Was Eleanor Bridge Mrs Hammersmith?

[Scott Nelson]

It kind of sounds like there were two documents involved, one with verifiable facts and another with unverifiable "facts". Maybe someone reworking a older text in modern times. No?

[caz]

During a stretch of insomnia last night I thought about our 'Mrs. Hammersmith'... and it seemed to me that the arguments for and against her identification lack a certain psychological subtlety into the mind of a hoaxer.

The diarist is an angler, and he's angling for true believers. He is also a puzzle maker who wants the reader to be able to figure out the puzzle he has created. That is nearly his entire 'schtick.'

This is somewhat clever, in a street smart sort of way, because he is banking on human egotism. By dropping hints instead of spelling everything out explicitly, the hoaxer is forcing the reader to play an active role in recreating Maybrick's secret inner world. In a way, the hoaxer is trying to make the reader an unwitting accomplice: the person who supplies the connective tissue by solving and identifying the various mysteries and difficulties in the text, thus making the whole exercise appear genuine.

This is the same gimmick that runs through every scam and every street hustle ever conceived: make the 'mark' feel clever. And we see the result in Paul Feldman's book, where, again and again, Feldy congratulates himself on being clever enough to have figured out what event or person the diarist was alluding to. 'No one could have known this but the real James Maybrick!' Feldman says, again and again, yet Feldman never seems to fully realize that the only reason verification for his own cleverness was possible, was because the clues the diarist left were part of the historical record. Without verification, there would be no opportunity for the 'mark' (the reader/the researcher) to congratulate himself on the cleverness of his detective skills.

For instance, at the most basic level, nowhere does the diarist explicitly state that he is James Maybrick. Instead, he drops clues: the Exchange. Bobo. Battlecrease. 'Ah, look at this," the readers says, "some annoying person named Lowry." And eventually investigation confirms that the cotton broker Maybrick had an assistant named Lowry, and this leaves the investigator with a sense of discovery and power and cleverness. Or "wow, this must be a reference to Brierley at the Grand National."

In this sense, it is important for the hoaxer to supply details that are verifiable--otherwise what's the point? If the Diarist is too obscure, he runs the risk of his reader not solving the puzzle, and he doesn't want that. Thus, it is utterly counter-productive for a literary hoaxer to simply 'make up' details, because then there would be no way for the investigators --like Feldman or Ike or Harrison-- to 'prove' the diary is real. Verification wouldn't be possible, and verification is part of the calculus.

In short, I can see how a true believer in the Diary's authenticity might want to argue that 'Mrs. Hammersmith' would be a nickname Maybrick invented for an annoying neighbor. Things like this could happen in the 'real world.'

But our hoaxer? It would be pointless. It runs against the grain of the unspoken contract he has made with his reader. It's overly subtle, too clever by half, and counterproductive. The reader wouldn't know that he was correct in his interpretation--it would raise doubt--and doubt is the hoaxer's enemy.

The last thing any literary hoaxer wants is for the 'spell' to be broken by sprinkling the text with too many unverifiable inventions, thus alerting the reader to the sad reality that it is only through his or her own imagination and overreaching that the diary's pretext of reality is maintained.

Yet twice we see this very thing in the diary's text: two 'facts' for which there is no historical verification. The strangulation murder in Manchester, and "Mrs. Hammersmith."

Which suggests to me one of two things. 1) the diarist was an amateur who struck two false notes; or, 2) the hoaxer was a sadist who enjoyed the thought of someone endlessly searching for something that doesn't exist.

Perhaps the hoaxer deliberately left the true believer with map to 'El Dorado'--an unobtainable opportunity to prove the diary was real.

But, personally, I don't see the hoaxer as that subtle.

This all sounds terribly clever of you, RJ, but are you not doing what you claim Mr or Mrs Barrett did, with a 'heads I win, tails you lose' strategy? So if something in the diary is verifiable by the reader, with the same effort the Barretts made to find the information, that is just typical of what hoaxers do to reel in true believers, like Feldy.

