If you eliminate the impossible

[Robert]

Not as much as a strain as it was for the Baker St Irregulars.

[Roy Corduroy]

No problem for the Bow Street Runners.

Roy

[caz]

His ladies watch!

Is this another lavatorial joke, perchance?

Hi Victor,

Anyone wearing Albert’s watch back in 1888 would have been directed straight to the gents, I can assure you.

There is enough historical and photographic evidence to put it beyond the slightest doubt. More reliable even than the DNA evidence that indicated Hanratty's guilt.

I’m sure the real James Maybrick would turn in his grave to think how his adopted ‘Time Reveals All’ motto was turned into a huge joke by the person who used a timepiece (bearing John Omlor’s initials - a touch of pure comic genius there ) to claim that Jim was Jack the Ripper. Whoever it was certainly attempted to make ‘time’ reveal all in their own way.

Love,

Caz
X

[Bailey]

Caz - and assuming the answer isn't in your book again - or anyone else, do we know of any reason why the Maybrick family motto was Time Reveals All?

B.

[caz]

Hi Bailey,

According to Shirley Harrison, it wasn't a Maybrick family motto as such, but what James chose for the personal coat of arms he bought in 1881, shortly before his marriage to Florie.

I have no idea why James chose those words. It strikes me that he already had a few things going on in his personal life that he'd have been hoping time would never reveal - at least not to his bride. But it's a stretch to imagine that whoever used the watch for their little joke was not well aware of that motto and playing on it.

Incidentally, our book has very little information on the Maybricks or the events of the 1880s. It concentrates on the first decade following the emergence of the diary and watch.

Love,

Caz
X

[Soothsayer]

The only thing is... the handwriting of the real James Maybrick does not remotely look like the handwriting in the diary. And that is one of the fatal mistakes the forger has done, he never imagined that investigators would take the trouble in searching for documents written by the real James Maybrick´s hand to compare them both.

No one appears to have picked up on Maria's extraordinary claim here (which I have emboldened, above).

I can't think of a circumstance in which a forger (good, bad, or plain indifferent) would ever bother starting such an endeavour without first checking the most obvious and basic function of any forgery, that it should look like what it purports to be.

Further, to then do so and to do so firm in the belief that Jack the Ripper is so irrelevant in the public consciousness that no-one would bother checking Maybrick's known handwriting would certainly put our forger firmly in the Camp Stupido (I should know, I run the damn camp!).

The issue of the unconfirmed handwriting adds to the mystery rather than ends it.

If the two handwritings had been identical...then that would have proven that the diary was genuine.

Again, any logic we may assume when we start reading rapidly drains away when the plug is pulled with startling claims such as this. If the two handwritings had been identical, Maria, then that would have proven only one of two things: that Maybrick had indeed written the journal, or that our forger had done his or her job well. We would have been no further forward.

Nevertheless, Maria, if we didn't have posts we wouldn't have progress. At least you post stuff, which is more than the vast majority of people do on this Casebook.

[The Good Michael]

Sooth,

Maria is stark raving mad. I'm serious.


Mike

[Sam Flynn]

I can't think of a circumstance in which a forger (good, bad, or plain indifferent) would ever bother starting such an endeavour without first checking the most obvious and basic function of any forgery, that it should look like what it purports to be.

Another category sits outside those mentioned in your parentheses, Sooth, and might fit the bill - namely, the "thick-as-two-short-planks" forger.

[Jon Guy]

If the two handwritings had been identical, Maria, then that would have proven only one of two things: that Maybrick had indeed written the journal, or that our forger had done his or her job well. We would have been no further forward.

Hello Sooth

Are you saying that, as the two handwritings are clearly not identical, Maybrick did not write the journal, and the forger did not do his or her job well ?

[Soothsayer]

Hello Sooth

Are you saying that, as the two handwritings are clearly not identical, Maybrick did not write the journal, and the forger did not do his or her job well ?

Son of Dickie,

I'm afraid you don't catch the Mighty Soothsayer out that easily - not even on a Sat'dee morning!

