One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[Iconoclast]

RJ,

[I]

The wear-and-tear on the watch is located in a spot (inside of the back cover) where one wouldn't expect to find wear-and-tear.

There's the rub.

Thus, your stuck with using the most suspicious aspect of the watch in order to date it.

Not a very good position to find yourself in, Ike.

You probably won't be too amazed to find that I don't date the Maybrick markings by the wear and tear around it but by the fragments of one of the implements used to make the Maybrick marks being embedded and datable to at least many tens of years old way back to the early 1990s.

It was noticed a long time ago by Chris Phillips and John Hacker that the stray, superficial, and incidental network of tiny scratches on the watch that supposedly show its antiquity are on TOP of the 'Maybrick' engravings.

Yet, the watch dates to the 1840s. If this was normal wear-and-tear, one would expect to see just as many stray, superficial, and incidental scratches to have been made on the watch between 1840-something and 1888. Yet, in those four decades, the watch remained pristine--as one would entirely expect, considering it is the inside back cover.

What are you (and Chris Phillips and John Hacker) proposing? That this implies that the Maybrick markings do not exist? I'm sure you can't be saying that as I wasn't aware that that was in debate? So you must mean that the Maybrick markings were laid down before any markings were later added to the surface of the back inside cover of the watch. But here's the rub to your rub, RJ. Whether the Maybrick markings were made in 1888 by James Maybrick or in 1988 by James Hoaxer, all of the subsequent markings - you say - were on top of these thereby implying that the watch had remained pristine within its cover for at least some four decades up to 1888 and that that would therefore be highly suspicious; but why would that be more suspicious than the Maybrick engravings being laid down by a hoaxer in 1900 or 1921 or 1947 or 1968 or 1988? In this scenario, you seem to be implying that the Maybrick engravings were laid down by a hoaxer long after Maybrick had passed away and this is more logical to you despite the fact that that would imply that the watch had lain 'pristine' for even longer than the forty years it would have done had Maybrick engraved the Maybrick engravings!

The suspicious network of scratches was made after the 'Maybrick' engravings ...

Goodness, there you go again making the same non sequitur ...

P.S. No one will understand this obscure factoid, Ike, but you---but I did notice one error by the anti-diarists. This watch has bugger-all to do with John Over, but it was once argued that since Mrs. John Over (who had worked for the Maybricks) had married shortly before 1888, she would have been long gone by 1888, and this would not have afforded a chance for Maybrick to steal her husband's watch.

I don't think the 'John Over' link with the watch has ever been touted as evidence that Jimmy Maybrick pilfered it from him, has it? I always assumed (and I'm sure it has been published as a theory in one of the original books) that Maybrick popped his clogs, one of the skivvies pilfered his watch, and somehow it fell into the hands of ex-colleague 'Mrs Over' who gave it to 'Mr Over', possibly with his initials added (or he later added them).

Mrs I is calling me downstairs to walk they dugs in the light Midlothian early evening rain so I must remove my genius from your immediate reply should one arrive, but rest assured any further querying of the authenticity of the watch or scrapbook will be met with my usual brilliant ferocity and insight.

Your old chum,

Ike

[rjpalmer]

You probably won't be too amazed to find that I don't date the Maybrick markings by the wear and tear around it but by the fragments of one of the implements used to make the Maybrick marks being embedded and datable to at least many tens of years old way back to the early 1990s.

Ike - Is that a typo or did you mean to write 'fragments' instead of fragment?

I'm not teasing you, Old Boy; I'm just seeking clarification. I notice I fell into a phonetical error in my last post and wrote your=you're. Your mistakes are forgivable, of course, but I always fear that you-know-who will thump me with a ferocity that even outshines your own genius if I should stumble even slightly.

I always assumed (and I'm sure it has been published as a theory in one of the original books) that Maybrick popped his clogs, one of the skivvies pilfered his watch, and somehow it fell into the hands of ex-colleague 'Mrs Over' who gave it to 'Mr Over', possibly with his initials added (or he later added them).

