What if the watch is real but the document isn't?

[Mike J. G.]

Just to save me the hassle of looking up something you appear to have abridged, could you clarify for us all what is represented by the ellipsis, please?

I'm sure it was nothing, but it does not to be clarified for the avoidance of any doubt as to what was originally said (a lesson, I believe, much taught by Lord Orsam himself back in the days before his dramatic resignation from the Casebook to spend more time with his family). On an entirely grammatical point, would I be right in saying that an ellipsis starts and ends with a space? (Just asking for a friend.)

That's the exact quote as I found it, Ike, I have abridged absolutely nothing. I literally copy and pasted that passage, I tried to do it in Italics but it didn't work. You can find it in the Maybrick Wiki as it appears above.

The main thrust of your argument around the embedding of aged particles to be later 'discovered' and 'dated' to many decades ago is that those scientists [see what I did there? - used your term to set up an argument against your position] whose speciality was metallurgy made pointless assessments on age [which was the objective of the exercise and what they were being paid to deliver] as they were so desperate to provide the client with a positive outcome that they completely forgot to add "thanks for the cheque ... but, mind, any idiot could also do it with an old school compass and a lot of rags".

The very bloke that did the analysis said it could have been artificially aged using the same process I described. I'm not sure where the mystery here is. He literally says it in his own analysis. The only point of contention is his own belief that it would be difficult to do, despite unwittingly claiming it could be done simply by polishing.

This is akin to "experts" claiming that (insert favourite hoax here) could be done but only by a fella what's really really clever. It's a nonsense. The fact remains, it could be artificially aged, therefore, claiming it couldn't be or wasn't, is a lie.

I deeply distrust any argument that contradicts specialist opinion - not because I believe specialists to always be correct but because I suspect it is more likely that facile retorts are more likely to come from a deeply biased perspective.

Then you deeply distrust the argument made by the very man who did the analysis in the first place, Ike, for it was him who claimed it could be forged, it was just his... wait for it, OPINION, that it would've had to have been done by someone in the know, despite how easily he claimed it could be done: polishing.

Talk about being biased, there's been enough opinion on record that the initials on the watch cannot definitively be aged, yet you and others choose to believe that they could not and were not. That's a deeply biased perspective. I'm simply reading what was written and pointing out how the analysis DID NOT prove the watches initials as genuine. That you find issue with that basic fact isn't my problem, mate.

PS The Maybrick signature on the watch is an extremely good match for the known Maybrick signature on his wedding licence. Is there any need for us to explore how that was possible or should we just conveniently ignore it in the same self-serving way you did (despite supposedly seeking evidence for or against)?

Ike

Is this the same wedding license that doesn't match the diary's writing??? Didn't you claim that there's little evidence James wrote that signature on the license? How can carved initials resemble the written word in a good enough manner as to presume a match?

[Iconoclast]

The very bloke that did the analysis said it could have been artificially aged using the same process I described. I'm not sure where the mystery here is. He literally says it in his own analysis. The only point of contention is his own belief that it would be difficult to do, despite unwittingly claiming it could be done simply by polishing.

Just so we're all clear, the metallurgist who said "But it's fairly easy to polish out some scratches to make them look old and layered" didn't also say "and as for embedding aged particles - well, any idiot just needs an old school compass".

It's interesting how easy it is to be selective, isn't it?

Is this the same wedding license that doesn't match the diary's writing??? Didn't you claim that there's little evidence James wrote that signature on the license?

Stick to the argument, Mike. The signature on the watch is an extremely good facsimile for that on the wedding licence. No need to try to shift focus away from this by suddenly throwing in the scrapbook, now is there? If you can't make your argument stick regarding the licence and the watch, just admit it, and then - if you have to - try your little deflection technique.

By the way, I don't recall claiming that there's little evidence James signed his marriage licence but I'm happy to be corrected. Who do you think did, then? A hoaxer, sneaking in ahead of him? Maybrick: "Oh, no need to sign it - someone's already done a really bad job of it for me".

How can carved initials resemble the written word in a good enough manner as to presume a match?

I've no idea what you mean by this.

[erobitha]

For the benefit of Mike J.G.

A little bit of science for you.

