The Diary—Old Hoax or New?

[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.