Why I find the diary implausible

[pinkmoon]

I think you understand it correctly, Stewart. If you ask me, it was all rather a waste of taxpayer's money to get Scotland Yard involved. I'd have thought the local Liverpool police could have done the same job if anyone thought it necessary or worth the expense.

Love,

Caz
X

Hi caz last week you told me that Anne barret signed her part of the diary away in 1994 do you know if Michael barret every signed his away and if so when.

[caz]

Good post graham it's nice to find some one who actually agrees that money has been made from this.

Yes, Pinky. Graham generally writes good posts on the diary, but I'm at a loss to know why you think nobody else has agreed with you that money was made at one time. I co-authored the blessed book Graham referred to, so I was writing about who made what money ten years ago, in 2003.

It was Mike's claim, in June 1994 (months after Scotland Yard lost interest, as I posted previously if you had been paying attention), to have written the diary himself, which put an end almost overnight to anyone receiving lucrative royalties ever since.

Love,

Caz
X

[pinkmoon]

So are you saying that Mike barret stopped receiving money from the diary in 1994?

[caz]

According to Caz and her co-authors (Ripper Diary - The Inside Story), Barrett had received monies totalling £47000 by August 1994, and apparently blew the lot. Legal expenses also contributed towards his coming out of the whole episode with nowt. Shirley Harrison, as a professional author, also made some money from her book, but I can't find a figure - not that it's any of my business anyway. So yes - money was made from the Diary, but probably not as much as might be supposed. Maybe Caz can add something to this.

Feldman, as I understand it, blew a sum well into 6 figures on his, it has to be admitted, obsession with the bloody Diary, and had little or nothing to show for it. In fact, I understand he attempted to take his own life because of it. Yet, and I don't give a bugger what anyone else thinks, his book "Jack The Ripper - The Final Chapter" is most definitely worth a read, not just with regard to the Diary, but also concerning new information he unearthed about Maybrick and the accusation and trial of Florence Maybrick. It ought to be required reading by anyone who's prepared to offer opinions regarding the Diary, its origins and its meaning.

Graham

Nothing much to add here, Graham, apart from the fact that a lot more misery than money seems to have come from the diary over the years, all things considered. It ruined more marriages, reputations and health than it filled bank accounts.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Hi caz last week you told me that Anne barret signed her part of the diary away in 1994 do you know if Michael barret every signed his away and if so when.

Anne wrote to Doreen (the Barretts' literary agent) that she wanted no share of the diary money, but as she was by then separated from Mike with a daughter to support, Doreen thought she should have a share for her daughter's sake, if not Anne's. As for Mike, he effectively 'signed his away' with his silly forgery claims, which he began making in June 1994, in revenge for what he thought Feldman was doing to ruin his life.

Love,

Caz
X

[pinkmoon]

Anne wrote to Doreen (the Barretts' literary agent) that she wanted no share of the diary money, but as she was by then separated from Mike with a daughter to support, Doreen thought she should have a share for her daughter's sake, if not Anne's. As for Mike, he effectively 'signed his away' with his silly forgery claims, which he began making in June 1994, in revenge for what he thought Feldman was doing to ruin his life.

Love,

Caz
X

Thank you my dear very helpfull xxxxxxxxxxxx

[caz]

So are you saying that Mike barret stopped receiving money from the diary in 1994?

Well certainly the big bucks dwindled away in the wake of his forgery claims, yes, although he would still have received all that was owing to him up until then, as his book royalties would have been paid in arrears.

(Sorry, I was in the middle of writing this when the phone rang, hence the delay in posting.)

Love,

Caz
X

[Lechmere]

Caz
Sorry for back tracking but I raised the issue of the details about Lime Street not being mentioned in the Diary and the alleged children of Sarah Robertson not getting mentioned (when the Diary ‘Maybrick’ sentimentalises over his legitimate children) as hints that the Diary was a forgery and so implausible (which is what this thread is about) rather than as pointers to the age of the forgery.
I don’t think someone who confesses to murder (and having a mistress) would be too prudish to admit to having illegitimate children.
Some people still dispute that the diary is a forgery of course.
Details such as the Lime Street connection and Sarah Robertson’s name were not in the public domain until recentlyish – and had they been mentioned then it would have some significance I think.

Anyway – on the issue of the term ‘mine’ for his mistress – it suggests to me that the writer didn’t know what name to use but had read that Maybrick had mistresses locally.
Robertson I don’t think is in contention as a local mistress – but there are other potential names that Livia has provided. The stories about his 1888 mistress or mistresses seem to conflate the alleged illegitimate children between different mothers, including Robertson.
I would suggest this uncertainty led to the author referring to the mistress as ‘mine’.
This doesn’t perhaps help us to date the forgery.
Bernard Ryan's Poisoned Life of Mrs Maybrick of course mentions a local mistress but not by name (incidentally Ryan seems to assume, almost certainly incorrectly, that the Liverpool mistress was Robertson, without naming her).

