One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[Ben]

Hi Tom,

Whitechapel (his business partner confirmed it, was he called Gustav Witt or something? - again this is all from memory).

No. Not Whitechapel. It was Cullum Street in the City of London. Gustav Witt was his former business partner and there's no evidence that Maybrick ever visited him there. That's many long sea miles away from "definitely there at the time of the crimes".

As for that list of supposedly obscure detail that you've copied and pasted more than once from an earilier post, I'm incredibly disappointed to see you dredge up the "May" reference after we've debated it in depth and learned that the Punch cartoon alone was needed for that reference - nothing else. As for the others, have you read any of the non-ripper books on the Maybrick case?

Best regards,
Ben

[Tom Mitchell]

Tom,

You're making stuff up again. Neither Witt nor anyone else has ever confirmed that Maybrick was anywhere near Whitechapel when the murders occurred. That's a fantasy. Please stop doing that.

He was, of course, in England. But then, so were millions of others.

As for your list...

1, 3, 4, and 5 can all be found in a single book, along with many of the other details in the diary and some actual phrases as well. The book is The Poisoned Life of Mrs. Maybrick by Bernard Ryan. It was published in 1977 and was readily available at the time the diary appeared.

There is no documented reference anywhere of anyone ever calling James "Sir Jim" or of his ever calling himself that (again, you must stop just saying these things).

The first syllable of his name is also the word May. You don't need any sources to know that.

And the line you write about the Grand National is not a clear fact, since you use the phrase "could well have been."

All done.

I'm off to the golf course,

--John

Hi John,

Witt certainly confirmed that Maybrick had legitimate business in Whitechapel. Whether or not he confirmed dates, I don't recall. Did I actually state that there was evidence Maybrick was in Whitechapel at the time of the murders? I must have done, but I'm in the editor and I don't know how to come out to check without losing my post.

I read Ryan's book not two months back. I assume that you have too. I have no recollection of 1, 3, 4, and 5 being either mentioned or timelined. Did Ryan mention that Gladys had been ill again (or even quote someone saying it?)? Was Ryan explicit about when Thomas was in America, that Maybrick was away at Christmas 1888 (possibly this one from the Baroness), or where Michael was when the diary claims Maybrick was visiting him? I think not - but I am open to being corrected if I am wrong.

"There is no documented reference anywhere of anyone ever calling James "Sir Jim" or of his ever calling himself that (again, you must stop just saying these things)."

Seriously, John, I thought better of you than that. Don't you know the example in the well-researched literature? I think you've been playing too much golf. I'm so shocked that you don't know this, I can't bring myself to tell you. Oh, go on then - it was in Feldman, in reference to the young girl Florence (whose surname I can't recall well enough to spell).

"The first syllable of his name is also the word May. You don't need any sources to know that."

Oh dear, this is the whole Ben argument again. Obviously, his name begins 'May'. What possible point were you striving to make with this lightening bolt of truth? The diary refers to Maybrick as 'May', and Florie's letter to Brierley refers to him as 'May'. It's either a coincidence or she did so because 'May' was an occasional name for him. It was the discovery of the letter in which she calls him 'May' which (as I recall) was not in the readily-available literature. If it was in Ryan, I apologise. I certainly don't recall it being in there.

"And the line you write about the Grand National is not a clear fact, since you use the phrase "could well have been."".

Now you really ARE scaring me, John. I thought you were amongst the cream of the crop of the anti-diarists, a man with the facts coursing through every vein?

Shirley Harrison (or was it Feldman again?) illustrated that the 1889 Grand National which was won by Frigate was won in the fastest time for 19 years. Thus, for Maybrick, if could easily have been the fastest such race he had seen. My phraseology was CLEARLY written to be as reasonable as possible, but you sadly took it to mean that the whole issue was pure guesswork.

Those of us who feel there is still much mileage in the diary will, I'm sure, take heart from your extraordinarily ill-thought-out response. I genuinely thought you were one of the gurus.

All done.

Tom

[Tom Mitchell]

Yes, my earlier posting implied that he was definitely there at the time of the crimes.

