google ngrams

[Lombro2]

The goldbrickers are also lead weights. I thought I'd get in on the act.

Be a Thinker. Not a Sinker.

[Lombro2]

Google Ngram's proves nothing. If you don't know if a phrase is modern, then maybe it isn't.

New phrases are usually just two different words put together for the first time. It's not some spontaneous act of creation by a printed author. And everyone has to catch on to it.

Turns of phrases are not reserved for the most intelligent--just "good talkers". Otherwise Joe Lombardi would be one of the most intelligent person in history.

[caz]

I wonder if 'RJsplained' will ever catch on as a turn of phrase. I saw it in print for the first time the other day, and the meaning needed no explainin'. What's more, the activity has been witnessed around here for upwards of two decades before Ike - for it was he - defined the phenomenon using a single new word.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

'In his novels Dickens chose his characters' names carefully and 'Bumble' lives up to the symbolism of his name through his displays of self-importance, greed, hypocrisy and foolishness.'

So did Dickens coin the name as a verb, to describe a character who 'bumbles' around being self-important, greedy, hypocritical or foolish?

Why could nobody in Maybrick's day have possibly thought to attach this word as an adjective to someone they considered to be a self-important fool, to describe the buffoon as a 'bumbling' one, without knowing or caring if anyone else had done so, or whether it would ever catch on in the future thanks to someone else doing so?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Honestly, Lombro2, I've no idea what you're saying.

Keep it simple, mate. Skip the analogies. Michael Barrett would not have given a moment's thought to how rational his thought process was to anyone else. He had a priceless gold bar in his hands and the fear of losing it also would have been weighing very heavy on those hands. If he had the notion that he might protect it even in some very small way which others would consider inappropriate or irrelevant, I don't see him worrying a jot about that.

What would £25 in 1992 (around £75 today) be to an unskilled, working class bloke who has just found a gold bar and doesn't know what to do with it and fears he might lose it soon?

I appreciate that I am also working with an analogy here but I think mine is a bit simpler to grasp.



Do you honestly think Mike Barrett would act in a calm and rational manner if he had suddenly come across one of these and thought he might be able to keep it?

Even though it was obviously someone else's possession?

Afternoon Ike,

Far be it from me to cazsplain this to anyone, but pinching the analogy that it takes a con artist to know a con artist, Mike Barrett of all people would have taken one look at your gold bar showing up in the Saddle of all places, and said: "Who are you kidding, lad?", suspecting that someone's leg was being pulled, and not particularly wanting it to be his - what with his dodgy hip from the road accident in his teens.

If people could just expand their minds a teeny bit, to consider that Mike was probably not the only Scouser in Liverpool, nor even in Anfield, who would have pulled a stranger's leg in 1992 for the price of a pint [or in Mike's case, on the off chance of making enough money at some vague and unspecified time in the future to make a mortgage payment - if he didn't spend it all on something else first], they might be able to put themselves in Mike's position, as a former failed mugger, if he thought he was being taken for a mug, by whoever was showing him an old book with handwritten entries like a diary would have, and signed by none other than Jack the Bloody Ripper in 1889.

It's only a hop, skip and a jump from there to Mike's fishing phone call to Doreen, using a false name, to see if she would instantly suspect her own leg was being pulled, followed by the call to Martin Earl, using his real name, to request something that a scallywag would have needed, in order to fake a diary like the one he had seen.

If Mike was the only silly faker in town, and had already been working on this long con for any length of time, one might have thought that by March 1992, when it came near to nut-cutting time, he would have appreciated the simple fact that he would either a) fail to obtain what was needed for a Battlecrease-based diary, or b) be unable to use anything he did obtain, without setting up the perfect paper trail for this 'unusual' request, which would be lying in wait for the moment when "Mr Barrett" and his genuine Victorian diary hit the headlines - with its previously 'blank' pages now heavily polluted with his idiot wife's handwriting.

