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

[erobitha]

Hi ero,

I do think those who have managed to convince themselves that the diary is a Barrett hoax are cutting off their own blood supply to alternatives. If they can't make the watch work as a 1993 Johnson brothers production - and I don't see how they ever will - their best bet would surely be to give up on the nonsense that has the diary being created on a dining table in Goldie Street, between 1st and 13th April 1992, and focus on it having been written at any time up until 8th March 1992 by someone who already knew about the watch and its engravings, before it ended up in the jeweller's shop across the Mersey.

Love,

Caz
X

100% spot on.

[caz]

The facts are that scientists have said that the engravings are several decades old. The caveat in Turgoose's case is arse-covering fear of the "multi-stage process" - just in case. Do you think Albert or Robbie Johnson could pull that off? Turgoose himself said he couldn't. But a couple of scally scousers did?

So if the carvings in 1993 and 1994 were several decades old, means it cannot be a modern hoax. I am not making claims on anything to do with the diary.

Clearly, you struggle with the fact the watch might not be a hoax. I don't think my theory would make any difference to you right now, so I'll keep it to myself. For now, I am focused on establishing that both items came from Battlecrease House in March 1992, and then I will gladly furnish you with my thoughts if you give a toss at that point. It's way beyond most people's comprehension at the moment. One step at a time, eh?

I agree with you that more evidence would be helpful, but then as Albert once said, "We could go on forever testing the watch, but it will never please some people."

Maybe the provenance angle will open up more minds if we are able to acquire some fresher information. I doubt it.

I'm not a special K. But I do know a few.

Hi ero,

I do think those who have managed to convince themselves that the diary is a Barrett hoax are cutting off their own blood supply to alternatives. If they can't make the watch work as a 1993 Johnson brothers production - and I don't see how they ever will - their best bet would surely be to give up on the nonsense that has the diary being created on a dining table in Goldie Street, between 1st and 13th April 1992, and focus on it having been written at any time up until 8th March 1992 by someone who already knew about the watch and its engravings, before it ended up in the jeweller's shop across the Mersey.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

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.

I hope you didn't bare all and get yourself arrested, Mike.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

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.

No assumptions from me on this one, Mike. My point was very simple but I'll try to phrase it in another way:

You have a gold watch which you wish to deface with someone - anyone - else's signature. It doesn't matter whose signature you will be attempting to forge, but you don't actually know how that person signed their name, and you have no easy access to an example known to be genuine, which would have given you the form and style they always used [eg J Bloggs/Joe Bloggs/Joseph Bloggs/JH Bloggs/Joe H Bloggs/Joseph H Bloggs/J Harry Bloggs/Joe Harry Bloggs/Joseph Harry Bloggs/or just JB followed by an indecipherable squiggle - I'm sure you could think of more combinations, but you get the drift], which you could then have had a stab at copying.

So it doesn't actually matter for this exercise whether or not we think the Maybrick signature in the watch is a match for the real thing, or a fair likeness or a poor one. What matters is how a Johnson brother hoaxing the watch in 1993 could be expected to have got the basic form and style of signature correct for Jim Maybrick [if not to reproduce an identical signature in gold, to those written on paper with pen and ink by the old devil himself], unless it is being argued that Albert or Robbie Johnson got access to genuine examples before one of them set to work.

Oh, and before he set to work with his chosen engraving tool, this 1993 hoaxer also apparently managed to do what the Murphys had failed to do the previous year. They had used jeweller's rouge in early 1992 to try and reduce the appearance of visible scratch marks on the same surface where the Maybrick signature etc would be found the following year by Albert's workmates. The scientific reports later proved that there were no scratches visible, even at the microscopic level, beneath the suspicious markings. So if the jeweller's rouge didn't manage to remove every last trace of the harmless scratches seen in 1992, the hoaxer must have used some miracle product the Murphys knew nothing about.

I just can't make this one work, and I have yet to see it being made to work by anyone who believes in a 1993 bandwagon hoax.

Love,

Caz
X

[erobitha]

Damn, mate. You’re a better poet than Barrett.

