One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[Aethelwulf]

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

Ike

The key word when it comes to the diary.

Actually, you might be disappointed to know that Maybrick has been knocked off my top spot concerning Most Ridiculous Suspects and Theories. I did have:

1-FM letters on Kelly's body
2-FM letters on Kelly's wall
3-Maybrick interpretation of GSG
4-Watch

Having read several bizarre recent posts I now have:

1-Anything to do with Gawen Sutton
2-FM letters on Kelly's body
3-FM letters on Kelly's wall
4-Maybrick interpretation of GSG
5-Watch

[FISHY1118]

The key word when it comes to the diary.

Actually, you might be disappointed to know that Maybrick has been knocked off my top spot concerning Most Ridiculous Suspects and Theories. I did have:

1-FM letters on Kelly's body
2-FM letters on Kelly's wall
3-Maybrick interpretation of GSG
4-Watch

Having read several bizarre recent posts I now have:

1-Anything to do with Gawen Sutton
2-FM letters on Kelly's body
3-FM letters on Kelly's wall
4-Maybrick interpretation of GSG
5-Watch

1 Sutton
2 Druitt
3 Maybrick/ Feigenbaum
4 Lechmere
5 The Organ Haversting Bandit
6 Deconstructing Nothing jack
7 Chapman [george]

[Iconoclast]

1 Sutton
2 Druitt
3 Maybrick/ Feigenbaum
4 Lechmere
5 The Organ Haversting Bandit
6 Deconstructing Nothing jack
7 Chapman [george]

I'm surprised to find that Maybrick and Feigenbaum appear as equal 3rd least-plausible candidates for Jack in your list. Ironically, I would have them 1st and 2nd for plausibility. Obviously, we are replete with arguments which point towards James Maybrick (and obviously we are replete with arguments which point away from him) and these put him head and shoulders in front of any other candidate - so much so that I never waste my time considering any other candidate; but one should at least recognise that Trevor made a very good case for Carl Feigenbaum (doesn't mean I have to agree with him, of course) which arguably no other author has really equalled with their own Jack-of-Choice.

As I say, I'm struck by the irony of that fact.

Ike

[Iconoclast]

The key word when it comes to the diary.

Actually, you might be disappointed to know that Maybrick has been knocked off my top spot concerning Most Ridiculous Suspects and Theories. I did have:

1-FM letters on Kelly's body
2-FM letters on Kelly's wall
3-Maybrick interpretation of GSG
4-Watch

Having read several bizarre recent posts I now have:

1-Anything to do with Gawen Sutton
2-FM letters on Kelly's body
3-FM letters on Kelly's wall
4-Maybrick interpretation of GSG
5-Watch

I should remind everyone that James Maybrick's scrapbook makes no explicit reference to any of your points, Aethelwulf. There are tangential references to 1) and 2) which require interpretation, a tangential reference to the traditional 'Juwes = James' interpretation of the GSG which - by definition - requires interpretation, and no mention whatsoever of the watch.

It's possibly not entirely fair to dismiss a document out-of-hand because of the interpretation of its readers.

PS Just in case anyone is confused, the Maybrick scrapbook doesn't mention Henry Gawen Sutton either.

Cheers,

Ike

[rjpalmer]

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.

I don't think Wild meant this at all.

'Implant' implies a deliberate act, as does "sufficient expertise." One hardly needs to be an expert to accidently leave behind a microscopic particle. This is a begging the question and a straw argument.

Are you suggesting that James Maybrick had 'sufficient expertise' to implant the particle? Or are you conceding that it would have been done accidently if he been the one tinkering with the watch with his brass letter opener?

As Ike has already admitted, if an already corroded particle could have been accidentally embedded in 1888, it could have been accidentally embedded in 1992.

I just question whether a brass implement coming in at 3.0 on the Mohs Scale is going to be shedding off tiny particles as it digs into 2.5-3.0 gold/silver alloy.

[Iconoclast]

I don't think Wild meant this at all.

'Implant' implies a deliberate act, as does "sufficient expertise." One hardly needs to be an expert to accidently leave behind a microscopic particle. This is a begging the question and a straw argument.

Are you suggesting that James Maybrick had 'sufficient expertise' to implant the particle? Or are you conceding that it would have been done accidently if he been the one tinkering with the watch with his brass letter opener?

