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[tanta07]

Fair enough, Caz. Although considering the bizarre, and ever growing, list of supects we have being a "step up" is no great shakes. Particularly as his age at the time of the murders, 50, was far older than any suspect that was described and very old for a fledgling serial killer.

So up a notch for at least having been to London, back down a notch on account of age!

In all seriousness though, we have a diary that isn't even in his own handwriting, and with pretty much zero provenance (or about as much provenance as Amos Simpson's shawl!). Why on earth this piece of nonesense was ever taken seriously in the first place I have bo idea. The mind boggles!

I'm not sure you're looking for a serious answer, but...serious answer? What continues to intrigue me about the diary is that it time after time places the Liverpool cotton merchant in London when the real Maybrick really was in London. Any hoaxer would have to have a bizarrely intimate knowledge of the comings and goings of Maybrick in order to get it right without fail.

I remain fairly "agnostic" about the diary; I'm fascinated with the prospect of it possibly being real, but I'm open to interesting evidence on either side of the debate.

[Iconoclast]

I'm not sure you're looking for a serious answer, but...serious answer? What continues to intrigue me about the diary is that it time after time places the Liverpool cotton merchant in London when the real Maybrick really was in London. Any hoaxer would have to have a bizarrely intimate knowledge of the comings and goings of Maybrick in order to get it right without fail.

I remain fairly "agnostic" about the diary; I'm fascinated with the prospect of it possibly being real, but I'm open to interesting evidence on either side of the debate.

By the Good Lord, you're a brave one tanta07 - risking psychological life and limb coming on here and having an opinion. It's a dangerous world (and that's before I even mention The Switchblade).

Anyway, you'll probably find that the references in the scrapbook to Jimmy being in London are all documented either just in Ryan and - if not - then probably also in Christie and/or Morland and if not one of those then in one of the more obscure trial documents so there'll always be a way out for the Hoax Mob.

I often think that it is a terrible shame (for me) that Martin Fido's 1987 publisher used the Punch cartoon from September 1888 on the back of what became a fairly seminal text on Jack as - if they hadn't - it would have been interesting to see how its presence in the scrapbook would be explained. That's the trouble with the scrapbook, of course, wherever we know it's right, it must have been researched, and wherever the research is missing, the hoaxer must have made it up.

Anyway, tanta07, good post.

Cheers,

Ike

[John G]

I'm not sure you're looking for a serious answer, but...serious answer? What continues to intrigue me about the diary is that it time after time places the Liverpool cotton merchant in London when the real Maybrick really was in London. Any hoaxer would have to have a bizarrely intimate knowledge of the comings and goings of Maybrick in order to get it right without fail.

I remain fairly "agnostic" about the diary; I'm fascinated with the prospect of it possibly being real, but I'm open to interesting evidence on either side of the debate.

I'm not aware of any such connections. Are Maybrick's movement for the period precisely known?

Anyway, there's lots of information about Maybrick in the public domain that would have been freely available to a forger.

[Iconoclast]

I'm not aware of any such connections. Are Maybrick's movement for the period precisely known?

Anyway, there's lots of information about Maybrick in the public domain that would have been freely available to a forger.

And I rest my case, Your Honour ...

[tanta07]

I'm not aware of any such connections. Are Maybrick's movement for the period precisely known?

Anyway, there's lots of information about Maybrick in the public domain that would have been freely available to a forger.

Yes, I suppose it's possible that a dedicated-enough researcher could have accounted for Maybrick's whereabouts every day, and then worked those details into a fake diary. But what I always circle back to is...WHY?

Why go to such extraordinary lengths to frame up a man who otherwise has no business being in a discussion of Ripper suspects?

Was it a complex hoax for Florence to use as a defense of murder charges? If so, why didn't she use it?

It's the WHY question that I can't get around with this cursed diary.

[erobitha]

Yes, I suppose it's possible that a dedicated-enough researcher could have accounted for Maybrick's whereabouts every day, and then worked those details into a fake diary. But what I always circle back to is...WHY?

Why go to such extraordinary lengths to frame up a man who otherwise has no business being in a discussion of Ripper suspects?

Was it a complex hoax for Florence to use as a defense of murder charges? If so, why didn't she use it?

It's the WHY question that I can't get around with this cursed diary.

If you also subscibe to the belief the watch is a hoax too, then you also have another big fat WHY. The Johnson family still have the watch.

[Iconoclast]

If you also subscibe to the belief the watch is a hoax too, then you also have another big fat WHY. The Johnson family still have the watch.

Yes, rather foolishly perhaps refusing that staggeringly-humungous wad of cash the Texan guy offered for the watch.

Still, the Johnsons were wealthy cotton merchants from Liverpool and therefore ... hold on, I'm getting confused here. The Johnson's weren't the accused, silly me. They were totally innocent Liverpudlians who had a very average income and presumably must have been holding-out for a monster payday if they could afford to walk away from a cool $40,000 IIRC.

Ike

[etenguy]

And I rest my case, Your Honour ...

