The Diary—Old Hoax or New?

[caz]

It's a pity that when Mike was talking to Alan Gray, trying to persuade him that he had faked the diary, he quite forgot the script according to Palmer, and observed instead how Ryan had got his facts right on one particular point because Maybrick confirms it in his diary.

No wonder poor Alan was tearing his hair out!

I hope Palmer is having better luck with Anne Graham.

[rjpalmer]

See, it is your quandary, RJ. You have created it and you cherish it.

Cherish it? My Dear Boy, I find it devastating. Just when I was on the verge of belief...this came along and dashed me down again.

I do appreciate your wise counsel, of course. You're quite right. At this point it is foolish to think that we can convince an unappreciative world that the diary is genuine, so the most we can really do is to lean into our own private beliefs and to dismiss any private quandaries that might spring up. Quite so.

Alas, for me this is a bridge too far.

I can overlook Maybrick not mentioning his new bicycle (as per Dolgin and Jones) or even an extensive walking tour of Wales, etc., and all the other events and people that we know he experienced during this same span of months, but considering his knife-fetish, his obsession with cutting throats, his fantasies about his own suicide, etc., I can't believe that Piggot's demise and that dreary funeral in Widnes wouldn't have registered in his murder journal, whereas the children's Christmas, Mrs. Hammersmith, trivialities about the weather, etc. did.

After all, it's not every day that someone's friend dabs the corner of his mouth with a handkerchief, excuses himself from the breakfast table, and then with carving knife in hand, goes upstairs and nearly cuts his own head off!!

I think such an event would have stirred the imagination of Jack, of Kurten, of Bundy, of Brady, or any other monster that stood among the mourners that day.

And of course, there is the worrisome bit about Barrett and Bernard. If only you could give me one incontrovertible, unequivocal, undeniable fact about Maybrick's personal life that doesn't appear in Ryan, my faith might be restored. How did Barrett know? Was he a secret Maybrick scholar?

Had Mike stood in front of the Cloak and Dagger club that famous evening and said that Christie or MacDougall etc., was the only book on the case he had read, his interviewer could have stood on a chair and shouted, Ah ha! The diary's text mentions Bobo!! Where in MacDougall can you find Bobo!!

But Barrett didn't do that. Mike said Ryan.

And Ryan works.

Somehow, Mike knew.

These are troubling times, Ike, but I do appreciate your counsel.

Wish me well,

RP

[caz]

Speaking strictly for myself, if I was Jack the Ripper descending into my own private hell, and my friend John Piggot nearly cut his own head off with a carving knife, I might have mentioned this in passing in my journal.

It's a bit of a worry that Palmer can imagine himself as a serial killer, and what he might or might not mention 'in passing' in his journal if he had been murdering and mutilating women in recent months.

I don't know any serial killers personally [at least I hope I don't] and happily I have no clue what it would feel like to be one. I also have no clue what it feels like to be a hypochondriac, as the real James Maybrick undoubtedly was, but I have known a few personally, and even lived with one as their carer for five years, and they tend to be so bound up with their own health worries - and only marginally more so when those worries are justified towards the end of their life - that they are not known for wailing or gnashing their teeth over all the physical or mental health issues afflicting the people around them.

Unless one believes James was only 'sick unto death' because he was being slowly poisoned by his wicked and wayward wife, he may well have felt like he was descending into his own private hell by early 1889 as his health genuinely deteriorated. I could certainly see the real James, on a chilly February day, complaining bitterly to his fellow mourners, even as Pigott's coffin was lowered into the grave, about the cold, and the effect it was having on his poor old extremities. I doubt it would have made much difference if the deceased had been a personal friend, or if James was only paying his respects because it was expected of him. The man comes across in the literature as a rather self-obsessed and self-pitying social climber, and the diary does at least reflect this much. Conversely, if the two merchants were particularly close, one might have expected the literature to make some reference 'in passing' to the ghastly circumstances of Pigott's death, in the run up to Maybrick's.

Maybe Palmer could ask Anne Graham, before putting his creation theory to her, what she recalls about Bernard Ryan's book, and what role it played in the early days of diary research.

[Iconoclast]

Ike,
I'm sorry, but Dear Old Piggy is a deal breaker for me. And the fact that we are discussing Jack the Ripper's Diary is what makes it the clincher!
After years of denial, you were finally on the verge of convincing me of the diary's authenticity---bogus handwriting, bogus research notes, and bogus 'one of instance' be damned!--but I simply cannot look past this absurdity. For the past several nights I have paced the halls trying to wrap my mind around this, but I find that I cannot.