But then you realised you needed a totally different argument for the few occasions where no amount of effort or research has solved the puzzle. But the exceptions don't prove the rule, as in confirm it; they test it to breaking point. It suddenly becomes unimportant to your hoaxer whether a certain detail is verifiable or not. For these exceptions the hoaxer couldn't give a rat's arse that the reader will be left with an unsolvable and therefore pointless 'clue'. So in comes the argument that the hoaxer either forgot the rule temporarily, because they had little or no previous experience of how to hoodwink the public consistently with a scam like this, or he/she got the odd moment of sadistic pleasure from injecting a non-existent surname or invented throttling, but at all other times behaved like your normal hoaxer, wanting the reader to 'get it' because otherwise there was no point. If that sounds way too convenient, end with the bit about the hoaxer's lack of subtlety. Always works on the true Barrett hoax believer - because Mike didn't have a subtle bone in his body.

A win-win argument for a Barrett hoax, RJ, but does it really prove anything about the inner workings of the diary author's mind? I don't see a burning need or desire to impress the modern reader with the verifiable or unverifiable. Might have been different had there been any effort at all to make the handwriting look like Maybrick's. That was an unverifiable puzzle running throughout the 63 pages, and about as subtle as a house brick. But your hoaxer evidently didn't mind, or perhaps he/she was more of a masochist than a sadist.

I note you didn't include the whore's mole bonnet among the unverifiables, which was probably just as well. You may not recall one sad poster from many moons ago doing a Feldy in reverse, by suggesting the name Michael Barrett was subtly 'hidden' within the text at that point. Embarrassment doesn't pick sides.

[erobitha]

Which Maybrick?

Not Michael.

[Scott Nelson]

I do believe Maybrick was JTR

Which Maybrick?

[erobitha]

During a stretch of insomnia last night I thought about our 'Mrs. Hammersmith'... and it seemed to me that the arguments for and against her identification lack a certain psychological subtlety into the mind of a hoaxer.

The diarist is an angler, and he's angling for true believers. He is also a puzzle maker who wants the reader to be able to figure out the puzzle he has created. That is nearly his entire 'schtick.'

This is somewhat clever, in a street smart sort of way, because he is banking on human egotism. By dropping hints instead of spelling everything out explicitly, the hoaxer is forcing the reader to play an active role in recreating Maybrick's secret inner world. In a way, the hoaxer is trying to make the reader an unwitting accomplice: the person who supplies the connective tissue by solving and identifying the various mysteries and difficulties in the text, thus making the whole exercise appear genuine.

This is the same gimmick that runs through every scam and every street hustle ever conceived: make the 'mark' feel clever. And we see the result in Paul Feldman's book, where, again and again, Feldy congratulates himself on being clever enough to have figured out what event or person the diarist was alluding to. 'No one could have known this but the real James Maybrick!' Feldman says, again and again, yet Feldman never seems to fully realize that the only reason verification for his own cleverness was possible, was because the clues the diarist left were part of the historical record. Without verification, there would be no opportunity for the 'mark' (the reader/the researcher) to congratulate himself on the cleverness of his detective skills.

For instance, at the most basic level, nowhere does the diarist explicitly state that he is James Maybrick. Instead, he drops clues: the Exchange. Bobo. Battlecrease. 'Ah, look at this," the readers says, "some annoying person named Lowry." And eventually investigation confirms that the cotton broker Maybrick had an assistant named Lowry, and this leaves the investigator with a sense of discovery and power and cleverness. Or "wow, this must be a reference to Brierley at the Grand National."

In this sense, it is important for the hoaxer to supply details that are verifiable--otherwise what's the point? If the Diarist is too obscure, he runs the risk of his reader not solving the puzzle, and he doesn't want that. Thus, it is utterly counter-productive for a literary hoaxer to simply 'make up' details, because then there would be no way for the investigators --like Feldman or Ike or Harrison-- to 'prove' the diary is real. Verification wouldn't be possible, and verification is part of the calculus.