But how was Maybrick identified as a source for a hoax diary? If you start with someone deciding to perpetrate such a hoax, how did they find Maybrick whose movements allowed for the hoax to be played. Possibly sheer luck or some knowledge about Maybrick was sufficient to inspire a hoav, but a bot of a puzzle nonetheless.

[Iconoclast]

But how was Maybrick identified as a source for a hoax diary? If you start with someone deciding to perpetrate such a hoax, how did they find Maybrick whose movements allowed for the hoax to be played. Possibly sheer luck or some knowledge about Maybrick was sufficient to inspire a hoav, but a bot of a puzzle nonetheless.

Hi etenguy,

I suspect that there will never be a categorical proof of who Jack was so - for me (probably because I have a background in it) - the answer is likely to lie in statistics. How unlikely are certain events through mere chance alone? If there are a number of unlikely events surrounding a candidate for Jack, I'd be the first to say that that candidate needs to be taken very seriously indeed.

You touch on this in your post. It is kind of the converse argument: how likely was it that James Maybrick would be chosen as Jack the Ripper and how likely was it that he would fit the bill? I think we all know that the answer to the first question is Very Unlikely Indeed, and the same for the second question.

Once you have accepted that those two things are Extremely Unlikely Indeed (remember, for them both to be true you have to multiply their odds together not simply add them up, so 'Very' quickly becomes 'Extremely') then you can turn to what we know about the evidence and see if anything points towards Maybrick. If Maybrick is innocent, there should be nothing pointing towards Maybrick. If he is guilty, there may be something pointing towards him.

My brilliant Society's Pillar has a brilliant chapter ('An Unreasonable Serendipity') discussing the things which seem to point at Maybrick but should not have pointed at Maybrick were he innocent. It's well worth a quick read, or indeed Pride of Place in the bookshelves you have behind you during your Zoom meetings.

Chief amongst the utterly implausible events which are true regardless of whether Maybrick was Jack or not:

JAmes MaybriCK provides us with the name 'Jack' (possibly why he chose the name)
He left us with a scrapbook of his thoughts and it hasn't been proven to be hoax in 28 long years
He scratched a confession into the back of a watch ("I am Jack") and signed it in a hand more or less exactly as that with which he signed his marriage certificate
Ripper-related rhymes work for Maynrick
Ripper-related letters with strange phrases fit conveniently into a Maybrick matrix
The GSG contains cryptic references to not only James but also to his brothers and errant wife (like he was innocent!)
The Diego Laurenz postcard to a Liverpool newspaper points directly towards 'James' and 'Florence'

I could go on, and I can already foresee the predictable rejoinders from the Hoax Mob (whose favourite trick is to take one item from a long list, diss that, and then move on, conveniently ignoring the weight of the rest).

The question you need to ask is further to the ones you did ask: if James Maybrick were innocent of the Whitechapel crimes, how likely is it that any of the supporting evidence would have existed (never mind all of it)?

Cheers,

Ike

[caz]

By the Good Lord, you're a brave one tanta07 - risking psychological life and limb coming on here and having an opinion. It's a dangerous world (and that's before I even mention The Switchblade).

Anyway, you'll probably find that the references in the scrapbook to Jimmy being in London are all documented either just in Ryan and - if not - then probably also in Christie and/or Morland and if not one of those then in one of the more obscure trial documents so there'll always be a way out for the Hoax Mob.

I often think that it is a terrible shame (for me) that Martin Fido's 1987 publisher used the Punch cartoon from September 1888 on the back of what became a fairly seminal text on Jack as - if they hadn't - it would have been interesting to see how its presence in the scrapbook would be explained. That's the trouble with the scrapbook, of course, wherever we know it's right, it must have been researched, and wherever the research is missing, the hoaxer must have made it up.

Anyway, tanta07, good post.

Cheers,

Ike

Afternoon Two-likes Ike,

I'm sure I'll be corrected if I'm wrong, but presumably RJ would argue that Bongo 'just made up' the infidelities of Sir Jim [with his mistress] and Bunny [with at least two whore masters], because he needed a motive for James to be dashing down to 'that London' between August and November 1888 to down whores.

I don't think [and again, I'm happy to be corrected] Bernard Ryan mentions Sarah Robertson, or even the fact that James had a mistress, or that Florie flirted outrageously with anything in trousers, or had any more than a brief fling with just the one silly billy, randy Alf. They stayed at Flatmans Hotel, where the many cotton men who frequented the place would have instantly recognised the naughty pair as Alfred Brierley and Mrs Florence Maybrick, despite her booking a room in the names of Mr & Mrs Tom Maybrick of Manchester. And of course, there were those love letters to Flo from Edwin and Mr 'Williams' [Bongo using his alias in a past life no doubt], which were found during a search of her effects, but apparently suppressed by the Maybrick brothers.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

I'm not aware of any such connections. Are Maybrick's movement for the period precisely known?

Anyway, there's lots of information about Maybrick in the public domain that would have been freely available to a forger.

