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[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".

My apologies, Herlock. I got the 'foolishness' bit from Mr. Bumble on Wikipedia. If you noticed, I quoted the relevant bit directly, but I'm more than happy to drop this one from the offending word 'bumbling', because 'buffoon' adequately takes care of what 'Sir Jim' evidently thought of his doctor: he was being an arrogant fool, or pompous ass if you prefer, for not believing what his patient was telling him. I used to suppose it was a reference to the doctor buzzing around his patient like a big ol' bumble bee, but again I'm happy if the diarist had something else in mind. Perhaps it's another question that only Anne Graham could shed any light on now - or maybe not.

Would it have been okay with you if an avid Dickens fan had known the character's name was derived from 'bumptious', and had called Dr Hopper a 'bumptious buffoon' instead?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

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.

That's fine, Herlock. If you have made your own mind up on the diary's language, there's no need for you to post any more on the subject.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

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

I remember a very short-lived one from the late 70s/early 80s:

"Too risky."

It was thought to be very comical at the time, chiefly by those who were trotting it out down our local pub in Croydon at every opportunity, but if anyone older than twenty-five had still been using it a day after the youngsters had worn it out, they'd have been the butt of the joke.

Love,

Caz
X

[Herlock Sholmes]

My apologies, Herlock. I got the 'foolishness' bit from Mr. Bumble on Wikipedia. If you noticed, I quoted the relevant bit directly, but I'm more than happy to drop this one from the offending word 'bumbling', because 'buffoon' adequately takes care of what 'Sir Jim' evidently thought of his doctor: he was being an arrogant fool, or pompous ass if you prefer, for not believing what his patient was telling him. I used to suppose it was a reference to the doctor buzzing around his patient like a big ol' bumble bee, but again I'm happy if the diarist had something else in mind. Perhaps it's another question that only Anne Graham could shed any light on now - or maybe not.

Would it have been okay with you if an avid Dickens fan had known the character's name was derived from 'bumptious', and had called Dr Hopper a 'bumptious buffoon' instead?

Love,

Caz
X

Hi Caz,

I don't understand your question. The word "bumbling" in "Bumbling buffoon" doesn't have anything to do with the Dickens character, Mr Bumble, so why would we think the diary was written by an avid Dickens fan? The diary author didn't refer to Dr Hopper as a "bumptious buffoon", so I can't see the point in discussing the hypothetical, but a nineteenth century writer could certainly have used that description.

Wikipedia, which should never be relied on for anything, gives a source for its description of Mr Bumble as being something called "Spark Notes", which appears to be a study website for American school children. The original quote from that website about Mr Bumble, which the Wikipedia writer has modified, is: "Dickens mercilessly satirizes his self-righteousness, greed, hypocrisy, and folly, of which his name is an obvious symbol." The key characteristics of Mr Bumble, as every serious authority on Dickens and Oliver Twist notes, are cruelty, pomposity, arrogance, greed, conceit and self-importance. If we look at Who's Who in Dickens (1998) by Donald Hawes, it is stated (per Kathleen Tillotson in her 1982 introduction to Oliver Twist) that Mr Bumble's name "has become a type of the petty tyrant and jack-in-office". That's why "bumbldeom" came to mean "fussy official pomposity". It's not connected with the "bumbling" in "bumbling buffoon", the twentieth century origin of which I explained to you.

But let me ask you this Caz. Does it not strike you, with some force, that we’re dealing with a suspicious document (because it purports to solve one of the most famous unsolved murders in English history) in which we find no fewer than four commonplace modern expressions, identified by all reference books as twentieth century expressions, of which we have not a single known written or printed example from the nineteenth century (including “top myself”), the existence of which was wholly unknown until it was found to be in the possession of a self-professed con-artist and down-on-his luck former journalist from Liverpool who had secretly tried to purchase a genuine Victorian diary containing blank pages?

[caz]

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?

I'm grateful to Palmer for refreshing my memory and saving me searching. Since Anne has been established as a liar, I'm not quite sure why Palmer concentrates so hard on making her words sing for his supper and hand him her guilt as a co-hoaxer on a silver platter.