As Ike has already admitted, if an already corroded particle could have been accidentally embedded in 1888, it could have been accidentally embedded in 1992.

I just question whether a brass implement coming in at 3.0 on the Mohs Scale is going to be shedding off tiny particles as it digs into 2.5-3.0 gold/silver alloy.

The "sufficient expertise" lay in convincing Wild that the engravings were many tens of years old. If the particles could have been already aged when they were embedded into the engravings, then why did Wild not simply say this? My reading of Wild was that he was saying that the particles were aged because they were in the engraving not because they may have been shed from an aged implement. If this were even vaguely possible, surely Wild would have said "It is impossible to age the watch by the age of the embedded particles because they could have been embedded there very recently - yesterday even - using an aged implement".

Wild was convinced that the particles were aged and that they could only have been embedded recently by a sophisticated act involving considerable metallurgy skills. I don't think laymen should be reinterpreting this claim post hoc as "... or they could have been implanted by a hoaxer using a flaky old tool but that's so obvious I barely even feel the need to state it, even though it completely contradicts my main conclusions".

Ike

[Aethelwulf]

'Juwes = James' interpretation of the GSG

Ike

Very good of you to remind us all of this staggering piece of deduction. All that time Abberline and Co must have been scratching their heads and it was easy as pie after all: Juwes = James! Corker.

[Iconoclast]

Very good of you to remind us all of this staggering piece of deduction. All that time Abberline and Co must have been scratching their heads and it was easy as pie after all: Juwes = James! Corker.

I was differentiating between the GSG containing a cipher to James rather than containing ciphers to the six most significant adults in his life. I wouldn't want you to imagine there is a tangential reference to the latter, hence my circumspection. I'll remind you that it was you who brought the issue up, not I.

Why do you feel that 'Juwes' could not have been a cipher for 'James'?

Without the piss-taking this time, ideally.

[caz]

The "sufficient expertise" lay in convincing Wild that the engravings were many tens of years old. If the particles could have been already aged when they were embedded into the engravings, then why did Wild not simply say this? My reading of Wild was that he was saying that the particles were aged because they were in the engraving not because they may have been shed from an aged implement. If this were even vaguely possible, surely Wild would have said "It is impossible to age the watch by the age of the embedded particles because they could have been embedded there very recently - yesterday even - using an aged implement".

Wild was convinced that the particles were aged and that they could only have been embedded recently by a sophisticated act involving considerable metallurgy skills. I don't think laymen should be reinterpreting this claim post hoc as "... or they could have been implanted by a hoaxer using a flaky old tool but that's so obvious I barely even feel the need to state it, even though it completely contradicts my main conclusions".

Ike

Afternoon Ike,

I suggest that if anyone wants to dispute the professional findings and objective conclusions of Wild or Turgoose, by reinterpreting them creatively to turn 'decades old' into 'wet behind the ears', they really ought to contact the two gents concerned to ask if any such reinterpretation would be justifiable - or more the product of unwarranted bias.

For me, the inference is that if the Maybrick engravings were new when examined, then the heavily corroded metal particle(s) had to be deliberately implanted into the base of one of the scratch marks, to produce the precise effect observed under the microscope, of a metal tool which had incidentally left fragments of itself behind many decades ago, which had then corroded naturally over the years. If this deliberate implantation is what would have required special skill and expertise - and no little creativity of thought - the implication is that the same effect would not have been produced by a Johnson brother simply using a genuinely old and corroded implement to make the scratches because it seemed like a good idea at the time. If that had been the case, it would have come out in the report, and the whole 'sufficient expertise' argument would have been inappropriate and incorrect.

What RJ and others rely on is the diary being a Barrett hoax, because proving that is the only way to prove the watch was a Johnson hoax.

The watch can only be clobbered to death by the diary. There is no stand-alone evidence against either Johnson brother. Who had the means, motive or opportunity to create those engravings, between the earliest publicity, naming Maybrick as the author of Jack the Ripper's diary, and early June 1993, when Robert Smith was shown the watch? The diary itself would not be published until the October, so anyone hoaxing the watch would have had no idea which of the named victims 'Maybrick' had claimed, nor how many. More to the point, they'd have had no idea how the diary handwriting compared with any surviving examples of Maybrick's, and would have been forgiven for assuming it compared favourably. How could they risk scratching a Maybrick signature in the watch, not knowing what form the real thing took, or how Maybrick formed his individual letters?