In short, I can see how a true believer in the Diary's authenticity might want to argue that 'Mrs. Hammersmith' would be a nickname Maybrick invented for an annoying neighbor. Things like this could happen in the 'real world.'

But our hoaxer? It would be pointless. It runs against the grain of the unspoken contract he has made with his reader. It's overly subtle, too clever by half, and counterproductive. The reader wouldn't know that he was correct in his interpretation--it would raise doubt--and doubt is the hoaxer's enemy.

The last thing any literary hoaxer wants is for the 'spell' to be broken by sprinkling the text with too many unverifiable inventions, thus alerting the reader to the sad reality that it is only through his or her own imagination and overreaching that the diary's pretext of reality is maintained.

Yet twice we see this very thing in the diary's text: two 'facts' for which there is no historical verification. The strangulation murder in Manchester, and "Mrs. Hammersmith."

Which suggests to me one of two things. 1) the diarist was an amateur who struck two false notes; or, 2) the hoaxer was a sadist who enjoyed the thought of someone endlessly searching for something that doesn't exist.

Perhaps the hoaxer deliberately left the true believer with map to 'El Dorado'--an unobtainable opportunity to prove the diary was real.

But, personally, I don't see the hoaxer as that subtle.

So which of the Barrett's executed this level of subtle psychology? It would be useful to know which one of them is my tormentor.

Surely, the unprovable nature you claim simply serves for people of the modern hoax mindset that such pointless endeavour (as you see it) is surely the best form of attack against its authenticity? If these things cannot be proven (by your standards) they did not happen. The doubters win.

Thankfully the world does not revolve around just you and I. The wider public can make their own minds up with the information provided. I am simply seeing if I can add extra information to the mix that can or should be considered.

If anyone is interested a discussion took place on the other place which might be of interest to others here:
https://www.jtrforums.com/forum/pers...rs-hammersmith

I do believe Maybrick was JTR and that’s my prerogative. I can also hold doubts that the scrapbook could be a hoax too. The two things do not have to be mutually exclusive.

The watch keeps my attention, not so much the scrapbook.

You need not cry for me R.J. I actually slept very well last night.

[rjpalmer]

During a stretch of insomnia last night I thought about our 'Mrs. Hammersmith'... and it seemed to me that the arguments for and against her identification lack a certain psychological subtlety into the mind of a hoaxer.

The diarist is an angler, and he's angling for true believers. He is also a puzzle maker who wants the reader to be able to figure out the puzzle he has created. That is nearly his entire 'schtick.'

This is somewhat clever, in a street smart sort of way, because he is banking on human egotism. By dropping hints instead of spelling everything out explicitly, the hoaxer is forcing the reader to play an active role in recreating Maybrick's secret inner world. In a way, the hoaxer is trying to make the reader an unwitting accomplice: the person who supplies the connective tissue by solving and identifying the various mysteries and difficulties in the text, thus making the whole exercise appear genuine.

This is the same gimmick that runs through every scam and every street hustle ever conceived: make the 'mark' feel clever. And we see the result in Paul Feldman's book, where, again and again, Feldy congratulates himself on being clever enough to have figured out what event or person the diarist was alluding to. 'No one could have known this but the real James Maybrick!' Feldman says, again and again, yet Feldman never seems to fully realize that the only reason verification for his own cleverness was possible, was because the clues the diarist left were part of the historical record. Without verification, there would be no opportunity for the 'mark' (the reader/the researcher) to congratulate himself on the cleverness of his detective skills.

For instance, at the most basic level, nowhere does the diarist explicitly state that he is James Maybrick. Instead, he drops clues: the Exchange. Bobo. Battlecrease. 'Ah, look at this," the readers says, "some annoying person named Lowry." And eventually investigation confirms that the cotton broker Maybrick had an assistant named Lowry, and this leaves the investigator with a sense of discovery and power and cleverness. Or "wow, this must be a reference to Brierley at the Grand National."