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.

I'm giving Anne 'a little too much credit' for still having a 1992 cheque book three years later? Really? If the police had demanded and received all the details, Palmer would be precisely where he is today, trying to mould Anne into the shape he needs, and the 1891 diary into a failed attempt by Mike to fake Maybrick's, in order to drag them both with him to his desired destination.

It won't work, and the police would have been wasting their precious time and public resources if they had tried to make it work, as hard as Palmer is still trying today.

It also seems like a rather awkward arrangement to have the supposedly nearly illiterate Mike fill out Anne’s cheques...

It might have been, if Palmer had any evidence for his use of the plural: cheques.

Does he have any evidence for this? Or is he making that bit up, to make another pithy observation that takes him no nearer to pinning Anne down and forcing her to dance to his tune? It takes two to tango, and from where I'm sitting Anne is not co-operating with Palmer's two left feet, any more than she was co-operating with Mike's, when he tried to 'terrify' her back into his life with his affidavit.

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.

Apples and oranges. Anne was not fully co-operating for Keith's sake over the little red herring; nor had she partially co-operated with Feldman's theorising for his sake the previous year. I wasn't praising Anne for anything here, or giving her any credit. I am merely observing that her actions are not consistent with the theory that she knew the red diary had been a failed attempt to get the raw materials for a forgery, or that she was 'terrified' of Mike producing any receipts that would finally reveal all. She co-operated because she could, and saw no harm in doing so. I can't see her doing anything after June 1994, if she knew Mike could throw her under the bus with the least provocation. His bus turned out to be a Dinky toy, but she'd have known that - assuming she wasn't a 'mental vegetable'.

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.

Well no, because neither of them would have needed to know - unless of course Mike chose the Martin Earl method specifically for an attempt to get the raw materials for a forgery. D'oh! It might then have been rather important to know if tracks would need to be covered in the event that Mike's request was successful.

Once more, it's Palmer who must think Mike was a 'mental vegetable' on 9th March 1992, and what does it say about Anne's mental capacity, from that day to this, if she didn't know or care how Mike would have gone about obtaining the raw materials for a fraudulent joint enterprise?

What happened, to bring Mike to his senses on seeing the 1891 diary, which 'does exactly what it says on the tin', but might as well have been an old copy of the Beano? By some medical miracle, he grows the brain cells needed by 31st March to do it right at his next attempt, down to using a false name when bidding at the auction sale and taking the ticket home with him, so there won't be a paper trail for the old book he should have been looking for anonymously in the first place. Even then, Anne still has no input, so she will never know if Mike has covered his tracks sufficiently on this occasion when he brings home the bacon - and Anne is egged on to drop a kidney on it.

When asked during a radio phone-in show why the caller changed his mind overnight and decided to vote for Brexit, he said without a hint of a titter that a horse had kicked him in the head.

Perhaps Palmer has a similar explanation for Anne letting Mike have control of a runaway horse called Bongo's Luck.

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

Ah, I'm loving the RJsplainin'. The very fact that Anne would have known what she didn't know, if she'd been in this situation, only helps to reinforce Palmer's image of a woman with such a tiny brain, I'm only surprised he hasn't suggested she is related to Caz.

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.

Assuming Anne actually thought to ask Mike what he'd been playing at, by ordering an 1891 diary which she ended up paying for, we can only guess what his response might have been. [Keep it clean at the back there. Mike always tried not to curse with ladies present.] Clearly, Anne wasn't going to tell Keith that the clown had hoped to use it for faking the diary he had already invited Doreen to see; nor that he wanted to see if his leg was being pulled, by whichever dodgy customer had shown him the old book during his lunchtime pint the day before. Maybe he just said: "Sugar lumps", leaving Anne to fill in the blanks - as she had filled in all those sexy blank pages Palmer gets so excited over.

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.

Palmer forgets that Anne would have been keeping secrets one way or another in any case, if Mike brought the diary home on any day in March 1992, whether this was before or after the red one arrived. It proves nothing.

