One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[rjpalmer]

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

This is another reference to the sadly senile shop owner. I am 'taking the word' of this senile old fellow, being that sort of footloose and fancy free fool.

But I still have the same nagging question: how does the memory of Old Man Stewart enter the equation?

It doesn't, does it?

The way I look at it, Stewart could have remembered the watch dropping from a flying saucer. Who cares?

In reality, he had little or no memory of the transaction despite what Ero claimed, and Stewart retired in 1980, so there was no receipt.

We do know, however, that he owned a shop for many years and the detritus of this business ended up with his son-in-law.

Ron Murphy (who was not suffering from Alzheimer's) said HE got the watch from his father-in-law before 1990. It is his account (which was evidently made in a sworn statement) that matters. Before that, the history of the watch is blank and unknowable.

I suppose all this talk of faulty memories and believing people with faulty memories is a way to avoid admitting that Murphy is being accused of lying about where he got the watch, having supposedly bought it off a sketchy character with a nickname that sort of rhymes with Rat Betty in March 1992.

The game is obvious enough--exploit the Old Guy with Alzheimer's when it is actually his daughter's and son-in-law's memories that matter.

So, as far as the March 1992 provenance goes, this is what we have to work with:

Johnson bought the watch in July 1992, and, according to both Murphy and his wife, the watch had been in the family for years. That is, long before March 1992.

If Ero is going to lecture people about documentation, then he needs to provide documentation to show that Murphy is lying. It's his theory--not mine.

Yes, I'm happy to believe Murphy. He owned a shop. His father-in-law owned a shop. Johnson had a receipt to show where he bought the watch--from the shop.

Yet I am required to produce a non-existent receipt from an old man who retired in 1980 in order to disprove the theory that Ero can't prove?

Is that how it works?

If so, then yes: I've failed to disprove Ero's theory.

So, we have reached a happy conclusion.

Ero can dismiss me as a man who doesn't require documentation, which is a good thing for his theory, considering that he doesn't have any.

Cheers!

[rjpalmer]

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.

Bravo, Ike. You discerned my thought process, but I am disappointed that you are merely "guessing."

I'm just an amateur, but here's how I look at it.

Engraving tools are generally made out of carbon steel. They are hard buggers.

Gold and silver are soft. The whole point of engraving or etching is using a metal that is harder than the metal that it is being scored.

In the general scheme of things, what is more likely to leave a trail of microscopic metal flakes or fragments?

A pristine and newish tool, or one that is already corroded and "darkened with age"?

Commonsense dictates the latter, doesn't it? How else would gold and silver manage to damage the tool that is scratching it?

Are you familiar with the Mohs scale of mineral hardness?

0.2–0.3	caesium, rubidium
0.5–0.6	lithium, sodium, potassium, candle wax
1	talc
1.5	gallium, strontium, indium, tin, barium, thallium, lead, graphite, ice[17]
2	hexagonal boron nitride,[18] calcium, selenium, cadmium, sulfur, tellurium, bismuth, gypsum
2–2.5	halite (rock salt), fingernail,[19] mica[20]
2.5–3	gold, silver, aluminium, zinc, lanthanum, cerium, jet
3	calcite, copper, arsenic, antimony, thorium, dentin, chalk[21]
3.5	platinum
4	fluorite, iron, nickel
4–4.5	ordinary steel

Note that gold and silver are at 2.5 - 3.

Iron and ordinary steel are at 4-4.5

I'm thinking the rusty nail used to carve the initials was already corroded enough that tiny flakes were left behind, one of them sticking in a scratch.

I can't visualize 'ordinary steel' breaking off fragments, no matter how small, when pushed against soft silver and gold.

In brief, how did Wild and Turgoose determine that all-important super tiny, microscopic fleck corroded 'in situ'?

Of course, the good news is that you own multiple hat racks. I appreciate that you have further reasons to believe in the antiquity of the diary, but others seem to be pinning most of their hopes on this one tiny speck. Not much of a toehold, really, when balancing on a gaping precipice.