In this sense, it is important for the hoaxer to supply details that are verifiable--otherwise what's the point? If the Diarist is too obscure, he runs the risk of his reader not solving the puzzle, and he doesn't want that. Thus, it is utterly counter-productive for a literary hoaxer to simply 'make up' details, because then there would be no way for the investigators --like Feldman or Ike or Harrison-- to 'prove' the diary is real. Verification wouldn't be possible, and verification is part of the calculus.

In short, I can see how a true believer in the Diary's authenticity might want to argue that 'Mrs. Hammersmith' would be a nickname Maybrick invented for an annoying neighbor. Things like this could happen in the 'real world.'

But our hoaxer? It would be pointless. It runs against the grain of the unspoken contract he has made with his reader. It's overly subtle, too clever by half, and counterproductive. The reader wouldn't know that he was correct in his interpretation--it would raise doubt--and doubt is the hoaxer's enemy.

The last thing any literary hoaxer wants is for the 'spell' to be broken by sprinkling the text with too many unverifiable inventions, thus alerting the reader to the sad reality that it is only through his or her own imagination and overreaching that the diary's pretext of reality is maintained.

Yet twice we see this very thing in the diary's text: two 'facts' for which there is no historical verification. The strangulation murder in Manchester, and "Mrs. Hammersmith."

Which suggests to me one of two things. 1) the diarist was an amateur who struck two false notes; or, 2) the hoaxer was a sadist who enjoyed the thought of someone endlessly searching for something that doesn't exist.

Perhaps the hoaxer deliberately left the true believer with map to 'El Dorado'--an unobtainable opportunity to prove the diary was real.

But, personally, I don't see the hoaxer as that subtle.

[caz]

Interesting thread, thanks all.

I often wondered if Mrs Hammersmith was a fictional character dreamed up as an oblique reference to 'Emma Smith', the early Whitechapel victim, who had a blunt instrument rammed inside her, which is what 'Sir Jim' fantasised about doing to a victim with his cane.

"Emma Smith!" is in a little book I have somewhere upstairs called something like: 'Cries of Old London Town', and is down as London slang used by porters and such when calling out the name of the train station, "Hammersmith!"

As for making up and using funny nicknames, here at Brown Towers we make an art form of it and I always have. My daughter had a cuddly seal we named Seal Dwitherkiss [get it?] and a cuddly parrot we named Parrot Fenalia [get it?].

A lady I once worked with was called Olive Boyt, so she quickly became "Oi'll 'ave a boit".

A lady who lives near us, who must remain nameless, is always referred to by a few of us as "Brick Top". It's not kind, and it's not big or clever, and there is no connection with her real name, but you'd know what we mean if you saw her.

Love,

Caz
X

[erobitha]

Thanks Ike for so eloquently explaining why I share these theories - I forget sometimes that to bring people on the journey with you they need to understand not only where you are going, but why. You did a first rate job articulating that for me, thanks.

When the bones have been scraped of all their flesh one must look for nourishment in different ways. The marrow can be extracted and the bones rendered down and used as broth. The man who realised this was possible was the man who didn’t starve.

After 130 years we need fresh thinking and new theories. Those theories could lead to hard evidence that unlocks the secrets which have shrouded this case for many, many years.

If all we keep doing is scraping the same old bones then we will starve.

Mary Jane Kelly is out there somewhere for example - just not as Mary Jane Kelly. Do we give up or do we look at it through the lens of context and psychology? If she changed her name why and from what?

Theories based on context is simply another way to create different strands of investigation. Mine are basic thus far and I have never claimed they are 100% fact but they could be the catalyst to answers.

I don’t take criticism personally but I won’t stop sharing theories just because certain people don’t like them. I’m here for the truth. Despite the irony of my signature

[Al Bundy's Eyes]

Perhaps 'Laurenz' would have been an alternative (after Laurence Krauss, author of A Universe from Nothing)? Actually, 'Diego Laurenz' would make a good handle, wouldn't it? I wonder if anyone has used it yet?

Just out of interest, I wonder if it is possible to edit one's username once it is registered? I quite fancy 'The Great Ikemondo'. What does my reader think?

