One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[Graham]

Porky Man,

Unless I misunderstand you, everything you've written has been available in the public domain since 1993 when Paul Feldman published his book "Jack The Ripper - The Final Chapter". Which, if you haven't read it, is certainly worth the effort, whether you accept his findings or not. He carried out a huge amount of new research, even though he did occasionally shoot off down dead ends.

Many of the points made serve to *almost* convince me that the 'Diary' was written by someone with first-hand knowledge of the Maybrick household and the people in it.

Graham

[Gladiator]

Unless I misunderstand you, everything you've written has been available in the public domain since 1993 ...
Many of the points made serve to *almost* convince me that the 'Diary' was written by someone with first-hand knowledge of the Maybrick household and the people in it.
Graham

Hi Graham,

The post that PM was citing (I don't think he wrote it) very neatly illustrates the profound challenges facing anyone who claims that the diary was written by anyone other than James Maybrick. It (the diary) contains a subtlety of detail which suggests that it could only have been written by someone at the time who was very close to the Maybrick household (which you state is an argument you are almost persuaded towards) and yet simultaneously demonstrates so modern-day a perspective on the crimes that it is nigh-on impossible for the author to have been part of Maybrick's household unless he or she were in fact the actual murderer.

In a way, then, you are almost making the de facto claim that you support the diary as the genuine work of Jack the Ripper himself.

Personally, I don't have a huge problem with being wrong (I'm fortunate in this respect that I have never worked for The Times so my ego on this point at least is fairly unaffected by the possibility of having erred) so I'm comfortable with the position that the diary demonstrates sufficient evidence that James Maybrick was indeed Jack the Ripper.

I can live with the bizarre provenance, the drink-induced confessions from Michael Barrett, and the occasional surreal moment ('tin match box empty', for example) because the body of other facts referenced in the diary seems to lean heavily in favour of it being highly unlikely that the diary we have in the public domain could possibly have been forged.

You don't need to read Feldman, Harrison 1 and 2, and Linder et al to recognise that the author of the Maybrick diary knew far more about Maybrick than anyone could reasonably have expected in 1991 (or before) unless they were themselves James Maybrick, and if the author was James Maybrick, the author was almost certainly Jack the Ripper as too much is known of these 19th century crimes from a 21st century perspective for Maybrick to write a fantasy at the time and to have not been the killer himself.

I accept that this may not be a popular view but I do feel that someone should stand up and fight the diary's corner from time to time ...

Gladiator

[Graham]

Gladiator, all this has been argued and debated in mind-boggling detail on these boards for the past however-many years; thanks for your post, but I really don't need a lecture. In no way do I support the view that the 'Diary' is the work of the Ripper himself, and I fail to understand how you can deduce this from my post. Being [I]close[I] to the Maybrick household does not imply the author being James Maybrick himself, and if you think I did imply this, then perhaps I failed to make myself clear. The parts of the 'Diary' that I find least convincing are the descriptions, such as they are, of the murders themselves.

As it goes, I do not and never have believed that Maybrick was the Ripper, but at the same time I cannot accept that the 'Diary' was written by Barrett nor, indeed, by anyone else still alive today.

In my opinion, a study of the books you mention is absolutely necessary for a thorough understanding of the nature of the 'Diary' and what is contained within it.

Graham

[miakaal4]

The motive?

Perhaps we should hold fire on Maybrick being the killer, and look at the Diary from another angle? For example, why would anyone but JM write it, why would it not hold more detail about the case? Come on it is not good enough to say it was written to smear Maybricks reputation, that is stupid. So if not genuine, who and why?

[Graham]

Come on it is not good enough to say it was written to smear Maybricks reputation, that is stupid. So if not genuine, who and why?

Come on then - start the ball rolling!

Graham

[Hatchett]

Maybe a simple question to ask about the diary is this:

If Maybury was Jack the Ripper and wrote the diary why did he not just write in a journal or real diary? Both of which would have been very easily available at the time. Why did he make use of a Photo Album which was hardly fit for purpose.

The Photo Album really points to a hoaxer using what ever he could find at the time.

[Cogidubnus]

If Maybury was Jack the Ripper and wrote the diary why did he not just write in a journal or real diary? Both of which would have been very easily available at the time. Why did he make use of a Photo Album which was hardly fit for purpose.

I suppose that would make the real suspect William Henry Brick then David

All the best

Dave

[Gladiator]

Maybe a simple question to ask about the diary is this:

If Maybury was Jack the Ripper and wrote the diary why did he not just write in a journal or real diary? Both of which would have been very easily available at the time. Why did he make use of a Photo Album which was hardly fit for purpose.

The Photo Album really points to a hoaxer using what ever he could find at the time.

Hi Hatchett,

The same argument could so easily be made of James Maybrick as Jack the Ripper - that he wished to write down his thoughts and he used whatever he could find at the time.

There is no suggestion in the diary that the author started out intending to leave something significant for history to eventually uncover. Indeed, quite the opposite appears to be true: the style of the diary is highly self-indulgent, and it focuses on his feelings of rage rather than the specific details of the eventual crimes (this has often been cited as a criticism of the diary, and yet it is entirely consistent with someone writing for their own eyes, documenting how they felt rather than what they did). There is no suggestion until the end game that the author intended an audience for his writing. It is only at the end of his life that the enormity of his crimes appear to have finally wrenched him back into our reality and tempered his ragingly egotistical soul, perhaps in some vain attempt to influence the Almighty, whose presence he was (if he was lucky) about to be in.