Perhaps they should lean more heavily on Society's Study Pillar?

Have a good day.

[jmenges]

Hi all,
Remember if your post contains more than a couple of hyperlinks the software automatically marks it spam and we’re required to approve it.
So if your post is experiencing a strange delay before appearing, that could be the reason.

Carry On

JM

[erobitha]

I do often wonder about flakey old tools but I must confess, very rarely in the case of the Maybrick watch.

The keyword in the original report for which hangs my insistence on the watch being real, and the word you conveniently ignore, is ‘ embedded’.

[Iconoclast]

I do often wonder about flakey old tools but I must confess, very rarely in the case of the Maybrick watch.

Hi ero b,

I can’t decide if you are being super duper clever here or just super clever, but this made me laugh out loud either way.

It reminds me of a sales conference I was once at when there was a presentation from one of our brilliant marketing gurus on some new software that would revolutionise our numbers, etc.. When the presenter was leaving the stage to polite applause from those who were not hungover, the compère came back on stage and said “Thank you Bob - another great tool from Marketing” and the poor bugger couldn’t understand why the room was in tears for about the next quarter of an hour. I’m still laughing now at the mere memory of it.

Your Old Chum,

Ike
Probably a Flakey Old Tool Too

[Iconoclast]

Perhaps they should lean more heavily on [the brilliant] Society's Study Pillar?
Have a good day.

I would do if I didn’t have to keep reminding you of my outstanding contribution to the study of Jack the [expletive deleted well ahead of the Casebook algorithm] Spratt McVitie, RJ!

Ike

[Iconoclast]

Bravo, Ike. ... In the general scheme of things, what is more likely to leave a trail of microscopic metal flakes or fragments? A pristine and newish tool, or one that is already corroded and "darkened with age"?

Thank you, RJ, for that unexpected 'Bravo' and I would dearly love to return one to you and indeed will when you answer these questions:

Where in Ryan, Christie, Morland, McDougall, trial transcript, and/or Maybrick, F. does it state that James Maybrick only ever scratched engravings into watches using pristine and newish tools? I have read most of those works and never once do I recall them stating unequivocally that James Maybrick was not the sort of Liverpudlian cotton broker come serial murderer who was incapable - by dint of some mental defect - to scrape engravings into watches using ones which are already corroded and "darkened with age".

Your knowledge of his tendencies clearly significantly exceeds mine and your 'Bravo' statuette is sitting on my desk awaiting your collection, dependent upon 1) you can actually answer my questions, and 2) you don't intend to slap me on your way to collect it.

Cheers,

Ike

[Iconoclast]

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

Ding dong Caz!

I totally missed the date, and also missed the similarity of Dr Gardner's reaction to that of our favouritist Scouse scrappy.

It is a shame that our favouritist April fool has now passed on, but perhaps if Dr Gardner ever falls under the influence of the water of life, the fun could all start again?

Cheers (hic),

Ike

[rjpalmer]

Where in Ryan, Christie, Morland, McDougall, trial transcript, and/or Maybrick, F. does it state that James Maybrick only ever scratched engravings into watches using pristine and newish tools? I have read most of those works and never once do I recall them stating unequivocally that James Maybrick was not the sort of Liverpudlian cotton broker come serial murderer who was incapable - by dint of some mental defect - to scrape engravings into watches using ones which are already corroded and "darkened with age".

Fascinating question, Ike -- as always, you seem to have an eccentric thought-process all your own.

Yes! Absolutely! I am totally fine with 'Maybrick' scratching the watch with a corroded implement and leaving behind a microscopic speck. Do I earn a bravo! point?

But in admitting that the speck could have been already corroded when it became embedded in the scratch, you've just eliminated any chance we have of dating it. If the darkened speck could have been left behind in 1888, it could have been left behind in 1992. As Caz notes, the same can be true of the superficial scratches.

[But she missed the point of my observation; I was not suggesting that these tiny scratches COULDN'T have been made in 1888--I was just pointing out that they don't appear to have been random and usual 'wear and tear' as is sometimes claimed--by Paul Butler, for instance].

