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[c.d.]

Hello Abby,

I'm guessing you had no trouble finding the Vous.

c.d.

[Abby Normal]

Hello Abby,

I'm guessing you had no trouble finding the Vous.

c.d.

nope one of the first places i learned to get to! lol

[John G]

James Maybrick spent a number of years as a shipping clerk in the docklands, which is close to the East End. He shacked up with Sarah Ann Robertson who has lived in and around Whitechapel most of her adult life and he also did business for Witt in London - where his offices were close to Whitechapel. How anyone can with a straight face say “We don’t even know Maybrick even visited Whitechapel” is certainly beyond my abilities of comprehension. He did. And quite often in his lifetime.

This is completely wrong. Sarah Robertson didn't live in Whitecapel, although she did, on occasion, style herself Sarah Maybrick. Nonetheless, no marriage certificate has ever been found.

And there's zero evidence that any James Maybrick ever lived with Sarah. In fact, the census records show the complete opposite. For example, in 1871, she was living in Stepney with her aunt and her aunt's new husband under the name Sarah Maybrick. No James Maybrick living at the address.

To summarize, no evidence that Maybrick ever visited Whitechapel, no evidence he was remotely familiar with the area. Not even in the 1860s and 1870s, let alone 20 to 30 years later!

[The Baron]

Now I realised I may know what kind of Error David Orsam has found, It must be a mistake done by the forger while blindly copying from a false source.

Whatever it is, I am sure Orsam will crack again the earth under all the Diary defenders and leave them in a total void.


The Baron

[erobitha]

This is completely wrong. Sarah Robertson didn't live in Whitecapel, although she did, on occasion, style herself Sarah Maybrick. Nonetheless, no marriage certificate has ever been found.

And there's zero evidence that any James Maybrick ever lived with Sarah. In fact, the census records show the complete opposite. For example, in 1871, she was living in Stepney with her aunt and her aunt's new husband under the name Sarah Maybrick. No James Maybrick living at the address.

To summarize, no evidence that Maybrick ever visited Whitechapel, no evidence he was remotely familiar with the area. Not even in the 1860s and 1870s, let alone 20 to 30 years later!

Skip over his career as a shipping clerk and his time doing business for Witt. As for Sarah Ann Robertson there is evidence they may have had numerous children together. So was he an early advocate of the ‘baby daddy’ set that was to become fashionable 150 years later? Ahead of his time. He appeared married enough for her family to name Sarah Ann as wife of James Maybrick. Albeit no official records exist but her family believed it so.

Stepney is a whopping 1.4m from the centre of Whitechapel. You are seriously suggesting he just circumnavigated Whitechapel for pretty much his entire twenties without ever venturing into it? To summarise, probably best you stick to the census and I will stick to good old fashioned logic.

[erobitha]

Now I realised I may know what kind of Error David Orsam has found, It must be a mistake done by the forger while blindly copying from a false source.

Whatever it is, I am sure Orsam will crack again the earth under all the Diary defenders and leave them in a total void.


The Baron

Cheers Dave.

[The Baron]

Cheers Dave.

I demand a new updated and redacted version of the Diary where all those known errors been addressed and corrected.

The 1992 version is outdated for new customers.


The Baron

[John G]

Skip over his career as a shipping clerk and his time doing business for Witt. As for Sarah Ann Robertson there is evidence they may have had numerous children together. So was he an early advocate of the ‘baby daddy’ set that was to become fashionable 150 years later? Ahead of his time. He appeared married enough for her family to name Sarah Ann as wife of James Maybrick. Albeit no official records exist but her family believed it so.

Stepney is a whopping 1.4m from the centre of Whitechapel. You are seriously suggesting he just circumnavigated Whitechapel for pretty much his entire twenties without ever venturing into it? To summarise, probably best you stick to the census and I will stick to good old fashioned logic.

What's logical about that? It's just more Diary Dreaming. There is no evidence whatsoever that he "just stepped into" Whitechapel, a notorious district and a complete labyrinth (frankly, he'd have to be crazy to take such a risk. And for what purpose?). Let alone that he would be familiar with Whitechapel, as the killer almost certainly was, 20 years later.

Still, at least your no longer claiming that he lived there!

There is no evidence that he lived with Sarah Robertson, in fact, the census records prove otherwise. And no evidence that he was married to Sarah Robertson, regardless of what fanciful notions her family may have had. Moreover, Sarah did not challenge his marriage to Florence, which would have been bigamist.

Let's face it, the diary is an obvious fake, with zero provenance and zero credibility. And I'm afraid it's just this sort of nonesense that gives the subject of Ripperology a bad name.

[erobitha]

What's logical about that? It's just more Diary Dreaming. There is no evidence whatsoever that he "just stepped into" Whitechapel, a notorious district and a complete labyrinth (frankly, he'd have to be crazy to take such a risk. And for what purpose?). Let alone that he would be familiar with Whitechapel, as the killer almost certainly was, 20 years later.

