The Diary—Old Hoax or New?

[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

[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]

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

[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.

[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]

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.

[Iconoclast]

I can overlook Maybrick not mentioning his new bicycle (as per Dolgin and Jones) or even an extensive walking tour of Wales, etc. ...

Interestingly enough, Jimmy Maybrick had quite a busy day that day as he must have attended his very best friend's funeral, wept openly at the wake at the tragic loss of his soulmate, and still had time to nip down to Wales for the start of that walking tour.

The day of the funeral (23/02/1889), JM left for Llangollen, North Wales with his friends, it seems. The trip in those days must have taken a good three hours or more - it would take one hour seventeen minutes to drive it today so you can imagine how long a horse-drawn carriage would have taken which does rather beg the question whether he even attended Johnny Pigott's last hurrah at all? I guess he and his other BFFs may have taken a train, of course (assuming the stations today were mirrored by the stations back then), which today would have taken some two hours and twenty minutes. He could have attended the funeral starting at 11am and still made it to North Wales by day's end, but it's also possible that he actually skipped it. Where did the attendee lists at funerals come from is an obvious question to ponder?

How religiously did Maybrick write in his treasured and only possible book of thoughts? In February and March 1889, not particularly often? And - if you're not writing - you're not recording. Ipso facto, and all that.

Nevertheless, there was nothing to prevent him from recording these events in his conventional diary back in his library back home in Battlecrease - you know, the one we no longer have a record of but which could easily have existed (and may yet still do so)?

By the way, Pigott's death was positively Castlereaghian in spirit. The coroner pronounced Castlereagh's in 1822 an act of insanity. Perhaps it wasn't that unusual in the 19th century?

Ike

[rjpalmer]

The day of the funeral (23/02/1889), JM left for Llangollen, North Wales with his friends, it seems. The trip in those days must have taken a good three hours or more - it would take one hour seventeen minutes to drive it today so you can imagine how long a horse-drawn carriage would have taken which does rather beg the question whether he even attended Johnny Pigott's last hurrah at all? I guess he and his other BFFs may have taken a train, of course (assuming the stations today were mirrored by the stations back then), which today would have taken some two hours and twenty minutes. He could have attended the funeral starting at 11am and still made it to North Wales by day's end, but it's also possible that he actually skipped it. Where did the attendee lists at funerals come from is an obvious question to ponder?

The burial was on 16 February 1889--the previous Saturday. The date of the newspaper article was 23 February (Saturday) so it is referring to the previous weekend.

John Pigott (1835-1889) Baptized at Loughton, Yorkshire, 16 Mar 1835, son of James and Hannah PIGOTT; married Mary Jane WATERS; buried 16 February, aged 68 years; of Fernley, Grassendale.

Source: Find a Grave.com

Always happy to help, Old Bean.

Yours, Mr. Muddy-Mud.

[caz]

Interestingly enough, Jimmy Maybrick had quite a busy day that day as he must have attended his very best friend's funeral, wept openly at the wake at the tragic loss of his soulmate, and still had time to nip down to Wales for the start of that walking tour.

The day of the funeral (23/02/1889), JM left for Llangollen, North Wales with his friends, it seems. The trip in those days must have taken a good three hours or more - it would take one hour seventeen minutes to drive it today so you can imagine how long a horse-drawn carriage would have taken which does rather beg the question whether he even attended Johnny Pigott's last hurrah at all? I guess he and his other BFFs may have taken a train, of course (assuming the stations today were mirrored by the stations back then), which today would have taken some two hours and twenty minutes. He could have attended the funeral starting at 11am and still made it to North Wales by day's end, but it's also possible that he actually skipped it. Where did the attendee lists at funerals come from is an obvious question to ponder?

How religiously did Maybrick write in his treasured and only possible book of thoughts? In February and March 1889, not particularly often? And - if you're not writing - you're not recording. Ipso facto, and all that.

Nevertheless, there was nothing to prevent him from recording these events in his conventional diary back in his library back home in Battlecrease - you know, the one we no longer have a record of but which could easily have existed (and may yet still do so)?

By the way, Pigott's death was positively Castlereaghian in spirit. The coroner pronounced Castlereagh's in 1822 an act of insanity. Perhaps it wasn't that unusual in the 19th century?

Ike

Well, Ike, at least Palmer has finally managed to spell poor old Pigott's surname correctly.

From a storyteller's point of view, 'Sir Jim' is hardly likely to have taken his confessional diary with him on that walking tour with friends, which looks like it was a belated and unsuccessful attempt to turn his failing health around. This was arguably occupying his thoughts more and more as 1889 progressed, and of course there were no new ripper murders for 'Sir Jim' to crow about in his private journal either.

'Sir Jim' spends little time thinking about the people around him, aside from 'the whore' and her 'whoremaster'. When he does it's usually in a negative context: Mrs Hammersmith is an interfering bitch; he wants to rip Lowry a new one; he's jealous of Michael's talents; his doctor is a meddlesome buffoon. Even his children distract him from ripping and he takes cruel pleasure in scaring them. His closest friend George gets the odd brief mention, as does his mistress. So it would have been in keeping for 'Sir Jim' to have spared little or no thought for Pigott and his sad fate, as having no impact on him personally. This is all about him, and blaming others for making him who he is.

I'm not sure why Palmer wants to go down the psychology garden path anyway if he plans to ask Anne all about her fictional story-cum-sales gimmick. He'd be better off sticking with the handwriting, and hoping that Anne will reveal the secret to disguising her own hand and giving it a mock-Victorian look. Why does Palmer give a rat's arse about Pigott, any more than 'Sir Jim' does in Anne's storytelling?