When I said:
‘the writer of the Diary had Maybrick premeditatedly and artificially acquire a comfort zone in the London Whitechapel (a location selected purely because it the name matched the Liverpool district)’.
The ‘purely’ was with reference to why the Diary ‘Maybrick’ selected Whitechapel as the location for his rampage. He ‘purely’ selected Whitechapel from the many districts in London because of the name coincidence with the street in Liverpool and the Diary ‘Maybrick’ explicitly states this. He did not give as a reason any local connection or previous knowledge through his work in the City or through Robertson.

[caz]

Caz
Sorry for back tracking but I raised the issue of the details about Lime Street not being mentioned in the Diary and the alleged children of Sarah Robertson not getting mentioned (when the Diary ‘Maybrick’ sentimentalises over his legitimate children) as hints that the Diary was a forgery and so implausible (which is what this thread is about) rather than as pointers to the age of the forgery.

Hi Lech,

Perfectly fair comment.

I don’t think someone who confesses to murder (and having a mistress) would be too prudish to admit to having illegitimate children.

I agree, not too 'prudish', but I didn't suggest otherwise. My own view (and that's all it is) is that a married Victorian social climber, who was in a secret extra-marital relationship, and unwilling or unable to support any offspring properly, would not necessarily have acknowledged them as his children, and therefore his responsibility, even to himself, never mind to the outside world. Sir Jim gloats about the sex part, seeing his mistress for pleasure, but I can certainly see why the author wouldn't have him waxing lyrical about the little ba*tards he could have done without.

Anyway – on the issue of the term ‘mine’ for his mistress – it suggests to me that the writer didn’t know what name to use but had read that Maybrick had mistresses locally.

Perfectly fair viewpoint - although the writer obviously knew the victims' names but made the deliberate choice to include only one of them. So it's not cut and dried.

Robertson I don’t think is in contention as a local mistress – but there are other potential names that Livia has provided. The stories about his 1888 mistress or mistresses seem to conflate the alleged illegitimate children between different mothers, including Robertson.
I would suggest this uncertainty led to the author referring to the mistress as ‘mine’.

Possibly so, but maybe you should read Livia's posts through again, along with the books by Trevor Christie and Bernard Ryan, if you don't think Sarah Robertson is 'in contention' as a local mistress. Ryan, for one, very clearly implies otherwise, and only one mistress appears to be in contention as the mother of the alleged Maybrick brood. The references all appear to concern one mother of five children - namely Sarah Robertson. With two of them allegedly conceived and born after the Maybrick marriage, she was either living locally at the time or he was travelling a long way to service her - to London or possibly the north east.

This doesn’t perhaps help us to date the forgery.

No it doesn't, sadly.

Bernard Ryan's Poisoned Life of Mrs Maybrick of course mentions a local mistress but not by name (incidentally Ryan seems to assume, almost certainly incorrectly, that the Liverpool mistress was Robertson, without naming her).

But where is your evidence that Ryan was 'almost certainly' incorrect to assume this was Sarah? Why shouldn't it have been, if he was still getting bills for her dresses when he died in 1889? They could hardly have been for the mistress who had married someone else.

When I said:
‘the writer of the Diary had Maybrick premeditatedly and artificially acquire a comfort zone in the London Whitechapel (a location selected purely because it the name matched the Liverpool district)’.
The ‘purely’ was with reference to why the Diary ‘Maybrick’ selected Whitechapel as the location for his rampage. He ‘purely’ selected Whitechapel from the many districts in London because of the name coincidence with the street in Liverpool and the Diary ‘Maybrick’ explicitly states this. He did not give as a reason any local connection or previous knowledge through his work in the City or through Robertson.

But why should he? The real Maybrick would have known about all his connections with London, and would not have needed to itemise each one to remind himself, so why would the author have done that? Sir Jim writes that Whitechapel is an 'ideal' location (which it is for several reasons, including the fact that he won't be connected directly with the place; he can come and go without being recognised; and he can slip out of the area and avoid house-to-house searches). He particularly enjoys his private joke over the coincidence of having his very own Whitechapel in Liverpool.

The author is playing with ideas more than he is trying to convince anyone that this is the real Maybrick writing. But it's absurd to suggest that he/she had Sir Jim describe Whitechapel as 'ideal' for murdering prostitutes purely for the game he could have with the place name.