Speaking of bollocks we are asked to believe…

Have you ever asked yourself why James Maybrick needed to secretly sign his own watch? Did he think he might forget that it was his, or what his own name was?

Or is it more obviously the work of a third party who is furiously signaling to the gullible of the world, “Look everybody, it’s Jim Maybrick’s watch!”

”And if he didn’t so convenient sign it, we’d have no way of knowing that!”

Think about it. It’s fairly stupid, isn’t it? He knew whose watch it was, didn’t he?

Instead of the “inconvenient truth,” maybe we should call it the “wildly convenient signature.”

Anyway, good luck in your travels, and enjoy your time outside the asylum.

A confession is stupid is it? Of course he didn’t scratch his name in the watch for his own benefit. He wanted history to find it. He wanted the world to know posthumously who he was.

It is entirely plausible the thing he confessed to Florence just before he died which scared her, may have exactly been that.

We don’t know yet how the watch left Verity’s workshop (Leeds or Lancaster depending on which watchmaker you think made it) and eventually found it’s way into Albert Johnson’s possession.

For all we know, Maybrick could have done it as a macabre practical joke for idiots like me to latch on to 135 years later. However, we know that can’t be true as at the time they (press or police) were not claiming these victims as the only victims of JtR. So it has to be real or a modern enough hoax.

We still have much to learn.

[rjpalmer]

"B" is the bollocks we're asked to believe

Damn, mate. You’re a better poet than Barrett.

Speaking of bollocks we are asked to believe…

Have you ever asked yourself why James Maybrick needed to secretly sign his own watch? Did he think he might forget that it was his, or what his own name was?

Or is it more obviously the work of a third party who is furiously signaling to the gullible of the world, “Look everybody, it’s Jim Maybrick’s watch!”

”And if he didn’t so convenient sign it, we’d have no way of knowing that!”

Think about it. It’s fairly stupid, isn’t it? He knew whose watch it was, didn’t he?

Instead of the “inconvenient truth,” maybe we should call it the “wildly convenient signature.”

Anyway, good luck in your travels, and enjoy your time outside the asylum.

[erobitha]

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?

The facts are that scientists have said that the engravings are several decades old. The caveat in Turgoose's case is arse-covering fear of the "multi-stage process" - just in case. Do you think Albert or Robbie Johnson could pull that off? Turgoose himself said he couldn't. But a couple of scally scousers did?

So if the carvings in 1993 and 1994 were several decades old, means it cannot be a modern hoax. I am not making claims on anything to do with the diary.

Clearly, you struggle with the fact the watch might not be a hoax. I don't think my theory would make any difference to you right now, so I'll keep it to myself. For now, I am focused on establishing that both items came from Battlecrease House in March 1992, and then I will gladly furnish you with my thoughts if you give a toss at that point. It's way beyond most people's comprehension at the moment. One step at a time, eh?

I agree with you that more evidence would be helpful, but then as Albert once said, "We could go on forever testing the watch, but it will never please some people."

Maybe the provenance angle will open up more minds if we are able to acquire some fresher information. I doubt it.

I'm not a special K. But I do know a few.

[Mike J. G.]

Anyway, it's Saturday! Been lovely catching up with you strange folks, I'll be back soon. This wasn't a one-off visit.

And, play nice, this nonsense isn't worth topping oneself over, y'know? Take refreshment over at your local Poste House and enjoy your weekend, you arsenics.

[Mike J. G.]

For the benefit of Mike J.G.

A little bit of science for you.


"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.

I fail to see where the personal beliefs of two scientists becomes established scientific fact, especially when you suggest in the same paragraph that a forgery cannot be ruled out.

So would it have been impossible for the carvings to have been more modern? If not, then that's not established scientific fact, is it?

The truth, as far as I can see, is that the carvings are not conclusively proven to be from the time period in which they're supposed to be from. That's about as far away from established scientific fact as one can get. It's just yet more uncertainty in an already swelling sea of uncertainty.

[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?

[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.]

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

[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.]

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.]

...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?