New Book: The Maybrick Murder and the Diary of Jack the Ripper

[Al Bundy's Eyes]

On the contrary, Abe, it's a shonky scrapbook which has the prima facie appearance of a hoax and reads like a poorly written novel but probably because its author wasn't a novelist.

Please don't allow your prejudices to form so shallow an opinion of a document which has not been proven to be inauthentic in thirty years of trying. There are some very easily-led readers amongst these pages and I would hate for any of them to be misled by superficial commentary of the artefact and the text.

Your old pal,

Ike

Eloquently put Ike.

[Iconoclast]

Hi Caz,

It's not that curious really, it's a shonky hoax that reads like a poorly written novel.

On the contrary, Abe, it's a shonky scrapbook which has the prima facie appearance of a hoax and reads like a poorly written novel but probably because its author wasn't a novelist.

Please don't allow your prejudices to form so shallow an opinion of a document which has not been proven to be inauthentic in thirty years of trying. There are some very easily-led readers amongst these pages and I would hate for any of them to be misled by superficial commentary of the artefact and the text.

Your old pal,

Ike

[Al Bundy's Eyes]

It's as clear as a bell because the diary author writes:

'I assured the w.... it would never happen again.'

It only has to be as clear as a bell to the person writing the diary. He is meant to be writing down his own thoughts, for nobody but himself. And yet here we have a tautology, unless he needs to explain to himself in his diary, what he meant by writing 'one off instance'.

Curiouser and curiouser...

Love,

Caz
X

Hi Caz,

It's not that curious really, it's a shonky hoax that reads like a poorly written novel.

[rjpalmer]

I do appreciate it may be difficult for Chris to take the contradictions into account, because nobody likes to question the recollections of a close friend, far less when it concerns his own house!

Isn’t this a rather unfair insinuation?

"Recollection" has nothing to do with Dodd's understanding of the lay-out of Maybrick’s old house, which was what Jones was discussing in the podcast. Dodd wasn't at Battlecrease in the 1880s. The family bought the house decades later.

Judging from Feldman's video, filmed in the 1990s, Dodd believed the upstairs room that received the heaters was Maybrick's old bedroom and that Maybrick's private study was off this room. Obliviously, this belief couldn't have been a "recollection." An assumption, maybe--or something that Dodd had been told by a realtor or someone else--but certainly not a recollection.

And it is clear from the podcast that Jones is doing exactly what you say he wouldn’t do: he is challenging Dodd's belief on this point. Jones is saying that the room wasn't Maybrick's bedroom, after all, and that Maybrick's private study was on the ground-floor.

On what this belief is based is left unsaid, but perhaps the book will go into more detail.

The main thrust of the podcast was that it would be ridiculous to imagine a very ill Maybrick, having climbed from his deathbed on May 6th, ordering Nurse Yapp to fetch a crowbar and a hammer so that he could make an ungodly racket pulling brass nails and lifting heavy floorboards.

It is not so much of a problem for you, perhaps, but can you appreciate why some might think it is a credibility issue for those who believe the diary is genuine?

[caz]

Florrie begs him not to do it again---a key point, if we are to fully understand the context.

'Maybrick' agrees not to do it again, assuring her it was a "one off instance."

It is as clear as a bell what the hoaxer meant by this...

It's as clear as a bell because the diary author writes:

'I assured the w.... it would never happen again.'

It only has to be as clear as a bell to the person writing the diary. He is meant to be writing down his own thoughts, for nobody but himself. And yet here we have a tautology, unless he needs to explain to himself in his diary, what he meant by writing 'one off instance'.

Curiouser and curiouser...

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

The idea of a notable or unique individual or event being compared to a single manufactured item produced from a mould which is then broken goes back centuries.

The tradition of describing a single item produced from a mould as a ‘one-off’ almost certainly dates from the 19th century. Anyone who imagines they can precisely date occupational jargon from its earliest appearance in print is either a fool or a charlatan.

And those who try to bullishly push such nonsense to promote their version of reality are guilty of the worst kind of ‘splaining’. Their ‘useful idiot’ acolytes, though, should be pitied as victims of Copenhagen syndrome.

How about Dickenssplaining, Gary?

Poor Mr. Bumble may have been a 'minor' character, as RJ says, but who in all of England would not have heard of him, going right back to 1838, which was the year Oliver Twist was published and James Maybrick was born?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

No commentary on Chris Jones referring to the Battlecrease/Eddie Lyons provenance as a "load of rubbish"?