We have never had a satisfactory explanation for this mother of all coincidences, whereby a Johnson brother is meant to have scratched that signature, hoping no examples survived, only to produce one that Maybrick himself could not have distinguished from his own.

Keith Skinner, objective as always, would point out that because he was able to track down Maybrick's marriage licence - which compares so favourably with the watch signature that chance ought to have had nothing to do with it - then so could a hoaxer.

But there's not much wriggle room here. A Johnson brother either consulted that licence, or another surviving example, in the few weeks he had to think up the plan and execute it, or he did it all with no safety net.

Or no Johnson was involved in the making of those scratches.

And that ought to be enough to give the Barrett Hoax believers a bit of a headache.

They might want to reconsider the claim Mike made to Alan Gray, that he put the scratches in the watch himself. I mean, why believe some of his forgery claims and not others? Why would he have told Gray the truth about who was behind the diary hoax, but then lied to him about who was behind the watch hoax?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

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.

The game was similarly obvious to you in Anne Graham's case. Didn't she 'exploit' the old guy, her own father, when it was her memory of first seeing the diary in the 1960s that mattered?

Not sure you can have it both ways, RJ. If you can accuse Anne outright of helping Mike to fake the diary, and therefore 'polishing up' her memory of its history to protect herself, I can gently suggest that the Murphys would have had good reason for 'polishing up' their memories of the watch, if they were worried about inadvertently buying stolen property from a Scouser. They were clearly worried when Albert returned to their shop asking questions. That much is on record.

Hurling accusations around with no evidence is what you do best, so you might like to rein in your outrage when others are reluctant to take an interested party's word at face value.

[Iconoclast]

They might want to reconsider the claim Mike made to Alan Gray, that he put the scratches in the watch himself. I mean, why believe some of his forgery claims and not others? Why would he have told Gray the truth about who was behind the diary hoax, but then lied to him about who was behind the watch hoax?

Hi Caz,

Well, in answer to your very valid questions, I think it's just possible that Mike Barrett was the Biggest Billy Bullshitter on the Block and that he never once showed any compunction about lying his way through the vast majority of his claims about the scrapbook once he was professionally on the sauce therefore there probably isn't a great deal of point in fact-checking his claims at all. Maybe not everyone will agree with me. Here's a good example, though. Mike claimed to have interviewed the comic Ken Dodd. In 133 editions of Celebrity magazine (minus editions 5, 6, and 13 which were sadly missing in the National Library of Scotland's records), Ken Dodd was interviewed just once - by lead feature writer Ian Woodward - and the results were published in editions 57 and 58 (February 26 and March 5, 1987) which is rather ironic given how very Liverpudlian Mr. Dodd was and how Mike generally got given the Liverpudlian interviews to conduct. So either Mike interviewed Mr. Dodd for editions 5, 6, or 13 (way back in February, March, and April of 1986 - still some months away from his December 25, 1986 first recognised interview, note), or else he got himself a bit confused, or else he just plain lied.

I imagine that we could probably find some examples of where Mike Barrett unequivocally just plain lied if I bothered to look at anything whatsoever connected with him between 1993 and about 2000, but I'm going to leave it there for now.

Cheers,

Ike

[caz]

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

Did Wild express surprise that the engravings could have been made in gold by a brass implement, which left a speck of itself behind?

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.

Are you not making the same leap as those who seem to think that someone of Maybrick's social status would have bought a proper diary for confessing to serial murder?

Why did the brass implement have to be a hand engraving tool, made for that express purpose? The scratches, unlike the ornate JO engraved to a professional standard on the back cover, were quite crudely made.

We know that whatever the tool was made of must have been hard enough for the job, so I have no idea what the purpose was in mentioning the Mohs Scale. A bad hoaxer blames his tools, so if one hadn't worked, he'd have tried another until it had the desired effect. I have always had in mind a Victorian brass pen nib as one of the tools employed, or at least tried out - of the same type used by Victorians to write their diaries. But then the real Maybrick would have resented the suggestion that he was the kind of cheapskate who'd have made do with a pen nib for his etchings in gold.

