The Diary—Old Hoax or New?

[Graham]

Sam, I believe we must agree to differ! But believe me, I do look forward to your posts on this and other subjects. Your arguments are invariably cogent and thoughtful.

Graham

[Sam Flynn]

Sam, please read my posts, if you will! I have said more than once that I don't believe the Diary was written by Maybrick, and I don't believe that he was the Ripper.

I know that, Graham.

Yes, I do see where you're coming from regarding those pesky anachronistic phrases and expressions, but I am not 100% convinced that they could not have been in parlance in the late 19th century.

That's fine, but I'm personally certain that "one off instance" and "spreads mayhem" are 20th Century expressions, which simply couldn't have been used by anyone in the late 19th. I also believe that there are one or two other phrases in the Diary that indicate that it's a late hoax.

If everyone with even the slightest interest in the case agreed that the phrases cannot be authentic, then is that it? Does that imply that we are not genuinely interested in who wrote the Diary if it wasn't Jim?

Not at all - I'd love to know who wrote it. It's just that I think it would be a complete waste of time to look for potential authors from the late 19th or early 20th Centuries.

[Graham]

Sam, please read my posts, if you will! I have said more than once that I don't believe the Diary was written by Maybrick, and I don't believe that he was the Ripper. Yes, I do see where you're coming from regarding those pesky anachronistic phrases and expressions, but I am not 100% convinced that they could not have been in parlance in the late 19th century. If everyone with even the slightest interest in the case agreed that the phrases cannot be authentic, then is that it? Does that imply that we are not genuinely interested in who wrote the Diary if it wasn't Jim? I'm getting that impression from time to time.

Graham

[Sam Flynn]

Graham, even if they were only "anachronistic-ish", the fact that more than one of them occurs in the same document vastly increases the cumulative probability against the Diary's being an early hoax. As far as I'm concerned, "one off instance" and "spreads mayhem" are enough on their own to place the Diary's authorship in the latter half of the 20th Century.

[Graham]

I know enough. Besides, if there are anachonistic phrases in the text (and there are; three or four of them in the same short document) the back-story is irrelevant.

Sam, I would never ever cast aspersions upon your knowledge of Jack the Ripper in general, and the Maybrick Case in particular. I still don't think that the phrases we refer to are absolutely proven to be anachronistic, but even so they are not the be-all and end-all of the Diary story. There is plenty else to consider.

Graham

[Sam Flynn]

I do detect that among some posters, who swear black and blue that the above terms could not have been in use during the late 19th century, appear to know very little about the Diary itself.

I know enough. Besides, if there are anachonistic phrases in the text (and there are; three or four of them in the same short document) the back-story is irrelevant.

[Graham]

One of the problems that has always dogged "diary" is that people don't ask "when" the "diary" was created, but let the argument polarise into whether the "diary" is genuine or a modern fake, and it's a circular argu,emt that goes nowhere.

Well, what you say is fine, but there are posters to this and previous threads who most certainly questioned and debated the possible age of the Diary. I, in my humble little way, was and is one of them. Maybe I don't shout loud enough to be noticed. I never believed Maybrick was either the writer of the Diary or the Ripper; I never believed it dates from the late 19th century. I have certainly considered the remote possibility that it was produced in an effort to get Florence off the hook and out of clink, but for the reason stated above I reject that notion. So what of other possibilities? A combination of Michael Maybrick, George Grossmith and maybe others to smear poor old Jim for some reason or the other? Could be, but I don't think so. As has been mentioned a myriad times, the whole feel of the Diary does not suggest a late-Victorian origin. The language - to me at least, and I buried myself in Victorian authors for many years - doesn't strike true. Could be wrong on this, but I don't think I am.

What has been largely forgotten during the course if this thread is the Maybrick Watch. As it 'appeared' not long after the Diary did, this has always smacked of some kind of 'conspiracy'. Well, to me it has at any rate. Was it simply a coincidence, or what? Those of you who have read 'Ripper Diary' will agree with me that Albert Johnson struck the authors as being the very picture or propriety - with which I could never disagree. But he was involved in the Watch at any rate - he's the one who bought it from the jewellers. So was there a contemporary link between the Diary and the Watch?

We also find that the analysts could never quite agree as to when the ink went onto the paper of the Diary, and the one test (by McNeill) that did date it to the early part of the 20th century was more or less ignored. I never quite got my head around why this should have been. Could it be that the other analysts had already made up their minds - or been ordered to - that the Diary is modern?

