One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[Kaz]

Having done some digging over the past few days I now understand that the Barretts did make money out of the diary, at least initially.

It also occurs to me that the choice of a scrapbook was a strange one. Maybrick's intention - if he were the author - would surely be to show his own cleverness in outwitting the authorities, but also to preserve his own outward appearance as a prosperous businessman. So why choose a scrapbook?

James Maybrick would have had two clear advantages over a forger:

He would have had no difficulty in acquiring a nice 1888 or 1889 diary, or journal, in which to document his activities.
He would also be the one individual in history who would have no difficulty in producing a document in James Maybrick's handwriting.
The writer did neither of these two things, which Maybrick could so easily have done. Why would he claim authorship of a document and then make it look as if he didn't actually write it? There is only one logical conclusion in my view.

The logical conclusion, when we discern that a diary was not used, and the entries apparently not made in Maybrick's own handwriting, is that an 1888 diary was something which the writer could not easily get hold of, and Maybrick's handwriting was something which the writer could not easily reproduce - therefore not Maybrick.

In my view, the only sensible course of action is to treat the Maybrick Diary as what it appears to be, a forgery, until the contrary is proven (i.e. expect those who claim the diary to be genuine to prove their case, and to give the artefact no further attention until they have done so).

Qui Bono? Whoever forged it. (Sorry, Soothsayer!)

Hi

I haven't read the diary for quite sometime, how much of Maybricks handwriting actually exists? Apart from the dubious will?

Is it not possible that maybrick was suffering with a Multiple personality disorder? Couldn't that explain any difference in writing?

The usage of a ripped up older book and not a nice shiny new one? what does a psychopath act like exactly? isn't that in keeping with someone not acting 'normal'?

[Lechmere]

A ‘scrap book’ with a load of pages torn out the front (probably because they contained information unrelated to Maybrick).
Different handwriting because he suffered from multiple personality disorder? A bit of a lame excuse that!

And he’s a psycho – so that’s why he used a scrap book (with pages torn out) instead of a small new journal?
That type of psycho killer usually acts ‘normally’ outside his killing activities though don’t they? Or was it because he was deranged and on mind bending drugs? Yet he was still ‘clever’ enough to evade the forces of law and order.

[John Bennett]

One thing I noticed when rereading the 'diary' recently is that the author appears to concentrate on Abberline as his investigative 'nemesis'.

Looking in the press reports, I notice that Abberline is mentioned often, though often in tandem with other officers such as Reid, Nairn, Moore, Beck and Thick.

The question is: was Abberline's public profile big enough at the time to warrant him being the target of the diary author's mockery? Why not Warren, who would have seemed a more high-up (and thus well-known) scapegoat?

And has Abberline's profile really only been in the ascendent to the general public since the release of official files or even the 1980s Michael Caine TV programme (and later From Hell)?

I'd be interested to hear what people think about this...

[caz]

Apologies, Caz. My signature was not intended to apply to any particular post. I am certainly not suggesting that the view of others are "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing', although inevitably there are some whose views I do not share. I just like it as a quote, but probably ought to change it to avoid ambiguity!

No apology required, Bridewell, and no ambiguity either. I was simply inspired by your sig when writing my own post. I knew you were not applying it to a particular post or poster.

I like it as a quote too, and have often used it in a 'diary' connection as it seems quite fitting.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

As an avid fan of the cryptic crossword, it always struck me that "Battlecrease" was such an improbable word that it might be an anagram. There must be many permutations, but, just for devilment I'll point out that one possibility is "Best Lacerate".

(That should take this post past the thousand mark!)

Hi again,

I believe I read somewhere that it was Florie Maybrick, not Jim, who came up with the name Battlecrease.

But 'just for devilment' could well have been our dodgy diarist's motive.

I always find it amusing to see someone (not you, I hasten to add), after another million words on the subject have been written, telling us that the handwriting doesn't match - as if they are the first person to make that observation. If it were that simple, the diary (and by association the watch - even with its 'Maybrick' resembling the genuine sig on Maybrick's wedding licence) would have gone the way of the Hitler diaries before you could say 'prison sentence'.

I'm wondering how it can be argued by Jonathan that the Maybrick hoaxer(s) learned from the Hitler fiasco and took pains to avoid the basic pitfalls, when Maybrick's will was available to researchers and forgers alike, to check what his handwriting looked like and make some kind of stab at copying it!

Another point was made by someone that Florie could not have divorced her husband in those days, but I think this is incorrect. If a husband deserted his wife or struck her in front of a witness, she could divorce him. Her rather open dalliance with Alf B may have been designed to provoke one of those responses from Jim, and he did indeed give her a black eye in front of a Battlecrease staff member after the Grand National. So it appears she had grounds for divorce and therefore no obvious motive to bump him off and risk the gallows instead.

Love,

Caz
X

[Bridewell]

Why Battlecrease?

Hi again,

I believe I read somewhere that it was Florie Maybrick, not Jim, who came up with the name Battlecrease.