Still, at least your no longer claiming that he lived there!

There is no evidence that he lived with Sarah Robertson, in fact, the census records prove otherwise. And no evidence that he was married to Sarah Robertson, regardless of what fanciful notions her family may have had. Moreover, Sarah did not challenge his marriage to Florence, which would have been bigamist.

Let's face it, the diary is an obvious fake, with zero provenance and zero credibility. And I'm afraid it's just this sort of nonesense that gives the subject of Ripperology a bad name.

This might shock you, I do not care if ‘ripperlogy’ gets a bad name. I simply care for the truth and wherever that leads. If you limit your thinking to census records and marriage certificates as the only evidence that matters you will never find the truth of the Ripper murders. It requires an ability to assess all of the information available, including testimony of family members, witnesses, news paper reports, circumstantial evidence, psychological profiling and unusual artefacts that pop up. It’s very easy to dismiss me as a ‘Diary Dreamer’ but the watch for me makes him a viable suspect. There is a chance the scrapbook was faked (if it can be categorically proven by science and overwhelming literary evidence - its nowhere near that yet) but it also doesn’t mean he didn’t do it. The watch is dismissed ironically through timing but re-read all the experts reports and show me where any of them believe the scratches to be modern. They don’t because they are not. Logic suggests the watch pre-dates the scrapbook find by at least 20 years. The hoaxers waited at least 20 years to create a hoax diary to support their hoax watch? That’s playing the long game. Or the watch is real and Maybrick in effect confesses via a watch. A man obsessed with time. I can’t rule out he wrongly confessed, but logic suggests unlikely. His signature is uncanny on the watch to his marriage certificate. But it’s not in the census, so maybe you are right.

[caz]

Anyway, the evidence is overwhelming that JtR was a local man with local knowledge . All of his activities were centred in an area of just one square mile, and even a greatly increased police presence didn't lead to him expanding this boundary. Put simply, he targetted victims in the area he was comfortable with. And the fact that Maybrick may have lived near to Whitechapel 24 years earlier does not qualify him as a local man with local knowledge. Neither does having a brother who lived in London.

I think, John, you illustrate very well the fact that there has ALWAYS been, and ALWAYS will be strong disagreement between everyone interested in the ripper case, over issues such as local versus commuter, dirt poor versus relatively prosperous, foreign versus English, sane versus insane, Jewish versus Gentile - the list goes on and on, and we have all argued over the many permutations for years here on these very message boards.

This is just one of many reasons why the very last thing I'd have wanted to do, in the early 90s, in the wake of the Hitler diaries, and with zero experience or expertise in the field of literary hoaxes, would have been to write a fake diary of Jack the Scouser, in handwriting that was nothing like the Liverpudlian cotton merchant I was attempting to portray as the Whitechapel Murderer, and then take it to London myself with the ink barely dry. I'd have had to be off my jolly old chump.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

MacNaghten makes for a better suspect than Maybrick.

You can be sure some of the Diary defenders don't know who Macnaghten was.


The Baron

You can't even spell his surname consistently!

[caz]

Yes, Erobitha, you're dreaming that.

It was Anne Graham who made the flimsy excuse that Mike wanted to know what a genuine Victorian diary looked like. First off, there is no evidence that Graham even knew that Barrett made this purchase until well after-the-fact. Second, she made this excuse at the same time she was using every trick in the book to prove that Barrett hadn’t hoaxed the diary, including inventing an elaborate cover story that the diary had been in her family since the 1950s (something she hadn’t bothered to mention during the previous two years!) and even encouraged her dreadfully ill father to play along. Even Caz doesn’t believe this hokum, so why should I?

If you would, step back, take a deep breath, and think it through. Do you really find Anne’s explanation plausible?

A man in a pub is selling a questionable painting by 'Vermeer.'

Is your first impulse to rush out and buy a blank 17^th Century canvas for comparison purposes?

What sort of sense would that make? What could this blank canvas possibly tell you about the authenticity of a Vermeer? Wouldn’t there have been a better way forward? Like take the 'Vermeer' to an expert?

It makes no sense.

Hi Caz - Can you or Keith produce any details of this alleged second conversation between Barrett and Martin Earl regarding the red diary, or am I to conclude that all Keith was really able to ascertain from Earl was his general policy/routine back in the 1980s and 90s? That, in fact, no record of this phone call exists, and thus we have no idea what passed between Earl and Barrett, or whether they even spoke a second time?

