If you eliminate the impossible

[caz]

Hi Chris,

Thanks for wasting your time responding to me once more then.

Over and out.

Love,

Caz
X

[D.Meakin]

I think he is the most popular one because many people bought the diary to be 100% proof certain... i was a little unsure with the diary, the watch i think is a total hoax, seems a little coincidental doesnt it, and makes much of the maybrick motto " Time Reveals All".
The actual diary be it hoax or real is a disturbing read.
I personally think William Bury is a better candidate than most of the so called "credible witnesses"
There are so many possibilites.. would be amazing if someone completely unheard of is put forward as the ripper. . .
that is what made the diary a big seller. . . .

[Christine1932]

The diary is modern hoax trying to make money with framing someone of JTR murders. Sordid.

[Graham]

The point about candidates for JtR is that anyone, at any time, can nominate any person who lived in and either side of 1888. There are some excellent candidates, eg Druitt, Kominsky, Bury; and some bloody silly ones, eg, Lewis Carroll, William Gull, Uncle Tom Cobbley. And some in-between ones like Tumblety and Sickert. Whoever decided to add Maybrick to the list made an inspired choice:

- he was already known to anyone with a halfway-decent knowledge of Victorian criminality;

- he had known East End connections (which may or may not have been known to the hoaxer(s);

- he had a known 'secret' life outside his immediate family circle;

- he had links, via his famous brother, to the Masons who, justified or not, will forever be associated with the Ripper Murders;

- it is impossible to prove where he was on the night of any given Whitechapel murder;

- he looked the part, with his drooping 'tache and his topper....

My own joke-candidate would be Sir W S Gilbert, of Gilbert & Sullivan fame, because he (a) didn't much care for women and (b) liked to walk the streets of London alone at night, (c) showed a definite streak of blood-thirstiness in his operatic libretti, (d) looked the part with his big whiskers and his top-hat. However, no way could I even begin to make a case for Gilbert as JtR in the same way as the Diary writer did for Maybrick.

For a start, Gilbert's movements during 1888 are well documented...and anyway, how could anyone capable of creating 'Iolanthe' be a serial-killer?

In other words, the hoaxer was saying, "Maybrick's my candidate, now it's up to you lot to prove that he wasn't the Ripper". We can't. Simple as that.

Anyway, what the hell...it's all a bit of fun, after all.

ATB,

Graham

[Christine1932]

I think it´s not fun to "bear false witness against your neighbour", like Christian would say = invent slanders to make money. It is sleazy, sordid business. It is quite simply wrong.

[Victor]

I think it´s not fun to "bear false witness against your neighbour", like Christian would say = invent slanders to make money. It is sleazy, sordid business. It is quite simply wrong.

Ah but that supposes that the "creation" of the journal (the author, researcher and penman - or all 3) was the same as the person who unveiled the journal to the world, and that's not even close to being proven.

[caz]

In other words, the hoaxer was saying, "Maybrick's my candidate, now it's up to you lot to prove that he wasn't the Ripper". We can't. Simple as that.

Anyway, what the hell...it's all a bit of fun, after all.

ATB,

Graham

Hi Graham,

I think maybe we all focus so much on Jack the Ripper and his murders that we automatically assume the diary and watch must have been created for the purpose of 'revealing' to the world the infamous bogeyman's identity and wallowing in the filthy lucre made as a result.

That arguably says as much, if not more about us than it does about the silly faker(s) who actually came up with the idea for 'Sir' James's diary.

What if we have this arse about face, and the original purpose was not to 'solve' the ripper case at all, but to even the Maybrick score by painting Jim even blacker than they had tried to paint his missus? What if it was a satirical piece, aimed at society in general and the Maybrick men in particular, to give 'em a taste of their own medicine (no pun intended but gratefully received) by portraying the late 'Sir' James as the very worst kind of brute - the very devil in fact - in the same way Flo Maybrick was portrayed in harsh reality as a 'horrible' woman who deserved to lose everything: her children, her home, her freedom, her life, on the strength of what many believed to be a trumped-up murder charge, based on her adultery alone? Florence was famously convicted and sentenced to death, while England's most wanted, and previously most reviled killer was still sticking two fingers up at the justice system that had failed her.

Who better to use for an illustration of the rough justice shown in the Maybrick case, than Jack the Ripper himself? That cartoon, showing Jack and Mrs M, either side of the scales of justice, could have inspired a waggish practical joker to show how saddling the late James Maybrick - arsenic eater, brothel creeper, womaniser and generally very naughty boy - with the Whitechapel murders of the previous year was no more monstrous or ridiculous a proposition than society saddling his flighty high-born widow with his premature death and hanging her as a scheming murderess.

In this context, a people watcher and social commentator like your joke-candidate, Sir W S Gilbert, might have appreciated the diary as a black-as-pitch 63-page parody and may not have been totally averse to being in on a jest of that nature. Jokes about time machines aside (along with odd arguments about the diarist not meaning 'mayhem' in a violent sense, even though he tells us himself that the 'knife' in his hand is responsible for it ), would anyone reading this diary back in the 1890s have assumed it was a serious attempt to frame James as the ripper, or would they have concluded it was a rather elaborate prank, played at the expense of the surviving Maybrick brothers perhaps?

Nobody has yet come up with a reasonable explanation for anyone composing and penning 63 pages of text (however repetitive) if the object was to produce a money-making ripper confession in April 1992, that would be taken seriously enough not to be dumped and forgotten about by the July (or its 'finder' convicted of attempted fraud by the October). If every word on every line was written only with that object in mind, that adds up to an awful lot of unnecessary extra risks taken, when just a page or two along the lines of a suicide note would have done nicely, been much safer and easier to come up with, harder to prove fraudulent and equally valuable if taken seriously. The Maybrick and ripper cases in their own right would surely have injected even the briefest written confession with sufficient interest and intrigue to keep the kettle boiling.

Love,

Caz
X

[Sam Flynn]

along with odd arguments about the diarist not meaning 'mayhem' in a violent sense, even though he tells us himself that the 'knife' in his hand is responsible for it )

a) It's not an "odd" argument at all, Caz;

b) The argument specifically refers to the use of the modern compound phrase spreads mayhem, in the sense of "spreads confusion", which is clearly the meaning that the author(s) of the Diary were used to. Alas, they were about half a century out if they were intending to ascribe those words to James Maybrick;

c) Never mind the knife in his hand - what's the "ring on his finger" got to do with violence?

[Christine1932]

Ah but that supposes that the "creation" of the journal (the author, researcher and penman - or all 3) was the same as the person who unveiled the journal to the world, and that's not even close to being proven.

But why the journal was written? To make money by taking a real person and write all kind of filth about him. Why to expose such heap of waste? To make money. If someone did that to my mother - "she is dead so lying is allowed" - I would such
Not physically, of course.