The Diary—Old Hoax or New?

[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.