Question re: Dear Boss Letter

[Kaz]

It's not suprising that there aren't more samples of his writing. Records preservation isn't great over 100 years.

The handwriting is a killer for the diary, samples of Maybrick's writing or not. The author of the thing is clearly emulating tthe Dear Boss letter and that's a sufficient sample to show that the diary writing does not match the handwriting.

Additionally, there is a great question as to whether the writing style is appropriate. Some have claimed that it might possibly be late Victorian, others say it's not. But James Maybrick was in his 50s and his education would have taken place decades before and would appear mid-Victorian. People do not typically update their letter formation to match current trends in education.

In the end, the diary doesn't match any of the samples it should and the writing style is incompatible with what we should expect from Maybrick.

Why should a maniac like the ripper abide by any rules?

If the samples are so small how do we know what his true handwriting looked like?

The Dear Boss letteres were abviously written in a fake hand to make it untraceable.

[caz]

Additionally, there is a great question as to whether the writing style is appropriate. Some have claimed that it might possibly be late Victorian, others say it's not. But James Maybrick was in his 50s and his education would have taken place decades before and would appear mid-Victorian. People do not typically update their letter formation to match current trends in education.

In the end, the diary doesn't match any of the samples it should and the writing style is incompatible with what we should expect from Maybrick.

Hi John,

The bit I emphasised above really ought to go without saying. It also ought to be all you needed to say. I don't really understand the rest, frankly, or what it's doing here.

In a way, Kaz is right. If the diary had been written by the ripper himself, while in secret double life mode, it would have been the product of someone who wrote his own rules.

But in any case, it's very clearly not a 'great question' to professionals in the field of handwritten Victorian documents whether the writing style is 'appropriate' (whatever that means). There was no 'might possibly be late Victorian' about it when the professionals were asked to look at the scrapbook itself. They saw a typically Victorian style which many of us have also seen for ourselves in our own collections dating from the 1840s onwards.

Anyone who claims that the style is categorically 'not' right for the period in question is simply voicing a layman's opinion that they would have the devil's own job to prove.

'People do not typically update their letter formation to match current trends in education.'

I know what you are trying to say here, but if anything is not 'appropriate' in such a discussion it's this. It presumes that the Victorian document experts consulted are idiots who didn't take this into account when looking for indications of date in the handwriting style. If they had said "Well I suppose the diary might just possibly be late Victorian, but only if the writer was still at school at the time" you might just possibly have had a point.

When it was clear who the writer was meant to be, and that he would have been coming up to 50 in the late summer of 1888, the experts did not shift from their 'consistent with the period' position.

Love,

Caz
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