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Originally posted by Mike J. G.
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Two interesting articles on the topic of handwriting analysis.
As I've said before, James Maybrick had no reason to disguise his hand. You don't start forming letters the opposite way to how you've been doing it for countless years simply because you're inebriated, or "off your noggin." And would you intentionally disguise your writing if you weren't banking on anyone actually reading what you'd written?
Supposing that Sir Jim penned the Dear Boss letter, (and/or Saucy Jack, seeing as, if I'm not mistaken, they're supposed to be close matches?) then why did he write it in a totally different fashion to how he was apparently penning his diary on the regular? Not simply in a smaller scale, or a bit more untidy, or a bit scribbly... But literally different in the sort of ways that are described in the above articles?
I mean, the obvious answer is that the person who wrote the diary did not write those letters. You're stretching logic if you disagree, bending over backwards to perform the sort of mental gymnastics you need to keep believing.
If the diarist didn't write the letter, then they didn't likely coin the moniker of Jack the Ripper, making all references to Jim, James and Jack largely irrelevant, coincidental and pretty damaging to the notion that Jim was Jack the Ripper.
If Jim wasn't Jack, then the diary is pretty much a work of fiction using cherry-picked information and imagination. Given that the diary's writing doesn't match what we have of James Maybrick's, I'd say the chances of him having written the diary are slim and none, and slim just left the building.
But someone wrote it... So which story are you behind?
To be an older hoax, it either came from Devereux, whose family had never heard of it...
It either came from Anne's family, yet she opted to forget about that fact until later down the line, for some reason.
Or it was found under the floorboards on Riversdale road and was pinched and taken to the university? Pub? And handed over for nowt to a scrap metal dealer who used to write articles in magazines who subsequently went straight to a publisher to make some bread.
Or... One of those bunch of characters wrote it, or knew who had.
Which one, however improbable, is more likely?
Had Tony kept it locked away from his loved ones, for absolutely no reason whatsoever? Deciding that during his final days he'd unleash the secret to one Michael Barrett, of scrap metal dealing fame?
Had Anne Graham simply forgot that the book had been in her family home for a billion years, suddenly finding it in the hands of her husband, before suddenly remembering after a strange series of lies about where it had come from, that it was her family heirloom?
Or, boys and girls, was it plucked from beneath the floor of Jimmy's home, whisked around town and planted, basically for nowt, in Mike Barrett's hands?
All roads keep leading back to that pesky Mike bloke, the one what wrote magazine articles and crosswords. Funny little games, indeed.
There was once a chap
Called Michael Barrett
On a darkened night
With a glass of claret
He put pen to paper
Like a knife to skin
And wrote a tall tale
About a bloke called Jim
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