The Inconvenient Truth of the Maybrick Watch

[Aethelwulf]

That's not my argument.

Yes, a hoaxer could have practised, if they had an original Maybrick signature to copy from, and if they had several other gold items lying around to deface. But could they have inscribed it inside Albert's gold watch in May 1993, using a genuinely old and crumbling brass implement?

Could you? Nobody as far as I know has ever tried it, and put their gold where their mouth is. Or if they have, they kept their resounding success to themselves.

All I am saying is that whoever did it was familiar with the form that signature took in the 1880s - or they were guessing and the correct form was purely accidental, which seems rather unlikely, doesn't it?

Love,

Caz
X

We're not talking evil genius here though.

1. Hoaxer obtains document with JM's signature
2. Hoaxer practices signature on soft metal
3. Hoaxer inscribes watch

[rjpalmer]

What does make sense is that for some reason two chancers saw an opportunity following all the hype of the diary to get involved. Amazing that the watch appeared within weeks of the diary. Too much of a coincidence surely? Maybe if they had appeared years apart but come on.....

At the risk of being exceedingly blunt, I am extremely hesitant to accept any of Jay Hartley's opinions or statements about the watch...he appears to be in a serious muddle on several key points.

In his article 'The Inconvenient Truth About the Maybrick Watch," Jay is greatly impressed that the watch is "still in the family," implying there was no attempt to cash-in on the hoax:


IN THE FAMILY

“Albert sadly passed away in 2008. Daisy, Albert’s granddaughter, the person he claimed he had purchased it for originally, still owns the watch (at the time of writing). The family has had numerous offers down the year for the artefact, including one for $40k from a Texas businessman. According to Albert’s notes, they even rejected an offer of $125K from someone called ‘Bob.’




“However, it still remains in Daisy’s possession. If the watch was created to cash in on the Maybrick diary, then why do the same family still own it 30 years on?”

“Are they waiting for a bigger payday than the ones they rejected? This is one long-game hoax if ever there was one.”

---

Uh, no. This is not the whole story, nor is it accurate.

Let me first point out that Jay is apparently unaware that the "Texas businessman" and the mysterious "Bob" are the same person. So how many actual offers were there?

The Texas businessman was Robert E. Davis, a collector of crime memorabilia, who went by the name 'Bob,' and he spent a considerable time negotiating with Albert, thus we get several different figures. This seems to have confused Jay.

More significantly, is it accurate to say that Albert Johnson "rejected" these offers?

Not in the least.

Let me point you to a far more candid and a far less sanitized version of these events as reported by someone who, unlike Jay Hartley and Caroline Brown, was actually in contact with Bob Davis and Albert Johnson back in the 1990s. This is Shirley Harrison, from 'The American Connection' (2003) p. 32, and it is an incredible revelation:




As you can see, rather than reject the offers, Johnson accepted a very large offer.

But embarrassingly for Albert, the deal fell through when it was discovered that his brother Robbie--behind Albert's back--had peddled 'shares' in the watch to two very sketchy and "menacing" characters, having falsely claimed that the watch had been appraised at a million pounds--which is commonly known as fraud.

Davis threatened legal action, the deal fell through, and having been cheated out of $15,000 in travel expenses, he returned home.

This is the real reason why the watch is "still in the family"--but you wouldn't know any of this from reading Jay Hartley's blog.

[Aethelwulf]

Surely that cannot be stated beyond reasonable doubt? Especially with all the points raised by rjpalmer? And then beyond that I just don's see why Maybrick would have done it? Why scratch his name illegibly into the watch along with 'I am Jack'? and then the initials of the victims? Why not the initials of his other victims (as alluded to in the diary) or at least some indication that he killed others? It just does not make sense. Is there any evidence that actually links Maybrick to the watch?

What does make sense is that for some reason two chancers saw an opportunity following all the hype of the diary to get involved. Amazing that the watch appeared within weeks of the diary. Too much of a coincidence surely? Maybe if they had appeared years apart but come on.....

You're wasting your time. Ike and Ero have been so deeply suckered into this total nonsense as to write a book and electronic doorstop on the subject. If the Maybrick interpretation of the GSG is seen by these as sound, well nothing will ever change their minds.

[Losmandris]

As I have already stated your opinion is as valid as anyone else’s opinion but we are beyond that with the watch.

We are in the realms of outright denial of what is in front of them.

The watch has to be taken seriously and thank god there are people left who are willing to do exactly that.

You dislike the science all you like but it doesn’t change it. Unless some kind of recognised expert comes with an alternative viewpoint no-one’s opinion actually matters.