Another point was made by someone that Florie could not have divorced her husband in those days, but I think this is incorrect. If a husband deserted his wife or struck her in front of a witness, she could divorce him. Her rather open dalliance with Alf B may have been designed to provoke one of those responses from Jim, and he did indeed give her a black eye in front of a Battlecrease staff member after the Grand National. So it appears she had grounds for divorce and therefore no obvious motive to bump him off and risk the gallows instead.

Love,

Caz
X

I didn't know it was Florence who came up with Battlecrease. I wonder what the thinking behind that was - seems an unusual name whatever the source. (Google doesn't help because it just chucks up all the Maybrick references!)

The divorce thing may have been me. If so I argued that it would have been difficult, rather than impossible, for a woman to divorce her husband.
I'm not sure motive is relevant, because I'm far from convinced that Florence killed her husband. Accidental overdose is much more likely in my view.

[Bridewell]

Why Battlecrease

I didn't know it was Florence who came up with Battlecrease. I wonder what the thinking behind that was - seems an unusual name whatever the source. (Google doesn't help because it just chucks up all the Maybrick references!)

Probably not the done thing to reply to my own post, so, on second thoughts I'll start a new one on this under "Why Battlecrease?"

[Soothsayer]

I'm probably the sole Maybrickian still at large, although my conversion is relatively recent.

Goodness, I have evidently been far too busy being brilliant, etc., righting wrongs with a swish of my swooshy sword, etc. again, but I have completely missed this extraordinary claim from a man who really ought to be less well than he clearly is given his demise in 1918!

I think I could make the claim before you did, sir (or should that be 'Sir'?)!

I have strong reasons for believing that Spyglass was also there long before you, although I wonder about that lad - he'd be first up for the fight long before anyone clarified what the fight was for (man after my own heart, but I'm not convinced he actually believes).

I welcome you willingly into the Brotherhood, Sir Robert, but please take a seat in the pews before you start stomping up to the pulpit!

Here endeth the reading from the Book of Soothsayer, Chapter 12, Verse 3, and amen to that, your graces ...

Sir Soothy Soothsayer, First Knight of Truth

[Soothsayer]

Hi all,
I am in total agreement with Sir Robert Anderson.
I am intrested and fasinated by every aspect of JTR, and that includes the Diary.
I have said before that it is a great mystery by it's self and if JTR is ever finally named, then we got something else to debate, unless of course Maybrick was the named felon as Soothsayer once pointed out to me.
And where is old Soothache when you need him ?

I must have had one heck of a long lunch in 2010, Spysie, 'cos I totally missed this one too. You, me, and Sir Bobster up at the front with the swishy swords, lopping off the heads of the anti-journalists, giving it laldie amongst the blood and guts, showing up, standing firm, ready for any fight regardless of the carnage, causes of the carnage, we proudly - ever bravely! - stand correctors of it, fighting the Good Fight, Spy me old mate, never giving up, never backing down, never letting 'Surrender' whisper in our ears unless it is the command of our own voices carrying through the noise of battle back to us as our enemies fall one by one before the fury - yes the fury! - of our sparkling, razorsharp insight and general cleverness!

Never give up the Faith, me lads!

The home fires still burn back home, boys, calling us, crying to us, inspiring us to defend first and then conquer, as surely we will!

If this Casebook should stand for a thousand years, they will still say this was our Finest Hour!

PS Get the kettle on, girls, I'm sensing the turning of the tide at last!

[Carol]

PS Get the kettle on, girls, I'm sensing the turning of the tide at last!

I've put the kettle on, Mr. Soothsayer, sir. Is there anything more you require, sir? Cook has just made some lovely scones, sir, and she's sent young George out to get some strawberry jam. Put your slippers on and get comfortable in front of the fire, sir. I won't be long.

One of the girls.

[Soothsayer]

I've put the kettle on, Mr. Soothsayer, sir. Is there anything more you require, sir? Cook has just made some lovely scones, sir, and she's sent young George out to get some strawberry jam. Put your slippers on and get comfortable in front of the fire, sir. I won't be long.

One of the girls.

I'm back. Thank the Good Lord!, I hear you all cry.

She's a lovely girl that Carol, but Old Mrs Soothsayer has her spies everywhere (I have always suspected young George himself of such devilment - but who can say No to his mum's strawbery jam? Not I!) and I have had to barricade myself into my study here in Soothsayer Tower, Lower Whottlington on the Whottle until the delightful maiden finally returned to her chores downstairs. Six months! Now that's what I call commitment to a cause!

On the subject of which, now that I have finally managed to unpick the nails from the boards (never hammer 5-inch nails into mahogony if you haven't got a pair of pliers handy - my fingernails are ruined but at least I'm out) I will be able once again to ply my merry trade on The Greatest Thread of All, for your education, your enrichment, and your mum's strawberry jam, George.

The Mighty Sooth
Truth Detective and Laird of All Knowledge

[Carol]

Thank goodness you're back, Mr. Soothsayer, sir! The Mistress has been giving me the strangest looks, and Cook keeps asking me all sorts of questions.
As for young George, I can't go anywhere without him popping up, grinning all over his face.

I'm quite upset!

Carol

[Soothsayer]

You turn your back for six months, and it’s astonishing how much misinformation can creep into this Casebook.

