The Diary—Old Hoax or New?

[Mike J. G.]

I'll add that Anne's remarks about not wanting to talk about certain things just seemed a bit like weak deflections. I get that her marriage was far from happy, but you're out in the public eye making bold claims, so you've got to be prepared to answer questions that relate to the claims that you're making, and her family provenance stories just didn't sound at all convincing to me.

But then, the scrapbook under the floorboards provenance doesn't add up for me, either. Too many leaps of the imagination are needed to get that scrapbook from under the floorboards, into an unnamed university and then into the Saddle.

It's anyone's guess where it actually came from and when, but it's hard to make the argument that it was written by James.

[erobitha]

I'll add that Anne's remarks about not wanting to talk about certain things just seemed a bit like weak deflections. I get that her marriage was far from happy, but you're out in the public eye making bold claims, so you've got to be prepared to answer questions that relate to the claims that you're making, and her family provenance stories just didn't sound at all convincing to me.

But then, the scrapbook under the floorboards provenance doesn't add up for me, either. Too many leaps of the imagination are needed to get that scrapbook from under the floorboards, into an unnamed university and then into the Saddle.

It's anyone's guess where it actually came from and when, but it's hard to make the argument that it was written by James.

I have my own theories and views, but I support Keith Skinner in when he says we should be trying to establish exactly where it came from first before we make any leaps to who wrote it. In my own theory I ignore him completely, but he is actually right. If the diary can be proven to been in Battlecrease House on the 9th March 1992, does it mean it was there on the 8th of March 1992? A year before? Ten years before? A century before? This opens up a whole new stream of investigation before we are even close to using this as the smoking gun of it being James Maybrick who wrote it. Which I don't believe he did.

Based on the weight of evidence today, the Battlecrease provenance has the most going for it. It is by no means conclusive, but we have too much circumstantial and testimonial evidence to ignore. We have statements from other electricians and independent witnesses that point the finger at Battlecrease. We have the double event on the 9th of March 1992. We have the coincidence of The Saddle being two doors down from Eddie Lyons and where Mike drank daily.

With Anne's story we have her and her dying father's statements.

Then, of course, we have the theory favoured by many, a Barrett hoax with or without Anne. No evidence at all to support this, except a retracted "confession" with no actual proof Mike successfully purchased anything that was used to create the "hoax".

It's all unsatisfactory.

[Mike J. G.]

I have my own theories and views, but I support Keith Skinner in when he says we should be trying to establish exactly where it came from first before we make any leaps to who wrote it. In my own theory I ignore him completely, but he is actually right. If the diary can be proven to been in Battlecrease House on the 9th March 1992, does it mean it was there on the 8th of March 1992? A year before? Ten years before? A century before? This opens up a whole new stream of investigation before we are even close to using this as the smoking gun of it being James Maybrick who wrote it. Which I don't believe he did.

Based on the weight of evidence today, the Battlecrease provenance has the most going for it. It is by no means conclusive, but we have too much circumstantial and testimonial evidence to ignore. We have statements from other electricians and independent witnesses that point the finger at Battlecrease. We have the double event on the 9th of March 1992. We have the coincidence of The Saddle being two doors down from Eddie Lyons and where Mike drank daily.

With Anne's story we have her and her dying father's statements.

Then, of course, we have the theory favoured by many, a Barrett hoax with or without Anne. No evidence at all to support this, except a retracted "confession" with no actual proof Mike successfully purchased anything that was used to create the "hoax".

It's all unsatisfactory.

I'd definitely like to know where it came from, but the Battlecrease provenance, for me, doesn't add up and I tend to agree with Chris Jones's comments regarding the whole story about that.

I think many of us, if not all besides Ike, believe that it wasn't written by James Maybrick, but someone wrote it and it somehow ended up with Mike. I've said before, I'm open to the idea of an older hoax, and I'm even open to the idea of a Battlecrease provenance, but I just don't find it convincing and I've laid out my reasoning in other threads.

And therein lies the problem with all of this, we're no further along in the mystery after all this time and I personally don't think we'll ever know. And even if we got someone like Anne spilling the beans, would everyone buy it?

Anne might have been telling the truth, but once you muddy the waters with a load of imaginative waffle then you've shot your credibility down the pan.

Her suggestion that she gave the scrapbook to Tony so that Tony could give it to Mike is and was goofy. And when she was asked "why" and she said something along the lines of "I'd rather not talk about it" you just knew she was chatting bollocks. She comes across in the radio Merseyside interview like a giggling schoolgirl, and her explanations are in no way convincing to me, but that's just me, I don't know the woman.

We'll never know. But we'll all make our own minds up as we see fit. Jim didn't write it. It's only fair to say that it doesn't match Mike nor Anne's handwriting, but Mike was the person who introduced it to the world, and so he was undoubtedly involved on some level, great or small. Nobody else besides Mike and Anne were talking... So it's either from an unknown person or persons... Or one of the many dodgy provenance stories are true, so pick one.

At any rate, James Maybrick was not Jack the Ripper, imo.

[erobitha]

We'll never know. But we'll all make our own minds up as we see fit. Jim didn't write it. It's only fair to say that it doesn't match Mike nor Anne's handwriting, but Mike was the person who introduced it to the world, and so he was undoubtedly involved on some level, great or small. Nobody else besides Mike and Anne were talking... So it's either from an unknown person or persons... Or one of the many dodgy provenance stories are true, so pick one.

At any rate, James Maybrick was not Jack the Ripper, imo.

Which of the provenance stories is the most dodgiest one for you? I'd be interested to see you list your thoughts from "dodgiest" to "least dodgiest".

[Mike J. G.]

Which of the provenance stories is the most dodgiest one for you? I'd be interested to see you list your thoughts from "dodgiest" to "least dodgiest".

They're all pretty dodgy, to be fair.

That's the problem with things of a questionable nature, that are too good to be true and come from questionable sources.