I honestly wouldn't pace the ill-lit early morning halls of Palmer Estate thinking there could possibly be anything in that vacuum which might resolve your quandary.

See, it is your quandary, RJ. You have created it and you cherish it. But it's a wasted hope - as hope is all it is - that somehow the absence of this (or any other event) in James Maybrick's Jack the Ripper scrapbook is somehow proof positive that James was not Jack. Any hoaxer reading Ryan could establish birthdays for the kids and for Florrie and yet not a mention once of what would have been so easy meat to put on our plates. And yet that does not bother you. Of course it doesn't bother you - it contradicts the restricted narrative you are peddling so it has to be ignored!

It is your quandary and no-one else's, and - even if it were other peoples' - it is but mere opinion. "If I was Jack the Ripper, I'd have mentioned X, Y, and Z. Someone else appears to be claiming that he was Jack the Ripper but he hasn't mentioned X, Y, and Z - so ipso facto, we have our hoax!". Research cannot be built upon such shockingly weak foundations. It is simply the stuff of idle speculation from a mind which seems to tear itself inside and out trying to find something to prove something is false when it has withstood every criticism thrown at it over thirty long and divisive years.

The question you should be asking yourself whilst you pace your hallowed halls, RJ, is why did James Maybrick's personal diary not survive his passing? Maybe it did. Maybe it rests somewhere in some home having been filched out of Battlecrease House in a laundry basket and sold off to the first bidder back in 1889, still intact, still able to answer every question you have posed regarding what you feel Maybrick should have mentioned and which you believe that he did not.

Ike

[rjpalmer]

Ike,

I'm sorry, but Dear Old Piggy is a deal breaker for me. And the fact that we are discussing Jack the Ripper's Diary is what makes it the clincher!

After years of denial, you were finally on the verge of convincing me of the diary's authenticity---bogus handwriting, bogus research notes, and bogus 'one of instance' be damned!--but I simply cannot look past this absurdity. For the past several nights I have paced the halls trying to wrap my mind around this, but I find that I cannot.

Had Dear Old Pigott succumbed to bowel cancer or had he carelessly slipped on a patch of February ice, I could have turned a blind eye to Jack the Ripper not mentioning his mournful demise in his Jack the Ripper's journal but Piggot, after sitting down to a fine fry-up of bangers and mash, etc., was suddenly inspired to wander upstairs where he nearly cut his own head off with a carving knife!

This is February 1889. For several months, Jim has been obsessing about his inability to cut the head off one of the ladies of East London, about cutting the head off of Diemschut'z horse, about his own inability to muster the pluck to 'top himself,' etc. etc., and now Dear Old Piggy, Wonderful Old Piggy, My Dear Friend Piggy, has up and done this very thing!

Yet, nary a peep. Not a whisper.

I'd admire your faith, Old Man, I really do. The faith of Job in the face of all his bitter disappointments is nothing compared to your faith in this relic.

But, as for me, I am done.

I can no more.

RP

---

P.S. Yes, the list of twenty names at John Piggot's funeral does give me reason to pause. Maybe I can find some hope in that. James Maybrick was merely one face in this massive crowd of mourners gathered in Widnes. Compare, for instance, with the sparce, intimate gathering at the funeral of the 'forgotten' Michael Maybrick, as per Bruce Robinson.

I will think on this more.

[Iconoclast]

Speaking strictly for myself, if I was Jack the Ripper descending into my own private hell, and my friend John Piggot nearly cut his own head off with a carving knife, I might have mentioned this in passing in my journal.

1) How do you know that James Maybrick was a 'friend' of the unfortunate Mr Pigott? The report indicates that many attending the service were 'merchants'. Have you never attended a funeral out of politeness for a work-related individual (or, indeed, anyone else) with whom you may never have even spoken?

2) How do you know that James Maybrick failed to mention Pigott's tragic death in his journal? Once again, Muddy the Mud Boy makes strategic use of the assumptions we all carry into the case. A more rigorous commentator - one paying more attention to what is possible rather than simply parroting what is convenient - would have written, "Speaking strictly for myself, if I was Jack the Ripper descending into my own private hell, and my 'friend' John Piggot nearly cut his own head off with a carving knife, I might have mentioned this in passing in my Jack the Ripper journal."