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

Whatever. This is just conjecture, because there is no evidence that the advert would ever have come to light without Anne's help; no evidence she even knew - or knows - there was an advert, or was bothered enough to find out; no evidence that she had anything to fear from co-operating, or not co-operating; and no evidence that if it had come to light without her assistance, the situation would be any different today, except that Palmer would have written post after post after post after blinkin' post about her lack of co-operation, and how this was significant, highly suggestive and downright suspicious.

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

No - Palmer needs to read my words more carefully. He was claiming that 'Anne was over a barrel'. I pointed out what Anne could have done if she had felt that way:

'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.'

That would have been in the worst case scenario, IF she had been involved in forgery and wanted to give away as little as possible. But she didn't leave Mike to recall anything, did she? If she knew she'd be damned either way, she might have done so, but she didn't. It's a pointless game Palmer is playing if Anne's co-operation or lack of it would have made no difference whatsoever to what he believes she was being secretive about.

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.

Wow, as non sequiturs go, that is quite a - what do they call it in the Land of the Free? - doozy.

Who is suggesting that Anne could - or would - have tried to deny its very existence, while knowing next to nothing about how Mike had gone about trying to obtain it, or whether he had any related paperwork? Yes, she'd have been pretty clueless IF she had done that, but no more clueless than Palmer thinks she was already, for umpteen other clueless things she must have done or not done, in the lead up to letting Mike and Caroline swan off to London to show a publisher her handiwork, while quietly 'terrified' by the prospect of him actually publishing it.

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

Again, who is suggesting she'd have lied outright about it? Is there someone whispering this in Palmer's ear?

Bottom line is that Anne certainly wasn't anywhere near as stupid as Palmer needs her to have been, and if she didn't actually do anything that would have been 'dangerous', he needs some evidence that she was in danger to begin with and successfully avoided it.

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.

Help from Oliver Twist, to invent more 'dangerous' scenarios for Anne the Artful Dodger to have avoided?

No thanks, I'd sooner ask Bill Sikes for help with the housework.

Love,

Nancy
X

[caz]

Hi Caz,

I don't understand your question. The word "bumbling" in "Bumbling buffoon" doesn't have anything to do with the Dickens character, Mr Bumble, so why would we think the diary was written by an avid Dickens fan? The diary author didn't refer to Dr Hopper as a "bumptious buffoon", so I can't see the point in discussing the hypothetical, but a nineteenth century writer could certainly have used that description.

Ah, I didn't realise that 'bumbling' wasn't even a word in Dickens's day, so nobody could have related it in their mind to Mr. Bumble, whether or not they knew that the name was actually derived from 'bumptious' and wasn't supposed to be used as a verb, as in 'to bumble about'?

Maybe the diary author wasn't trying to relate it to Bumble, or Bumbledom, at all, when trying to write like a late Victorian. But there is little doubt that Dr Hopper could equally well have been described as a 'bumptious' ass [and later a 'meddling' buffoon] without altering the intended meaning, so hats off to Anne Graham for getting this so nearly spot on, while still managing to 'trip over'.

Glad to know you checked that 'bumptious buffoon' was commonly used by real 19th century writers. I took a quick look and turned green when I saw the first example.

But let me ask you this Caz. Does it not strike you, with some force, that we’re dealing with a suspicious document (because it purports to solve one of the most famous unsolved murders in English history) in which we find no fewer than four commonplace modern expressions, identified by all reference books as twentieth century expressions, of which we have not a single known written or printed example from the nineteenth century (including “top myself”), the existence of which was wholly unknown until it was found to be in the possession of a self-professed con-artist and down-on-his luck former journalist from Liverpool who had secretly tried to purchase a genuine Victorian diary containing blank pages?

