One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[Yabs]

Hi Yabs, All,

Florie and Edwin were particularly close, and it would appear that Florie herself filled Edwin in on the changes to her social life over the festive season of 1888, while he had been in America.

I don't think there is a problem, therefore, with Edwin having learned the juicy details from Florie after his return in 1889. She may have felt she owed him that much.

Love,

Caz
X

Hi Caz.
Thank you for the food for thought..

Considering the attitudes of the Victorian era I’m not convinced Florence would feel comfortable willingly confessing to her brother in law about her affairs if I’m honest.
Do you not get the impression that the brothers Michael & Edwin turned against Florence once they found out about her unfaithfulness?
It seems from that point onward, they were happy for Florence to be convicted of anything, even murder.
Both Michael and Edwin gave evidence in court for the prosecution stating that James was a strong and healthy man, something they both knew not to be true and both were also falsely in denial of his addiction.
I wonder why good friend Edwin would turn against Florence and give false evidence against her even though it could result in her death unless it was some kind of Victorian outrage regarding her unfaithfulness?

Also, Neither William or Thomas gave evidence in court, perhaps this adds credence to not only William, but also Thomas’s lack of contact with James?

Back to the elicit letter...
Whatever the method of discovery It seems that there was definitely a letter to Brierley from Florence that was found.
what made this letter particularly bad for Florence, was that she wrote it whilst James was on his deathbed.
I guess this would be enough to turn both Michael & Edwin against her.

.....Ripper connection aside, the more I read, the more I find the Maybrick case just as interesting.

[caz]

On the face of it I would have very little factual evidence to counter. The accused was subsequently acquitted due to lack of evidence and her death treated as an accident. However, there were clear signs of at least two struggles and a man's footprint in the mud and evidence to indicate a body was dragged down.

Somebody killed her and he was let go as basically having no reason to kill her, and therefore it must have been an accident. The legal systems were not perfect and still not.

The Manchester geography thing is interesting. You are of course factually correct, but you assume just because someone calls somehwere Manchester that it also must be factually correct. Manchester had many cotton mill towns in and around close proximity to the city, so someone could quite easily feel it was all Manchester, even if the town was 20 miles north of Manchester city centre. Horwich in fact had a train station open in 1870 on the Manchester to Preston line. If we accept 40mph as the average train speeds of the time then they would be in Horwich within 30 minutes. Question is would you use general areas or be specific in the context of the era? Even with that, they would have had to have travelled out of Manchester city and back to Manchester city if they wanted to return to Liverpool. It's all Manchester to me.

Manchester is a catch-all name for a much wider area than the city itself, like Liverpool, Birmingham and 'London' - which extends way, way beyond the square mile of the City. In a virtual pub quiz recently, one question was:

Chessington World of Adventures is situated in which city?

Ridiculous question, because it's in Surrey, has a Kingston post code, and is in Greater London, which is not a city by any stretch.

But you get the picture. Too many large or 'smallish' towns to mention, all at least 25 miles in every direction from central London, can still be referred to as London, by anyone travelling there from outside the London area. "I'm off up to London at the weekend." "Whereabouts?" "Oh, you wouldn't have heard of it. Amersham."

I love the way RJ attempts to keep the Barretts in the frame by finding out what the weather was like in April 1888 and showing it was not cold and damp - like Bongo found this case and referred to it vaguely in this DAiry, but screwed up by assuming that Manchester in April was always going to be relatively cold and damp compared with "that London".

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

'Damp' anywhere in the UK in early spring can hardly be considered a coincidence.

'Cold,' on the other hand, is relative. Even if we only accept the weather report you posted from Swinton, being "favored with something like decent weather" sounds like an improvement over the previous week, doesn't it? It may not be a ringing endorsement, but would the diarist be grumbling about a cold and damp 'hell hole' if the weather was improving?

Ah, so you accept that the Manchester area on that Saturday night in April 1888, could have felt 'damp and cold' after all, to anyone lurking on the streets after dark, despite trying to argue it was like a weekend watching cricket, in the merry month of May?

Bongo, as 'Sir Jim', makes it clear he is comparing Manchester, and Liverpool, unfavourably with London weatherwise, where he is planning to commit more murders. Both northern cities are cold, damp hell holes, if he is hoping to spend his Saturday nights walking the streets in search of lone women to attack.