Enlighten me. I am an empty vessel.

How did it get from Mr. and Mrs. Over to George Davidson who hid it under his pillow before he died? Or don't bother: I'll go back and refresh my memory on how Feldman worked that one out.

And how did it get from Davidson's pillow to underneath Dodd's floorboards and inside a biscuit tin?

If I'm following you correctly, it went from the unengravably-minded Mr. X (or Mrs. X) in the late 1840s to Maybrick to an 1889 employee of Florrie's to Mrs. Over to Mr. Over to Davidson and then back underneath the floorboards in Maybrick's death chamber (where it all started) and then to Eddie L. who, with the help of H.G. Wells and a time machine, sold it to the Stewarts sometime in the 1980s, who sold it to Albert Johnson in 1992.

The strange voyage of this watch rivals anything dreamed up by Jules Verne.

Of course, H.G. Wells can be eliminated from our calculus if we are willing to include the Stewarts in our nest of liars.

At least Feldman's faith in Graham left your explanation slightly less convoluted. You've got the watch leaving the house only to find its way back into the house--and after the house was let out to someone else.

But you've got time to work it out before the 2025 update, so no worries.

Enjoy walking thine dugs.

[erobitha]

And how did it get from Davidson's pillow to underneath Dodd's floorboards and inside a biscuit tin?

If I'm following you correctly, it went from the unengravably-minded Mr. X (or Mrs. X) in the late 1840s to Maybrick to an 1889 employee of Florrie's to Mrs. Over to Mr. Over to Davidson and then back underneath the floorboards in Maybrick's death chamber (where it all started) and then to Eddie L. who, with the help of H.G. Wells and a time machine, sold it to the Stewarts sometime in the 1980s, who sold it to Albert Johnson in 1992.

Is there a receipt for this transaction Roger?

Does it not strike you as somewhat odd someone has a a vivid memory of buying a fairly nondescript watch (that is quite forgettable on the face of it) as being purchased from a scouser apparently, a decade or more before Albert Johnson purchased it from the Wallasey antiques shop? As far as I'm aware there is no record of this watch every being transacted in the 70s / 80s, unless you know something I do not.

We have an old man's memory who apparently has amazing levels of recall.

[erobitha]

Is there a receipt for this transaction Roger?

Does it not strike you as somewhat odd someone has a a vivid memory of buying a fairly nondescript watch (that is quite forgettable on the face of it) as being purchased from a scouser apparently, decades before Albert Johnson purchased it from the Wallasey antiques shop? As far as I'm aware there is no record of this watch every being transacted in the 70s / 80s, unless you know something I do not.

We have an old man's memory who apparently has amazing levels of recall.

This got me to thinking about the popular TV show from the 80s / 90s called 'You Bet!' Celebrities would guess whether the contestant could execute their chosen skill under time pressure.

I wonder if old man Stewart ever thought going on with his amazing memory recall skills for nondescript jewellery and its provenance. He most definitely would have cleaned up for charity.

[rjpalmer]

We have an old man's memory who apparently has amazing levels of recall.

The way I look at it, the old man's memory wasn't even remotely "amazing," but I'd be interested in learning why you think he is even relevant.




For the purposes of the 'Battlecrease' provenance, it doesn't really matter where the Old Man got the watch.

Ron Murphy's own memory would hardly need to be good, let alone 'amazing,' to remember he had been given the watch by his father-in-law around 1990.

Are you suggesting Ron really bought the watch off a nervous Eddie Lyons 4 months earlier (March 1992) and misremembered it as coming from his own father-in-law 2 or 3 years earlier?

Is that likely?

Have fun with it; I'm not particularly eager to be drawn back into the debate, but I do have another question for Ike in a few days.

Cheers.

[erobitha]

The way I look at it, the old man's memory wasn't even remotely "amazing," but I'd be interested in learning why you think he is even relevant.




For the purposes of the 'Battlecrease' provenance, it doesn't really matter where the Old Man got the watch.