Would Anne have signed that cheque for £25 if it had paid for what had recently become Maybrick's diary?

When Anne signed it, in May 1992, and enabled her payment to be traced back, three years later, to its roots in March 1992, why did it not occur to her that Mike could have royally screwed up and left a wholly incriminating record, if she knew he had wanted this diary to transfer the text from the word processor? Was she another 'mental vegetable', or did she know the 1891 diary was never intended for that purpose?

Love,

Caz
X

[Herlock Sholmes]

'In his novels Dickens chose his characters' names carefully and 'Bumble' lives up to the symbolism of his name through his displays of self-importance, greed, hypocrisy and foolishness.'

So did Dickens coin the name as a verb, to describe a character who 'bumbles' around being self-important, greedy, hypocritical or foolish?

Why could nobody in Maybrick's day have possibly thought to attach this word as an adjective to someone they considered to be a self-important fool, to describe the buffoon as a 'bumbling' one, without knowing or caring if anyone else had done so, or whether it would ever catch on in the future thanks to someone else doing so?

Love,

Caz
X

The problem with that theory, Caz, is that the Dickens experts don't agree with it.

According to Paul Kendell, for example, in his 2022 book, Charles Dickens: Places of Objects and Interest:

"Dickens derived the name from the word bumptious, which is an ambiguous word for conceited, arrogant, pompous and consumed with one's own self-importance, clearly unsavoury qualities that were associated with Mr Bumble".

Although, in your description of Mr Bumble, you include the word "foolish", the Britannica online only describes him as "cruel, pompous" and says that "Bumbledom, named after him, characterizes the meddlesome self-importance of the petty bureaucrat. Bumbledom, named after him, characterizes the meddlesome self-importance of the petty bureaucrat".

The 1885 Imperial Dictionary of the English Language defines "Bumbledom" (attributed to Dickens' character) as "A sarcastic term applied to fussy official pomposity, especially in the case of the members of petty corporations, as vestries, and covertly, less or more, implying inefficiency"

According to all the sources I've found online, including a number of 19th century dictionaries, the name of Mr Bumble doesn't seem to have anything to do with the later word "bumbling".

[caz]

Well, since I did bring this up...

Whoa there. Don't blame me that your theory is flawed.

If the diary only existed as an idea or as a rough manuscript in March 1992, it would have made perfect sense for Barrett to ask for a minimum of twenty blank pages--he could always adapt or annotate the typescript to fit whatever Martin Earl could come up with.

My theory is flawed?

'If the diary only existed as an idea... etc etc'?

And if the Barretts were both 'mental vegetables', it might make perfect sense to Palmer for Mike to have thought this request was as good a way as any to obtain something he could safely use for forgery purposes with no comeback. And perfect sense for Anne to pay for whatever was located as a result, but leave it until May 1992, when their fake diary had already been seen in London, so the purchase would seem unconnected and irrelevant. And perfect sense for her to expose her own subterfuge in 1995, when she could have destroyed her old cheque book innocently or otherwise with no comeback and no memory of the cheque details, and nobody else on the planet could have accessed those details from her bank, in order to date the start of the transaction back to March 1992. She could have left Mike to recall - if he was capable - the relevant dates or payee's name and business, and been no worse off if he had managed to do it against all the odds. As we know, his memory wasn't up to the task, so we would never have known about the advert if Anne had not kept her cheque book and then fully co-operated with Keith regarding this aspect of the investigation.

But that's not your theory. You are claiming the diary DID exist and Barrett was shown the diary down the boozer. Even a quick examination would reveal there was 60-70 pages of handwriting in it. If Barrett was testing to see if such a blank diary could be obtained with the requisite number of pages--and that's what you stated--asking for a minimum of 20 pages doesn't make a hell fo a lot of sense, particularly to Mike's vegetable mentality, since that wouldn't allow for the creation of even 1/3rd of the diary he had seen. Wouldn't it have been far more logical and natural to ask for a blank diary with a minimum of 60-70 pages in order to mirror what he had seen???