"Stanley Dangar, for reasons I never understood, decided the scratches had been recently engraved and that Bristol and Manchester Universities were wrong. He also believed the watch to be a lady’s watch. He talked to me of a ‘conspiracy’ led by Paul Feldman and he joined in the battle on the Internet to this effect and said that he was arranging simulation tests in Germany to prove that brass particles could easily be embedded in the watch artificially. Those tests did not work. ‘We had a little difficulty,’ he told me later. In fact, by April 1997, the laboratories had still failed to make brass particles stick into gold."
- Shirley Harrison

The nonsense of an old etching tool (e.g. rusty compass) would not leave aged brass particles in the BASE of the engravings. It would leave trace evidence on the sides of the engravings too. The fact the are embedded in the base proves they are of considerable age. Embedded particles. Do you have any idea how big a particle is?

"Dr Wild told Robert Smith privately that he personally felt the scratches could be as old as 1888/9. So both Dr Turgoose and Dr Wild agreed that the likelihood of anyone acquiring the considerable technical and scientific expertise necessary to create scratches that would pass their test was very remote. Both agreed, too, that the scratches were at least several decades old, thus ruling out any possibility that the watch is a modern forgery."

So we have a watch that cannot be a modern forgery based on all of the scientific analysis, unless someone had the necessary skill and equipment to pass the tests - which are very remote. The polishing of the scratches is as relevant to the point of aged brass particles as your squeezey cheese reference.

The above is established scientific fact. On this basis we can conclusively rule the watch out as being a modern forgery. It dates to the latest the 1970s and potentially as far back as the LVP. That is where the watch stands on absolute science today.

Did Maybrick etch it? Well we have no scientific proof. But there are some remarkable similarities to marriage licence, especially with the ornate M, double loop on the K and the loop in the Y.

That's remarkable luck for a 1970s forger long before the advent of the internet.

[Iconoclast]

I tried to do it in Italics but it didn't work.

When you are composing your text, you can highlight the bit you want to italicise and click the slanty I icon on the ribbon at the top of the text box (where you will find lots of formatting options).

Personally, I was a young man of the '80s and learned it the shortcut way:

Control+I = Italics / Italics Off
Control+B = Bold / Bold Off
Control+U = Underline / Underline Off
Control+A = Select All (very handy for when the system automatically logs you out and you risk losing a 30-minute work of art)
Control+C = Copy (also very handy for when the system automatically logs you out and you risk losing a 30-minute work of art)
Control+W = Close Window
Control+Shift+T = Reinstate last closed tab in web browser

Et cetera ...

PS That wasn't an ellipsis - it was just a force of habit ...

[caz]

How can carved initials resemble the written word in a good enough manner as to presume a match?

That might have been a good question, Mike, if it had been worded completely differently.

If I may be so bold, a better question might have been:

How would a hoaxer working in 1993 have set about carving a replica of the real James Maybrick's signature, without even knowing what form he used, let alone having an example in front of him to copy from?

How many gold watches do you think you'd need to deface before carving a signature in a 'good enough manner' to resemble the way, for example, I signed my name on my marriage certificate? Would you agree it couldn't be done, without first having a good idea of how I sign my name and how I form the letters I include?

You seemed to be arguing that this can't be done in a good enough manner to produce an exact match. I'd say that was fair, even for anyone trying to carve their own signature in gold. But I'd go further than that, and suggest that it shouldn't have been possible to carve anything remotely like another person's signature, without a clue what the result should look like.

If you genuinely believe it would be a piece of cake to reproduce what is on that surface, and get similar observations and conclusions from Wild and Turgoose, then put your money where your mouth is and succeed where Stanley "Dangerman" failed. You could start by investing in a gold watch, just like Albert Johnson did, but choose someone else's signature this time, so you aren't influenced by the number of times you have clocked JM's.

Come back when you have some practical experience to share, of how it was for you.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

...and response came there none. Why am I not surprised?

Another stroke of luck to consider, if a hoaxer made the engravings on the back of the early and very limited publicity about the diary, without knowing what JM's signature should look like, or that initials also featured in the diary, is the one that tops the lot.

A timepiece of all things was chosen for their companion hoax, which rather begs the question of whether they knew that Maybrick, cotton merchant and fornicator, had a coat of arms bearing the legend: TEMPUS OMNIA REVELAT before hitting on the ingenious idea of a confessional watch, so that 'time' would literally reveal all.

If I had been the hoaxer and hadn't been aware of that corker, I would have been tickled pink and nobody could have wiped the smile off my face.

Love,

Caz
X

[Mike J. G.]

When you are composing your text, you can highlight the bit you want to italicise and click the slanty I icon on the ribbon at the top of the text box (where you will find lots of formatting options).

