17th September to Diary handwriting comparisons

[caz]

The photo album that was used for it is an early 20th C. specimen; I've seen loads of them. (That detail irks me; why the heck didn't they use a real journal or diary to write it? Grrr...)

No offence, Archy, but do you seriously think we would even be having this conversation if the 'typical' Victorian guardbook (which could date from the 1870s), examined up close by numerous specialists, bookbinders and so on, was in fact 'an early 20th C. specimen'? You may have seen loads of later examples resembling the diary because styles didn't change overnight.

I never get the argument that a Victorian serial killer would have been conventional and used a 'real' diary for recording his day-to-day thoughts in between murders. "Ah, what have we here? The diary of my husband/boss/business colleague/son-in-law for 1888, and another for 1889. Wonder what the old bugger has written about me?" Why would he not have used something that was less obviously a personal journal, and less likely to attract prying eyes? The only way a deliberate hoaxer screwed up by not using a conventional diary was in not anticipating that this would actually be held up as a bad mark against it.

I agree, the style is atrocious. It's an excruciating read, and for all the wrong reasons... If "fingers-on-the-blackboard" could be termed a literary style, this is it.

But how do you know that wasn't the point of the exercise? Whether it was the ripper, or Maybrick, old or modern hoax, it was never meant to read like Dickens, was it? If you wanted to poke fun at a lower middle class brute of an arsenic-eating womaniser, whose wife had very nearly hanged for his dubious double life, might you not also choose to produce something 'excruciating' and 'nails-down-the-blackboard'?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Hello Spyglass.

"I have always tended to lean towards it being written at the time it purports...if it was a hoax."

That's a good idea. One thing that might strengthen this notion would be to find correspondence from people of that social class who spoke in that manner.

I am fairly used to seeing correspondence/diaries of that era, and from different social classes. The diary is an ill fit.

Cheers.
LC

Eh? And what social class would that be, Lynn? And why would you look for the hoaxer among people of the same social class as the low-life character they invented, to impersonate and parody? Why would you expect the hoaxer ever to speak in that manner when not pretending to be James-as-Jack?

Nobody speaks like that (as Tony Curtis was told when doing his best Cary Grant impression in Some Like It Hot ).

Love,

Caz
X

[The Good Michael]

Nobody speaks like that (as Tony Curtis was told when doing his best Cary Grant impression in Some Like It Hot ).

So true. If anyone spoke the way they wrote, they would be irritating beyond all measure and would not have made it past their teens. Writing is typically much more elaborate than the spoken word... unless you're Hemingway.

Mike

[Tempus omnia revelat]

You sure about that? Then please explain why George Lusk is being referenced in the letter as the head of the vigilance committee as early as September 17th.

You seem to be trying to establish a Victorian provenance for two items believed by all to be modern hoaxes by way of arguing they were written by the same hand. Don't you think such an argument merely strengthens the conclusion that both are modern hoaxes?

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

Hi Tom,

As far as I am aware Tom, George Lusk was made head of the Whitechapel Vigilance Commitee in early September 1888 (somewhere around the 9th/10th, if memory serves me correct.), which means that the letter is accurate in its conclusion. I could be wrong on this, and am open to correction.

Secondly - and I'll say this again as it doesn't seem to be sinking in - I have been to the public record office and seen this letter for myself. I did this because at the time rumours were being bandied about to the effect that it was a fake and had been written with something akin to a ball-point pen. I was staggered to find on viewing that this was not the case and, on asking several people in charge at the PRO, I was also informed that there where no doubts about its authenticity.

I'm sorry if this information jars, but until you come up with more concrete evidence that it is a forgery then I - and many others - will continue to believe (rather like the diary) that it is genuine.

Kind regards,

Tempus

[Tom_Wescott]

Hi Tempus. Yes, by Sept. 17th, Lusk had been placed in charge of this vigilance committee...a committee that at that time was only writing letters to get rewards. A total non-entity. Lusk himself was hardly in the papers at all by that date, Joseph Aarons getting most of the press...which was very, very little. In short, this committee is only significant to us today because of the package they received in October. Clearly, the modern author of the 17th Sept letter didn't know all of this when he wrote the letter. The talk of Lusk as some sort of threat to the Ripper is absolute proof that the letter could not have been written in September, 1888.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

[lynn cates]

despues

Hello Spyglass. Perhaps you'll come across it later.

Cheers.
LC

[lynn cates]

Anthrax epidemic

Hello Dave. Do Zoot and Dingo perform those corrections? (heh-heh)

Cheers.
LC

[lynn cates]

period

Hello Caroline. I mean middle and upper middle classes. I have read a good portion of such a genuine diary and a good deal of correspondence from the mid and late Victorian period.

Nothing at all like this "diary."

Cheers.
LC

[caz]

Ah, but have you ever read the thoughts of a Victorian mutilating serial killer-cum-lower middle class Liverpudlian merchant, as imagined by anyone of any social class?

I've never seen anything remotely like this 'diary' in style or content, which is why I hesitate to attribute it to a certain class or 'type' of author, based on any writings of a more conventional nature. The nearest I have come is a deliberately semi-literate article I once read in Punch.

What social class did the author of From Hell come from? I think the difficulties in assessing this may be similar. Could have been anyone from semi-literate oaf to highly educated young med student.

Love,

Caz
X

[lynn cates]

style

Hello Caroline. Thanks.

"but have you ever read the thoughts of a Victorian mutilating serial killer-cum-lower middle class Liverpudlian merchant, as imagined by anyone of any social class?"

Umm, no. Would the "Journal of Uni, the unicorn" do as well? (heh-heh)

"From Hell"? Sounded like a middle class chap hoaxing an Irish accent. I also detected an attempt to frighten George Lusk. But the prose style was altogether congruent with the times--at least in my humble estimate.

Say, there is a new science--experimental stage--called "stylometry." Familiar with that?

Cheers.
LC

[The Good Michael]

I've never seen anything remotely like this 'diary' in style or content, which is why I hesitate to attribute it to a certain class or 'type' of author, based on any writings of a more conventional nature. The nearest I have come is a deliberately semi-literate article I once read in Punch.

Also the Lusk letter, though I'm not going there.

Mike

[spyglass]

Hi Lynn,
To answer your earlier question, the diary was taken to a leading antiquarian book dealer Jarndiyce based in London.
As I recall, their opinion was that the diary and the writing was with no doubt Victorian and they failed to understand why people would doubt it.

Regards.

[caz]

Hi Mike,

That's what I meant by From Hell.

Hi Lynn,

I imagine that the art of 'stylometry' would be to attribute a given prose style to the period in which its author was most likely writing.

So we have the prose style of the diary. What times would you say it is 'altogether congruent' with, if any?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Hi Lynn,
To answer your earlier question, the diary was taken to a leading antiquarian book dealer Jarndiyce based in London.
As I recall, their opinion was that the diary and the writing was with no doubt Victorian and they failed to understand why people would doubt it.

Regards.

To be strictly fair, spyglass, I'm not sure how much the prose style came into this. It was the physical artefact - the guardbook itself, plus the appearance of the ink and the handwriting - that the chap at Jarndyce had no hesitation in declaring consistent with the right period. Mind you, he was a specialist in 19th century literature, so he'd have looked pretty silly if the diarist had been writing about himself as "Bond - James Bond" - using a 1960s prose style.

Love,

Caz
X

[The Good Michael]

That's what I meant by From Hell.

ooo, I missed that! Sorry. My brain isn't right.

Mike