Love,

Caz
X

[rjpalmer]

Ah, so you accept that the Manchester area on that Saturday night in April 1888, could have felt 'damp and cold' after all

Hi Caz,

What I suggested is that Barrett calling Manchester 'damp and cold' in late winter or early spring and it actually sprinkling 14 miles from Horwich on a specific date is hardly a startling 'coincidence.' It's like guessing that Saudi Arabia would be hot at some indeterminate time in summer...and...guess what?...nailing it!

And no, despite whatever point you are attempting to make, I still don't accept that "Maybrick" would have described that weekend as "cold" like a "hell hole," when the weather was actually on the uptick and described as generally pleasant.

I think that's fairly reasonable, don't you?

And if you're seriously suggesting that Mike Barrett needed to know about this drunken woman falling into a ravine in order to forge the Diary then I can only...

...what? disagree?

As to James' point that this imaginary visit to Horwich could have been part of a longer visit to the Manchester area, and thus doesn't preclude a murder in warmish Horwich on the same trip, that is fine & dandy if looked at in isolation...

...but in a later passage the Diarist states that 'my first was IN Manchester...."

So you're still stuck with the scenario of a Scouser referring to Horwich as being in Manchester. The same city his brother lived in.

[erobitha]

I have found that Manchester and the surrounding areas were referred to as Cottonopolis in Maybrick’s time - a catch all term for all of the cotton industry area of Manchester which includes places like Bury, Bolton and Blackburn. Could he simply be replacing the word Cottonopolis with the word Manchester?

The number of cotton mills on Manchester peaked at 108 in 1853. ^{As the numbers declined, cotton mills opened in the surrounding towns, Bury, Oldham (at its zenith the most productive cotton spinning town in the world), Rochdale, Bolton(known as "Spindleton" in 1892) and in Blackburn, Darwen, Rawtenstall, Todmorden and Burnley. As the manufacturing centre of Manchester shrank, the commercial centre, warehouses, banks and services for the 280 cotton towns and villag within a 12-mile radius of the Royal Exchange grew. The term "Cottonopolis" came into use in about 1870.}

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cottonopolis

[Al Bundy's Eyes]

I have found that Manchester and the surrounding areas were referred to as Cottonopolis in Maybrick’s time - a catch all term for all of the cotton industry area of Manchester which includes places like Bury, Bolton and Blackburn. Could he simply be replacing the word Cottonopolis with the word Manchester?

The number of cotton mills on Manchester peaked at 108 in 1853. ^{As the numbers declined, cotton mills opened in the surrounding towns, Bury, Oldham (at its zenith the most productive cotton spinning town in the world), Rochdale, Bolton(known as "Spindleton" in 1892) and in Blackburn, Darwen, Rawtenstall, Todmorden and Burnley. As the manufacturing centre of Manchester shrank, the commercial centre, warehouses, banks and services for the 280 cotton towns and villag within a 12-mile radius of the Royal Exchange grew. The term "Cottonopolis" came into use in about 1870.}

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cottonopolis

Hi,

It's a bit clutching at straws though. The Horwich murder isn't the missing piece of evidence.

If it was an unsolved killing of a "Ripper" nature, then yes, maybe, but the combination of the type of murder/accidental drowning combined with the geographical disparity suggests this is a red herring.

Cottonopolis is a broad catch all term, like "the black country", "the potteries". A statement like " I went to Cottonopolis" would give the liberty to look at a wider radius of the whole area, but the clear stating of "in Manchester" rules that out.

Salford was (and to many people still is) a totally separate entity to Manchester, but the sprawl of the city has totally absorbed it, so there's no clear distinction between the two
both on a map and in observation to the traveller, so all would be forgiven for a non local to refer to Salford as Manchester. But 25 miles, several train stops and a trip through the countryside to a town that's next to Bolton? No, Jim didn't jump off the t
rain thinking " this Manchester's cold and damp"

Seriously, that articles a great example of the fact that there are unfound stories out there, and that persistence might just pay off. But we can't shoehorn it to fit the diary and claim it as further proof of it's accuracy.

It would be interesting to look for deaths in Manchester of women who were found outdoors, presumed to have died of other causes who could be strangulation victims though. That might explain it not showing up as a murder.