Personally, I was a young man of the '80s and learned it the shortcut way:

Control+I = Italics / Italics Off
Control+B = Bold / Bold Off
Control+U = Underline / Underline Off
Control+A = Select All (very handy for when the system automatically logs you out and you risk losing a 30-minute work of art)
Control+C = Copy (also very handy for when the system automatically logs you out and you risk losing a 30-minute work of art)
Control+W = Close Window
Control+Shift+T = Reinstate last closed tab in web browser

Et cetera ...

PS That wasn't an ellipsis - it was just a force of habit ...

Bloody hell, Ike, that's a bit complicated for me, but thank you. Clicking the italics option normally works for me, not sure what was happening that day.

[Mike J. G.]

...and response came there none. Why am I not surprised?

Caz
X

Don't be fooled, Caz, I'm incredibly inconsistent when it comes to posting, but it's not because I'm avoiding the rebuttals to comments that I'm obviously posting with the knowledge that there'll surely be a rebuttal. I'm honestly just not able to be here as much as I'd like.

Ive been reading the "Who Were They" thread, for better or worse. I'm just now reading my notifications. Be cool, Yolanda.

X

[Mike J. G.]

That might have been a good question, Mike, if it had been worded completely differently.

If I may be so bold, a better question might have been:

How would a hoaxer working in 1993 have set about carving a replica of the real James Maybrick's signature, without even knowing what form he used, let alone having an example in front of him to copy from?

How many gold watches do you think you'd need to deface before carving a signature in a 'good enough manner' to resemble the way, for example, I signed my name on my marriage certificate? Would you agree it couldn't be done, without first having a good idea of how I sign my name and how I form the letters I include?

You seemed to be arguing that this can't be done in a good enough manner to produce an exact match. I'd say that was fair, even for anyone trying to carve their own signature in gold. But I'd go further than that, and suggest that it shouldn't have been possible to carve anything remotely like another person's signature, without a clue what the result should look like.

If you genuinely believe it would be a piece of cake to reproduce what is on that surface, and get similar observations and conclusions from Wild and Turgoose, then put your money where your mouth is and succeed where Stanley "Dangerman" failed. You could start by investing in a gold watch, just like Albert Johnson did, but choose someone else's signature this time, so you aren't influenced by the number of times you have clocked JM's.

Come back when you have some practical experience to share, of how it was for you.

Love,

Caz
X

You're working on the assumption that I consider the signature on the watch to actually match the recorded ones we have for Jim, which is a bit fanciful, as I don't really think that they do, but that's me. Assuming that you feel that they match, do you now feel that Jim was Jack, or that it was Jim's watch, and the reason none of the other handwriting matches is because Jim didn't scratch all of the other waffle into it, or what? What's your view on it all?

I think that way too much is being made of very little, and I don't really think that the backstory of said watch is anything to hang your hat on, and if there's anything that does lend it more credibility, I've not seen it, so maybe you can point me in the right direction.

I don't feel anyone needed to sit practicing anything, because I don't feel that the scribble on the watch is anything to write home about in the first place.

[Mike J. G.]

...and response came there none. Why am I not surprised?

Another stroke of luck to consider, if a hoaxer made the engravings on the back of the early and very limited publicity about the diary, without knowing what JM's signature should look like, or that initials also featured in the diary, is the one that tops the lot.

A timepiece of all things was chosen for their companion hoax, which rather begs the question of whether they knew that Maybrick, cotton merchant and fornicator, had a coat of arms bearing the legend: TEMPUS OMNIA REVELAT before hitting on the ingenious idea of a confessional watch, so that 'time' would literally reveal all.

If I had been the hoaxer and hadn't been aware of that corker, I would have been tickled pink and nobody could have wiped the smile off my face.

Love,

Caz
X

Again, does this mean that you now feel that James carved his name into that watch? If so, why does nothing else match his writing? If, say, it was his watch, you've got to accept that the rest of the nonsense carved into wasn't done by his hand, which makes the signature's relevance as it pertains to Jack or the scrapbook pretty null and void, or do you feel that the signature matching Maybrick's means that he could've been Jack after all, despite none of the other stuff including the scrapbook matching his hand?

Playing devil's advocate, best case scenario, it's Jim's watch... What credibility does that lend to the "diary?" Nothing else on there can be linked to Jim, as far as I can see. Nothing in the scrapbook can be linked to him through the handwriting, nor can it be linked to the Dear Boss letter. Yet he's supposed to have scribbled on all three. Where does that leave us?

[Mike J. G.]