Cheers,

TGI

The Great Ikeconundrum

[Iconoclast]

The name is just a random word I saw online somewhere and thought it would be suitably ambiguous. Means nothing as far as I’m aware, but I like the idea of something being born from nothing.

Perhaps 'Laurenz' would have been an alternative (after Laurence Krauss, author of A Universe from Nothing)? Actually, 'Diego Laurenz' would make a good handle, wouldn't it? I wonder if anyone has used it yet?

Just out of interest, I wonder if it is possible to edit one's username once it is registered? I quite fancy 'The Great Ikemondo'. What does my reader think?

Cheers,

TGI

[Al Bundy's Eyes]

Ike, me owd mucker, me owd matey skip, I'm not embarking on a crusade against your heir apparent. Just so, as you claim about supposition and context, if David "Lord Orsamgasm" can argue that Godmother and Aunt are incompatible, the same logic applies to Mrs Hammersmith. Maybe Jim was dead against such formalities. Maybe he was so in awe of the countess he never called her anything but "the godmother"

We don't know. We can't know. So it's not a great starting point without outside verifiable details.

Really, Lord Orsamgasms "Bunny's Aunt" didn't finally nail the coffin. Mrs Hammersmith isn't prising the lid off to shouts of "hallelujah".

Just saying....

[Iconoclast]

Cracking response. The facts are so few, all we have are the maybes. Explore, by all means. Just be open to criticism.

He's just proposing a theory, Abe, to explain facts about the scrapbook which we to date have not been able to clarify. If one believes in something and something appears to contradict it, it's not unreasonable to look for context which might explain the apparent discrepancy.

Context is absolutely everything in life. The other day I was watching a YouTube documentary on the famous Charlton footballing brothers. Up until that point, I had seen the 1958 FA Cup Final goals hundreds of times. It was the final after the Munich disaster and Man Utd has surprised everyone by making it to the final where they played Bolton. The narrative around the game had always been that Man Utd had in fact been outplayed by Bolton that day, as their two goals suggested.

Here's the rub. The documentary on the Charlton brothers showed a quick clip of Bobby Charlton hitting a long shot after 8 minutes which struck the post and came out again straight into the 'keeper's hands. Immediately, I thought: "Wow - context change". That one clip made me stop and think about the context surrounding the 88 minutes we know nothing about rather than the two minutes we know so much about. Context. If Bobby had scored on 8 minutes, who knows how the game could have ended?

And I've said this a thousand times about James Maybrick's scrapbook: we have to permit him the 88 minutes we know little or nothing about as well as the 2 we do know about. If we allow him to be a real 3D person rather than the one-dimensional caricature we occasionally make him, then he gets to come out of his own shadow to be the man who loved sport, and may have attended Everton's first league games, who smoke and drank, who womanised, who ate and travelled, had hopes, ambitions terrible frailties, and may well have had foolish nicknames for folk he knew. So George at the Exchange gets to be known as 'Hammersmith', therefore his wife gets to be known as 'Mrs Hammersmith', just as I am 'Iconoclast' so my missus is therefore 'Mrs Iconoclast'. If anyone is confused, that's not her actual name.

In my brilliant History vs Maybrick thread, I wrote:

So we should be circumspect and cautious before we dismiss possible context which was unequivocally pertinent - if perhaps prosaic - to him but which may seem of no consequence to us, here now down down the long line looking back with the natural scientific absolutism of our unremitting retrospect; our expecting only the obvious, anticipating only the rational, when dealing with a human being who lived a life – as we all do – free of the constraints which later tether those who remain to the simplistic binaries of the cold light; a man whose moments on the earth were as ours – daily as deep as his all-too human soul could reach into the warm glow of hot blood and the unpredictable eye and mind. So the fact he may have been influenced by the early football results shouldn’t be overlooked nor too easily dismissed.