Do you think it might just be possible to move on from the boring and increasingly tiresome arguments about 'one-off' and 'top myself'? I know what the response of most posters will be, up to them, but I do detect that among some posters, who swear black and blue that the above terms could not have been in use during the late 19th century, appear to know very little about the Diary itself.

Gone on long enough, but I would just like to end by saying that the more I think about it, the more I think that Melvin Harris was on the right lines - with or without Bongo's involvement at the onset. Does this mean, for what it's worth, that I think the Diary is a fake, then? Yep - not think it is; rather convinced that it is.

Graham

[Iconoclast]

Ike,

Look at some of the Harry Dam writings.

Can you direct us to where we should look, Scott? Google takes us either to what looks like Dutch Wiki sites or else straight back to Casebook threads.

Cheers,

Ike

[Iconoclast]

Read it, thank you, good read. Interesting that someone could still be successful, publishing wise, this late with the Diary. 25 Years of the Diary of Jack The Ripper, Robert Smith. He resurrected a bad argument and got everyone to argue it again anyway.

This has probably been addressed before (god, around here I feel like I always have to lead with that disclaimer, LOL). Has anyone considered that someone was forging the diary with the intent of gaining Florence Maybrick a pardon or parole? Circa 1895. Use the Diary to paint the deceased Maybrick as the Ripper; the roost needn't hold long, just long enough for the public to response to the exciting (false) revelation and pressure the courts into releasing her.

It would be more convincing if those anti-diarists (not necessarily you APerno) who look to David Orsam as their inspiration stuck more religiously to his version of events. The World According to Orsam is clear - Bongo Barrett and his brilliant band of brigands created the 'Victorian scrapbook' to make a few shillings and they chose that most obvious of candidates - the 50 year old reasonably successful Liverpool businessman with no apparent links to the east end of London - as their foil. That's the Orsam tenet and his acolytes need to stick to this. So those people who put it out there that perhaps someone wrote it to help Florence's trial or to help free her from incarceration cannot therefore be Orsamites. You absolutely cannot have it both ways. If it transpires that Bongo and gang didn't do it, then we have no hoaxers. Of course, one can still then argue that the scrapbook is a hoax, but we are back to black in terms of the light shining on the hoax theory. We are left with some phrases that certain people believe could not have been used in 1888 or 1889 despite the lack of available evidence (written documents and letters) to check this, and some questionable analysis of the scrapbook's internal content.

To make any progress at all here, we need to once and for all unravel the Barrett input into the scrapbook. As PaulB suggests above (and others argue in other ways), what is crucial here is 'when' the scrapbook was created. From the 'when' we can start to more seriously consider whether Bongo is the fulcrum of a hoax in 1992 or whether we need to be thinking of some other master forger in Liverpool in the early 1990s, or maybe someone with astonishing insight into the Maybrick household and Jack's crimes in 1888.

I don't believe that it is any other scenario. For what it's worth, I cannot get my head around Bongo being its creator because there just are not enough strong reasons to compel me to, so I am convinced it will turn out to be the latter. Not necessarily a hoax, of course ...

[PaulB]

Read it, thank you, good read. Interesting that someone could still be successful, publishing wise, this late with the Diary. 25 Years of the Diary of Jack The Ripper, Robert Smith. He resurrected a bad argument and got everyone to argue it again anyway.

This has probably been addressed before (god, around here I feel like I always have to lead with that disclaimer, LOL). Has anyone considered that someone was forging the diary with the intent of gaining Florence Maybrick a pardon or parole? Circa 1895

Use the Diary to paint the deceased Maybrick as the Ripper; the roost needn't hold long, just long enough for the public to response to the exciting (false) revelation and pressure the courts into releasing her.

Just a passing thought.

Yes, it was considered that the "diary" was created to help in Florence's trial, but the conclusion was that James being Jack the Ripper would have provided Florence with a motive for murdering him and that no matter how sympathetic people might be towards Florence for taking such an action, it would still have been murder and perhaps have resulted in her execution. I think Florence's lawyers wanted a "not guilty" verdict, not to provide mitigation for a "guilty" one.

Of course, that doesn't mean the "diary" could not have been produced for the purpose you suggest, but never used.