By the way, I don't recall claiming that there's little evidence James signed his marriage licence but I'm happy to be corrected. Who do you think did, then? A hoaxer, sneaking in ahead of him? Maybrick: "Oh, no need to sign it - someone's already done a really bad job of it for me".

I believe it's been argued that he had someone else sign things for him whenever he was either too busy or too stuffed with arsenic.



QUOTE=Iconoclast;n771614]I've no idea what you mean by this.[/QUOTE]

I simply meant that the finer details of a person's handwriting as it pertains to a signature cannot be compared to a carving of the same (supposed) signature, if that makes sense, not accurately, IMO.

[Mike J. G.]

I'm posting on my phone in one of the many Poste Houses of Liverpool, so bare with me, folks. I'm not pished, though, I promish.

[Mike J. G.]

For the benefit of Mike J.G.

A little bit of science for you.

"Stanley Dangar, for reasons I never understood, decided the scratches had been recently engraved and that Bristol and Manchester Universities were wrong. He also believed the watch to be a lady’s watch. He talked to me of a ‘conspiracy’ led by Paul Feldman and he joined in the battle on the Internet to this effect and said that he was arranging simulation tests in Germany to prove that brass particles could easily be embedded in the watch artificially. Those tests did not work. ‘We had a little difficulty,’ he told me later. In fact, by April 1997, the laboratories had still failed to make brass particles stick into gold."
- Shirley Harrison

The nonsense of an old etching tool (e.g. rusty compass) would not leave aged brass particles in the BASE of the engravings. It would leave trace evidence on the sides of the engravings too. The fact the are embedded in the base proves they are of considerable age. Embedded particles. Do you have any idea how big a particle is?

"Dr Wild told Robert Smith privately that he personally felt the scratches could be as old as 1888/9. So both Dr Turgoose and Dr Wild agreed that the likelihood of anyone acquiring the considerable technical and scientific expertise necessary to create scratches that would pass their test was very remote. Both agreed, too, that the scratches were at least several decades old, thus ruling out any possibility that the watch is a modern forgery."

So we have a watch that cannot be a modern forgery based on all of the scientific analysis, unless someone had the necessary skill and equipment to pass the tests - which are very remote. The polishing of the scratches is as relevant to the point of aged brass particles as your squeezey cheese reference.

The above is established scientific fact. On this basis we can conclusively rule the watch out as being a modern forgery. It dates to the latest the 1970s and potentially as far back as the LVP. That is where the watch stands on absolute science today.

Did Maybrick etch it? Well we have no scientific proof. But there are some remarkable similarities to marriage licence, especially with the ornate M, double loop on the K and the loop in the Y.

That's remarkable luck for a 1970s forger long before the advent of the internet.

Nothing is established fact as far as the watch or the scrapbook goes, as far as I can tell, besides the problematic fact that none of it matches the hand of the man who is supposed to have been behind both. Now, unless the watch and/or scrapbook is submitted to more rigorous modern testing then we've not got much to go on... along with a provenance that raises more doubts than certainties. If there's some new information out there that would elevate either item into the land of established fact, then I've most definitely not seen it. Last I checked, the jury was most certainly still out on both the watch and the scrapbook being legitimate Victorian relics, and I've not read anything on here that has convinced me otherwise, much less that there's any reason to suspect James Maybrick was behind either of them, and even less that he was Jack the Ripper.

If one or more of these things are conclusively proven, as you claim, then where's the actual proof, not what two men "feel" or "agree" to be true, but the actual scientific proof that the initials on the watch are from the late 1800s and furthermore, that they belong to Jim? I'm still not seeing it. Has there been any modern attempt at looking into these problems? As Ike said in the thread where you're all yelling at one another, there's very little in the way of fact about any of this saga, which is why not many people are in here seriously discussing the likelihood of James Maybrick being either the man who owned the watch and wrote the diary, or that he was the world's most famous serial killer who managed to fool the police, evade capture and navigate the dark London streets, specialised in being a bit of a revolutionary inventor of phrases, a psychic and an expert in disguising one's own hand so much so that he could write several letters, a scrapbook and decorate a pocket watch with multiple styles of writing all while being sauced off his noggin on arsenic, only to then descend into a completely unrelated but famous "murder" case which would put his wife on the world's stage. James lived quite a life, apparently.