[Iconoclast]

I have found that Manchester and the surrounding areas were referred to as Cottonopolis in Maybrick’s time - a catch all term for all of the cotton industry area of Manchester which includes places like Bury, Bolton and Blackburn. Could he simply be replacing the word Cottonopolis with the word Manchester?

The number of cotton mills on Manchester peaked at 108 in 1853. As the numbers declined, cotton mills opened in the surrounding towns, Bury, Oldham (at its zenith the most productive cotton spinning town in the world), Rochdale, Bolton (known as "Spindleton" in 1892) and in Blackburn, Darwen, Rawtenstall, Todmorden and Burnley. As the manufacturing centre of Manchester shrank, the commercial centre, warehouses, banks and services for the 280 cotton towns and villag within a 12-mile radius of the Royal Exchange grew. The term "Cottonopolis" came into use in about 1870.

Hi Erobitha,

Very interesting.

Bit of a challenge to read there with the font sizes steadily decreasing so I've removed them (in the quotation, above, obviously).

Cheers,

Ike

[erobitha]

Hi,

It's a bit clutching at straws though. The Horwich murder isn't the missing piece of evidence.

If it was an unsolved killing of a "Ripper" nature, then yes, maybe, but the combination of the type of murder/accidental drowning combined with the geographical disparity suggests this is a red herring.

Cottonopolis is a broad catch all term, like "the black country", "the potteries". A statement like " I went to Cottonopolis" would give the liberty to look at a wider radius of the whole area, but the clear stating of "in Manchester" rules that out.

Salford was (and to many people still is) a totally separate entity to Manchester, but the sprawl of the city has totally absorbed it, so there's no clear distinction between the two
both on a map and in observation to the traveller, so all would be forgiven for a non local to refer to Salford as Manchester. But 25 miles, several train stops and a trip through the countryside to a town that's next to Bolton? No, Jim didn't jump off the t
rain thinking " this Manchester's cold and damp"

Seriously, that articles a great example of the fact that there are unfound stories out there, and that persistence might just pay off. But we can't shoehorn it to fit the diary and claim it as further proof of it's accuracy.

It would be interesting to look for deaths in Manchester of women who were found outdoors, presumed to have died of other causes who could be strangulation victims though. That might explain it not showing up as a murder.

I am not convinced that we can rule this one out to be honest. I accept your points have valid modern context, but not so sure that is so true through the lens of that time. I don't think it can be that easily dismissed personally. Would it have been more 'ideal' if it was closer to the city centre, of course. But I do feel even then there will be more notions of why it can't be so. I will continue looking for similar incidents, but as I say, I do not personally rule this one out even if others do.

[Al Bundy's Eyes]

Fair do's. It'll be interesting to see what you find.

[caz]

Hi Caz.
Thank you for the food for thought..

Considering the attitudes of the Victorian era I’m not convinced Florence would feel comfortable willingly confessing to her brother in law about her affairs if I’m honest.
Do you not get the impression that the brothers Michael & Edwin turned against Florence once they found out about her unfaithfulness?
It seems from that point onward, they were happy for Florence to be convicted of anything, even murder.
Both Michael and Edwin gave evidence in court for the prosecution stating that James was a strong and healthy man, something they both knew not to be true and both were also falsely in denial of his addiction.
I wonder why good friend Edwin would turn against Florence and give false evidence against her even though it could result in her death unless it was some kind of Victorian outrage regarding her unfaithfulness?

Also, Neither William or Thomas gave evidence in court, perhaps this adds credence to not only William, but also Thomas’s lack of contact with James?

Back to the elicit letter...
Whatever the method of discovery It seems that there was definitely a letter to Brierley from Florence that was found.
what made this letter particularly bad for Florence, was that she wrote it whilst James was on his deathbed.
I guess this would be enough to turn both Michael & Edwin against her.

.....Ripper connection aside, the more I read, the more I find the Maybrick case just as interesting.

You make some fair points, Yabs. I would only say that if an indiscreet Florie did open up to Edwin, concerning the widening of her social circle from Christmas 1888, it wouldn't be the only time she would misjudge her audience and speak out - or indeed put pen to paper - unwisely, trusting her listeners or readers not to turn against her, but to understand her behaviour and show sympathy - and ultimately mercy. I don't think she had the self awareness or life experience to fully appreciate when to keep her trap shut - and her ink unused.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Hi Caz,

What I suggested is that Barrett calling Manchester 'damp and cold' in late winter or early spring and it actually sprinkling 14 miles from Horwich on a specific date is hardly a startling 'coincidence.' It's like guessing that Saudi Arabia would be hot at some indeterminate time in summer...and...guess what?...nailing it!