Your argument is built on the assumption that there are two valid handwritings to compare, but this we do not have. We have the journal, of course. And we have a will which has been much contested, we have a signature on a marriage certificate (and we know that signatures are frequently different to natural writing styles), and we have the 'ship letter'. Our forger - if forger we had - did not base his or her forgery on any of these latter three examples which suggests one of two further things:

1) The forger truly was 'thick as two short planks' or
2) The document is genuine and if we could ever find another document where Maybrick is writing casually and more or less entirely for his own eyes (despite his style shifting right at the very last towards a confessional rather than solely introspective method), we would find that the document we have (the journal) and the document we find (whatever it may be), do actually match.

Whatever we think about the handwriting, the author certainly did their job well, Son of. Even The Times, back in 1993, in the very process of debunking the journal, went on record as stating that it was a very good fake!

[Ben]

So, in other words, you've gone from:

None of the examples of Maybrick's handwriting look anything like the style of the diarist.

To:

That means Maybrick probably wrote the diary.

That's just ridiculous. The fact that the diarist didn't bother to emulate the real Maybrick's handwriting is only evidence that the fake was a particularly clumsy one.

Best regards,
Ben

[Jon Guy]

Your argument is built on the assumption that there are two valid handwritings to compare, but this we do not have. We have the journal, of course. And we have a will which has been much contested, we have a signature on a marriage certificate (and we know that signatures are frequently different to natural writing styles), and we have the 'ship letter'. Our forger - if forger we had - did not base his or her forgery on any of these latter three examples which suggests one of two further things:

I have to say, Sooth, like the young Seamus John James Given, I have to admire your agility and quick feet behind a non existent defence. The transfer window is open my friend

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vWbWs0PL2Q

[Soothsayer]

So, in other words, you've gone from:

None of the examples of Maybrick's handwriting look anything like the style of the diarist.

To:

That means Maybrick probably wrote the diary.

That's just ridiculous. The fact that the diarist didn't bother to emulate the real Maybrick's handwriting is only evidence that the fake was a particularly clumsy one.

Best regards,
Ben

Hmmm...you and logic have never been bedfellows, or even casual acquaintances, have you, Benjy?

All I said was that not to have used the obvious 'example' (if you believe he wrote the will) suggests that either the forger was stupendously stupid or else the document is for real, and we just don't have the correct comparator for the journal (Maybrick's casual writing for his own eyes).

Have you ever noticed, Ben, that throughout your embarrassing performance over the 'May' reference, and now this latest, not a single Casebooker has written in defence of your position?

Now, obviously none have written to defend mine (that's par for the course), but usually The Cult members 'pull together' when one of their members is getting mired in the dust and dirt of an argument.

Significantly, they have kept very quiet. This, ironically, ought to speak volumes.

[Roy Corduroy]

None of the examples of Maybrick's handwriting look anything like the style of the diarist....
The fact that the diarist didn't bother to emulate the real Maybrick's handwriting is only evidence that the fake was a particularly clumsy one.

Thanks for that, Ben. And since the thread is "eliminate the impossible," that does it. James Maybrick is eliminated as the author of the Diary because it's not his handwriting.

The Diary is a fun subject for me because it's so easy. I guess that's that why I enjoyed reading it back then. It was easy to dismiss, and that's comforting.

Roy

[Ben]

Have you ever noticed, Ben, that throughout your embarrassing performance over the 'May' reference, and now this latest, not a single Casebooker has written in defence of your position?

A) They did, and they made a few excellent observations of their own in the process.

B) The one's who didn't recognised that a weak observation can be countered by a single post by a single individual, and that the absence legions of posters all chiming in with "Yeah! What Ben said about the May nonsense!" doesn't make your flawed observations any more palatable.

There is absolutely no logical justification for using the fact that the diarist's handwriting matches none of Maybrick's known examples to argue that the diary is genuine. On the contrary, it is perhaps the most screamingly obvious factor against its authenticity.