No, not really. How many blank pages does it take to hoax a diary supposedly kept by Jack the Ripper? Would a hoaxer not have cut his garment according to his cloth? Just one blank sheet of paper would have been enough for a brief dying statement, while having in excess of 70 blank pages to work with could have proved an exceedingly rare luxury for a hoaxer to get his hands on in 1992. I suspect Mike had a more logical mind [don't smirk at the back there] and realised that if he requested many more blank pages than anyone could reasonably have needed for the purpose, or could have expected to find, he was likely to be waiting a lot longer to see what was available. What if the writing had run to several hundred pages? Mike would have been waiting forever, when he only needed to know if one could have been obtained with twenty or more, which would have served the same purpose. Why would he have asked for more than that and cut down his chances of learning what he wanted to know: whether genuine Victorian diaries with enough blank pages for a funny little ripper hoax were readily obtainable or not?

It is interesting, however, that you are admitting in a roundabout way that Barrett was attempting to obtain the raw materials for a hoax. Kudos for that. You're 90% of the way, now just begrudgingly limp the last 10%.

How funny. I'm happy being 90% of the way to being 100% right or wrong, and still able to limp in either direction. I can see what happens to people who race to their own finishing line, 100% confident that they could not have been running in 100% the wrong direction.

This is beside the point. Mike ordered the diary and was duly billed for it, and it duly arrived. He need not have done any of that (and could have avoided the scolding from Anne who DID pay for it) if his motive was just testing to see if it could be done. I see it as another flaw.

There's a surprise.

When Mike ordered it, he was told it was for the year 1891, but he may not yet have identified 'Jack the Ripper' as a real person who had died a few days after the only date in his recently acquired diary. Alternatively, he may have read enough by then to make him doubt that this was just some cheeky Scouser's idea of a joke, but retained enough curiosity to see the genuine Victorian diary that had resulted from his original request. He didn't need to order it, but could have had no reason to do so if he had needed something he could use for faking Maybrick's diary, because this wasn't it, and ordering it could only have created a needless paper trail when he would be off out in a day or two for his next attempt.

I still think it is odd--and probably significant--that Anne only signed a blank cheque and Mike filled out the details. It's as if she was limiting her involvement. The delay in paying could be seen as evidence of Anne resisting Barrett's scheme. It's uncertain, but it's a strange detail and unless Keith Skinner uncovered evidence that Anne was in the frequent habit of signing blank cheques for an alcoholic (which seems wildly implausible) some sort of explanation is in order.

This was a cheque in settlement of a specific invoice generated by Mike's order for the 1891 diary, which had gone unpaid until she stepped in. I am not entirely clear whether Anne signed it before or after Mike had filled in the details, or if she watched him do so, but I'm also not sure why Palmer would rely on Anne's word, or why she'd have lied, if she claimed to have signed a blank cheque, trusting Mike not to pay himself a million pounds. If Palmer still thinks 'some sort of explanation is in order', I imagine this could only come from the woman he suspects was involved in a forgery, in which case any explanation she gave would be treated accordingly.

I wonder why, when Mike was told the diary was for the year 1891, he didn't think to ask for any more information about this if - unusually for Martin Earl - he was not given a 'full' description before his order was taken. This is Mike we are discussing, who had an overactive tongue in his head, so if he was still hoping this diary might be usable, surely he'd have asked at the very least if the 1891 date was printed or handwritten; if it appeared inside the diary or on the cover; or if it appeared more than once. This would not have looked suspicious, given that Mike had specifically requested a diary from 1880-1890, and he was being offered one for a later year. In the event that Martin didn't already have that very basic information from his supplier, a couple of brief phone calls would have obtained it and passed it on, to save the time and expense of sending something that wasn't what the customer wanted, or having to chase it up later if it wasn't paid for or returned.