The denouement was deliberately prosaic - it was intended to jolt the reader out of the reverie and back into the reality of James Maybrick's life in 1888. And - if we want to understand the scrapbook - we need to be able to have the intellectual curiosity which permits of the apparently implausible and positively sanctifies it as a glorious possibility.

People do strange things. I constantly refer to Mike Barrett's affidavit as his 'affy David'. It's a corruption, of course, of Barrett's own original misspelling of a relatively underused word in the language. If in a hundred years someone was trying to work out who this mysterious genius Iconoclast was (the guy whose determination, strength, persistence, and handsomeness eventually solved the puzzle of who Jack the Spratt McVitie was) and they stumbled upon me as a candidate (for - of course - I keep a Victorian scrapbook of my own whenever I am ripping-up sex workers here in Lower Whottlington on the Whottle) they might draw the conclusion that Ike's use of 'affy David' was in homage to his much-respected father-in-law called David who died last year and who his (David's) wife constantly referred to - as fondly as only the ironic Scots truly can - with the expression "He is [now was] an affy man" ('affy' being a Scots corruption of 'awful'). Now, our erstwhile author in a hundred years time might get laughed at for the convoluted nature of this 'link' to me. And yet, they would be perfectly right - that is indeed the reason I write 'affy David'.

Now, that's the power of context for you, dear readers. So when erobitha suggests that George Bridge was nicknamed 'Hammersmith' because of the nascent bridge, and that therefore James Maybrick may have referred to George's wife as 'Mrs Hammersmith', we should be very wary indeed of reaching quickly for the 'cry foul' button on our remote controls. It 'could have been' the case.

It is unlikely that context is ever going to be proven, which brings me back to the power of statistics to make a point (this in response to - was it Harry D's? - confusion over another of my brilliant posts): if a sufficient number of events occur which appear to point towards a certain possibility, then one can argue from statistical probability that such a number of things would not occur in this way by mere chance alone (that is, that something must be causing them all to appear to point towards a certain possibility).

Moral of this story is do not too easily dismiss the possible evidence of context. There is no reason to think those who came before us expended their entire lives in a vacuum.

Ike

[Al Bundy's Eyes]

The name is just a random word I saw online somewhere and thought it would be suitably ambiguous. Means nothing as far as I’m aware, but I like the idea of something being born from nothing.

I think the ‘could have beens’ are interesting because they can fire imaginations and spark people with more skills than I to follow these lines and see if there is more compelling evidence to be found beyond someone’s free trial ancestry account.

If you can’t think different then you can’t solve different.

Cracking response. The facts are so few, all we have are the maybes. Explore, by all means. Just be open to criticism.

Best endeavours.

[erobitha]

PS erobitha, 1) Why are you called 'erobitha'? (I finally feel the need to ask), and 2) possibly as hard to prove as my GSG argument, but well done all the same (maybe James had a sense of humour and enjoyed playing around with her name - who else do we know who enjoys doing that???)

Cheers,

Ike

The name is just a random word I saw online somewhere and thought it would be suitably ambiguous. Means nothing as far as I’m aware, but I like the idea of something being born from nothing.

I think the ‘could have beens’ are interesting because they can fire imaginations and spark people with more skills than I to follow these lines and see if there is more compelling evidence to be found beyond someone’s free trial ancestry account.

If you can’t think different then you can’t solve different.

[Al Bundy's Eyes]

"Hammersmith was a quaint nickname for her, and most likely George too"

You've already arrived at your conclusion. It's not a theory. It's tenuous claims to bolster what you need to be facts. Like the "Manchester Murder" that was in a different town.

Erobitha, I'm not knocking your research, and certainly I'm not knocking you as an individual, that's really not me. But if you have a pre disposed view, your looking for anything that fits it, and that's not objective research.

If there are facts out there, they can be found. But saying that an entirely random Mrs Bridges was Mrs Hammersmith because Jim liked a pun is not conclusive.

Unless the low opinion was because he felt Mrs Bridges spread between two towns? Maybe she spurned him, despite her easy virtues? That'll do, since we're making **** up. Helps to explain Jim's hatred of licencious women.