Fake!

[Tom Mitchell]

This is a circular argument:
"The diary refers to the letter so the letter is genuine; the letter supports the diary writer's authorship of the name so the diary is genuine."

I'm moving on from this now as I try not to get deeply embroiled in diary threads.

Regards, Bridewell

Hi Bridewell,

Obviously, it's a circular argument - we all knew that before you told us.

The point is that for now one supports the other (until one or both are proven to be hoaxes).

It is worth noting here, once again, that our 'shoddy hoax' has been supported by a hoaxer who was prepared to access Home Office files (as I recall) and slip the 'faked' Sept 17 letter into a genuine Home Office docket (I think) for discovery by Peter McLelland in 1988. That's a huge amount of effort and a cunning degree of forethought given that the diary still had four or five years to emerge into the light of day.

Definitely no shoddy hoax.

Cheers,

Tom

[Tom Mitchell]

Tom,

Clearly the Grand National is a major English sporting event.

A colossal amount of books have been written on this subject including facts, figures, statistics etc.

In my view, even a burrow owl would possess the wisdom needed to include some facts from the period.

I should have added in my reply of yesterday that you have clearly focused on an obscure detail in the diary which you believe to be easily-researched (I question whether that was true given that it took Shirley Harrison's researcher a significant amount of time to uncover it in a pre-WW2 sports magazine).

What I should have added yesterday was a request for you to clarify whether a similar 'colossal amount of books' also have been - in your opinion - written on where James Maybrick's parents were buried?

As I say, you just can't have it both ways.

Tom

[Jonathan H]

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/08/03/loch-ness-monster-skipper-george-edwards-has-best-ever-shot-of-elusive-nessie-pictures_n_1737013.html

[Tom Mitchell]

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012...n_1737013.html

Jonathan,

You believe that the diary is a hoax.

Where do you think the diary hoaxer sourced the thoroughly obscure fact that Maybrick's parents were buried in the same grave?

Tom

[Fleetwood Mac]

Jonathan,

You believe that the diary is a hoax.

Where do you think the diary hoaxer sourced the thoroughly obscure fact that Maybrick's parents were buried in the same grave?

Tom

They're buried at Anfield cemetary, along with James.

That would be very easy to discover, particularly for someone from Liverpool.

[Harry the Hawker]

Hi Mac

Would that be a Northern Burrowing Owl or a Florida Burrowing Owl? What are their relative airspeeds?

Dave

Laden, or unladen?

Best!
Harry

[Jonathan H]

http://home.comcast.net/~tprinty/UFO/mj12.htm

[Tom Mitchell]

They're buried at Anfield cemetary, along with James.

That would be very easy to discover, particularly for someone from Liverpool.

I don't doubt that this and pretty well any other fact can be researched or 'discovered' to use your term.

The issue is more about the depth of effort the hoaxer was prepared to go to.

For a document which has been routinely described as a 'shoddy hoax' or words to that effect, it seems to me that the hoaxer's research has been seriously underplayed.

For example, he or she went to Anfield cemetery. Why? Seeing Maybrick's grave could hardly be incorporated into the diary! If then by chance his parents' grave was viewed, then fair enough the hoaxer would have something to slip into the diary. And if that is what happened, then that is what happened - but, boy, the work that person put in to attempt to fool us all was definitely not 'shoddy'.

The hoaxer should be applauded for their skill and attention to the finer detail, I'd say.

[Jonathan H]

http://rense.com/general49/making.htm

[Carol]

I don't doubt that this and pretty well any other fact can be researched or 'discovered' to use your term.

The issue is more about the depth of effort the hoaxer was prepared to go to.

For a document which has been routinely described as a 'shoddy hoax' or words to that effect, it seems to me that the hoaxer's research has been seriously underplayed.

For example, he or she went to Anfield cemetery. Why? Seeing Maybrick's grave could hardly be incorporated into the diary! If then by chance his parents' grave was viewed, then fair enough the hoaxer would have something to slip into the diary. And if that is what happened, then that is what happened - but, boy, the work that person put in to attempt to fool us all was definitely not 'shoddy'.

The hoaxer should be applauded for their skill and attention to the finer detail, I'd say.

Hi Tom,

I agree with everything you say here. I think that is why it has been so difficult to 'unconditionally' prove that the Diary is a fake. The person who does manage to prove this is going to have to be as 'picky' about the finer detail as the hoaxer.

Carol

[Carol]

http://rense.com/general49/making.htm

Hi Jonathan!