Banged to rights.

Apologies ...

Tom

[Tom Mitchell]

Hi Tom,



No. Not Whitechapel. It was Cullum Street in the City of London. Gustav Witt was his former business partner and there's no evidence that Maybrick ever visited him there. That's many long sea miles away from "definitely there at the time of the crimes".

As for that list of supposedly obscure detail that you've copied and pasted more than once from an earilier post, I'm incredibly disappointed to see you dredge up the "May" reference after we've debated it in depth and learned that the Punch cartoon alone was needed for that reference - nothing else. As for the others, have you read any of the non-ripper books on the Maybrick case?

Best regards,
Ben

Ben,

The Witt comment I have acknowledged. It puts Maybrick in London, though, which is very LARGE, I know - but at least it puts him there. Further, no evidence puts him anywhere else, which truly would have shafted the diary's case. Still, it is all circumstantial at best, I accept.

The 'May' thing, I too am disappointed to see you bring up again.

1) There's a forged or authentic diary which describes Maybrick as 'May'.
2) There is a letter from Maybrick's wife referring to him as 'May'.

It is either a coincidence (more of our forger's remarkable luck), or else the forger knew of both the Punch cartoon AND the letter, or else Maybrick wrote the diary. For convenience, I am excluding here the possibility that it was written by a member of Maybrick's family.

You and I are firmly in agreement that the diary refers to the Punch cartoon. Both the Punch cartoon DID exist and the diary DOES exist, as does the letter from Florie.

You are quite right, without the Punch cartoon, there almost certainly would have been no mention of 'May' in the diary. But there WAS a Punch cartoon and either Maybrick for real or our forger for fake could have read it.

Cheers,

Tom

[Omlor]

Tom,

I don't really have time for this.

No, no one has ever placed the real James anywhere near Whitechapel at any time near the murders.

No, no research has ever found anyone ever calling the real James "Sir Jim" -- you need to read your Feldman again more closely. You are misremembering the document you cite. Please stop doing that.

Yes, every single one of the details I mentioned can be found explicitly in Ryan.

And no, there is nothing in the diary that states any of the particulars that you mention above about the race.

Sorry,

--John

[Tom Mitchell]

Tom,

I don't really have time for this.

No, no one has ever placed the real James anywhere near Whitechapel at any time near the murders.

No, no research has ever found anyone ever calling the real James "Sir Jim" -- you need to read your Feldman again more closely. You are misremembering the document you cite. Please stop doing that.

Yes, every single one of the details I mentioned can be found explicitly in Ryan.

And no, there is nothing in the diary that states any of the particulars that you mention above about the race.

Sorry,

--John

Hi John,

I think you ought to have time for this as you are gradually unweaving the mystique that the anti-diarists have all the answers!

I trust you aren't about to be pedantic about the name in order to wriggle out of this one?

The reference to 'Sir Jim' (actually, 'Sir James') which doesn't exist can be found on Page 107 of Feldman (paperback), where a quotation is given from the Aunspaugh correspondnce: "She [Nurse Alice Yapp] did not see why Sir James (Mr Maybrick) ever brought me there any way". Maybrick wasn't a Knight of the Realm, so why on earth would she refer to him as that unless it was common use within the household?

I've given you my quotation to back up my claim, John. I'm not about to re-read Ryan (you have actually read it, yeah - page for page - as I have?) but I feel overwhelming certitude that you will not find a reference to Gladys being ill again in there. Please locate it for us. We're all waiting.

While you're at it (you'll be a while, mind), list where it confirms the dates Thomas was in America, or confirms that Michael was definitely in London when the diary claims Maybrick visited him.

I think your best hope is to find the Baroness's reference to James having left Florie alone at Christmas 1888, but even that I have my doubts about.

Just the page numbers of the paperback will do, I'll look them up once you supply them.

In the meantime, folks, I think it is safe to say that if anyone is making stuff up, it is not I (the odd slip-up here and there excepted - I'm doing most of this from memory, you know!).

Remember, you said explicitly in Ryan, so we're all agog awaiting the explicit references. That's assuming you respond, of course.