You may have missed this, Herlock, but I have no problem with the arguments for the diary not being Victorian; I have endless problems with the arguments for it being a Barrett production from early April 1992 - or indeed any other date some kind soul can come up with, to prise RJ Palmer gently out of the tight corner he has become wedged in due to Auction Theory. Don't ask - just check the archives if you genuinely want to learn more about this, because those problems have not diminished or materially changed in recent times as far as I am concerned. If anything, the latest arguments for a Barrett hoax have been very useful for confirming all the old problems I had and giving me new ones I never saw before.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

I've probably checked the wrong sources again, but I just found this:

'The word "bumble" comes from Middle English and is an imitative word. It can mean to act in a clumsy or inept way, or to make mistakes. For example, you might bumble through a dance or bumble an interview.

Etymology

• The earliest known use of the word "bumble" is from around 1405, in the writing of Geoffrey Chaucer.
• The word "bumbling" came to mean "confused, blundering, awkward" in 1886.'

So have I got this wrong, or could someone writing in 1888 have described their doctor as a bumbling buffoon, to mean he was a blundering buffoon for not believing his patient was in pain?

Love,

Caz
X

[rjpalmer]

Hi Herlock,

Apparently the diary faithful missed it, but last year I posted the entry for 'bumbling' from the 1888 edition of A New English Dictionary on Historic Principles (the forerunner of the Oxford English Dictionary) Vol. 1, page 1174.

Not Google, or Wikipedia, but the entry by Professor Murray and his Victorian gang of geniuses responsible for the O.E.D.

It listed the word 'bumbling' in the sense of 'bungling' as OBSOLETE.

You can see all the gory details here, Post #607, May 10, 2024, including images of the original entries.

One off - Jack The Ripper Forums - Ripperology For The 21st Century

This readily explains why, despite hundreds of thousands of pages of newsprint and books, etc., from the Victorian period having been digitized, no one can find "bumbling clown" or "bumbling idiot" or "bumbling buffoon" or "bumbling moron" etc. etc.

The word re-entered the language just before World War II, as noted by David Barrat.

[rjpalmer]

Note the cross in front of the 1888 entry



A note reveals that this means "obsolete."



I don't know about you, Herlock, but I wouldn't want to argue with the Professor and the Madman.

[Lombro2]

That’s so groovey! Ain’t it?

Obviously maybe someone wasn’t born in 1888.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Ah, I didn't realise that 'bumbling' wasn't even a word in Dickens's day, so nobody could have related it in their mind to Mr. Bumble, whether or not they knew that the name was actually derived from 'bumptious' and wasn't supposed to be used as a verb, as in 'to bumble about'?

Maybe the diary author wasn't trying to relate it to Bumble, or Bumbledom, at all, when trying to write like a late Victorian. But there is little doubt that Dr Hopper could equally well have been described as a 'bumptious' ass [and later a 'meddling' buffoon] without altering the intended meaning, so hats off to Anne Graham for getting this so nearly spot on, while still managing to 'trip over'.

Glad to know you checked that 'bumptious buffoon' was commonly used by real 19th century writers. I took a quick look and turned green when I saw the first example.



You may have missed this, Herlock, but I have no problem with the arguments for the diary not being Victorian; I have endless problems with the arguments for it being a Barrett production from early April 1992 - or indeed any other date some kind soul can come up with, to prise RJ Palmer gently out of the tight corner he has become wedged in due to Auction Theory. Don't ask - just check the archives if you genuinely want to learn more about this, because those problems have not diminished or materially changed in recent times as far as I am concerned. If anything, the latest arguments for a Barrett hoax have been very useful for confirming all the old problems I had and giving me new ones I never saw before.

Love,

Caz
X

Yes, just to be clear Caz, "bumbling" wasn't a word in Dickens' day. That's the whole point.

The diarist may well have thought that "bumbling buffoon" was a Victorian expression.... but they got caught out, just like they got caught out with "one off instance".

Although you say you have "no problem" with the diary not being Victorian, which we know it isn't, you nevertheless re-introduced into this thread the subject of "bumbling buffoon", which no-one had even mentioned this year. and asked why nobody "in Maybrick's day" could have thought to take the name of Mr Bumble and turn it into "bumbling"? What was the purpose of doing so other than to try and push the diary back to the Victorian era? Is that when you would prefer the diary to have been written? But it's pointless because "one off instance" proves that it's a twentieth century creation. So isn't discussion of other expressions in the diary (for which there are no known 19th century examples in any case) just a waste of all our time?