As for Melvin Harris, I always thought his speciality was thinking he could spot a hoax on the barest intelligence.

I assumed his ability to solve the mystery of the brass speck would have been on a par with his ability to solve the mystery of Jack the Ripper's identity - and we both know how that panned out.

[caz]

I don't think Wild meant this at all.

'Implant' implies a deliberate act, as does "sufficient expertise." One hardly needs to be an expert to accidently leave behind a microscopic particle. This is a begging the question and a straw argument.

Are you suggesting that James Maybrick had 'sufficient expertise' to implant the particle? Or are you conceding that it would have been done accidently if he been the one tinkering with the watch with his brass letter opener?

As Ike has already admitted, if an already corroded particle could have been accidentally embedded in 1888, it could have been accidentally embedded in 1992.

I just question whether a brass implement coming in at 3.0 on the Mohs Scale is going to be shedding off tiny particles as it digs into 2.5-3.0 gold/silver alloy.

Are you questioning the fact that particles of aged brass were found in the base of an engraving? I'm just wondering how they got there, if a brass implement cannot dig its way into 18ct gold, as you appear to imply.

Why would a hoaxer, working in 1993, have gone to the trouble of locating a suitably corroded, genuinely old brass implement in any case, unless the plan was to leave microscopic particles of it in one of the engravings, in such a way that it would be identified under test conditions and indicate a similarly old age for the engravings? Which brings us back to what was said about sufficient expertise needed to embed aged particles in the base of an engraving, in order to produce the required effect as seen under the microscope.

If the particles could have ended up there by accident and not design, it was lucky for your hoaxer that he took no chances and got himself an old tool for the job.

[rjpalmer]

My reading of Wild was that he was saying that the particles were aged because they were in the engraving not because they may have been shed from an aged implement. If this were even vaguely possible, surely Wild would have said "It is impossible to age the watch by the age of the embedded particles because they could have been embedded there very recently - yesterday even - using an aged implement".

I see, Ike. The particles were blackened because they were embedded.

So you are suddenly convinced that the blackened particle had to have aged 'in situ'? Yet only a day or two ago you suggested the exact opposite in Post #8572 (and the emphasis is all yours, Old Boy):

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".

This is very curious. You seemed quite willing to accept that 'Maybricik' had left behind a blackened particle because he was using an "already corroded" implement (your own words), yet you now claim that your 'reading' of Dr. Wilde leaves such an explanation impossible?

Then why on earth did you suggest it?

Either you are making it up as you go along, Ike, or your left-hand doesn't know what your right-hand is typing. Or, I suppose, there is a third possibility: you haven't really thought any of it through, and you are now reduced to backpedaling.

Meanwhile, you now seem to be suggesting that brass particles can only age (or blacken) when they are embedded in gold and silver. Do I have that right?

Isn't that nonsensical? I've seen a number brass objects--monkeys, doorknobs, picture frames, etc., and they were blackened. How do you explain that, since none of these objects were embedded in a golden scratch?

Adieu.

[rjpalmer]

Are you not making the same leap as those who seem to think that someone of Maybrick's social status would have bought a proper diary for confessing to serial murder?

Why did the brass implement have to be a hand engraving tool, made for that express purpose? The scratches, unlike the ornate JO engraved to a professional standard on the back cover, were quite crudely made.

My leap?

The engraving tool wasn't my suggestion: it was Dr. Robert Wild's. I was challenging the idea.



'Brass from the engraving tool.'

I just pointed out that I haven't seen any brass engraving tools; they've all been hardened steel.

But let's say Wild was just using the term 'brass engraving tool' in a generic sense: this could have been a brass nib, a bizarrely over-sharpened brass letter-opener, a brass pin.

My questions still remain. Why is it trailing behind particles? Why couldn't it have been already corroded? Why does Wild claim it was 'blackened with age' rather than just blackened, since any number of chemicals can blacken brass? How did he determine this? Why does he assumed the hoaxer would have to have implanted the particle deliberately, rather than accidentally?

The report leaves far more questions than answers, but perhaps this is to be expected, since Wild complained that he only had brief access to the watch and that his comments were provisional.

And it always bothers me when Feldman uses so many dots ... ... .... where he has clearly left something out of Wild's statement....