Wouldn't your question have been a more suitable one to ask 'Ero' who appears to be gobsmacked that this speck was embedded? Of course it is embedded, that's why it was still there and why it was noticed. The question isn't whether it was embedded, the question is why it was 'blackened' (Wild thought it was 'with age') and whether it became blackened before or after it was embedded.

Are you acknowledging that--since we cannot know--there is actually no way to date when the scratches were made?

If so, I agree with you again. We are becoming quite chummy.

However...

Here is a counter-question for you. It is an innocent one--I merely pose it; I don't have an authoritative answer. It is an opportunity to earn more bravo! points.

Are engraving tools generally made out of brass? Wild identified the speck as brass and suggested it was left behind by the implement.

The antique hand engraving tools I have seen are made out of hardened steel. They have to be harder than the medium they are scratching or engraving.

I have seen photographs of old engraving implements that look like they were made from other metals, but I have not been able to confirm what they are.

Look again at the Mohs Scale. Are you going to use candle-wax to scratch or engrave a piece of nickel? How would that work?

Brass is 3.0 on the scale; silver and gold are 2.5-3.0 depending on the purity. In theory, the watch maker or jeweler would be faced with gold that was just as hard as the brass tool he was attempting to use to scratch it wth. That would be very problematic, wouldn't it?

So, you see, Old Boy, I am confused once again--why would a person use brass to engrave gold and silver? Are we even certain this particle was left behind by Jay's 'flakey old tool' (whom I will refer to by the strictly hypothetical initial 'J' since it can refer to either Johnson or James) or did it become embedded there for some other reason?

Melvin suggested it was nothing more than a dirty old rag that done the deed.

[And remember, for reasons of economy, let's refer to the 'flakey old tool' as 'J' from here on out].

[erobitha]

For the reader's benefit, this was Wild's 1994 conclusion:



It seems when Wild said "....it is unlikely that anyone would have sufficient expertise to implant aged brass particles into the base of the engraving" he did not considerate it could apparently easily be done using a flakey antique brass tool. This expert who claims this required specialist abilities and equipment did not consider the rusty compass by Robbie Johnson theory.

Those pesky Johnsons pulled the wool over everyone's eyes to get that big pay day. Any day now. 30 years on.

[Iconoclast]

Fascinating question, Ike -- as always, you seem to have an eccentric thought-process all your own.

"Pot calling Kettle, come in Kettle". It's only eccentric because you wish to misunderstand it. I was simply pointing-out that there is no logic which states that James Maybrick in 1888 would use a pristine implement whereas James Hoaxer in 1988 would necessarily use an aged one. Basing your understanding on the implement that was likely used does not tell you who was the more likely engraver.

Yes! Absolutely! I am totally fine with 'Maybrick' scratching the watch with a corroded implement and leaving behind a microscopic speck. Do I earn a bravo! point?

Well, yes, you do but it's a sort of sullied one given how long it took you to get to the stage to collect it.

But in admitting that the speck could have been already corroded when it became embedded in the scratch, you've just eliminated any chance we have of dating it. If the darkened speck could have been left behind in 1888, it could have been left behind in 1992. As Caz notes, the same can be true of the superficial scratches.

See, this is where you turn into Mr. Kettle. You must surely have known that the aged particles were said to be at least tens of years old even in 1994 which rather clearly makes any modern hoax theory very weak indeed? Understanding that, we all know that you then need to turn a convoluted, difficult, highly-skilled event into a fairly routine one in order to move the aged particles back to 1992 or 1993. As I have said many times before, neither Turgoose nor Wild stated anything to the effect of "... that said, it would be straightforward for a hoaxer to have used a contaminated implement to embed the aged particle, and for a vigorous bout of elbow grease to polish out the scratches". The fact that neither said this implies to me that neither saw these processes as even vaguely likely in this case.

Wouldn't your question have been a more suitable one to ask 'Ero' who appears to be gobsmacked that this speck was embedded? Of course it is embedded, that's why it was still there and why it was noticed. The question isn't whether it was embedded, the question is why it was 'blackened' (Wild thought it was 'with age') and whether it became blackened before or after it was embedded.