Ron Murphy's own memory would hardly need to be good, let alone 'amazing,' to remember he had been given the watch by his father-in-law around 1990.

Are you suggesting Ron really bought the watch off a nervous Eddie Lyons 4 months earlier (March 1992) and misremembered it as coming from his own father-in-law 2 or 3 years earlier?

Is that likely?

Have fun with it; I'm not particularly eager to be drawn back into the debate, but I do have another question for Ike in a few days.

Cheers.

I shall be clear in case there is any ambiguity. For someone who puts much weight on documented evidence, receipts should play a big part in establishing proof of purchase should it not? Yet once again somehow you allow your standards to slip in the case of the phantom auction ticket, the pen shop materials and the watch prior to reaching the Murphys. Where are the proof of purchases?

I am referring to the fact the old man (father in-law) apparently was able to tell Ron very clearly how he came to come by the watch in the first instance. Without any historical documented proof of such, should we not keep an open mind to whether such a story can be truly accurate?

If Eddie decided to break up the haul and sell the watch to Ron Murphy, would he not be somewhat twitchy that this nondescript watch may have been fenced as stolen goods, especially if it turns out to be what people are saying it is - Jack the Ripper's watch.

I think Ron is in the game of self-preservation, in the same way Eddie is and the same way Mike was.

If it was nicked, they need to plead ignorance, or they get nicked.

If any actual receipts appear for the original transaction I shall eat my hat.

[rjpalmer]

I shall be clear in case there is any ambiguity. For someone who puts much weight on documented evidence, receipts should play a big part in establishing proof of purchase should it not? Yet once again somehow you allow your standards to slip in the case of the phantom auction ticket, the pen shop materials and the watch prior to reaching the Murphys. Where are the proof of purchases?

WHAT proof of purchase? Murphy got the watch from his father-in-law who had retired from the jewelry business.

I don't know how much you know about small businesses (my father was a small business owner) but they very often accumulate mountains of merchandise and projects over the years and never get around to finishing them. That's what Murphy and Stewart are describing.

Are you saying Murphy was suppose to get a receipt from his own step-father to show some sort of chain of evidence? Why would he have done that? He doesn't need to have had a receipt--he knew where he got the watch--from the remains of his father-in-law's old shop.

Do you think he had some way of predicting that 10 - 30 years later there would be all sorts of wild and unproven speculation about the watch? All he knows is he had it since 1990 and his father-in-law had it before that.

If anyone has a problem with receipts it is you.

Show me the receipt that Murphy gave Eddie Lyons when Lyons sold him the watch in March 1992.

All you have is wild speculation and gratuitous accusations against Murphy and Lyons.

But thanks for reminding me why it is futile to post here.

Much appreciated.

[rjpalmer]

I am referring to the fact the old man (father in-law) apparently was able to tell Ron very clearly how he came to come by the watch in the first instance. Without any historical documented proof of such, should we not keep an open mind to whether such a story can be truly accurate?

In order to appease you, I went back to reread Shirley Harrison's account--someone who had actually quizzed the Murphys.

Here is what you describe as Mr. Stewart's 'very clear' and even 'amazing' memory. Or are you thinking of another account?



He barely remembers the event, and considering that he is going senile, who knows if the bit about the accent is accurate?

Why do you find this 'very clear' memory suspicious?

Meanwhile, Harrison was told that Mr. Stewart retired in 1980.

Small businesses are only required to keep receipts for 6 years. And by 1992, Stewart had been out of business for 12.

There was no paper trail, nor would any reasonable person expect to find one.

What you are really suggesting is that Murphy was lying about getting the watch from the remains of his father-in-law's business sometime around 1990 or earlier.

[Iconoclast]

Ike - Is that a typo or did you mean to write 'fragments' instead of fragment?

One might say that this is my very own 'Midlothian Question'. Unfortunately, I can't answer it right now as all of my books were long since relocated to what whimsically I might call Lower Whottlington on the Whottle in the English Midlands and won't be reunited with them until late Friday afternoon (late Friday morning to the over-the-pond dwellers).

