One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[Jonathan H]

I have been asked to move over here.

Apart from all the obvious reasons for judging the diary (and the watch) to be a modern hoax, is not Melvyn Harris' argument, about the the docuemnt containing a 1958 hoax by Donald McCormick, one 'incontrovertible fact which refutes the Diary'?

I would love to hear the counter-argument.

[Magpie]

I have been asked to move over here.

Apart from all the obvious reasons for judging the diary (and the watch) to be a modern hoax, is not Melvyn Harris' argument, about the the docuemnt containing a 1958 hoax by Donald McCormick, one 'incontrovertible fact which refutes the Diary'?

I would love to hear the counter-argument.

If you are referring to the "one little whore" rhyme, I think it's weak "evidence". It's a counting rhyme, McCormick's is a counting rhyme, but aside from that there's not much that proves the former could only be based on the latter.

Aside from limericks, counting rhymes are probably the more common populist "poem" out there. They've been around for ever, anyone of any skill (or lack thereof) can make one up in a few seconds, and McCormick's contribution was not necessary as a template for the one in the Diary.

[Jonathan H]

Yes, I see what you are saying.

Is there anywhere I can look for myself to compare the two, apart from the texts which they appear in?

[Soothsayer]

I have been asked to move over here.

Apart from all the obvious reasons for judging the diary (and the watch) to be a modern hoax, is not Melvyn Harris' argument, about the the docuemnt containing a 1958 hoax by Donald McCormick, one 'incontrovertible fact which refutes the Diary'?

I would love to hear the counter-argument.

Magpie makes a good counter-argument, as we have seen, Jonathan, but I like your thinking - it's this sort of detail that we are ultimately looking for to nail the journal as a hoax (either a detail of content or a detail of material - for example, the ink, the scrapbook, etc.).

Until we can find the categorical evidence either way, we remain mired where we have been for eighteen long years, in the shifting sands of mere opinion and speculation.

I admire your detective skills and I hope you get a fine deerstalker for Christmas (I've given all my old ones away, I'm afraid).

[spyglass]

Welcome back soothsayer! I need you on the who is JTR ? poll thread.
Thanks.

[Soothsayer]

Welcome back soothsayer! I need you on the who is JTR ? poll thread.
Thanks.

Hi Spysie,

I took a wild stab in the dark on this one a few years back and I think I ended up plumping for James Maybrick. :0)

I'd like to join you, but I can't remember where it's located!

I kid ye not, all this brilliant detective work uses up more brain cells than they told us at Detective Skool.

Anyway, you were always ahead of me in most subjects (and always so willing to sell me your homework for a couple of farthings and a treacle scone, you may recall), so a kindly reminder would be greatly appreciated.

But haste! I've just spotted it in the strip on the left!

And they dared to doubt my powers of detection just because I scored 11% on the How to Hold a Magnifying Glass paper ...

S.

[Soothsayer]

Hi Spy. Actually, everything you wrote about the Diary is wrong, and yes, it's proved a fake.

Hi All,

Amazing news - apparently the journal of James Maybrick has been proven to be a hoax after all these years!

Looks like my job is sadly done and I have failed in my mission after all. The Truth was never there to be defended after all, and my swishing, swooshy sword was labouring through thin air all that time.

The Greatest Thread of All Time is finally done to death!

(Just awaiting Tom's postmortem as to how the journal was finally and categorically proven to be a hoax before I sign off for the last time.)

[Soothsayer]

Hi All,

Amazing news - apparently the journal of James Maybrick has been proven to be a hoax after all these years!

Looks like my job is sadly done and I have failed in my mission after all. The Truth was never there to be defended after all, and my swishing, swooshy sword was labouring through thin air all that time.

The Greatest Thread of All Time is finally done to death!

(Just awaiting Tom's postmortem as to how the journal was finally and categorically proven to be a hoax before I sign off for the last time.)

Oh dear, alarm over. Turns out to be ill-informed opinion again dressed up as fact.

Looks like I'm here to stay ...

[spyglass]

GOOD NEWS!!
how I would miss you soothsayer, thanks for the back up.

[Jonathan H]

Furry Fiend?

Some people act as if we Diary-skeptics have to absolutely prove the 'Diary' a fake and if we can't -- a disputed claim -- then it remains in contention as an historical artifact.

