Fake!

[Sally]

I agree with you Sally, right up to the point where you seem to think that removing pages from the diary proves it a fake. Not sure why you think this. Those pages could've contained anything. They could also have been removed at any time, especially if someone else would have been incriminated or connected to the diary.

I hate calling it a diary, anyway. All it is is a Victorian document that the killer has placed his thougths into. No one knows for sure what it was used for at the time.


Kind regards,


Tempus

Tempus

No, you are mistaken. I did not say that the removal of pages from this document - whatever it really is - proves that it is a fake. Evidently, it does not. Nonetheless, the removal of the pages would be necessary if the diary were a fake. If the diary were not - i.e. were genuine, there is no immediately obvious reason for the removal of the pages.

In the balance, I would say that was a point in the favour of the 'anit-diarists' as you like to call those who consider it likely a forgery.

[Tempus omnia revelat]

Tempus

No, you are mistaken. I did not say that the removal of pages from this document - whatever it really is - proves that it is a fake. Evidently, it does not. Nonetheless, the removal of the pages would be necessary if the diary were a fake. If the diary were not - i.e. were genuine, there is no immediately obvious reason for the removal of the pages.

Apart from the fact - as I said before - that they may have incriminated or mentioned someone else. It may simply have been the case that he wanted to start a fresh. To focus on one unknowable feature when you have all the other facts and coincidences surrounding the diary is a bit...we'll, pointless.

In the balance, I would say that was a point in the favour of the 'anit-diarists' as you like to call those who consider it likely a forgery.

If you say so, Sally.

Kind regards,


Tempus

[miakaal4]

Oh, by the way, wasn't the forger lucky that old James had no alibi for each of the five murders?

[Iain Wilson]

I am sure that when someone is writing about thoughts, images and deeds they would be writing fast, the words pouring out in short bursts, they wouldn't bother with too much formal grammar. They would forget the odd full stop, which he does, and put other punctuation in the wrong place, because it is not important to the content. He was not writing a letter to a severe maiden aunt, or his pal George, he was writing it for HIM and HIM alone. So he could sit in his study and gloat. So he could pour out the poisons that he felt were causing his actions, and ignore the real poisons he was using as medicine because he was addicted to them and he knew it.
It is only towards the very end of the diary that he begins thinking that others might actually read what he has written.
Now he see's the book as his confession. He knows he will soon die, or believes he will. He has scorned God in the book, and perhaps, now close to death he fears retribution. So confess all, leave the book in a place it will be found, and hope that when it is read, the audience will understand his motivation and forgive him.
The tone has changed, regret replaces violent promises and gloating, the need to be wanted by his wife replaces the desire to be alone to hunt.
Fake! ?????????Really?

I'm not sure you really need THAT many question marks!

Imparting the feeling you have described could easily be accomplished by a competent novelist.

[Tempus omnia revelat]

I'm not sure you really need THAT many question marks!

Imparting the feeling you have described could easily be accomplished by a competent novelist.

I don't think miakaal4 was writing a novel, Iain. Besides, I was more interested in his points than in his Question Marks.


Kind regards,


Tempus

[Carol]

You do know that Jarndyce Booksellers of London is of the firm opinion that the text (as well as the handwriting) is Victorian in nature? They are one of the world's leading dealers in Victorian era documents. (I visited them in 2009 to reconfirm their opinion which was first expressed in 1992.)

Hello Sir Robert,

I didn't know that you had visited them in 2009. Thanks for telling me.

Carol

[Steven Russell]

Blucher is a copy of the original, which is apparently lost. That isn't Maybrick's handwriting. (Neither is the Diary IMHO but that's another issue.)

Bah! Thanls for putting me straight on this point, Bob.

Best Wishes,
Steve.