And here you go getting there too late for your own party again. You know that ero b is 'gobsmacked' by the proposed age of the embedded particles not simply by their presence, but you do a little word dance and seek to obfuscate and shift the focus of the argument entirely. You are RJsplaining. In the same way that we get Orsamsplaining, it lacks any sense whatsoever of rational plausibility. But neither of you care because your sole objective is to weaken any and all evidence which points towards James Maybrick being Jack the Ripper.

Are you acknowledging that--since we cannot know--there is actually no way to date when the scratches were made?

No, of course not.

If so, I agree with you again. We are becoming quite chummy.

Not chummy enough to attend the same parties, though, it would appear.

Are engraving tools generally made out of brass? Wild identified the speck as brass and suggested it was left behind by the implement.

I've no idea. Does it matter whether they are or not? Must James Maybrick have hunted down a gold-engraving kit, or could he just have picked-up his Victorian brass letter-opener and used that on a whim?

The antique hand engraving tools I have seen are made out of hardened steel. They have to be harder than the medium they are scratching or engraving. I have seen photographs of old engraving implements that look like they were made from other metals, but I have not been able to confirm what they are.

Why would you even need to look for them? Do you honestly think James Maybrick would have done (see my earlier comment directly above)?

Look again at the Mohs Scale. Are you going to use candle-wax to scratch or engrave a piece of nickel? How would that work?

How that would work is that James Maybrick would just look for something which worked. If the first thing he tried didn’t work (for example, candle wax), he’d have tried something more substantial (for example, a fish head) and kept on trying until he hit on something realistic such as letter opener. I seriously doubt he gave any weight whatsoever to the Mohs scale, though I do understand why you attempt to imply he should have done.

Brass is 3.0 on the scale; silver and gold are 2.5-3.0 depending on the purity. In theory, the watch maker or jeweller would be faced with gold that was just as hard as the brass tool he was attempting to use to scratch it with. That would be very problematic, wouldn't it?

Given that someone managed to put those scratches in the back of that watch, I’d say it’s not hugely surprising at all. Why are you trying so hard to find a reason why the engraver could not have been James Maybrick (as if we didn’t know)? Why are you so convinced that a Mohs scale of 3.0 would not be more than adequate to engrave scratches into a material with a Mohs rating of, say, 2.999999? How did you establish that variations of gold and brass were essentially the same on the Mohs scale therefore no-one would think to engrave gold with brass?

So, you see, Old Boy, I am confused once again--why would a person use brass to engrave gold and silver?

By this, you mean “Why would someone planning to scratch into gold and silver choose an implement with a Mohs scale rating which could be readily researched and understood to be potentially inadequate unless the variety of the gold was not nearer the 2.5 end of the scale which, of course, the engraver would have researched beforehand?”. If you’re still genuinely unsure why Maybrick would have done this, let me remind you of my earlier comment above, and iterate the photograph. If this hadn’t worked, he’d have just tried something else. I’ve got to be honest, your confusion over this does strike me as rather obtuse.

Are we even certain this particle was left behind by Jay's 'flakey old tool'?

We have no idea exactly what did the engraving as this is unknown but we can certainly use logic to surmise it.

Melvin suggested it was nothing more than a dirty old rag that done the deed.

And there was a man with no hidden agenda.

Not.

Ike

[Iconoclast]

For the reader's benefit, this was Wild's 1994 conclusion:

It seems when Wild said "....it is unlikely that anyone would have sufficient expertise to implant aged brass particles into the base of the engraving" he did not considerate it could apparently easily be done using a flakey antique brass tool. This expert who claims this required specialist abilities and equipment did not consider the rusty compass by Robbie Johnson theory.

Those pesky Johnsons pulled the wool over everyone's eyes to get that big pay day. Any day now. 30 years on.