Love,

Caz
X

[Dictionary Brown]

This is an excellent thread. Thanks, Damaso.

First, the diary seems strange to me in its limited scope. Who buys a scrapbook thinking "I am going to use this solely to complain about my wife", then starts planning a murder spree, and writes only about the murder spree in that diary.

I really don't see the problem so many people seem to have with the choice of a scrapbook. I've used many books with blank pages for things they were never intended for, and I think many people have as well. As a kid I used to draw on the old fashioned folded computer paper; something that that paper was never intended for.

Also, the Maybrick diary was a private journal, and I believe it was best disguised as something that at first glance did NOT look like a diary

It's not impossible for a person to have such a limited diary - but it's far more likely, imo, that it was cheaper for a hoaxer to only write about the things that people would be interested in.

I see a few scattered examples of banal detail in the diary, but if taken as genuine, then it was a journal meant mainly for describing his murderous thoughts, planning, fantasizing, and re-living his crimes. It did have a limited scope.

It's also limited in scope a second way: there's not much in there that only the killer would know.

I believe some might argue that the empty tin matchbox reference is something that only the killer could have known at the time. But there's a lot of debate over that, so I suppose on the whole you're right.

Abberline is the only police official mentioned. The notion of Abberline and the Ripper being engaged in a Holmes and Moriarty battle of wits between two outstanding geniuses is thoroughly modern, read the press reports of the time and many other police officials are being discussed. Where is SIR CHARLES WARREN, about whom the papers of the time would not shut up?

I believe the diary does mention Warren.

"Perhaps I will send Abberline and Warren a sample or two, it goes down well with an after dinner port."

But in fairness, from what I see Warren is mentioned only once compared with multiple mentions of Abberline. I'm not sure if any other police officials are mentioned by name.

The diary bets it all on the C5 being the only London victims. There was no consensus on this at the time, and if anything most grouped all of the murders together, even the pre-Tabram ones and the torso killings.

I see this as a strong argument against the idea that the diary is an old forgery, and could also be viewed as supporting the diary's authenticity.

Even if the Ripper only did kill the C5, why no mention of the other murders? If Maybrick pre-meditated this killing spree long before Nichols took her last breath, why nothing in the diary about Tabram's killer stealing his thunder? Why no gloating that many other crimes were being ascribed to him, furthering his goals and stroking his ego? The writer of the diary forgets the other killings: again, a modern trait, not a trait of persons living in the 1888 news cycle.

This is a legitimate point. The author of the diary certainly seems to be an egomaniac with manic and depressive phases, so it is surprising that the other murders ascribed to the Ripper were not mentioned in some form, either in complaints or gloating.

The diary strongly hints that Maybrick wrote several, if not many, of the letters: it hints that he coined the phrase "Jack the Ripper" and it makes a vague mention of sending rhymes to the police. It's hard to find a serious Ripperologist today who believes that the killer wrote any of the letters.

That is very interesting, I will have to read up on the latest information about the letters and why they're all currently considered fakes.

Before the diary defenders chime in - no, nothing I've posted here disproves the authenticity of the diary in a dispositive way. But I submit that "prove it undeniably false, or else" is a special rule that diary supporters have made up just for this discussion, and bears no relation with how we choose the things we believe, either as individuals or as a society. In reality, we lack the ability to fully prove or disprove many of the things we could possibly believe, so instead we use a mix of logic, intuition, and limited evidence to rank things according to plausibility, and believe only the things that fall above a certain line.

I understand what you are saying. It is reasonable to give the content of the diary the "smell test" as I believe you're describing. Diary opponents have been vigorous and vocal, and that's exactly the way it should be. I know feelings sometimes might get hurt and sometimes tempers flare in this debate, but having a loyal opposition is necessary to move forward. This may sounds redundant, but it's true: the only way the diary can withstand vigorous scrutiny is if there are people out there willing to vigorously scrutinize it. The fact that it has withstood such intense scrutiny over the years, to me, speaks volumes about its authenticity.

I personally wouldn't characterize the pro-diary camp's position as "prove it undeniably false, or else", as much as just requesting one thing that unquestionably knocks it down and ends the diary debate once and for all. Because, until it is conclusively knocked down, diary believers believe the diary shouldn't be quickly dismissed.

[GUT]

But of course a major weakness is that Maybrick, it appears, was a reasonably intelligent man. Yet we are expected to accept that he wrote out a diary which if found and accepted as true could only have one result for James.