Am I understanding you correctly? You want us to believe that Martin Earl described this tiny, worthless memo book in great detail to Barrett, who willing forked out 25 pounds for it under the bizarre belief that he would be able to trade this worthless oddity, tit-for-tat, for a priceless artifact revealing the identity of one of the world’s most notorious unidentified killers? How on earth is that even remotely plausible? It doesn’t pass the smell test, and I am not certain it even passes the sanity test.

Let’s hang it up, shall we? This is beyond bonkers.

It's your assessment that is bonkers, RJ.

I don't 'want' you to believe anything. In fact, it will be all the more delightful if you don't, and you then come unstuck when the full force of all the evidence against Bongo having a hand in the diary's creation comes at you like a tsunami.

Martin Earl is adamant that Mike knew precisely what had been located as a result of his advert. Martin didn't order anything from a supplier until he'd given a full description to the customer and got a yea or nay. It was his standard business practice. I can see you're not happy about this, but you'll just have to suck it up or take it up with Martin himself.

Once again for the record, Mike never 'forked out' a penny for the tiny 1891 diary he asked Martin Earl to order and send him. You know this. You must also know that Mike of all people, on seeing the "old book" for the first time and getting hooked in, could not possibly have known if it was written the week before, by some scally trying to hoodwink him, or if it might just turn out to be a 'priceless artifact', written over a hundred years ago. Nearly 30 years on, and even the scientists haven't been able to date the bloody thing, so what chance did Bongo have on 9th March 1992 of knowing a damned thing about its potential value? Did you expect him to fork out a six-figure sum on the word of some bloke down the pub, who said it looked old and nobody else knew it existed?

Whether you believe Bongo bought it or wrote it, he'd have called Doreen on the dog and bone that day, not having a clue if it would immediately be condemned as recently written and worthless, if and when he showed it off in London.

When Martin Earl chased up the payment for the 1891 diary, which Mike had failed to pay for or return, within the standard time allowed, Anne had to cough up the £25, and that's when she probably asked what he was thinking when he ordered it. She wouldn't have known about the advert, only what it had produced, and Mike died without knowing the advert had been tracked down. It does make some sense to me that Mike might have wanted to know how easy it would have been - and how much it would have cost - for someone to hoodwink him, by obtaining a genuinely old diary from the right period [1889 being the only date in the Maybrick diary] with enough blank pages for the purpose. He simply wouldn't have known what he was letting himself in for, if he'd seen this "old book" and wondered if it was worth anything at all.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Now I realised I may know what kind of Error David Orsam has found, It must be a mistake done by the forger while blindly copying from a false source.

Whatever it is, I am sure Orsam will crack again the earth under all the Diary defenders and leave them in a total void.


The Baron

Well I hope he proves it was a Barrett wot dunnit, or it'll be back to square one as far as I'm concerned.

Mind you, I don't see myself as a diary defender. It's an inanimate object and my belief is that its naughty author always intended to remain anonymous. But I'd defend Bongo Barrett against the accusations that he created a literary hoax back in the early 90s, which would, in 2020, still be resisting all attempts by every 'Orsam' over the decades, to demonstrate his handiwork was in it.

Clever old Bongo. He even pinned it on himself, yet nobody has been clever enough to do the pinning themselves. We've all had a go, but the pins just keep falling out again.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

What's logical about that? It's just more Diary Dreaming. There is no evidence whatsoever that he "just stepped into" Whitechapel, a notorious district and a complete labyrinth (frankly, he'd have to be crazy to take such a risk. And for what purpose?). Let alone that he would be familiar with Whitechapel, as the killer almost certainly was, 20 years later.

Still, at least your no longer claiming that he lived there!

There is no evidence that he lived with Sarah Robertson, in fact, the census records prove otherwise. And no evidence that he was married to Sarah Robertson, regardless of what fanciful notions her family may have had. Moreover, Sarah did not challenge his marriage to Florence, which would have been bigamist.

Let's face it, the diary is an obvious fake, with zero provenance and zero credibility. And I'm afraid it's just this sort of nonesense that gives the subject of Ripperology a bad name.

There's also no evidence that Bongo Barrett had ever heard of Sarah Robertson when he took his DAiry to London, so I'm not sure of the relevance of any of this. Bongo didn't apparently care whether Sir Jim ever set foot in Whitechapel London. Bernard Ryan's book would have told him that the real JM often went down to London for a day or two at a time in 1888. That's a step up from ripper suspects not known to have been anywhere near London that year.

Clever old Bongo.

Love,

Caz
X

[John G]

There's also no evidence that Bongo Barrett had ever heard of Sarah Robertson when he took his DAiry to London, so I'm not sure of the relevance of any of this. Bongo didn't apparently care whether Sir Jim ever set foot in Whitechapel London. Bernard Ryan's book would have told him that the real JM often went down to London for a day or two at a time in 1888. That's a step up from ripper suspects not known to have been anywhere near London that year.

Clever old Bongo.

Love,

Caz
X

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!