Okay, I misunderstood. I thought you were frantically trying to post evidence that the Manchester area was not 'cold and damp' on 14th April 1888, and therefore Bongo got the weather wrong in his DAiry. I totally agree that it would be no coincidence at all if it was 'cold and damp' relative to London, on pretty much any night of the year when there was an R in the month.

And no, despite whatever point you are attempting to make, I still don't accept that "Maybrick" would have described that weekend as "cold" like a "hell hole," when the weather was actually on the uptick and described as generally pleasant.

I think that's fairly reasonable, don't you?

Not really, RJ. How much is known about the real Jim's tendency to feel the cold, in the year leading up to his final illness, when he complained of numbness? And surely the point here is how much 'Sir Jim' would have felt the cold, out late at night waiting for an opportunity to attack a woman out alone, who was very much the worse for drink. Bongo's DAiry is stuffed with references to our Jim's dislike of the cold, fully in keeping with his decision to make the considerably milder and drier London his hunting ground, and summertime his season of choice.

And if you're seriously suggesting that Mike Barrett needed to know about this drunken woman falling into a ravine in order to forge the Diary then I can only...

...what? disagree?

Er, no. I thought you were making that argument, because why the hell would it have mattered otherwise what the bleedin' weather was doing, specifically on the evening of 14th April 1888, if you were satisfied that Bongo wasn't writing about that occasion, and therefore cannot have been let down by a spot of unseasonably mild, dry weather?

As with lying, you need a good memory if you want to keep changing your arguments.

As to James' point that this imaginary visit to Horwich could have been part of a longer visit to the Manchester area, and thus doesn't preclude a murder in warmish Horwich on the same trip, that is fine & dandy if looked at in isolation...

...but in a later passage the Diarist states that 'my first was IN Manchester...."

So you're still stuck with the scenario of a Scouser referring to Horwich as being in Manchester. The same city his brother lived in.

I spent most of my younger life IN London, RJ, but never lived in the city, or even central London. I was brought up in Southfields, between Wimbledon and Putney, moved to South Harrow [then in the county of Middlesex], then moved to Colchester for a couple of years and commuted up to Liverpool St, before moving back up to London, this time to Streatham Common. I spent the next thirty plus years in the Croydon area of South London, before finally moving down here to the West Country in 2011.

I appreciate you live in a different country, which is why I am doing my best to explain how things work over here.

If and when the real Maybrick travelled by train to Manchester on business, he might have arrived at the main station, or stayed overnight in the city, but business - or pleasure - could have taken him anywhere in the wider Manchester area, and he could have taken a train there or hailed a horse-drawn cab.

But do, by all means, carry on arguing against Bongo referring to the Horwich case in his diary, even though nobody is suggesting he did! It livens up a dull Monday if nothing else.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

I have found that Manchester and the surrounding areas were referred to as Cottonopolis in Maybrick’s time - a catch all term for all of the cotton industry area of Manchester which includes places like Bury, Bolton and Blackburn. Could he simply be replacing the word Cottonopolis with the word Manchester?

Of course, erobitha. Could you imagine Bongo attempting to spell CoTENPoliCE?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Seriously, that articles a great example of the fact that there are unfound stories out there, and that persistence might just pay off. But we can't shoehorn it to fit the diary and claim it as further proof of it's accuracy.

It would be interesting to look for deaths in Manchester of women who were found outdoors, presumed to have died of other causes who could be strangulation victims though. That might explain it not showing up as a murder.

Good point, Al. Equally, if a woman out alone at night - and possibly drunk - could have been the victim of a strangulation attempt and passed out, but then regained consciousness after her assailant had left her for dead, might she have been reluctant to report the attack and admit the circumstances? Such an incident might not have shown up at all if the victim recovered without seeking medical treatment.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

The person I gave the tapes to has dropped off the face of the earth. I have no way of retrieving them.

I have to say, RJ, that I'm curious why it took so long to worm this out of you.

First of all you thought you still had your Gray/Barrett tapes, but claimed your set was incomplete. You didn't explain how you knew this.

