Originally posted by barnflatwyngarde
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To my tin ear, the pastiche - or parody, spoof, burlesque - reads like it was meant to be a bad one, and was loaded with deliberately bad jokes, rhymes and wordplay, for comic effect.
It reads to me like the ultimate ripper hoax, based on the many ripper letters received by the police and press, and articles in Punch, published at the time of the murders, which the vast majority took to be spoofs, and not connected with the killer himself.
The difference with the diary - whether it was the brainchild of someone schooled in the 1930s [Melvin Harris's early prediction], or in earlier or later decades - is that the killer can be identified from the internal content as a real person, who was a nobody until his death in mysterious circumstances in Battlecrease House, not long after The Autumn of Terror. In fact, I have seen it from day one as an Alternative Diary of a Nobody, with the Maybricks as Liverpudlian Pooters!
I didn't know then, that there might be circumstantial evidence that it was found in Maybrick's old bedroom - the ultimate place to plant the ultimate ripper hoax.
How it might have got there and when is another matter, but I doubt its author ever imagined it would end up with Michael Barrett.
I could see the author now, crying with laughter at the unexpected mayhem spread by what Mike did next.
Have a lovely Christmas but please stay safe.
Love,
Caz
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