Just read the above. Thank you very much for the link! I can remember seeing the 'Big Foot' footage some years ago on the Discovery channel. Maybe Mr Long can help us with ferretting out an 'unconditional' fact or two about the Diary!

Carol

[Carol]

http://home.comcast.net/~tprinty/UFO/mj12.htm

Hi Jonathan,

Me again.

Many thanks for the link. The mind boggles!

Carol

[Jonathan H]

Dear Carol

What I am arguing with these links is that some people make honest mistakes ('Loch Ness') and some people lazily make almost no effort in their hoaxes (the 'Majestic-12' documents) but still have enormous impact on pop culture, and some people (the 'Bigfoot' costume) do go to a lot of trouble, research and expense to try and make it convincing.

And that there are people who want and/or need to believe and so facts make no difference (eg. the Turin Shroud was proven by science to be exactly what the earliest primary source claimed; a cunning fake pianted by an unknown artist. Yet there are still people today who claim it is authentic.)

I think that the Maybrick Diary is a hoax. Effort was made by the hoaxers but the hand-writing does not match. They had a fall-back for this, of course, but it's weak and doomed the enterprise to be a marginal controversy.

I suspect that the inspiration was the Hitler Diaries hoax of 1983, which really was shoddy and only accidentally successful -- for a while -- and this provided a template for the hoaxers on what not to do.

But they still called the murderer 'Jack the Ripper' when that is, in a delicious irony, itself a contemporaneous journalistic hoax, and some elements of Donald McCormick's hustling entered the Diary's bloodstream too.

They believed that they needed a figure, James Maybrick, who was deceased relatively soon after the Kelly murder. What they did not realise is that Kelly as the final Whitechapel victim is a Druitt-centric notion, backdated by Macnaghten to become the 'autumn of terror'. In fact, the police investigation continued for years and it was thought, at the time, that Frances Coles was the final victim (in the extant record we see Anderson and/or Swanson mixing up the two 'final' victims.)

The Ripper Diary is a source without credible provenance, about which the people concerned have fundamnetally -- and self-servingly -- changed their stories, and thus need not trouble us anymore than the Yeti.

[Kaz]

The Ripper Diary is a source without credible provenance, about which the people concerned have fundamnetally -- and self-servingly -- changed their stories, and thus need not trouble us anymore than the Yeti.

Just out of interest, what research have you personally done that proves the 'people concerned' are all liars?

What numbers are you labeling as 'frauds'?

I wouldn't want to be known as a direct decedent of JTR, would you?

[caz]

Effort was made by the hoaxers but the hand-writing does not match.

But there was no attempt to make the handwriting match Maybrick's, Jonathan, which makes mincemeat of your quaint notion that modern hoaxers learned from the Hitler Diaries hoax of 1983 'what not to do'.

The Hitler hoaxer quickly earned himself a prison sentence for his pains, yet you seriously think that he inspired someone to try a Maybrick hoax without even bothering to source any of Maybrick's handwriting to copy, and presumably without even bothering to conjure up a more convincing provenance than "I got it from a dead mate"?

But they still called the murderer 'Jack the Ripper' when that is, in a delicious irony, itself a contemporaneous journalistic hoax, and some elements of Donald McCormick's hustling entered the Diary's bloodstream too.

There is no proof that a journalist was behind the name, but equally the diarist doesn't call himself 'Jack the Ripper' in the diary until very late on, when everyone in the world was using the name anyway. The author calls himself 'Sir Jim', and he laughs at the thought of Victoria giving him a knighthood so he can now 'rise Sir Jim'. He sticks with 'Sir Jim' after the double event and throughout, only adding 'Sir Jack' in the wake of the 1889 Grand National, and finally using the full 'Jack the Ripper' for signing off on 3rd May, when the real James Maybrick was very ill and not expecting to live much longer.

Also, you have yet to identify any words or phrases in the diary that could only have been written with reference to McCormick. You appear to have been sucked in by the dubious claims and subjective opinions of the late Melvin Harris, which surprises me considering your ability to think entirely for yourself concerning Druitt.

The Ripper Diary is a source without credible provenance, about which the people concerned have fundamnetally -- and self-servingly -- changed their stories, and thus need not trouble us anymore than the Yeti.

The two people who changed their stories - Anne Graham and Mike Barrett - only harmed themselves in the process. There is absolutely no evidence that either was knowingly involved in a hoax, modern or otherwise.

If the diary doesn't need to trouble you any more than the Yeti, why are you troubling yourself by giving us your unsupported views on who created it and when?

Love,

Caz
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