Why is all this so hard to grasp, and resisted as if it is too flaming hot to approach even with Joy Division oven gloves? [Thank you Half Man Half Biscuit]

[caz]

The problem with that theory, Caz, is that the Dickens experts don't agree with it.

According to Paul Kendell, for example, in his 2022 book, Charles Dickens: Places of Objects and Interest:

"Dickens derived the name from the word bumptious, which is an ambiguous word for conceited, arrogant, pompous and consumed with one's own self-importance, clearly unsavoury qualities that were associated with Mr Bumble".

Although, in your description of Mr Bumble, you include the word "foolish", the Britannica online only describes him as "cruel, pompous" and says that "Bumbledom, named after him, characterizes the meddlesome self-importance of the petty bureaucrat. Bumbledom, named after him, characterizes the meddlesome self-importance of the petty bureaucrat".

The 1885 Imperial Dictionary of the English Language defines "Bumbledom" (attributed to Dickens' character) as "A sarcastic term applied to fussy official pomposity, especially in the case of the members of petty corporations, as vestries, and covertly, less or more, implying inefficiency"

According to all the sources I've found online, including a number of 19th century dictionaries, the name of Mr Bumble doesn't seem to have anything to do with the later word "bumbling".

Did anyone ask Dickens?

And would readers of Dickens, who were not Dickens experts, have understood such niceties?

[Herlock Sholmes]

Did anyone ask Dickens?

And would readers of Dickens, who were not Dickens experts, have understood such niceties?

It doesn't matter Caz. You may not be aware of this but the latest research has shown that the use of expressions such as "bumbling buffoon" is down to the co-founder of Time magazine, Briton Hadden, who liked to coin new words and who encouraged the writers of his new magazine during the 1920s to use interesting new words. One of the words chosen by Time to describe politicians was "bumbling", and the English Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, was nicknamed "Bumbling Baldwin". This made its way across the Atlantic and was picked up by British newspapers, especially the Daily Express. It led on to the use of previously unknown expressions in the English language such as "bumbling buffoon", which seems to have made its first appearance in print in the 1940s.

Even this doesn't matter because "one off instance" has conclusively demonstrated the diary to be a modern forgery. There's not much point in trying to backdate other modern expressions to the nineteenth century where they don't belong.

[Lombro2]

One-off conclusively proves that a creative person wrote the diary.

James Maybrick has to be at the top of the list to any fair and reasonable person. Unless you got Bongo as another Ringo, or Beatle of your choice.

[Lombro2]

To me “trip over” is conclusive of an old document. But I don’t go on and on about it.

I’ll even let you Ngram it for fun although I don’t know how you’d do it without a transitive to mean make a mistake.

[C. F. Leon]

With all the arguments about Maybrick being the First Person in History to invent particular words or phrases, how about working the other way- are there any words or phrases in the diary that were NOT commonly used or even obsolete by the time period the Hoaxer would have been faking the thing (?early 1990s)? In other words, ones that would be common and make sense to the Victorian mind, but make no sense in the 21st Century?

Another track- Is there anything that would make sense for a limited time in the early 1990s, that aren't used today? Here I trying to definitely set the Hoaxer Period (H.P.). I'm thinking things like "Up your nose with a rubber hose" that was popular for a very limited time in the 1970s, but is pretty much never used today. Terms like "Playboy Bunny" would not have been used before Playboy magazine started up in the 1950s. "light this candle", failure is not an option", "3peat", "T. rex" (used as the animal's name, NOT the band), "Great Society", etc.

- CFL

[rjpalmer]

I am not entirely clear whether Anne signed it before or after Mike had filled in the details, or if she watched him do so...

Please let me help.

According to Keith Skinner, Anne claimed that she signed the blank cheque first. The rest was left for Mike to 'complete.'

“She was so "bloody mad" at such extravagence [sic], when they were so broke, that she signed her name and threw the cheque across the floor for him to complete." (Skinner/Harrison Timeline, July 1999).