Whilst I understand that Harris and Warren and RJ and Orsam desperately did not and do not want anything left on the table which might point away from a modern hoaxer and therefore towards James Maybrick, our dear readers really ought to bear in mind that not every one of their extraordinary claims have substance.

Therefore, maybe almost none of them do.

Ike

[Iconoclast]

We are constantly told that there are profound errors with the Maybrick scrapbook. We are casually informed that there are simply things wrong with it. One of those is the very scrapbook itself. We are reliably informed that James Maybrick was too affluent and middle class to use an old scrapbook as his record of his crimes. Indeed, in his brilliantly incompetent analysis for Time Warner, the idiot Kenneth Randell wrote:

There are no logical explanations as to why the purported author, Maybrick, a man of means, would have done this. First of all, he would have bought a normal, Victorian diary, but if for some reason he wanted to use a scrapbook he would have bought a new one. He would be unlikely to take one he already had and tear out the contents.

Rendall wasn't asked whether he thought the scrapbook was likely to be authentic - he was asked to prove or disprove it - but that didn't stop him offering-up his asinine views as facts. Many commentators continue to fall into this trap. They're all idiots too.

Here's a simple example of a middle class artist in the Victorian age keeping a 'diary' (yes, he called it that) in a simple notebook:







Where James Maybrick wrote occasional doggerel in his account, Henry Scott Tuke drew occasional figures (as would be the want of an artist, I guess):



Now, Tuke's notebook is a better example of a Victorian 'diary' than Maybrick's scrapbook, it is true, but neither is an actual formal diary with pre-set dates and what have you. Is it any more amazing to you that James Maybrick chose to write in a scrapbook than that Tuke chose to write in a notebook? Tuke may have purchased the notebook for this purpose or for any other purpose but ultimately purposed it for his diary. Who is to say that James Maybrick (or Maybrick & Co.) did not purchase the scrapbook for its ultimate use or for any other purpose but that James ultimately purposed it for his 'diary'?

By desperate commentators frantically searching for illogical reasons why the Victorian scrapbook could not have been James Maybrick's, this sort of unsustainable opining diminishes the strength of any argument against the scrapbook. RJ was trying it in his last post by arguing the toss about the relative hardness of gold and silver and that of brass. It's the same desperately weak principle - find something you don't like about the scrapbook or wouldn't expect of the scrapbook (if you wrote it) and make that a central plank of a case against its authenticity, full in the knowledge that eager but ill-informed acolytes will lap it all up as ultimate truth.

This is why my role on this Casebook is so important - to keep you all on the right track as much as I possibly can. It's hard work, though, I can tell you.

Ike

[Scott Nelson]

Don't give up Ike. This thread can't and shouldn't die.

[Iconoclast]

Don't give up Ike. This thread can't and shouldn't die.

Dinnae ye fret, bonny lad - the Ikester is going nowhere.

I should have added a little slice-of-life to my post regarding the antique letter opener. So, I'm thinking that James Maybrick, sitting at his desk, engraves his name into the watch as a precaution against theft. Either then or at a later time he decides to scratch the initials of his earliest victims. After he thinks of the name 'Jack the Ripper', he decides to stick in 'I am Jack' too. He probably thinks no-one will ever look and - if they did - they wouldn't make sense of his additional engravings (they were very difficult to see to the naked eye).

Can you imagine him sitting in his office carefully scratching out his name then the initials and then the confession 'I am Jack'? It's fascinating to visualise him doing so.

Can you imagine him sitting in his office fuming with rage that young Thomas Lowry - his 'lowly' clerk - had asked him where the company's scrapbook was, and even more angrily feeling forced to cut out the earlier pages so that he can return the items stored in them back to Lowry? I wonder what he told him? "I found the scrapbook badly damaged so I cut out the used pages and threw the rest away. There's a good lad - nip down to Smith's and buy a replacement out of petty cash".

The great thing about the Maybrick scrapbook is that one can actually step back in time and watch Maybrick in the throes of all the steps he took to avenge Florrie via his horrendous 'campaign'. You just can't do that with all those other made-up candidates. It's kind of the ironic, tragic beauty of the thing.

Ike