With James Maybrick as a serious suspect for being Jack the Ripper ...?!

I'm sorry, but it's the other way round.

For here we have a source which cannot be traced back beyond the modern era (the same with the fob-watch, in terms of its scratches).

That makes it a completely unreliable source.

I know enough about the 'Diary' to know that the murderer identifies himself by the 'Dear Boss' hoax letter (oh well, mad people can do as they please ...) and that the handwriting is a poor match for what has survived pf Maybrick's.

Sociologically, the significance of the hoax is that it represents an orbiting back to 'Jack the Gentleman' of the Sims-Edwardian Era ; a businessman at the end of the Reagan-corporate glut, followed by Cornwall's naive nonsense about Walter Sickert, as seedy as he was talented; the Ripper as a British artist-monster.

I think we are heading back to the drowned not-a-doctor -- though not based on evidence -- as no solution is satisfactory to this 'mystery' for a restless zeitgeist, and so old, allegedly discredited ones will inevitably be revived, celebrated and rudely cast aside.

Montague Druitt was the gentleman suspect posthumously accused by a gentleman policeman, Sir Melville Macnaghten, and so he will have his day in the Sun again -- what with Old Etonians once more ascendant in Parliament, complete with marches against poverty and greed as a backdrop.

Then Druitt will be dumped, again, and replaced with ... with ... maybe an animal expert will claim that the murders really do strongly resemble the specific mutilations caused by the Indus Orangutan, and the ludicrous Gorilla-on-the-loose joke of 1888 will get its moment too ...

[Soothsayer]

For here we have a source which cannot be traced back beyond the modern era (the same with the fob-watch, in terms of its scratches).
That makes it a completely unreliable source.
...

Jonathan,

You sound well-informed and as most people reading this will be wondering how you draw the above conclusion could you fill us in, please?

The evidence has not precluded the watch and scratches being LVP, and the provenance provided by Anne Barrett has not been proven to be false.

I'm struggling to understand how you could have come to such a conclusion, for in proving this you will have proven the journal to be a fraud, and to my knowedge, there is not a person alive who has yet done so.

[Jonathan H]

Let me ask you a question of clarification.

What do you mean that: the provenance provided by Anne Barrett has not been proven to be false?

[Soothsayer]

Let me ask you a question of clarification.

What do you mean that: the provenance provided by Anne Barrett has not been proven to be false?

It's incredibly simple, Jonathan. The provenance which Anne Barrett gave the journal goes back at least as far as 1943 (when her father first saw it). To date, she has neither retracted this statement nor has her claim ever been proven to be false. This means that it could not be a modern forgery if what she says is true, and we have no grounds whatsoever for saying she's lying or 'misinformed'.

If the journal is pre-1943, it could not have been sourced from any of the modern Ripper texts (thereby altering the commonly-held view of where the author copied 'tin match box empty', for example). It must have been sourced either from the killer or from someone with an in-depth understanding of the case pre-1943.

It starts to get harder to rationalise the forgery argument in that context.

[Soothsayer]

They come along in their thousands with their heady claims that so much has been revealed. And then they are asked to justify their claims, and a thousand men fall away in disgrace, before a thousand more, and ever onwards until no man stands making the claim except once more through wishful thinking and the vague rememberings of something long hence said, misremembered, misinformed, misguided, and not long to be posted missing. If only once we could meet a soldier who would stand and fight with the arms they claim to carry.

The diary has been proven to be a fake ...

It has no provenance ...

The ink wasn't available until 1970 ...

The author admitted he faked it ...

It could have been written in a weekend ...

How much they wish it were so but cannot back up their claims when - bereft of the evidence but challenged to reveal it - they choose to disappear back to the dark forests of MadeItUpButAssumedItWasTrueAndDidn'tThinkI'dHaveTo ProveIt.

[Jonathan H]

Are you talking about me slinking away into a forest ...?

I'm in a different time-zone. I have only just seen your pseudo-religious reply.

So, she she says it goes back to 1943, but we have no evidence from that year or any other, that it was actually sighted by anybody, until the 'Dairy' popped up in modern era -- right?

That's not good enough. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence (Carl Sagan) and this does not even come close to passing that test.

But it's vital to you that it be real, isn't it, which is not an historical approach.