You can argue Anne was lying about this, of course, but that would certainly undermine your claim that Anne “fully cooperated.” If a person is lying, can they be fully cooperative?

In reality, my statement about the oddity of this transaction doesn’t hinge on the order of who wrote what. In the unlikely event that the police fully investigated the Barretts and demanded to see Anne’s cancelled cheques, they wouldn’t know if the cheque was signed first or afterwards, so, in making Barrett fill out the details, Anne would still have plausible deniability. Lloyd’s keeps records of cancelled cheques for something like 5-7 years, so Anne wouldn’t necessarily know or believe she could have fully eliminated the paper trail, so I think you’re giving her a little too much credit in the mere fact she kept records. Most people do.

It also seems like a rather awkward arrangement to have the supposedly nearly illiterate Mike fill out Anne’s cheques and then have her sign them herself, but then again, in Martin Fido’s theory, Mike wasn’t quite as illiterate in 1992 as we’ve been led to believe. Tom seems to think Mike's handwriting was very similar to Anne’s—if he could kindly upload an image of the cheque we could decide for ourselves about this strange 50/50 collaboration between Mike & Anne.

(See what I did there, Tom?)

As we know, his memory wasn't up to the task, so we would never have known about the advert if Anne had not kept her cheque book and then fully co-operated with Keith regarding this aspect of the investigation.

There it is again—fully cooperated. You certainly seem eager to pretend that Anne was "fully co-operating,” when your own theory is based on Anne lying to Keith repeatedly over a period of many years.

You are also (again) giving Anne too much credit in tracing the advertisement.

There is not a scintilla of evidence that Graham or Barrett knew Earl's methods and thus would have known about the damning advertisement placed in Bookdealer.

Anne’s admission helped trace it, but she wouldn’t have known that it would. See the difference?

Also, Anne’s flimsy excuse that Mike ‘just wanted to see what a diary looked like’ withers into nonsense in the face of Earl’s ad: no one needs to know what a minimum of 20 blank pages looks like.

If Anne was truly cooperative, she could have revealed the purchase of the red diary, and all the relevant details, at any time over the previous 2 1/2 years. She didn't—she kept it a secret---despite being under contractual agreement with Shirley Harrison.

The first time she was ‘fully cooperative” was when her hand was forced by circumstances.

She could have left Mike to recall - if he was capable - the relevant dates or payee's name and business, and been no worse off if he had managed to do it against all the odds.

All you're doing here is ADMITTING that Anne was over a barrel!

Precisely: if Barrett simply sobered up long enough to remember that the bookdealer was in Oxford, there was a strong possibility that Skinner, Harris, or Harrison could have traced Martin Earl and Anne's goose would have been thoroughly cooked if she had been stupid enough to claim that the red diary was a figment of Mike's imagination.

Anne wasn't that stupid. She realized that lying about it outright would be dangerous.

In truth, Anne was forced into making a calculated decision whether to deny the red diary or try to talk her way out of it. Clearly, she opted for the latter and left a false impression that the diary had been purchased in May 1992. This false fact served her well until (I think it was mid-1999) when it became clear that the diary had actually been ordered in March.

If you need further help, don’t hesitate to ask.

Regards.

[Lombro2]

The closest thing to obsolete would be “trip over” as in “trip over a detail”, and “trip over” without a transitive as in making a mistake (assuming that existed outside the diary). They were largely replaced by “trip up on something” and completely, sans transitive, with “trip up”.

But the diary says, “Abberline thinks I will trip over.”

[Lombro2]

This Ngram shows how “trip over” became “obsolete” as it was replaced by “trip up” and “trip on” but made a comeback in 2000.

I’m sure none of the examples are “trip over” with no transitive meaning “made a mistake” anyway but the graph is still illustrative of the general decline in usage.

So Ngram can be useful like scientific data if you know how to interpret it.