[Dictionary Brown]

Giving it my own smell test, here's what I find plausible about the diary (or more accurately, what I find implausible about a forgery):

The verse writing. There's a surprising amount of it, and if the diary is a forgery, then it's creative writing within creative writing. I doubt a contemporary forger, unless notably gifted at writing, would do more than the minimum amount of verse within the forgery, if they thought of it at all. How does verse incriminate James as JTR specifically? I know James' stated reason was sibling rivalry, but how does that detail of verse serve the contemporary forgers? Maybe I'm missing something, but the amount of creative writing in the diary, including lists of rhyming words, smells authentic. It's not just writing, it's extensive re-writing as well. Add to that a complete page of verse all scratched out. Either the forgers were writing their first draft as their final draft (a bold and risky move), or they were pretty darned smart to include such a persistent yet unnecessary detail, for authenticity's sake alone.

I seriously doubt that any contemporary forger whose intent was to provide Florence with a forgivable motive would incriminate her at the end of the diary. If the diary was meant to help Florence in her legal case, the diary should have ended with James' suicidal overdose, and not with James requesting Florence to administer a lethal dose. Sure, it's an open question as to whether or not she would/did, but if they had diary in hand and accepted as authentic, the authorities would have been confronted with two facts: 1. James asked Florence to give him a lethal dose, and 2. James Maybrick then died. Alternatively, a forged diary that ended with James intending to take a suicidal overdose would have gotten her off the hook, as well as a boatload of post acquittal sympathy to boot. I see no logical reason to forge the diary for Florence's benefit and then use it incriminate her especially when absolving her would have only taken a few strokes of a pen.

How would the contemporary forger know that the Ripper murders would end?

Why would contemporary forgers trying to sully James' name go to the trouble to make him seem remorseful or sympathetic? It's a touch I would expect from a modern hoaxer, but if was a contemporary hoax to attack James posthumously (why anyone would feel that was even necessary is beyond me) why expend any energy at all making him seem the slightest bit remorseful or tortured about his actions? If James was not Jack the Ripper, it would stand to reason that he probably wasn't as bad as JTR. So, what did Maybrick do that was so bad that it would make someone want to frame him as JTR just to ruin his legacy? And motivate them to also forge a confession on a watch as well? And if their goal was to besmirch his name, why go to any effort to make him sympathetic? It just doesn't wash.

Looking over the facsimile and judging from the handwriting alone, it certainly appears to have been written over multiple sittings. The ink seems uneven when some entries are compared, and the size of the handwriting varies. Some paragraphs are written very tightly and with tiny print, while others the line spacing widens and tilts. Later in the text, the writing stretches out and gets a bit larger, which I would interpret as someone writing quickly and with heated emotion. Right after "the bitch the bitch the bitch", the next entry is in small, tightly controlled letters. And the diary is never more formal than in the last page. I believe only in the final pages did Maybrick begin acclimating himself to the thought that he might let the diary be found after his death. I believe the majority of the diary was meant for his eyes only, as a way of planning and reliving his crimes.

[Dictionary Brown]

But of course a major weakness is that Maybrick, it appears, was a reasonably intelligent man. Yet we are expected to accept that he wrote out a diary which if found and accepted as true could only have one result for James.

Right away he acknowledges that keeping the diary might be dangerous.

I am beginning to believe it is unwise to continue writing. If I am to down a whore then nothing shall lead the pursuers back to me, and yet there are times when I feel an overwhelming compulsion to put my thoughts to paper. It is dangerous, that I know. If Smith should find this, then I am done before my campaign begins. However, the pleasure of writing off all that lays ahead of me, and indeed the pleasure of thoughts of deeds that lay ahead of me, thrills me so. And what deeds I shall commit.

Later in the diary he wonders if he should destroy it. Then he reaffirms that he enjoys planning and reliving his deeds in writing. From what I understand, many serial killers keep incriminating souvenirs of their crimes, so it's not really that unusual.

I believe the man who was Jack the Ripper would have such an outsized ego to keep a journal such as this. He not only has serious egomania, he has huge blind spots I would expect from someone in the deep throes of an addiction to deadly poison as well as an obvious mental disorder. The diarist claims that "nothing shall lead the pursuers back to me", when (assuming the diary is real) he writes a diary, scratches a confession on a watch, leaves clues at crime scenes, writes letters to papers and police, and takes body parts home with him!

[MayBea]

... If the diary was meant to help Florence in her legal case, the diary should have ended with James' suicidal overdose, and not with James requesting Florence to administer a lethal dose.

DB, you've done an admirable job highlighting the weakness of the old hoax theory. I hope you add your vote to the Vote the Diary thread.

I don't think there should even be an Old Hoax Theory option. At best, it should be called Old Document theory, for those who don't want to make a decision on authenticity.