One of the problems that has always dogged "diary" is that people don't ask "when" the "diary" was created, but let the argument polarise into whether the "diary" is genuine or a modern fake, and it's a circular argu,emt that goes nowhere.

[Scott Nelson]

Ike,

Look at some of the Harry Dam writings.

[APerno]

fyi if anyone wants to really know the history of the phrase one off instance and how it proves the diary is a hoax (like if you actiually needed yet another fact that does that) all they need to do is google orsam books and click on articles.

the definitive answer to the maybrick nonsense(and many ripper related bull shite) will be found here.

Read it, thank you, good read. Interesting that someone could still be successful, publishing wise, this late with the Diary. 25 Years of the Diary of Jack The Ripper, Robert Smith. He resurrected a bad argument and got everyone to argue it again anyway.

This has probably been addressed before (god, around here I feel like I always have to lead with that disclaimer, LOL). Has anyone considered that someone was forging the diary with the intent of gaining Florence Maybrick a pardon or parole? Circa 1895

Use the Diary to paint the deceased Maybrick as the Ripper; the roost needn't hold long, just long enough for the public to response to the exciting (false) revelation and pressure the courts into releasing her.

Just a passing thought.

[Iconoclast]

I suppose the diary being a hoax is the most likely answer; it is the simplest explanation, after all. However, if the diary was created by a hoaxer, I've had some nagging questions that I can't resolve:

- If you're going to pick a subject as your fake Ripper, why choose Maybrick? The innocuous Liverpool cotton merchant seems about as unlikely a Ripper suspect as you can come across. Why not choose a far sexier subject like Chapman or Druitt or Tumblety, or hell, just about ANYONE else?

Hi tanta07,

This is one of the most bemusing aspects of the whole scrapbook case. Of all the eligible males alive in 1888, our 'hoaxer' homed-in on the most obvious of candidates - yes, the 50 year old well-respected businessman from a prosperous part of Liverpool who had no overt link with the east end of London. It's so obvious, I'm amazed his name didn't come up years earlier!

There are contradictions at every turn in the Maybrick case - some working for him and some working against him. It does your head in at times!

Cheers,

Ike

[Sam Flynn]

"I was clever. George would be proud of me, told the bitch in my position I could not afford a scandal. I struck her several times an eye for an eye, ha ha too many interfering servants, damn the bitches."

The passage comes directly after the reference to the Grand National and is an obvious (a little TOO obvious) reference to the fight later that night, in which the "interfering servants" heard Maybrick scream "such a scandal will be all over town tomorrow." The maid had tried to intercede, etc. It's all in the standard books on the Maybrick case.

Thanks, RP. What immediately follows is a couple of pages of attempted poetry ("Victoria, Victoria, the queen of them all"), and my eyes glazed over. Had they not, I'd have seen that the passage you quoted appearing immediately after the "poem".

I agree with you that the reference to the fight is a little too obvious, and that the info is available in the standard books about the case.

[rjpalmer]

Could you clarify for us all how this passage could have been made LESS obvious (that is, which bits are too obviously flagged to be believable)?

What I mean is this. If the Maybrick Diary was genuine, or even created by a clever forger doing original research, we would expect to find many instances where the diarist strays from all the standard bits that can be found in all the standard retellings of the Maybrick trial. But the diarist doesn't do that. We get precisely what we would expect to get: The Grand National, "Bobo", the interfering Mrs. Yapp, the fight upstairs in the bedroom, Brierley. When it comes to the "Maybrick" bits, the diary never strays from the expected story-line; it's like the hoaxer is merely ticking off boxes. A, B, C, D.

An analogy would be a hoaxer faking the Diary of George Washington, and merely mentioning the cutting down of the cherry tree, the wooden false teeth, crossing the Potomac, and freezing his arse off at Valley Forge. It's too "pat" and too simplistic to be credible. It's clearly based on secondary sources.

By comparison, we know that the real James Maybrick sat several times for a portrait in October 1888. We know Maybrick took an extended walking trip of Wales, sometimes walking as much as 20 miles a day. This took place in early 1889...a big event in anyone's life, but not a whisper of it in the Diary, apparently because the hoaxer, relying strictly on the standard retelling of the Maybrick trial, didn't know about it.

That's what I mean, Ike. Not just this passage. The whole she-bang. It's too pat. Not a whisper of truly obscure knowledge, which would be extraordinary to see in a private journal supposedly hidden for 100 years.