I am willing to concede that you are rarely wrong on the finer points of note, RJ, and that therefore there was probably just the one fragment. One more than there should ever have been, thankfully, but just the one nevertheless. It seems the hoaxer didn't use a particularly contaminated implement, I guess.

I notice I fell into a phonetical error in my last post and wrote your=you're. Your mistakes are forgivable, of course, but I always fear that you-know-who will thump me with a ferocity that even outshines your own genius if I should stumble even slightly.

Yes, we share a common weakness and a common fear, RJ. The shadow of the Dark Lord is pervasive. I already dread the mileage I offered him with my disappointing logic-fail at the very end of my 'Darwin's Notebooks' original post (just because I claim to have hoaxed them isn't going to stop any erstwhile village idiots under the influence of Stroma whisky liqueur from subsequently claiming that it was they who did the deed).

Actually, it is I who have been under the influence of the said liqueur. Mrs I and I returned from walking they dugs to settle down to watch the rest of the excellent 'Patriots Day' (Boston Marathon bombings) on Netflix, and then were suckered into watching 'The Last Stand' with Arnie at his wonderful and corny best (our third viewing at least) so the bottle got hit harder than was originally intended; hence, I did not respond last evening.

How did it get from Mr. and Mrs. Over to George Davidson who hid it under his pillow before he died?

It has never been more than inference. The gold watch found under the pillow of a destitute man just sounds too good to be untrue, and what have you. The reality is, it would surely have been more like shopkeeper, Maybrick, skivvy, ex-colleague, Mr Over, George (God knows how or why), police, shopkeeper (police benevolent fund), unsure, unsure, Stewarts, Albert Johnson.

And how did it get from Davidson's pillow to underneath Dodd's floorboards and inside a biscuit tin?

Mebbes aye and mebbes nay as they say up here.

But you've got time to work it out before the 2025 update, so no worries.

You are slipping, RJ, aren't you? I assume you meant to type 'the brilliant 2025 update'?

Ike

[caz]

Darwin notebooks worth millions lost for 20 years

'Stolen' Charles Darwin notebooks left on library floor in pink gift bag - BBC News



Charles Darwin’s notebooks have apparently turned up. What a relief! They have been valued at £2 million and were stolen a few years ago, but now they’re back, thank goodness! Just imagine, if we didn’t have Darwin’s original notebooks, we would have no idea about evolution by natural selection. Phew – we dodged a bullet there, dear readers. Now we can finally get back to understanding where we came from and how the differences between species emerged.

I was intrigued, though, that these two apparently Victorian notebooks, written in apparently genuine Victorian ink, have been so rapidly accepted as the genuine articles and - in the cynical, brainless spirit of so much that passes as analysis in this world - I have immediately concluded that they are obvious fakes! Let me justify my conclusions with some illogical inferences. Do we need to look any further than their desperately poor provenance? They appeared one day on the floor of a probably-ex-scrap-metal-dealer-turned-librarian, for goodness sake, wrapped in cling film with no return address. How suspicious does that sound to you? (I think the word you are looking for is 'very', by the way.)

Fortunately we had some experts on hand to validate their authenticity, but I'm not convinced for a moment.



‘Lines of evidence’? Sounds reasonable. What were they, I wonder?



So the hoaxer has used two different Victorian inks, and that’s conclusive enough for the ‘experts’? Really? Or is it more that the ‘experts’ know how incredibly difficult it would be to source even one genuinely Victorian ink so to have sourced two is obviously as compelling a confirmation of authenticity as one could ever hope to have?

Personally, I think the hoaxer just clocked that he or she needed two different shades of genuine Victorian ink, went to the local art shop and bought some modern ones made by Diamine.

But the hoaxer has been so much cleverer still!



What was that about tiny bits of copper coming off where the hinges are located? That’s exactly what hoaxers do, for goodness sake! They get contaminated implements and they scrape off tiny bits of copper from Victorian hinges to fool the so-called ‘experts’! They probably used an old hanky to polish out modern scratches to make them look authentically Victorian. Come on, everyone, how could anyone fall for this utter mince? How could otherwise intelligent people fall for this blatant and shoddy fraud? No provenance. Dodgy inks. Faked hinge copper. How on earth has this got as far as the BBC?