[miss marple]

Forgeries succeed because they fill a gap and people want to believe in them. For example the great forger Mark Hofman forged many documents proving the founding if the Morman church by Joseph Smith and recieved huge amounts of money from the church for these. No one questioned how he had accessed so many previously unknown documents. He also forged many other important documents including a poem by Emily Dickinson, it was written in her style and in a copy of her hand.
The' Diary' has been obscured by too many trees [the content] so you cant see the wood.
Let me give you a scenario,
Imagine someone has discovered a missing journal of Charles Dickens, an account of his relationship with his mistress Ellen Ternan [ which would be one of the great literary discoveries ever]
'' Where did you find this document? ''
'' it turned up under a floorboard in Gads Hill I was told.[ Dicken's country house]
'' How do you know its by Dickens? Well the content is really interesting and could have been written by him as it is in a Dickens style.''
So it was written by him?
Its not in his handwriting, but that does not matter because of the content. Its in an old scrape book with half the pages torn out.
Stop right there and put your rational hat on. When a thing is too good to be true, it usually is.
The watch turning up is two good to be true too, anyone can scratch marks inside a watch cover.It was necessary to reinforce the diary.
I love reading about great forgeries, forgers go to great lengths, but usually slip up somewhere. For a famous person, forging the hand would be important, but if you did not have a record of the person's hand and thought none existed then in the forgers mind, no one would know.
Forgery is about desire, and dreams.

Miss Marple

[Tempus omnia revelat]

Forgeries succeed because they fill a gap and people want to believe in them. For example the great forger Mark Hofman forged many documents proving the founding if the Morman church by Joseph Smith and recieved huge amounts of money from the church for these. No one questioned how he had accessed so many previously unknown documents. He also forged many other important documents including a poem by Emily Dickinson, it was written in her style and in a copy of her hand.
The' Diary' has been obscured by too many trees [the content] so you cant see the wood.
Let me give you a scenario,
Imagine someone has discovered a missing journal of Charles Dickens, an account of his relationship with his mistress Ellen Ternan [ which would be one of the great literary discoveries ever]
'' Where did you find this document? ''
'' it turned up under a floorboard in Gads Hill I was told.[ Dicken's country house]
'' How do you know its by Dickens? Well the content is really interesting and could have been written by him as it is in a Dickens style.''
So it was written by him?
Its not in his handwriting, but that does not matter because of the content. Its in an old scrape book with half the pages torn out.
Stop right there and put your rational hat on. When a thing is too good to be true, it usually is.
The watch turning up is two good to be true too, anyone can scratch marks inside a watch cover.It was necessary to reinforce the diary.
I love reading about great forgeries, forgers go to great lengths, but usually slip up somewhere. For a famous person, forging the hand would be important, but if you did not have a record of the person's hand and thought none existed then in the forgers mind, no one would know.
Forgery is about desire, and dreams.

Miss Marple

Unfortunately, Miss Marple, the handwritting of the diary does look like handwriting on ripper letters of the time. One particular letter being sent from the same district as another letter - that the original diary team picked out as being in Maybrick's handwriting - that was sent the day before. More coincidences.

Kind regards,


Tempus

[Casebook Wiki Editor]

Forgeries succeed because they fill a gap and people want to believe in them.

The Maybrick Watch and Diary have met with withering (and much of it superficial) criticism from the moment they crawled out into daylight.

Its not in his handwriting, but that does not matter because of the content. Its in an old scrape book with half the pages torn out.

In twenty years, I've never seen anyone argue that it's in Maybrick's handwriting. I wish we had more examples of JM's handwriting, but it is pretty obvious that the Diarist made no effort to copy said handwriting.

BTW I showed a slide at York with several examples of the handwriting in the Diary. It varies widely -and wildly.

The watch turning up is two good to be true too, anyone can scratch marks inside a watch cover.It was necessary to reinforce the diary.

Read up on the tests done on the Watch before you make this assumption. And bear in mind the Watch popped up for sale in that window right at about the time Barrett made his fateful call to London.

