I left it there for the fools but they will never find it.

[Michael W Richards]

Whats going on here, is everyone suddenly hungry?

Cheers

[Graham]

Just to get back on thread (I've had my dinner, thanks):

If James Maybrick had an enemy who was planning to use it to discredit him, and then stuck it in a bottom drawer when Maybrick died suddenly, that's entirely something else. Although, accusing your business rival of being Jack the Ripper is a little silly-- much better to accuse him of shady business practices.

I don't think that even in the cut-throat world of the late 19th-century cotton trade that a businessman would resort to blackening a rival's reputation by anything so damning as accusing him of being Jack The Ripper. However, as has been stated many times in the past on these boards, how about someone concocting 'the Diary' as a means of supporting Florence Maybrick following her trial? As in, "Yes, I did kill my husband, because I discovered that he was in fact Jack the Ripper and so he had to die, so please let me out of clink as I was doing humanity a big favour".

Even so, I find this highly unlikely, for the simple reason that I have never accepted that Florence Maybrick murdered her husband, and there is very little concrete evdience to suggest that she did. Yet at the same time I do seriously propose that 'the Diary' may not be a modern hoax (not a 'forgery' - if so, a forgery of what?) and if that is the case it must have been produced for some purpose other than simple amusement. If it is an old production, as I believe it is, then someone somewhere must have had it in for poor old James Maybrick.

Going over old ground again, but so what? It's fun!

Graham

[lynn cates]

lungs

Hello Dave. And I thought only my old sainted mum used that word for lungs.

Cheers.
LC

[Cogidubnus]

Hi Lynn

Being of Hibernian descent you ain't got an old sainted mum...in fact, if you're of Glasgow stock, the term you're seeking is Madonna Miraculis...

All the best

Dave

[lynn cates]

battle axe

Hello Dave. Thanks.

Hmm, Phil Carter's word is, I think, battle axe. (heh-heh)

Cheers.
LC

[RivkahChaya]

Why is it that in America it's impossible to obtain good bacon, proper sausages, decent cheese, and quality bread? In a similar vein, why is it that in England we can't get prime rib of beef?

I don't know about the bacon or sausage. The cheese and bread, you either have to pay or work for. You can get really good cheese from Wisconsin, but if you don't live in Wisconsin, it's expensive. There are also some kosher dairies that make pretty good cheese, but the types are limited, and it's very expensive. The Amish supposedly make really good cheese, too, but they use rennet, so I don't eat it. Again, expensive.

If you buy your bread from a stand-alone bakery, that bakes it from start to finish on the premises, not from frozen dough, and you buy it within a few hours of baking, it's very good. This is especially true of sourdough bread from San Francisco, and bagels from New York, which really aren't as good anywhere else (if you haven't had a bagel from New York City, you haven't had a bagel). Again, expensive, with the exception of the NYC bagels, which are pretty reasonably priced, compared to bakery bagels any place else, like Panera, for example.

Also, you can bake your own bread, which some of the women in my family are very good at, thank you. I do good challah, and great baguettes, also some pretty decent dinner rolls. My aunt does all kinds of bread, and bagels too, the only really, truly good ones outside of New York, plus, the best whole wheat challah ever. My maternal grandmother was a darned good cake and pastry maker, and made some good sandwich bread too. I've never gotten sandwich bread down. My mother was never good at bread, although there were other things she cooked very well.

Quick-rise yeast is one of the best non-technology advances of the last 25 years. You can go from ingredients on the counter to a fully baked loaf of bread in three hours. Active dry is a thing of beauty as well, because I would always scorch it when I was working with cake yeast.

[curious4]

Lights

Hello all,

Just to get back to liver and lights again for a second (I grew up believing this included any edible innards) I`m quite glad this came up (obsessive/compulsive gene kicking in again) as I have seen somewhere in the JTR literature a reference to someone threatening to have someone`s liver and lights, which was interpreted as cutting out his liver and putting his lights out.

To anyone not familiar with this expression, please note.

Delicious and nutritious - shame they have gone out of fashion!

Best wishes,
C4

[Gladiator]

This was never a formal 'diary' as such; more a collection of thoughts ... he was a secretive arsenic eater who was meant to be secretly gutting whores in "that London" and returning to put his thoughts and fantasies to paper, either in his study, which was kept locked when he wasn't around, or at his office, where prying eyes might have been more of a problem ... I think I would have had James/Jack pick a used Victorian guard book, not expected to be written in, rather than an actual diary for 1888 ...

We really should not be judging this book by its cover. The fact that the text is not written in an 1888 diary has no bearing on the issue. I'm not aware that the word 'diary' appears once in the 'diary'. That strongly suggests to me that the author did not set out to replicate a diary. My overwhelming suspicion is that - had that been the author's intention - then he (or she) would indeed have purchased the very finest 1888 diary to match the very finest knife he claims to have purchased for his victims. (This - of course - assumes that one could still easily purchase such a diary at the mid-point of 1888.)