[Herlock Sholmes]

I've probably checked the wrong sources again, but I just found this:

'The word "bumble" comes from Middle English and is an imitative word. It can mean to act in a clumsy or inept way, or to make mistakes. For example, you might bumble through a dance or bumble an interview.

Etymology

• The earliest known use of the word "bumble" is from around 1405, in the writing of Geoffrey Chaucer.
• The word "bumbling" came to mean "confused, blundering, awkward" in 1886.'

So have I got this wrong, or could someone writing in 1888 have described their doctor as a bumbling buffoon, to mean he was a blundering buffoon for not believing his patient was in pain?

Love,

Caz
X

Caz, this post is another example of what I was talking about. It's like you are trying very hard for some reason to push the diary back to 1888. But "one off instance" already disproves that possibility.

Now the etymology of "bumbling" has already been discussed elsewhere. In the 19th century, "bumbling" was essentially an obsolete old English word. It isn't found in the 1844 New English Dictionary, or other nineteenth century dictionaries, other than to describe the sound of a bee, or other than as an obsolete or dialectical word because "bummel" or "bumble" is known to have been a word used in the Scottish and North Country dialects to mean a blunderer or bungler. It's not quite true to say that "The word "bumbling" came to mean "confused, blundering, awkward" in 1886." It was used by one North Country writer, Eliza Lynn Linton, in a book published that year entitled Paston Carew which referred to a character as "a big bumbling young fellow". To say that "bumbling" came to mean "confused, blundering, awkward" in 1886 as a result of that single ambiguous reference in an obscure book by a North Country writer is pushing it way too far.

The reality is that the word 'bumbling" was barely used in written form during rest of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and certainly not in any overt way to refer to confused, blundering or awkward individuals. There is a 1909 mention of a "bumbling fool" but other than this we don't find any mention of bumbling idiots, bumbling fools or anything like that nor any mention of bumbling doctors, politicians, detectives or the like. Until this 1909 reference, the word "bumbling" doesn't appear to have had a particular derogatory usage. Like I said in an earlier post, it was re-invented by the journalists of Time magazine during the 1920s as an insult for politicians and then re-introduced into the English language when Stanley Baldwin was described by Time, and then English newspapers, as "Bumbling Baldwin". It's only after this that we find uses of the expression "bumbling buffoon".

So it's not quite the same as "one off instance" in that it was literally impossible for someone to have used that expression in 1888 but the reality is that "bumbling" was not a common English word in 1888 and anyone wanting to punctuate a description of someone as an incompetent person in that year would have called them either a "bungling buffoon" or "blustering buffoon". As you've mentioned, "bumptious buffoon" was also not impossible. But "bumbling buffoon" is an anachronism for 1888, just like "top myself" is an anachronism, as is "spreads mayhem".

To repeat the point, though, there is no point in discussing these anachronistic expressions when we know for sure that "one off instance" is a modern phrase. We are better trying to work out who authored the diary in the post Second World period rather than attempting tortuous arguments to try and show that modern expressions could theoretically have been used in the nineteenth century even when there is no evidence of such usage. As to that Caz, do you have any possible candidates to propose from after 1945 who might have done it? And I must ask again, why could the Barretts not have done it, please?

[Lombro2]

1898 The English Dialect Dictionary, Being the Complete Vocabulary of All Dialec... - Google Books

[Herlock Sholmes]

1898 The English Dialect Dictionary, Being the Complete Vocabulary of All Dialec... - Google Books

Thanks for confirming what I already posted

[Herlock Sholmes]

Note the cross in front of the 1888 entry



A note reveals that this means "obsolete."



I don't know about you, Herlock, but I wouldn't want to argue with the Professor and the Madman.

Me neither Roger. A formidable partnership.