It is time for the Might of Soothsayer – a Particularly Clever Person (as you all know) – to dispel yet more myths about the Maybrick journal.

Let’s just start with the end in mind here, and remind ourselves that we have for the last nineteen years had the answer to the most famous crimes in history: we have a confession from James Maybrick, Liverpool cotton merchant, and thoroughly unlikely candidate for the mantle of Jack the Ripper. It is a confession which has never been disproven, though many have attempted to do so with opinions wielded as facts. For most of us, that confession is sufficiently compelling and sufficiently full of relevance to the case that we find it easier to apply Soothsayer’s Razor and accept that on the balance of probability the journal was actually written by James Maybrick and that James Maybrick was indeed Jack the Ripper than we do that it was written by some person or persons unknown in his name and for some unknown end.

Recently, I have seen on the Casebook an argument resurface which goes along the lines of this: James Maybrick could not be Jack the Ripper because this would require him to be at the centre of two of the most notorious crimes of the 19th century – the Whitechapel murders and his own ‘murder’.

The argument – thus made – ‘logically’ continues that the choice of James Maybrick as Jack the Ripper was made primarily due to the prominence of his own murder; that the facts for the ‘forgery’ were laid bare not by his guilt but by his very demise; that without his demise in the way it occurred there could not have been the case against him for his being Saucy Jack.

The case above clings to basic principles of statistics for its premise, and yet on every occasion it has been cited on this Casebook the writer has (or writers have) failed to acknowledge another fundamental tenet of statistics which – if proven here – immediately dispels the case made for the forgery. And that tenet is this: two things occurring simultaneously and apparently independently can only be classed as genuinely coincidental (as defined by common parlance) and therefore statistically implausible if there are no circumstances linking the two together.

It seems obvious to the reader, does it not, that two things which seem linked at first by chance may yet be linked by purpose, and if that becomes the case, that the initial coincidence immediately ceases to have its compelling charm? It is like the wonderment of a magical trick which immediately evaporates the moment the nature of the trick is revealed.

Is there a compelling case for there being a purposeful link between James Maybrick’s actually being Jack the Ripper and the nature of his death which thrust him so ironically into the national limelight (and thenceforth into the Liverpool lime)?

Of course there is. Maybrick himself provides us with that very link - that purpose which removes the apparent coincidence of the two sets of crimes: The pain is unbearable. My dear Bunny knows all. I do not know if she has the strength to kill me. I pray to God she finds it. It would be simple, she knows of my medicine, and for an extra dose or two it would be all over. No one will know I have seen to that.

This is, of course, no proof that any of what the writer wrote actually occurred, but that is not on this occasion the point. What this extract reminds us of is the possibility that James Maybrick was indeed Jack the Ripper and that – in coming to know of this fact – Florence either did indeed administer sufficient ‘medicine’ to finally kill him or that he himself finally did it to himself, inadvertently leaving Florrie to bear the blame.

And thus another argument against the authenticity of the journal falls into the category of opinion and misinformation rather than fact. The notion that the statistical likelihood of Maybrick being party to both of these major criminal events of the 19th century is actually miniscule is utterly lost if his death was actually causally associated with his crimes.

You know, I am starting to suspect that my work here is not yet done ...

[Carol]

Hi everyone!

The title of this thread makes me think that what I am about to say should be on another thread relating to the Diary, but as my employer is currently around (his little green light is shining) I thought I'd better post it here so he can see it!

Right then. I joined Casebook in August 2008 with the intention of finding out more about the Diary. I'd just read a copy of 'The Last Victim' and had become very interested in the story. My next book was bought soon after - 'The Maybrick A-Z' by Chris Jones. Wonderful book, in my opinion. In that book he mentions the Janion family, with whom James Maybrick, especially, was very friendly. Domatila Janion was Mrs. Briggs' mother, and was also godmother to Bobo and Gladys. Domatila was from Santiago, Chile. According to Mrs. Briggs, in an interview she gave after Florence Maybrick's trial, her father Richard Charles Janion was a friend of James Maybrick who 'visited our house frequently' long before the Maybricks married. Domatila was aged 49 at the time of Maybrick's death, and, therefore, very close to Maybrick in age. Her husband was 65.

Now. Remember the Diego Laurentz letter? When I was first studying the Maybrick Diary back in 2008 I made notes and among those notes are some thoughts I had to do with this letter. I wondered if Domatila Janion, being from Chile and, therefore, fluent in Spanish, might have called James Maybrick 'Diego' in fun. Diego is, as most of us by now know, James in Spanish. (I have checked with the Spanish Bible 'on line'). They were the same age and I can easily imagine some friendly banter between them over the years.

Could James Maybrick have written that letter after all? Could someone who knew them all very well have written that letter? These thoughts have continued to nag at me since 2008, but as I'm officially a 'non-believer' in the Diary I have put them as far back in my brain as possible.

No doubt someone will tell me that what I have written above was thought about years ago, but as I haven't seen it yet I thought I'd just mention it.

Carol

[The Good Michael]

Carol,

If the woman you mentioned spoke some English, she would most probably have used 'Jaime' rather than 'Diego' as that is the direct translation.

Mike