What we have today is a watch that could not be a modern hoax in 1993, with embedded brass particles in the base of the engravings and a signature (especially the K) being extremely similar to Maybrick’s own hand.

Surely that cannot be stated beyond reasonable doubt? Especially with all the points raised by rjpalmer? And then beyond that I just don's see why Maybrick would have done it? Why scratch his name illegibly into the watch along with 'I am Jack'? and then the initials of the victims? Why not the initials of his other victims (as alluded to in the diary) or at least some indication that he killed others? It just does not make sense. Is there any evidence that actually links Maybrick to the watch?

What does make sense is that for some reason two chancers saw an opportunity following all the hype of the diary to get involved. Amazing that the watch appeared within weeks of the diary. Too much of a coincidence surely? Maybe if they had appeared years apart but come on.....

[caz]

Albert Johnson discovered the inscriptions in the watch, so we can theorise that he was responsible for putting them there. Nothing in Albert's past to suggest he had ever tried to con anyone, with a hoax or a forgery or anything else? No problem. Look to the brother and see what dirt can be raked up there.

This is Cross theory by another name.

Charles Cross discovered a murdered woman, and hungry eyes see a man with an entire killing career ahead of him. Nothing in Cross's past to suggest it? Oh well, if the fact that a small child was once accidentally killed when they ran out in front of his cart can't be used against him, look to Cross's mother and see what dirt can be raked up there.

When Mike Barrett told Doreen Montgomery that he had JtR's diary, she observed that 'finds like these don't grow on trees', and we can theorise that he was responsible for growing it from seed.

Nothing in Mike's past to suggest he could have forged a sick note? Handwriting that resembled my cat's? Not a problem. Look to Mike's other half, who wrote his magazine articles for him, and theorise that she was the one up to the elbows in diary ink and diabolical doggerel.

As a bonus, rake up a handbag snatch from Mike's youth, to demonstrate an early desire to add a literary hoax to his CV, given enough time and a favourable wind.

Finally, hit pay dirt with a marriage breakdown that led Mike to push the self-destruct button. Swallow all the forgery claims he made while grieving the loss of his wife and daughter and drinking himself stupid, then regurgitate them like alphabetti spaghetti to give the desired dates and details for your April Fool of a Barrett hoax.

Love,

Caz
X

[erobitha]

Literally everything I have read in this thread points toward hoax. I cannot see it any other way. It is just all too convoluted to even come close to the truth. Literally nothing is clear. And that screams dodgy to me. I have no stake in this fight, I do not have a pet suspect I just like to look at the case as objectively as possible, focus on the scant facts we have in an effort to come to some kind of logical conclusions (though this is challenging in itself) but this is about as illogical as it gets. Nothing makes any sense.

As I have already stated your opinion is as valid as anyone else’s opinion but we are beyond that with the watch.

We are in the realms of outright denial of what is in front of them.

The watch has to be taken seriously and thank god there are people left who are willing to do exactly that.

You dislike the science all you like but it doesn’t change it. Unless some kind of recognised expert comes with an alternative viewpoint no-one’s opinion actually matters.

What we have today is a watch that could not be a modern hoax in 1993, with embedded brass particles in the base of the engravings and a signature (especially the K) being extremely similar to Maybrick’s own hand.

[caz]

A hoaxer would practice, as I said. There is no reason to think Maybrick could have done it better than a hoaxer.

That's not my argument.

Yes, a hoaxer could have practised, if they had an original Maybrick signature to copy from, and if they had several other gold items lying around to deface. But could they have inscribed it inside Albert's gold watch in May 1993, using a genuinely old and crumbling brass implement?

Could you? Nobody as far as I know has ever tried it, and put their gold where their mouth is. Or if they have, they kept their resounding success to themselves.

All I am saying is that whoever did it was familiar with the form that signature took in the 1880s - or they were guessing and the correct form was purely accidental, which seems rather unlikely, doesn't it?

Love,

Caz
X

[FISHY1118]

Literally everything I have read in this thread points toward hoax. I cannot see it any other way. It is just all too convoluted to even come close to the truth. Literally nothing is clear. And that screams dodgy to me. I have no stake in this fight, I do not have a pet suspect I just like to look at the case as objectively as possible, focus on the scant facts we have in an effort to come to some kind of logical conclusions (though this is challenging in itself) but this is about as illogical as it gets. Nothing makes any sense.

Ill second these thoughts, Diary + Watch = Hoax

[caz]

Sorry, Caz, this is weird commentary with not an ounce of critical thinking attached to it.