Hoaxer, not forger, John. Get with the zeitgeist. RJ Palmer wants it known that this was only a hoax, not a forgery, because it makes it easier to explain why the Barretts knew it didn't matter that the handwriting would look nothing like Maybrick's.

Has anyone checked Caroline Barrett's handwriting? In April 1992 there were only three people in that house in Goldie Street, and she was a witness to the diary being transferred into the scrapbook from Bongo's word 'prosser'. Caroline would have been ten and a half, so could have done a much better job of it than her Dad.

Of course, back in the real world, what Caroline actually witnessed was her Mum typing up a transcript from the Maybrick diary, using the word processor they'd had since 1986.

Love,

Caz
X

[Iconoclast]

Afternoon Two-likes Ike,

I'm sure I'll be corrected if I'm wrong, but presumably RJ would argue that Bongo 'just made up' the infidelities of Sir Jim [with his mistress] and Bunny [with at least two whore masters], because he needed a motive for James to be dashing down to 'that London' between August and November 1888 to down whores.

I don't think [and again, I'm happy to be corrected] Bernard Ryan mentions Sarah Robertson, or even the fact that James had a mistress, or that Florie flirted outrageously with anything in trousers, or had any more than a brief fling with just the one silly billy, randy Alf. They stayed at Flatmans Hotel, where the many cotton men who frequented the place would have instantly recognised the naughty pair as Alfred Brierley and Mrs Florence Maybrick, despite her booking a room in the names of Mr & Mrs Tom Maybrick of Manchester. And of course, there were those love letters to Flo from Edwin and Mr 'Williams' [Bongo using his alias in a past life no doubt], which were found during a search of her effects, but apparently suppressed by the Maybrick brothers.

Love,

Caz
X

Hi Caz,

You make an interesting observation and - for all I know - also made it in your excellent Ripper Diary: The Inside Story which you may have noticed I called something else entirely yesterday and thereby risked the ire of the tiger. Gulp.

Anyway, I can't be certain if Sarah appears in Ryan but she certainly doesn't appear in the Index in Ryan which implies to me that Ryan knew little - if anything - of said lady in Old Landarn Tearn.

Interestingly, there is a Clara Morris in the Index of Ryan. A long-lost relly, I wonder?

Cheers,

Ike

[caz]

Yes, I suppose it's possible that a dedicated-enough researcher could have accounted for Maybrick's whereabouts every day, and then worked those details into a fake diary. But what I always circle back to is...WHY?

Why go to such extraordinary lengths to frame up a man who otherwise has no business being in a discussion of Ripper suspects?

Was it a complex hoax for Florence to use as a defense of murder charges? If so, why didn't she use it?

It's the WHY question that I can't get around with this cursed diary.

Yes, me too, tanta, although the diary doesn't do many favours for Florence either. It's as if someone found the Maybrick affair rotten to the core, and wanted to do a number on the whole ghastly crew.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Hi Caz,

You make an interesting observation and - for all I know - also made it in your excellent Ripper Diary: The Inside Story which you may have noticed I called something else entirely yesterday and thereby risked the ire of the tiger. Gulp.

Anyway, I can't be certain if Sarah appears in Ryan but she certainly doesn't appear in the Index in Ryan which implies to me that Ryan knew little - if anything - of said lady in Old Landarn Tearn.

Interestingly, there is a Clara Morris in the Index of Ryan. A long-lost relly, I wonder?

Cheers,

Ike

Not a relly of mine, Ike. It would have to be a relly of my ex.

Thought of him last night actually [not in that way], because back in 1992 our only daughter was at primary school, like Caroline Barrett, and my ex was always a pisshead, like Bongo - only with nothing else in common. He was earning a good crust and wanted me to stay at home and be a full time Mum, so I had time on my hands. But strange to report, it never dawned on either of us what a wizard wheeze it would be to research and create a literary hoax, to identify Jack the Ripper as someone who lived over 200 miles away from London, and whose life was very well documented due to the circumstances of his death. At the time, I was designing my own knitwear for kids of my daughter's age, and trying my hand at making patchwork quilts. When hubby came home he was far too tired to join me in a spot of hoax creation for profit or pleasure. He'd be snoring his head off by 9 after his usual skinful, while I'd be looking round for a blunt instrument.

If our daughter hadn't chosen the London Dungeon for her 11th birthday treat, I wouldn't have seen Feldy's book in the shop and wondered why the hell a diary that had surfaced in 1992 was still being written about in 1998.

And I wouldn't be here now, still wondering.

Love,

Caz
X

[Harry D]

JAmes MaybriCK provides us with the name 'Jack' (possibly why he chose the name)
He left us with a scrapbook of his thoughts and it hasn't been proven to be hoax in 28 long years
He scratched a confession into the back of a watch ("I am Jack") and signed it in a hand more or less exactly as that with which he signed his marriage certificate
Ripper-related rhymes work for Maynrick
Ripper-related letters with strange phrases fit conveniently into a Maybrick matrix
The GSG contains cryptic references to not only James but also to his brothers and errant wife (like he was innocent!)
The Diego Laurenz postcard to a Liverpool newspaper points directly towards 'James' and 'Florence'