"M" is for the mystery he weaved in the land
"A" for the arsenic that didn't trouble his hand
"Y" for the years that his legend will breathe
"B" is the bollocks we're asked to believe
"R" is revolutionary, as he apparently was
"I" really can't fathom how he wrote Dear Boss
"C" for the circus of the whole bloody scene
"K" for the killer that Sir Jim had never been

[erobitha]

Nothing is established fact as far as the watch or the scrapbook goes, as far as I can tell, besides the problematic fact that none of it matches the hand of the man who is supposed to have been behind both. Now, unless the watch and/or scrapbook is submitted to more rigorous modern testing then we've not got much to go on... along with a provenance that raises more doubts than certainties. If there's some new information out there that would elevate either item into the land of established fact, then I've most definitely not seen it. Last I checked, the jury was most certainly still out on both the watch and the scrapbook being legitimate Victorian relics, and I've not read anything on here that has convinced me otherwise, much less that there's any reason to suspect James Maybrick was behind either of them, and even less that he was Jack the Ripper.

If one or more of these things are conclusively proven, as you claim, then where's the actual proof, not what two men "feel" or "agree" to be true, but the actual scientific proof that the initials on the watch are from the late 1800s and furthermore, that they belong to Jim? I'm still not seeing it. Has there been any modern attempt at looking into these problems? As Ike said in the thread where you're all yelling at one another, there's very little in the way of fact about any of this saga, which is why not many people are in here seriously discussing the likelihood of James Maybrick being either the man who owned the watch and wrote the diary, or that he was the world's most famous serial killer who managed to fool the police, evade capture and navigate the dark London streets, specialised in being a bit of a revolutionary inventor of phrases, a psychic and an expert in disguising one's own hand so much so that he could write several letters, a scrapbook and decorate a pocket watch with multiple styles of writing all while being sauced off his noggin on arsenic, only to then descend into a completely unrelated but famous "murder" case which would put his wife on the world's stage. James lived quite a life, apparently.

"M" is for the mystery he weaved in the land
"A" for the arsenic that didn't trouble his hand
"Y" for the years that his legend will breathe
"B" is the bollocks we're asked to believe
"R" is revolutionary, as he apparently was
"I" really can't fathom how he wrote Dear Boss
"C" for the circus of the whole bloody scene
"K" for the killer that Sir Jim had never been

Love to know what modern test will provide "actual scientific proof that the initials on the watch are from the late 1800s". Give me the name of such a test, and I will personally campaign for GoFundMe to pay for it. Why would I not want that to be proven?

My own personal opinion is as the title of this thread says when I originally created this thread. I have a strong belief the diary was hoaxed to support the watch. However, I do not believe the arguments for it being a hoax are as conclusive as others believe, and I, therefore, keep an open mind.

In order for me to work back to find out who and why (definitely not the Barretts), I need to establish that both items came from Battlecrease House. Once that is established, I can see who wrote it and why the diary came to be.

The science of the watch is more robust than the scrapbook, but that doesn't suit your dainty little poem or whatever that is called.

I am all for science, pal. Show me the way.

Are you sure there is no match to Maybrick's handwriting? Hmm, guess I'm not as convinced as you.

[Mike J. G.]

Love to know what modern test will provide "actual scientific proof that the initials on the watch are from the late 1800s". Give me the name of such a test, and I will personally campaign for GoFundMe to pay for it. Why would I not want that to be proven?

My own personal opinion is as the title of this thread says. I have a strong belief the diary was hoaxed to support the watch. In order for me to work back to find out who and why, I need to establish that both items came from Battlecrease House. Once that is established, I can see who and why the diary came to be.

The science of the watch is more robust than the scrapbook, but that doesn't suit your dainty little poem or whatever that is called.

I am all for science, pal. Show me the way.

Are you sure there is no match to Maybrick's handwriting? Hmm, guess I'm not as convinced as you.

That's kind of the point, mate. You seem to be implying that the facts are that the carvings are several decades old, and I'm saying that it's not the established fact at all, and that we really don't know one way or another, which is exactly where we are with the scrapbook. Nowhere. It's all about what you want to believe.

I can't really get behind the idea of the"diary" being hoaxed to support the watch, it just doesn't make much sense to me, so maybe you can explain that to me...

Yes, I don't honestly see any match in handwriting beyond one letter that isn't far off but isn't conclusive evidence for what you're saying here. The writer of the diary seems to lay claim to Dear Boss, whose writing matches another letter, but not the scrapbook, which is a huge issue if you fancy Jim as Jack.

Don't pretend like you didn't smile at my poetry, kemosabe, it's miles better than the scrapbook's attempts

Why so cereal?