There is nothing for us to gain in reflecting on the diary's authenticity (or otherwise) merely on the basis that it was written in a scrapbook. If we do, we immediately start falling into the trap of making unreasonable assumptions about the state of mind of the author. I - like Caz implies - suspect that the start of the writing of this scrapbook (currently unknown, of course, because the pages are ripped-out) very probably occurred in the moment. It is perfectly plausible, I feel, to imagine a man fantasising about committing these acts and - to heighten the pleasure of the fantasy and to provide a ready renewal of it (to effectively treat it like a personal pornography) - accept that he may very well have reached out to something close to hand which he believed would not be suspected by others. Despite his need to believe himself to be a clever man he - like most murderers - was not particularly clever (if you believe the text as a whole), and I personally have no difficulty in accepting that he may have taken a long-unused company scrapbook, dusted it down, and used it to vent his then still psychological urges.

Of course, the author plays with this possibility when he (or she) makes reference to Maybrick's clerk Thomas Lowry asking for something from Maybrick which sends his employer into a rage, and strongly then implies that he may well have ripped out the original pages and returned them, adding cryptically "Curse the b*****d Lowry for making me rip". If correct, I like to think of that line as probably the 'cleverest' in Maybrick's otherwise truly puerile record of his thoughts.

Still, the real issue remains for us to assess: This piece of work has been in the public domain now for twenty years and it continues to confound its doubters and detractors. Despite numerous ill-thought out claims that it has categorically been proven to be a hoax, it has not been proven to be a hoax. Cornwell - in her extremely expensive attempt to prove that Sickert wrote some ripper letters - claimed that Rendall had proven the diary to be hoax. Many others have made similar casual - but highly inflammatory and inaccurate - claims. Absolutely nothing has been proven bar that the diary was constructed in such a way that it simply cannot be shown to be a hoax.

Some would say that that very robustness in the face of such long and concerted hostility points strongly to the diary actually being beyond disproof. And that - of course - could only point to it being (whisper it quietly) the genuine article ...

[Graham]

Good post, Gladiator. However, I think in truth that the provenance of the 'Diary' hasn't been proven or disproven one way or any other; but what has not been proved, at least to the satisfaction of many interested people myself included, is that it's a modern production. I don't use the word 'forgery' here, as in my view a forgery is a counterfeit copy of some genuine article, and as far as I'm aware no other 'Maybrick Diary' has yet come to light. However, with reference the the mention of Stuart Cumberland earlier in this thread, shortly after the Maybrick Trial someone was touting so-called "Mrs Maybrick's Diary" around London publishers, without success.

Graham

[The Good Michael]

I don't know about the bacon or sausage. The cheese and bread, you either have to pay or work for. You can get really good cheese from Wisconsin, but if you don't live in Wisconsin, it's expensive. There are also some kosher dairies that make pretty good cheese, but the types are limited, and it's very expensive. The Amish supposedly make really good cheese, too, but they use rennet, so I don't eat it. Again, expensive.

If you buy your bread from a stand-alone bakery, that bakes it from start to finish on the premises, not from frozen dough, and you buy it within a few hours of baking, it's very good. This is especially true of sourdough bread from San Francisco, and bagels from New York, which really aren't as good anywhere else (if you haven't had a bagel from New York City, you haven't had a bagel). Again, expensive, with the exception of the NYC bagels, which are pretty reasonably priced, compared to bakery bagels any place else, like Panera, for example.

Also, you can bake your own bread, which some of the women in my family are very good at, thank you. I do good challah, and great baguettes, also some pretty decent dinner rolls. My aunt does all kinds of bread, and bagels too, the only really, truly good ones outside of New York, plus, the best whole wheat challah ever. My maternal grandmother was a darned good cake and pastry maker, and made some good sandwich bread too. I've never gotten sandwich bread down. My mother was never good at bread, although there were other things she cooked very well.

Every major city has good bagels. Every major city has great cheeses. The only difference between British breakfast sausages and American is that American sausages are more coarsely ground, so the texture is different. It's ignorant to say one can't get something in America and it's also ignorant to say only New York has certain food that is acceptable.

Mike

[Graham]

I'd rather you didn't call me 'ignorant', if you don't mind, Michael. I was expressing an honest opinion based upon my personal experience.

Graham

[The Good Michael]

I'd rather you didn't call me 'ignorant', if you don't mind, Michael. I was expressing an honest opinion based upon my personal experience.

Sorry Graham. Your personal experience maybe needs some broadening.

Mike

[Graham]

I think not, certainly not as far as the relative merits of sausages American and English are concerned. But I accept your apology with good grace.

Graham

[The Good Michael]

Graham,

I've traveled the length and breadth of the UK and found that overall the food was dull for my palate. That being said, I was able to unearth some gems in places even as far away as Shetland. It's about one's own tastes and not about the inadequacy of a developed nation's cuisine, regardless of anything else. I find English sausages too finely ground so that the texture is mushy. It is my preference to have coarsely ground sausage, when I eat meat at all.

Mike

[RivkahChaya]

Every major city has good bagels. Every major city has great cheeses. The only difference between British breakfast sausages and American is that American sausages are more coarsely ground, so the texture is different. It's ignorant to say one can't get something in America and it's also ignorant to say only New York has certain food that is acceptable.

Mike

Have you had a New York bagel? I have had bagels all over the US, and the ones from NYC are special. I don't know anyone who has actually eaten a genuine NYC bagel who does not agree with me.

There is a coffee shop in Southern Indiana, where I went to college, that bakes bagels and pastries in-house, completely from scratch, and the bagels are very, very good. They are the closest to New York bagels I have had outside of New York, but they are not quite there. My aunt's bagels are really good too, and she will tell you that since she left New York, she hasn't been able to get them to turn out quite as good.