[miss marple]

Can you be more precise about that letter Tempus? i have not the diary book at hand as it is in storage. I do have letters from Hell is it in there? Victorians were taught handwriting at school[ copperplate] so there is a generic similarity with the hand writing. It was taught in schools until the 1950s. I was taught it. My handwriting is untidy but I can produce a good style if necessary.

I have gone on in other posts about the tearing out of the pages, having seen handled and owned many Victorian journals, diaries scrap books etc I can only say again, the majority of them are only half or three quarters filled, so acquiring one and tearing out the written pages is a given. Thirty odd years ago Liverpool was one of the great places for dealers to buy Victoriana. when I was doing Portobello market there were several dealers who went up there on a regular basis and come back with very interesting stuff. Scrap books were easy to pick up.
Nothing will convince me the diary is other than a fake, it has more in common with all the great fakes than any real literary discoveries.
Also rationality flies out the window when discussing the diary.
Why would Liverpool businessman Maybrick, unpleasant and drug addicted as he may have been take trips to the East end of London to mutilate and murder obscure whores. There is no evidence for this or that he was intimate with the area There is no motive, he had a mistress and a normal sex life. The dangers involved in going to the east end are far greater and more complex for a middle class man from a different city than a local. If he had such murderous instincts, and hated women so much, he could have started with Flo.
I think he was far too self obsessed to be a murderer, obsessed with his health and selfish. Not the sort of guy to take the sort of uncomfortable risks and gambles involved in being a serial killer.
Innocent people don't need alibis. A guilty person with standing in the community, would make sure he had some.

Cheers Miss Marple

[Graham]

It is simply not true that 'Victorians were taught copperplate at school'. Some were, but the majority most certainly were not. I started school in 1951 (I don't mind admitting) and I was not taught copperplate, merely to write clearly and legibly - which to an extent is a forgotten art, for me at least, courtesy of the computer.

I would argue about many aspects of the 'Diary', but not that its writing is anachronistic. As I posted earlier, I have hand-written family documents going back to about 1880, and with only a couple of exceptions none of the private letters, postcards, etc., are in copperplate. Perhaps the hand-writing in these documents is somewhat more disciplined than you might find these days, but it really isn't a lot different to a modern hand.

G

[miss marple]

Graham.
Copperplate was taught in schools,I even have an exercise book from 1859 just of copperplate handwriting practice. it was the most widely used form of joined up writing in the 19th century because it could be done with an ordinary dip pen, instead of a flat calligraphy nib. It created a flow and at its best could be very elegant or at worst, make it easier to do joined up writing.
And in all the written journals i have seen copperplate is the standard. Some tidy some untidy. The modern hand developed from copperplate.

Miss Marple

[Graham]

Journals perhaps, but not in ordinary letters, post-cards, note-books, etc. In many Victorian working-class primary schools, both rural and urban, it was probably hard enough for teachers to get the little darlings to hold a pen properly, let alone write in copperplate.

No way was copperplate taught as a regular manner of hand-writing in British schools in the 1950's; and in 1957 I went to an old-fashioned grammar-school, were the masters (not 'teachers' and all male) wore academic gowns and some even their mortar-boards on a daily basis, and there wasn't a sentence of copperplate in sight.

Are you posting from the USA, perchance?

G

[Casebook Wiki Editor]

Nothing will convince me the diary is other than a fake, it has more in common with all the great fakes than any real literary discoveries.

Then there isn't much point to discussing it, is there? Well, you are upgrading to the company of "great fakes"....that's progress of a sort.

Why would Liverpool businessman Maybrick, unpleasant and drug addicted as he may have been take trips to the East end of London to mutilate and murder obscure whores. There is no evidence for this or that he was intimate with the area There is no motive, he had a mistress and a normal sex life. The dangers involved in going to the east end are far greater and more complex for a middle class man from a different city than a local.