None of Feldman's crazy conspiracy theories (which came later--more on this another time) has anything to do with his initial contact with Johnson.

Feldman was an experienced and successful businessman and was just as able to discern a cold reception as anyone else (probably more so) and he quickly realized that Albert was fobbing him off onto his brother.

That's strange...and interesting.

It merely tells me that Albert and Robbie had different personalities. Their initial dealings were with Robert, and with the book Shirley was still busy writing. Albert would have felt his loyalties were to Robert and Shirley, and may even have been warned not to let this Paul Feldman fellow throw his weight about, with his tendency to phone people at all hours and interrogate them until he got the answers he wanted.

Why on earth would Robbie have needed to have been there to show Albert's watch, which Albert supposedly bought for his granddaughter? Robbie should have had nothing to do with it.

Why on earth not? In Albert's shoes, I'd have been glad of my own brother's presence and input, as the stronger and more confident personality, and why would anyone have objected to him being there? Why do you object to Robbie being there?

And why was it Robbie who was phoning Feldman from Dr. Turgoose's office? I hope you aren't trying to deny that he wasn't front and center in all of this.

Not at all. I'd have wanted my brother to have done exactly the same, although to be fair he is infinitely more qualified to talk science with scientists than I am, or Robbie would have been.

Feldman later repeats that he had 'no doubt' that it was Robbie who was in charge of the business arrangements concerning the watch.

Again, Robbie was probably more disposed to discussing business arrangements, and more willing to engage with Feldman, than Albert ever was. I can't read any more into it than that, based on my own relationship with my brother and all the time I spent in Albert and Val's company.

But I suppose I can appreciate why you would want to make Robbie seem like an unimportant and irrelevant figure in all of this, even though it is plain from both Harrison and Felman's accounts that wherever the watch was, Robbie was not far behind.

Not an unimportant or irrelevant figure, but one who was, by nature, a lot more eager than Albert ever was to seize the potential advantages of having this watch in the family.

I can appreciate why you would want to make Robbie seem like the sort of reprobate who could have run rings round his simple brother. After all, you have no dirt on Albert to rake up [apart from sounding 'cold and distant' when phoned by Feldy], and Robbie had no previous for forgery, so without his record for drug dealing and possession, you'd have precious little else to hold against either of them.

Where did the rock steady hand come from? You know, the one Robbie used to inscribe a good likeness of Maybrick's signature in Daisy's gold watch with his flaking old tool, while ripped to the tits on wacky baccy and laughing hysterically, while Albert and Val sat downstairs watching Songs of Praise?

[Losmandris]

Literally everything I have read in this thread points toward hoax. I cannot see it any other way. It is just all too convoluted to even come close to the truth. Literally nothing is clear. And that screams dodgy to me. I have no stake in this fight, I do not have a pet suspect I just like to look at the case as objectively as possible, focus on the scant facts we have in an effort to come to some kind of logical conclusions (though this is challenging in itself) but this is about as illogical as it gets. Nothing makes any sense.

[Iconoclast]

The diary has never been authenticated and it never will be.
It was examined by three different examiners at three different times and all three refused to authenticate it.

Reputations are rather important to such people, I imagine. Hugh Trevor-Roper probably went to his grave regretting his moment of ill-considered 'authentication' which - possibly forever - sets such 'authenticators' up to be Naysayers. It's the 'intellectually' safe ground post-Kujau.

Enquirer: I think I may have the diary of Jack the Ripper here.
Authenticator: [Thinks: **** me, there's a ******* time bomb under my career] It's a hoax, I'm afraid.
Enquirer: But you haven't seen it.
Authenticator: [Thinks: **** me, this one's not going away easily] Well send it 'round to my office and I'll reject it, I mean, I'll consider it in due course.
Enquirer: Okay.
Authenticator: By the way, what's everyone else saying about it?

Psychology Methodology 101.

[rjpalmer]

1) The scrapbook has never once been formally disproven

Unfortunately for you and Jay Hartley, this oft-repeated hokum is utterly meaningless.

Questioned documents have to be authenticated. Even an undergraduate in Historic Methodology 101 could tell you that.

The diary has never been authenticated and it never will be.

It was examined by three different examiners at three different times and all three refused to authenticate it.

And this occurred before it was published.

Robert Smith then gave up and published it under a sort of "Ripley's Believe it or Not" disclaimer.

That was nearly 30 years ago.

In the intervening years, Smith still hasn't been able to get anyone to authenticate his diary.