How naïve are these so-called ‘experts’ – that they would be fooled so easily and by so little actual evidence? They didn’t mention the handwriting but I think we can safely take it as read that there are more than enough extant examples of Charles Darwin’s private writing intended only for his own eyes that there were comparators for both the hoaxer to style their text on and the experts to be hoodwinked by.



Clever work by the forgers - imagine the furore and the cacophony of doubt which would have emerged had there been any pages torn out, especially those at the start. I could have had a field day!



Well they absolutely couldn’t have been stuffed in a tin box underneath the thief’s floorboards – we all know that’s just ridiculous!



Doh! Or else the thirteen year old forger just knocked them out last weekend (it was pretty wet in the UK as I recall).

How fortunate it is, I suggest, for the hoaxer or hoaxers that someone wasn’t publishing a book next year about how Darwin’s notebooks had been burned in a firepit and who - in order to keep the sweating author's erstwhile publisher at the table - therefore might feel the need to shout ‘Fake!” loud enough for the dumbest newspaper in history to get onboard and instigate a biased, personalised campaign of criticism and doubt. Imagine the truly unnecessary confusion that would have caused Darwinologists over the next thirty years!

Maybe I should, just for jolly? It might stop anyone else getting completely off their tits on whisky and claiming they wrote the bloody things!

Committee for Iketegrity, anyone?

Did you notice the date, Ike?

"I was shaking," says Dr Gardner of her reaction to seeing the bag and its contents for the first time on 9 March. "But I was also cautious because until we could unwrap them, you can't be 100% sure."

Almost Bongo's claimed reaction to seeing his DAiry for the first time, when the brown paper wrapping came off - only he sensibly dated this back several months, knowing he may have been casting his eyes over stolen property on 9 March, precisely 30 years ago.

Monday 13th April 1992 was the start of Caroline's Easter holidays in 1992, so when Bongo handed the old book over to Doreen, he might well have said: "Happy Easter"!

I reckon Anne Graham should be asked about this. It's a heck of an April Fool, isn't it?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

The suspicious network of scratches was made after the 'Maybrick' engravings, and since there is no way to date scratches in metal, the watch is even less compelling than the Edwardian photo album/guard book.

(I call it Edwardian for the same reason that Caz recently called it Victorian. What bloody evidence is there that it is Victorian?)

Right, so with no way to date scratches in metal, what bloody evidence is there that this 'suspicious' network of scratches, on top of the Maybrick/Jack engravings, were made in 1993, and not 1943, or 1893?

And what bloody evidence is there that the typical Victorian guard book [as described IIRC by Don Rumbelow's book binder friend] is Edwardian?

You can have all the bloody faith you like in your own instincts for spotting a modern fake, but without bloody evidence that's all it is.

[caz]

Is there a receipt for this transaction Roger?

Does it not strike you as somewhat odd someone has a a vivid memory of buying a fairly nondescript watch (that is quite forgettable on the face of it) as being purchased from a scouser apparently, a decade or more before Albert Johnson purchased it from the Wallasey antiques shop? As far as I'm aware there is no record of this watch every being transacted in the 70s / 80s, unless you know something I do not.

We have an old man's memory who apparently has amazing levels of recall.

And yet, ero, this old man could not be questioned because he was apparently suffering from senile dementia. My mum died with it in 1993, after suffering for five or six years. She couldn't have described my young daughter two minutes after a visit, and eventually forgot where her own lavatory was. The idea that she could have remembered a stranger flogging her something on the doorstep several years before is beyond absurd.