Later you discovered a handy 'note to self', reminding you why you were unable to find and release your own tapes. You had given them away back in 2007, and I would 'chuckle' if you told me who was the recipient.

Your reluctance simply to name that Chuckle brother led to my assumption that they must still be alive, but even now you can't simply say they have since died, but want to retain a bit of mystery by saying they have 'dropped off the face of the earth'.

What on earth is this big mystery surrounding your tapes, RJ? I don't personally give two hoots if the person you gave them to back in 2007 is six feet under today, or clinging to the moon's surface. And I very much doubt their identity would do more than put a wry smile on my dolly old eek.

What I do know, without winkling it out of you with a sharp pin, is that a smallish circle of privileged individuals received material originating with Alan Gray and shared with Melvin Harris, so you could have given your tapes to John Omlor, Peter Birchwood, or even his ghastly wife for all I care. All three dropped off the face of Diary World several years ago and - mercifully - have not been heard of since.

The fact remains - and the irony appears to be quite lost on you - that the only individuals privy to these tapes and holding them back, at a time when, in your recently expressed opinion, they might feasibly have supported the claims Mike made in his January 1995 affidavit [not the 21st century affi-David], would have been Melvin and his various foot soldiers. I am left wondering why none of them had the courage of their convictions to release them to your 'interested public'. Mike had already 'confessed', and was trying to support his forgery claims with Alan Gray's help, so there was no 'conflict of interest' preventing Mike's voice from being heard.

Unless of course, letting everyone hear Mike trying to explain things in his own voice, and in his own words, would actually have conflicted with the interests of those accusing him of forgery at the time. I can't readily think of another explanation.

Love,

Caz
X

[rjpalmer]

Good afternoon, Caz.

I’ve been reading your latest posts about Horwich, British weather, Cottonopolis, unrecorded strangulation attacks, etc., with enjoyment, but also with increasing confusion…and alarm.

Here’s the issue I have.

On a fairly regular basis, you remind your readers that you do not believe the Diary is genuine—ie.written by James Maybrick. In your opinion it is a hoax, though evidently an ‘old’ hoax.

Then why are you so hell bent on the diary being accurate? Why can’t the Manchester murder simply be made up? Why is a hoax required to be based on true events?

Isn’t the whole point of a hoax that it ISN’T a representation of reality?

I can readily see why true believers like Erobitha or Ike would be impressed by the mysterious case in Horwich.

True; they are forced to apply a shoehorn, but it’s somewhat “doable.” They can argue, as Erobitha does, that the passage in the Diary is an encapsulation of a several day trip to ‘Cottonopolis’; that Maybrick DID find Manchester damp at some point during the trip, and that he later wormed his way up north to examine the local cotton mills, came across a drunken woman, and right there and then decided to start his ‘campaign’ by strangling her with her scarf before shoving her down a slippery ravine. By the time Sir Jim makes it back to Liverpool and writes about it in his perverse journal, his overriding memory is the ‘thrill’ of having ‘squeezed and squeezed,’ so the details of the unfortunate woman’s demise as recorded in the diary don’t necessarily need to match perfectly with what we read in the inquest reports.

Fair enough. It doesn’t really work for me, but I can see how a true believer in the diary might argue this.

But why on earth would you—an old hoax advocate---want to go there?

How would it benefit an old hoaxer to give an account of a murder in such vague terms that the reader would have no hope of ever recognizing it? How would such an unrecognizable account of the Horwich murder benefit the verisimilitude of the hoax, or achieve any conceivable purpose?

The diarist eggs the custard amply enough when he describes the Whitechapel murders; we can say “ah, that’s the double event,’ or “ah yes, that’s clearly a reference to Hanbury Street.”

No so with the Manchester murder. It is not a credible representation of anything.

Why is that?

…unless, of course, the hoaxer simply made it up, as described by Barrett...

If he WASN’T making it up, wouldn’t the hoaxer have made damn sure that he included enough detail that the reader would confidently accept the murder, once he found it?

“The bitch screamed so I threw her down the bank. Ha ha ha. How I enjoyed the sound of her head bouncing off the rocks! A whore in Horwich. How clever I am!"

In short, I don’t quite understand what you are attempting to argue.

Unless you mean to imply that this “old hoax” is a representation of actual events, and that James Maybrick was the Whitechapel Murderer.