One might as well yell from the rooftops that no one has ever 'formerly disproven' the Fiji Mermaid or Kate Eddowes' shawl. What is this even supposed to mean?

Is there a governing body somewhere in Iceland that decides such things?

[Iconoclast]

Well, what a ******* day I obviously missed!

Let's just have a momentary sanity check here:

1) The scrapbook has never once been formally disproven - it has only had arguments lain against it which in themselves are unproven (for example, where Jack left Kelly's breasts is essentially not in debate but where he variously put them during his early morning of carnage cannot now be known; and, for example, Baxendale and Baxendale alone claimed the ink dissolved entirely when tested and yet he concluded from this that the ink therefore went down no earlier than 1945 - he's the expert, we are told but all the King's amateurs now leap on his claims and infer that what he must have meant was 19.45 on April the Something 1992);

2) The watch has never once had any scientific claim laid against its authenticity - this has been solely the provence of its critics who - again - appear to know more than the experts. So, in the absence of the critics, the experts have identified no issue with the watch being authentic;

3) This is a critical one, but most of you will ignore it or not understand it: the 'F' and the 'M' we can all see on Kelly's wall are said to be simply articulate rivulets of blood (as if blood did that!) and - if they are - a staggering coincidence happened to insert the very initials the scrapbook implied would be there into that photograph. But it doesn't stop there because we now have to believe that the 'K' in the back of the watch only has a coincidental loop because some other scratch by some utter ******* miracle happened to conveniently form the 'K' so distinctive of James Maybrick. The chances of two such pieces of critical evidence being artificially gifted to us by sheer chance events alone is simply off the scale. But most of you won't understand that because - it seems - you are unable to process the natural consequences of what you are arguing for.

The scrapbook is sullied by many challenges, it is true, but the watch - to be absolutely clear - is only sullied by the desperate yearning of sceptical amateurs seeking to cast mud into the experts' clear waters.

Ike

[caz]

This has already been addressed in Posts #22 and #23 above.

Has the signature been authenticated? If so, by whom?

And what evidence can you produce to show that the loop in this supposedly startlingly similar 'k' is not part of the superficial, sharp-edged scratches?

I think you may have misread my recent posts, including the very specific questions I have asked.

I have not suggested the signature in the watch has been 'authenticated'. I was asking how your hoaxer in 1993 would have accessed a document showing an authenticated Maybrick signature, if they wanted to avoid the very real possibility of making a complete hash of things. How would they have distinguished between a document showing his original signature, for instance, and a hand-made copy of an original certificate or licence, if they didn't know what his actual signature looked like? And why bother trying to obtain a signature at all, when initials or just a surname scratched in capital letters would have been enough?

You seem to have been suggesting or implying that the watch is part of the same 'cache' taken from Battlecrease on 8 March 1992.

9th March, but the answer is I don't know how the watch came to be put up for sale around the same time Doreen was seeking a publisher for the diary. If you don't find that even remotely odd, that's fine. I do.

If this is the case, why would a hoaxer have bothered to imitate Maybrick's handwriting in almost invisible etchings on the back of a watch, but made no effort at all to imitate his handwriting on the all-important confessional diary?

How, in your view, does that make the least bit of sense?

Well that's not my argument, so you'd have to ask someone else. I have never believed that the person holding the pen had the least intention of trying to pass it off as Maybrick's own handwriting.

[erobitha]

What waffle? Your reactions to my points are so generalized and inane and poorly formulated that I have been convinced for months that you merely skim over them quickly before launching into a barrage of angry and meaningless pouting.

Why don't you instead use reason and address the specific points?

I welcome anyone else to review my above posts and specifically show where what I am suggesting about the scratches and the letter formations is incorrect.

And by the way, on another matter:

According to Dr. Turgoose, the 'am J' and "Maybrick' were the earliest etchings.

"am Jack" is part of "I am Jack."

So Maybrick named himself Jack even before he murdered Polly Nichols?

Fascinating.

What points? You drawing squiggles is not a point and does not require reasoning. What are you asking people? How much do they rate your squiggles? They are not based on anything scientific.

It's just like how you dismiss the F and M in Kelly's room as Pareidolia, are you using the same argument here too? Random squiggles do not make you an expert, so it requires no 'reasoning'. Simply compare the photograph with the examples of K. I have 22 more if you want them. You only need your eyes for that.

More water muddying. It was in those specific micrograph sections in which they were examined they were the earliest scratches, by the way. 'am J' was not in the same section as 'Maybrick' when they were being examined, so your point there is wrong. They were not compared against each other.

I am not angry RJ. Just right.