And finally! The diary states that "admittedly the race was the fastest I have ever seen" (not bad from memory, huh?). The diary doesn't need to say anything else about the race, and I didn't say that it did. Harrison or Feldman provided confirmation that the race was the fastest in 19 years, and thus the entry was supported by the likely facts (i.e., that this would seem to Maybrick like the fastest race he had seen).

I'm possibly flattering myself, but I think you're meeting your match, Mr. Omlor, and you don't appear to like it.

All done.

Tom

[Ben]

Hi Tom,

The Witt comment I have acknowledged. It puts Maybrick in London, though, which is very LARGE, I know - but at least it puts him there.

Where's the evidence that Witt placed Maybrick in London, let alone Whitechapel, at the time of the murders? He certainly did not confirm that "Maybrick had legitimate business in Whitechapel".

Once more on the May issue: You can only highlight an "interesting coincidence" if there's a strong argument for the diarist not mentioning "May" without the presence of the easily obtainable Punch cartoon. Since the dratted thing said May in the context of Jack the Ripper, that was all the diarist needed to harp upon about "May" thereafter. It totally and utterly ennervates any semblence of a "coincidence" with the Florrie letter, which, as Gareth observed earlier, was more than likely just a written abbreviation rather than an actual nickname.

Regards,
Ben

[Ben]

Tom, I'd thoroughly recommend Melvin Harris' excellent: The Maybrick Hoax; A Guide Through the Labyrinth for answers to many of your questions:

http://www.casebook.org/dissertations/maybrick_diary/mhguide.html

[Tom Mitchell]

Hi Tom,



Where's the evidence that Witt placed Maybrick in London, let alone Whitechapel, at the time of the murders? He certainly did not confirm that "Maybrick had legitimate business in Whitechapel".

Once more on the May issue: You can only highlight an "interesting coincidence" if there's a strong argument for the diarist not mentioning "May" without the presence of the easily obtainable Punch cartoon. Since the dratted thing said May in the context of Jack the Ripper, that was all the diarist needed to harp upon about "May" thereafter. It totally and utterly ennervates any semblence of a "coincidence" with the Florrie letter, which, as Gareth observed earlier, was more than likely just a written abbreviation rather than an actual nickname.

Regards,
Ben

Hi Ben,

There is a Witt quotation which makes explicit reference to Maybrick doing his London business for him. Again, I'm doing this from memory. This is the gist of the quotation.

In retrospect (as I've already admitted), it didn't say Whitechapel, and it didn't give a date. Bang to rights, Your Honour.

The 'May' thing is just so much simpler than you're making it.

The 'Maybrick' in the diary refers to himself as 'May', tickled by the Punch cartoon.

Not particularly interesting in and of itself.

105 years later, the diary is published. Still the 'May' is not interesting.

At some point, the telegram (not letter) from Florie to Brierley crops up and it refers to Maybrick as 'May'.

The Punch cartoon inspires Maybrick to make play of a name which he may well have beem referred to in the household. The telegram adds a small amount of support for that possibility.

No more, no less.

Cheers,

Tom

[Ben]

Hi Tom,

There is a Witt quotation which makes explicit reference to Maybrick doing his London business for him. Again, I'm doing this from memory.

It says: "he was my partner in L'pool up to 1875 & continued to do my London firm's business up to the time of his death", and here I'd agree with Harris' conclusion:

No luck was involved. If the Witt letter is read with care it can be seen to say no more than this: Maybrick continued to transact the business of Witt's London firm, until the time of his death. This does not mean that he worked in London: it means that he handled all deals that involved transactions in Liverpool. Since Paul Feldman is primarily a businessman he should know that such things are commonplace. Indeed, years ago, I myself (Harris) transacted the London business of organisations in Vienna and New Jersey, without visiting them once.

The Punch cartoon inspires Maybrick to make play of a name

Well, not "Maybrick" so much as the forger, but the point is that the Punch cartoon was inspiration enough for his later references to "May" within the diary.

Regards,
Ben

[Tom Mitchell]

Hi Tom,

... point is that the Punch cartoon was inspiration enough for his later references to "May".