Whenever a stranger sells an item to a jeweller, giving no details, documentation or provenance, the jeweller has to take it on trust that it hasn't just been nicked from somewhere. Running a business, they don't generally put gold watches in a drawer and forget about them, when they can get them working and make a quick sale. Perhaps the old man's memory was good in parts, like a curate's egg, remembering in 1993 the scouser who had originally flogged him the watch many years before, but forgetting he had put it in a drawer until his daughter found it in the Spring of 1992 and finally put it in the window, just as Mike Barrett was flogging on its companion piece.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

For the purposes of the 'Battlecrease' provenance, it doesn't really matter where the Old Man got the watch.

Assuming he did get it, and remembered when that was.

Ron Murphy's own memory would hardly need to be good, let alone 'amazing,' to remember he had been given the watch by his father-in-law around 1990.

Are you suggesting Ron really bought the watch off a nervous Eddie Lyons 4 months earlier (March 1992) and misremembered it as coming from his own father-in-law 2 or 3 years earlier?

Is that likely?

I realise you were asking ero, but don't forget, Timothy Dundas managed to 'remember' and describe an entirely different watch from the one bought by Albert, believing they were one and the same. So recall is rarely perfect, and often selective or even self-serving.

[caz]

WHAT proof of purchase? Murphy got the watch from his father-in-law who had retired from the jewelry business.

I don't know how much you know about small businesses (my father was a small business owner) but they very often accumulate mountains of merchandise and projects over the years and never get around to finishing them. That's what Murphy and Stewart are describing.

Are you saying Murphy was suppose to get a receipt from his own step-father to show some sort of chain of evidence? Why would he have done that? He doesn't need to have had a receipt--he knew where he got the watch--from the remains of his father-in-law's old shop.

Do you think he had some way of predicting that 10 - 30 years later there would be all sorts of wild and unproven speculation about the watch? All he knows is he had it since 1990 and his father-in-law had it before that.

If anyone has a problem with receipts it is you.

Show me the receipt that Murphy gave Eddie Lyons when Lyons sold him the watch in March 1992.

All you have is wild speculation and gratuitous accusations against Murphy and Lyons.

But thanks for reminding me why it is futile to post here.

Much appreciated.

For someone with so little faith in any information coming from Keith Skinner, unless it has been published in full here and signed and sealed in blood, RJ displays a touching faith in certain Scousers he will never meet, to have provided true and perfectly remembered accounts of their business and personal dealings, in relation to the watch and the diary, and asks for not a shred of supporting evidence. He also has boundless faith in one particular Scouser he never met, to have told basic truths in his affidavit of 5th January 1995, even when the dates and order of events are so clearly untrue and either misremembered or invented, and there is nothing to suggest the diary was ever in an auction sale at Outhwaite & Litherland. RJ's faith in strangers - Scousers or otherwise - mysteriously deserts him when they have poured cold water on Mike's auction story. They were simply wrong about their own procedures, while Mike knew better.

It's an eccentric way of seeking out the truth, unless the truth is the last thing one actually wants to find.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

He barely remembers the event, and considering that he is going senile, who knows if the bit about the accent is accurate?

I don't think RJ helped his case here.

Old man Stewart, already ill and going senile, is asked in 1993, by his daughter and son-in-law, to remember who had sold him a gold watch years before, which the Murphys eventually got working and sold on in July 1992.

How did the old man know, in 1993, which watch they were talking about? How did they jog his memory so he could recall, in 1993, having bought the watch which had been in Albert's possession since July 1992?

If RJ doubts the old man's failing memory regarding the chap's accent, I can't say I blame him. But it's a 'convenient' detail to doubt, while having no such doubts about the same man's ability to recall buying the watch itself, and to know this was the same one Albert bought.

Something's not adding up here, unless the 'Liverpool accent' was a Freudian slip emanating from one of Ron Murphy's more recent memories, rather than anything his father-in-law was recalling. Yet RJ is swallowing the basic truth of the story, that the watch had been in the Stewart family for years, just like Feldy did when Billy Graham was trying to recall the diary's history, with Anne's help, in the summer of 1994.

What is it with these Scousers and their dates, eh? Eh? Eh?

Oh what a tangled web they weave
When flogging off what others thieve

Love,

Caz
X