoke designs for specific orders.

[milchmanuk]

post 9018, thanks for information, i was tempted to buy the mammoth book of JTR. so it holds nuggets,
the crucifix also has skull & cross bones , this at buildings mainly churches' was the sign of plague pit ( burial ) Liverpool street station when work was carried out revealed plague burial also the brick with skull & crossbones was rebeded into the masonry on the new construction works.
because this crucifix is unique to that nunnery i wondered if it represented a past plague burial also.
if you believe there unique to each order that is.

[milchmanuk]

P.S. Just as Ike now believes he can see 'FM' on the backwall in Miller's Court, some people believe they can see two crucifixes hanging on Kelly's wall.

Of course, as one poster pointed out, if they were still nailed to Kelly's wall at the time of the infamous crime scene photograph, it is difficult to understand how Maybrick managed to steal them at the time of the murder.



The original thread can be found here:

Archive through August 12, 1999 (casebook.org)

as you say we could probably make all sorts of images out in that room.
does look more like removed items rather than still hanging.
which Jack never got.

[milchmanuk]

also just reading this appeared in Stephen Knights book " the final solution "
Mary Jane Kelly, stayed in the Crispin Street Refuge in or before 1885.
and is no longer ther.

[milchmanuk]

also just reading this appeared in Stephen Knights book " the final solution "
Mary Jane Kelly, stayed in the Crispin Street Refuge in or before 1885.
and is no longer ther.

the site was Roman burial site not plague.
in Tudor times became "the spital" artillery's ground

[milchmanuk]

the site was Roman burial site not plague.
in Tudor times became "the spitel" artillery's ground

should read " the spitel "

[Iconoclast]

as you say we could probably make all sorts of images out in that room.

And many posters do, Milky - primarily to avoid the rather obvious fact that Florence Maybrick's initials are frustratingly obvious on Kelly's wall.

This from Farson (1973) but it's pretty good in all reproductions so there's no wishful thinking going on here:


Just saying ...

Ike

[milchmanuk]

And many posters do, Milky - primarily to avoid the rather obvious fact that Florence Maybrick's initials are frustratingly obvious on Kelly's wall.

This from Farson (1973) but it's pretty good in all reproductions so there's no wishful thinking going on here:


Just saying ...

Ike

i see a photo shop photo of this only coloured letters and a Heart on the arm as if a tatoo ?
" a letter here a letter ther"

[FISHY1118]

Its a toss up of the wackiest theorys, Organ Harvesting or F.M letters on kellys wall in blood .

[Iconoclast]

Its a toss up of the wackiest theorys, Organ Harvesting or F.M letters on kellys wall in blood .

It's a shame you have to inject false elements to the theory. By inserting your own incredulity in the form of accusations of 'wackiness', you attempt (as others have done many times before you) to strip away the man from the myth. The myth - granted - would not have written 'FM' on Mary Kelly's wall, but then again the myth never really lived, he didn't breath, he didn't eat, he didn't love, he didn't have ambitions and irrational human impulses. The myth is just a cardboard Jack the Ripper cut-out on a waxworks wall and that's the one you reference when you decide whether or not any particular theory or any particular aspect of any particular theory holds up to your stereotype of what was actually just a man. Not a normal man, agreed. Not an innocent man, certainly. But a man nevertheless. And if that man was James Maybrick then there is absolutely nothing wacky about his signifying to himself that the destroyed body in front of him represented his errant wife Florence, and therefore nothing wacky in the slightest about the thought he might dare to leave her initials on the wall next to Kelly's eviscerated cadaver. High on arsenic or strychnine, and higher still on his terrible blood lust, it is absolutely not your place to say that those letters on Kelly's wall (that everyone can now see now that Maybrick's scrapbook has revealed their presence) were not placed there by James Maybrick.

Why would you consider it 'wacky' for such a simple gesture to have occurred? Is it because you don't want to admit that that gesture points directly towards James Maybrick as the Whitechapel fiend? Or is it because you simply cannot get your mind to edge beyond the cardboard cut-out stereotype of a killer without a human heart and an all-too-human mind?

If you do not allow your mind to consider the possible, you will never be able to add value to this debate on any level. The possible does not have to be the plausible, nor indeed the probable, but to discard it as 'wacky' and outlandish because it doesn't fit with your inhuman characterisation of what was ultimately just the actions of a man makes you a poor commentator on the case.

Ike