Regards,
Ben

I've never once questioned this, Ben. Indeed, on more than one occasion throughout this thread, I have agreed with you.

Cheers,

Tom

PS Your Witt quotation is fair enough. At best, ambiguous about whether or not he was ever in London - but probably not even that.

[Tom Mitchell]

Um, well, no, that isn't true at all. It's loaded with glaring anachronisms, amateurish, easy-to-find details on the ripper case and knowledge of the Maybrick case that certainly did not require anything resembling "a huge propensity for research".
Regards,
Ben

I missed this one the first time, Ben!

Other than the reference to 'Poste House' (could be Liverpool, could be somewhere else), what other one (or more) anachronisms are you aware of?

I did say that the mention of Liverpool FC, for example, would be a bit of a monumental gaff. So let's have it or them, Ben. Anachronisms from the diary, at your leisure.

Yes, according to Mr Omlor, all those "amateurish, easy-to-find details on the ripper case and knowledge of the Maybrick case that certainly did not require anything resembling "a huge propensity for research" are all to be found in Ryan's book on Florence.

We're still waiting for the page numbers, I note (his golf must have over-ran).

I have no doubt whatsoever that they'll be there - in much the same way as the documented reference to 'Sir Jim' (well, Sir James) wasn't on page 170 of Feldman.

Cheers,

Tom

[Tom Mitchell]

Ben,

Remember - it's loaded with them, apparently ...

Cheers,

Tom

[Ben]

Other than the reference to 'Poste House' (could be Liverpool, could be somewhere else)

No, Tom. Not somewhere else. Liverpool.

The idea that the "Poste House" referred to an establishment other than the one with the exact same spelling that resided slap-bang in Maybrick terriroty entails a ludicrous degree of astonishingly unlikely coincidence. So that's an anachronism, and a particularly careless one.

Other than the reference to 'Poste House' (could be Liverpool, could be somewhere else), what other one (or more) anachronisms are you aware of?

Well, if we encompass the basic ahistoricisms and general "wrongnesses", we have the diarist have a different style anything resembling Maybrick's known hand (or anything resembling the Dear Boss letter which the diarist also claimed to have written), he had Mary Kelly's organs in the wrong places; he had Michael Maybrick as a lyricist when there's no indication that he was any such thing; placing farthings at the scene of the Chapman murder when there weren't any. That sort of thing.

Yes, according to Mr Omlor, all those "amateurish, easy-to-find details on the ripper case and knowledge of the Maybrick case that certainly did not require anything resembling "a huge propensity for research" are all to be found in Ryan's book on Florence

Well, actually, most of them were pretty successfully demolished in the article written by Melvin Harris, referenced earlier. For example, we learn that the Morland book referred to Gladys' severe cough, and as coughs tend to be recurring, it doesn't take an enormous stretch of the imagination to fathom that it happened more than once. It's not as if she was likely to have been ill only once in her life. Or that bit about Maybrick being away for Christmas when we've no evidence that he was anywhere other than home, with the Baroness' letter only stating that her daughter was left unattended by her husband at some point in December of '88. Or there's the swift disposal of the nonsense that "Sir Jim" required any detailed knowledge and the attendant assumption that Maybrick knew he was referred to as "Sir James" by a young girl who no doubt considered him a stern, patriarchal figure.

Best regards,
Ben

[Victor]

Hee hee

The diary is flawless in the sense it doesn't have flaws.

The Poste House thing, yes that's a flaw, but not big enough to stop it being flawless.

The matchbox empty thing, yes that's a flaw, just not big enough...

The handwriting thing....

O costly intercourse of death...

A few extra bodies, hey let's move them to Manchester for no apparent reason. Can't find them...oo-er, they're "unreported" ones.

Letters on Kelly's wall that may or may not be there.

These are flaws, so the diary isn't flawless! I'd agree that if it didn't have all these "issues", "discussion items" or whatever, then it'd be flawless.

So Tom, why don't you offer to pay Robert Smith to get the thing properly tested so we can all agree with you.