He's not wrong.

Are you suggesting that the primary source documents - the original timesheets from 1992 - are modern fakes, RJ?

Has Chris Jones actually seen them, do you know? Or has he been relying on Paul Dodd's recollections, which unfortunately have been far from consistent over the years, going right back to 1993. I'm not blaming Paul for this, of course, because human memory can be notoriously unreliable, without the belt and braces of documentary evidence. But it ought to be of some concern to any impartial observer, that his memory is flatly contradicted by the historical record, as well as some of his own previous accounts - also on record - and is unlikely to improve with time.

I do appreciate it may be difficult for Chris to take the contradictions into account, because nobody likes to question the recollections of a close friend, far less when it concerns his own house!

Love,

Caz
X

[Yabs]

At first, I thought you might be right, based on the advertisements, but now I have my doubts.

I think it might mean the number of years since weaning.

"Our Friend the Horse," a handbook by Frank Barton (Fleet Street, 1900) refers to a two year and three-month old horse as a "two years off", as demonstrated by the horse's teeth.

He then calls as three-year old horse a "three off." Off weaning, evidently, as the horse's teeth change from temporary to permanent. I've seen two other handbooks on raising horses, and they both used the phrase in reference to determining the horse's age by its teeth. Anyway, this seems a long way away from the Mabyrick diary.

I think you’ve nailed it, RJ.
so one-off regarding young horses has nothing whatsoever to do with a singular event, and neither would the Maybrick phrase originated from that

[rjpalmer]

At first I thought that maybe the phrase. Two-off and the like meant the colt or filly is two years off from becoming a grown horse at the age of 4 or 5

At first, I thought you might be right, based on the advertisements, but now I have my doubts.

I think it might mean the number of years since weaning.

"Our Friend the Horse," a handbook by Frank Barton (Fleet Street, 1900) refers to a two year and three-month old horse as a "two years off", as demonstrated by the horse's teeth.

He then calls as three-year old horse a "three off." Off weaning, evidently, as the horse's teeth change from temporary to permanent. I've seen two other handbooks on raising horses, and they both used the phrase in reference to determining the horse's age by its teeth. Anyway, this seems a long way away from the Mabyrick diary.

[rjpalmer]

Either way it would appear that one-off, two-off etc in an equine context refers to years

I think you must be right, or very close to it, in suggesting that it was the number of years away from full maturity.

Since a colt is a young uncastrated male horse, a colt could hardly be accurately described as being five years old.

So the original argument that a 'one-off' horse could mean a young, immature horse was probably wide of the mark.

[Yabs]

Either way it would appear that one-off, two-off etc in an equine context refers to years

[Yabs]

Then Five Off turned up and I was none the wiser again.

[Yabs]

At first I thought that maybe the phrase. Two-off and the like meant the colt or filly is two years off from becoming a grown horse at the age of 4 or 5

[rjpalmer]

I took this to imply a unique promising filly (it was not obvious why it would be unique, granted)

Ah, a one-off filly means a unique filly?

Then what is a two-off filly?

[Iconoclast]

hi gary
with all due respect, I think he has discussed it multiple times on his site.

hope all is well my friend. : )

Hopefully Gary will clarify this ambiguity.

As I understand it, he made an argument a year or two ago that 'one-off' could relate to a one-year old pony or horse. I forget the exact details but they were along these lines. This argument was then analysed by Lord Orsam and (no surprises here) debunked (in his opinion).

Now, I think this is where the ambiguity comes in. Yesterday, Gary posted a clipping he states was from 1864 in which the expression 'one-off promising filly' was used. I took this to imply a unique promising filly (it was not obvious why it would be unique, granted) and I assumed that the equine-reference was simply a coincidence (like we don't have enough of those in this case?). Perhaps I was too previous in accepting this position. Perhaps he was pursuing his previous argument that 'one-off' in the context of a horse was related to its age, but - if he was - I'm unclear why Orsam needed to have known about the 1864 reference. That is, why would an earlier use be any more relevant to the argument if the later usage had been debunked?

Anyway, I'm happy to be corrected. Gary, could you clarify for the casual readers amongst us (clearly including myself here) what argument you were making by posting the 1864 clipping, please?

Cheers,

Ike