Please see below; reposting this yet again until perhaps it is read....you can believe whatever you wish about the Diary and the Watch, but the "real" James Maybrick had real ties to London and specifically Whitechapel. This is all from books and court records dating looooooooong before Mike Barrett got his mitts on the Diary. And the real James Maybrick got kicked out of his wife's bed once she finally realized there was another Mrs. Maybrick, so I don't know what you mean by normal sex life.

I think he was far too self obsessed to be a murderer, obsessed with his health and selfish. Not the sort of guy to take the sort of uncomfortable risks and gambles involved in being a serial killer.

Major league druggie, gambler, another FAMILY on the side, and always one step ahead of the creditors - the real James Maybrick was a risk taker.

Once more for Miss Marple:

I will add this to what I originally wrote - In 1871 Maybrick went into business with Gustavus A. Witt, Commissioning Agent, in Knowsley Buildings, Tithebarn Street, Liverpool. Witt, by 1888, was running a London office in a tiny street called Cullum Street, which was about 400 yards from Mitre Square. Witt testified in an affidavit that Maybrick did his firm's London business.

To say he had no ties to the area is demonstrably false. Not a matter of opinion, but of historical record.

Maybrick did extensive business over the years for a cotton broker that had their London office in Whitechapel, Cullum Street to be precise. His "wife" lived in Whitechapel when he met her and she later lived at 55 Bromley. The affair lasted for almost 20 years and there were 3-5 children as a result of it.

So Maybrick was a reasonably frequent visitor to the Whitechapel area. That's not even including visits to his brother at Wellington Mansions.

This had to be excised from my talk at York. (I am in the process of getting all my notes up in the moderated Maybrick forums at JTRForums.) The section was to be entitled "Let's Meet Those Wild and Wacky Maybricks" and was co-written by Livia Trivia, Mark Ripper, Katja Nieder and myself. If something is wrong it's safe to assume I wrote it....

Sarah Ann Robertson (1837-1927) Sarah Ann is an interesting person in a case chock full of interesting characters. There is little doubt she was James Maybrick's mistress and for all intents and purposes passed for his wife at times. Some believe she was actually married to James and never divorced, making Maybrick not only an adulterer but a bigamist as well. In the 1850s she was living in Tower Hamlets on the edge of Whitechapel and probably met James when he moved to London in 1858 to work in a shipbroker's office. She lived with him off and on for almost 20 years and it is alleged she bore him 5 children, two of them after his marriage to Florence. It is possible that she was the woman Florence learned about in 1887, leading Florence to sever marital relations with her husband. And if the Diary is to be believed, this and Florence's own infidelities were the impetus that lead to the series of gruesome murders of prostitutes we now know as the "Autumn of Terror" in 1888 Whitechapel. Certainly many of Sarah Ann's relatives believed she was married to James Maybrick; her aunt's husband, Thomas Conconi's 1868 will has a bequest to "Sarah Ann Maybrick, the wife of James Maybrick of Old Hall Street Liverpool". Keith Skinner has tracked down Sarah Ann's Bible containing the touching note "To my darling Piggy. From her affectionate husband James Maybrick. On her birthday August 2nd 1865". I note the Americanized date and the Piggy/Bunny zoomorphic nicknames. According to Trevor Christie (Etched in Arsenic) AFTER his honeymoon James went to Sarah Ann and "informed her of his marriage in what must have been a stormy scene. Amid tears and recriminations he promised to give her an allowance of Ł100 a year to support his children, but this was never paid regularly." A stand up guy was James Maybrick..... In the 1871 census Sarah Ann Maybrick is listed as a "merchant clerk's wife" living with her aunt and uncle, the Conconi's at 55 Bromley Street, Commercial Road London. Please note the location in terms of Whitechapel. At her death in 1927 she was listed as "Sarah Ann Maybrick, otherwise Robertson." There is no mention of her in the Diary, but the mysterious woman referred to as "mine" may well be Sarah Ann Robertson. Throughout the diary, Maybrick is a man more sinned against, than sinning.