Suddenly, it doesn't read quite as convincingly, does it? Once you qualify your claim that you know Pigott and Maybrick were friends, and once you qualify what you meant by 'journal', your argument appears rather more facile and contrived, does it not, Muddy? And that wouldn't be like you, would it?

Dear readers, if you are struggling with this, please note that there is no evidence that John Pigott meant anything whatsoever to James Maybrick and - whether he did or he did not - James Maybrick was just as likely to have recorded this event in his private diary which he kept at home in Battlecrease House rather than in his office where he kept his Jack the Ripper scrapbook in which he recorded almost solely his feelings about his errant wife Florrie and the murderous acts he felt she had prompted him to commit.

"But James Maybrick didn't have a private diary at home", I hear you say. Well, my dear dear innocent readers, how do you know he didn't?

Ike

[erobitha]

Speaking strictly for myself, if I was Jack the Ripper descending into my own private hell, and my friend John Piggot nearly cut his own head off with a carving knife, I might have mentioned this in passing in my journal.




Once again, we are left wondering why the diarist doesn't seem to know anything about Maybrick's private life, 1888-1889, outside the events mentioned in Bernard Ryan's The Poisoned Life of Mrs. Maybrick--the one 'Maybrick' book that Barrett admitted to reading.

One would think a hoaxer could have used this grisly event to good effect...had she or he known about it--particularly as there is a decided lull in the text between Mary Kelly's murder and the final dénouement in May. And even Dr. Humphreys makes a curtain call in Piggot's case.

Curious.

He is 20th on that list of mourners RJ. Do you have any other evidence they were actually that well acquainted?

Maybe you can ask your question to Anne Graham when you challenge her about her faking the diary.

Let me know how you get on.

[rjpalmer]

Speaking strictly for myself, if I was Jack the Ripper descending into my own private hell, and my friend John Piggot nearly cut his own head off with a carving knife, I might have mentioned this in passing in my journal.




Once again, we are left wondering why the diarist doesn't seem to know anything about Maybrick's private life, 1888-1889, outside the events mentioned in Bernard Ryan's The Poisoned Life of Mrs. Maybrick--the one 'Maybrick' book that Barrett admitted to reading.

One would think a hoaxer could have used this grisly event to good effect...had she or he known about it--particularly as there is a decided lull in the text between Mary Kelly's murder and the final dénouement in May. And even Dr. Humphreys makes a curtain call in Piggot's case.

Curious.

[Iconoclast]

If one fail at an attempt, he opens his eyes to alternate approaches. If one defends his failure, he loses sight of new approaches.

Those are the Diary Defenders.


The Baron

The Art of War (Sun Tzu)?
The Prince (Niccollo Machiavelli)?
Or Dastardly Drainpipes (Algernon Orsam)?

[The Baron]

If one fail at an attempt, he opens his eyes to alternate approaches. If one defends his failure, he loses sight of new approaches.

Those are the Diary Defenders.


The Baron

[Scott Nelson]

Thank you all --Ike, Jay and Roger. Your answers are as clear and consistent as any of Mike Barrett's assertions.

[rjpalmer]

Call me thick, but I still don't know what a diary defender is.

Hello, Mr. Thicke, or should that be Scotty Upright?

Diary Defender is a necessary umbrella term that has developed to encompass the surprising and (in some instances) the cringeworthy coalition that has developed between those who fervently believe the diary is the authentic creation of James Maybrick and those who just as fervently believe that isn't but is instead a hoax of indeterminate age and origin. Normally, one would expect these two factions to be bitter enemies, going at it endlessly, but they are united in their disdain for the common opinion: that the diary is an obvious modern fake with Mike and Anne up to their armpits in it.

It's as if you stumbled into a pub in Rivington and lo and behold here was one big, happy group of Man U and Manchester City fans laughing and joking and buying each other rounds and engaging in the most surprising examples of flattery and admiration, until you realized their love was only based on an extreme distaste for Liverpool FC fans.

[erobitha]

Call me thick, but I still don't know what a diary defender is.

Anyone who does not believe the book was a Barrett / Graham concoction.

[Iconoclast]

Call me thick, but I still don't know what a diary defender is.

Come on, Scotty.

Warburton's Farmhouse Loaf.

Deuchars IPA.

Ironing board.

Car door handle.

The clue is rather in the name. It's someone who defends the Maybrick scrapbook against criticism (usually implied to mean 'any and all criticism').

Amazingly enough for the Casebook, I don't even think it's necessarily meant as an insult ...

Ike

[Scott Nelson]

Call me thick, but I still don't know what a diary defender is.