There are brief moments in the diary where the author wishes to prove that the crimes were indeed his, but these are fleeting and swamped by the self-indulgent rage, and possibly reflect only that as time passed he had started to imagine the record making its way into the annals of criminal history after all.

If this were true then - just as he claims to have wished he had adopted the sobriquet 'Sir Jim' rather than 'JtR' - he may well have looked at the photo album and wished he had thought better at the start of his choice of document.

And that just brings us back to the crucial point: there is no suggestion that this started out as a confession, and plenty to suggest that it spent most of its creation on the threshold of being destroyed (due to the risk it posed to the author). In the end, he wanted the fame, even if it was a notorious one, and even if he did attempt to dress it up as regret. So we got a bizarre choice of document because the choice came long before the desire to 'publish' and - presumably - he had no intention of or willpower to re-write his 'diary' in something which history might consider more appropriate for the enormity of his crimes.

What was fit for purpose to James Maybrick in early 1888 (when we might guess he started his diary) may very well not have been fit for purpose six or nine or twelve months later, but which of us would in all seriousness sit down and write it all out again to satisfy the possible doubts of some of his eventual readers?

Cheers,

Gladiator

[caz]

Hi Gladiator,

You make an interesting point. Of course, some will say that you are doing the hoaxer's work for him/her by interpreting the text in this way to explain why "Sir Jim" did not go to WH Smith's and treat himself to a shiny new 1888 diary in which to record his secret double life. But you can't get out of the diary what the author didn't put in, so I think what you say is relevant.

I would argue that if this was a hoaxer who tried and failed to get hold of a blank 1888 diary for the purpose of turning James into Jack, he/she intentionally made up for it in the way you describe, with various pointers in the text to "Sir Jim" using this Victorian guard book for his dark thoughts, not knowing at the start where they would lead him.

This was no rushed job over a wet weekend.

Love,

Caz
X

[Gladiator]

Hi Gladiator,
This was no rushed job over a wet weekend.
Love,
Caz
X

Hi Caz,

Yes, I'd say there are extremely strong grounds for arguing that this was a document longer in the making than the mythical wet weekend of yesteryear. I'd also argue that there remains substantial grounds for pursuing the document as genuine, but the momentum behind research into the diary has long-since dissipated - worn down to the ground by the relentless negativity which follows this book around.

I suspect that support for the diary as genuine article has largely gone underground - dormant and hidden, probably never to raise its head again. It seems unlikely now that anything new could come to light which would categorically nail the crimes at Maybrick's door, and certainly nothing which could not otherwise be said to have been uncovered also by the hoaxer and incorporated into the text awaiting its eventual discovery.

All I can think of are:

• Eddowes' 'red leather cigarette case' is found and analysed and traces of arsenic are identified.
• Someone produces an uncontested example of James Maybrick casual handwriting which mirrors that in the diary.

Personally, I'm not optimistic about either, but one may live in hope. If the diary were to be the genuine article, its failure to be confirmed as such would be a terrible loss to criminal history, but no loss at all to those who simply enjoy the craich (which I suspect is one of the diary's biggest reasons for being so routinely marginalised and disparaged).

Yours,

Gladiator

[Graham]

I recall that not so long ago someone - was it Stewart Evans? - claimed to possess incontrovertible proof that the 'Diary' came from Battlecrease House. Whatever happened to that claim? If it wasn't Stewart Evans who made that claim, then I apologise to him.

Paul Feldman also thought that he had proof that the 'Diary' came from Battlecrease, but according to him the people concerned didn't quite put their money where their mouths were. Without bothering to consult my books on the matter, I think Feldman claimed to have found a couple of guys from a firm of electricians who were re-wiring Battlecrease, and one of them said that the book had been found under floorboards and tossed out into a skip. There was a suggestion that it had been taken to Liverpool University for further investigation, but no more was heard of it. If anyone can throw light on both these claims, then I'd be more than interested.

Graham

[Stewart P Evans]

Accepted

Apology accepted.

[Graham]

So who the devil was it??? Caz? Caz? Are you there, Caz?

Graham

[Graham]

It seems it was Keith Skinner; or at least Chris Jones' Maybrick website would suggest so. Not that it really matters who it was, but if it can be proved that the 'Diary' came out of Battlecrease, then that would go a hell of long way to strongly suggest that its author possessed the surname Maybrick....or a close relationship to the Maybrick family....wouldn't it?

Graham

[Gladiator]

but if it can be proved that the 'Diary' came out of Battlecrease, then that would go a hell of long way to strongly suggest that its author possessed the surname Maybrick....
Graham

If the diary can be demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt to have come from Battlecrease House then it is fundamentally genuine on the basis that it could not have contained the information it did and have come from that house without it being the work of the criminal himself. The only other possibility would be that the schoolteacher who owned (still owns?) Battlecrease House in the early 1990s was involved in its creation and that's not a path I'd personally want to be going down.

If it came from Battlecrease House and somehow found its way into the hands of Michael Barrett, the convoluted provenance story which we got may well be easier to explain - fearful of a prosecution for theft, those who spirited it out of Maybrick's old home would presumably have had to eventually come up with a cover story. And, Lord, what a cover story they came up with!

I think the most disconcerting element of all of this - and far worse than the criminal finally being unmasked and the guessing game over - would be that we would all have to admit that after all of these years and all of the vitriol, Soothsayer was right!

Maybe we should let sleeping dogs lie while we can, eh?

Gladiator