The Inconvenient Truth of the Maybrick Watch

[rjpalmer]

I have literally no idea what you are waffling on about but anyone who has eyes can see the similarity.

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.

[erobitha]

Very rare RJ and I agree on anything but I would be of the opinion a further expert opinion would be required to look closely at the K versus the 27 examples of records I have.

You drawing random squiggles doesn’t do it for me old chap. I have literally no idea what you are waffling on about but anyone who has eyes can see the similarity. It’s examples like this that make me wonder if you are actually just focused on just creating muddied waters than accepting what you can clearly see.

Considering this requires the owners permission for any further testing, if Daisy was to agree, why don’t you suggest what you feel would be the fairest way to have this properly looked at by an expert - and in what field in particular would satisfy you?

I can’t help but feel Albert was right. No test will be good enough for some.

[rjpalmer]

We are all entitled to our opinions on how similarly, or differently, the individual letters are formed, compared with, say, the Maybrick signature on his marriage licence, but there is no denying that the form the signatures take is the same, and they are equally legible, and far from a hard to decipher squiggle, as the real deal could so easily have been.

Well, since you asked, here is my 'opinion' about the differences in letter formation.

Here is an image of how James Maybrick formed the letter "k" at the end of his signature, taken from Freemason records that Hartley/Skinner have provided:



Next, here is how I believe it was formed in one smooth motion:





The letter formation obviously starts at the point indicated in the lower left by "B" (for beginning) since it is simply a continuation of the letter 'c.'

His hand then moves to the upper right at a 45-degree incline, forms a clockwise loop, shoots straight upward, and then downward and back to the right as indicated by the red arrows, ending at the "E" (for end).


The 'k' on the watch certainly appears to be formed differently, even if we use Jay Hartley's photograph.





It looks like the main vertical arm of the 'k' is formed first, starting with the dark dot, indicated by the yellow arrow. Clearly, in stark contrast to James Maybrick's methods, it is not a continuation of the 'c.' It is not even connected to the c.

It then follows a very different hand motion, as indicated by the red arrows. Finally, the uppermost stroke, indicated in blue, looks like it was formed separately.




This, in my amateur opinion, indicates the signature is not authentic, even if we theorize that the hoaxer was attempting to imitate Maybrick's signature, but I would recommend seeking a professional opinion.

When doing repetitive tasks, our hand movements form neural patterns in our brains, and these become "hard wired" over time and we then repeat the same motions going forward. I see no reason why Maybrick's hand movements when using a pin or an engraving tool would be so radically different from when he wielded a pen.

That's all I have time for.

[Aethelwulf]

without accessing a single authenticated example.

A big claim, can you prove it? That no one could have got hold of his signature?

He could have had a middle name, for example, and might always have used it, or just the initial, when signing.

It could have taken many different forms, and yet this hoaxer guessed the one form that matched - even if some claim to see no great similarity between the signature in the watch and a genuine Maybrick example.

How do I sign my name? How would you have gone about finding out, back in 1993, if you wanted to play a prank, scratching my signature into a valuable piece of gold jewellery? What would you use for your multiple practice runs? Not gold, surely? How would you rate your chances of getting a reasonable likeness, when you don't even know what form my signature takes?

Why would you even bother with a signature, when initials, or the individual letters of my surname, using capital letters, would have sufficed and been so much less likely to differ fatally from my own?

Waffle

X

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

[rjpalmer]

But can you, hand on heart, claim that this is an objective opinion, not tainted in any way by your deeply held suspicions about the Barretts, and by extension the Johnsons?

Would you believe me if I told you?

As I've already stated, it looks to me (and it looked to others, including John Hacker) that the letters are formed differently.

Let's take the "K" that so excites Jay Hartley.

I wonder if Jay could tell us about the photograph of the 'K' that he has at his website, accessible at the link provided in his original post?

Hartley's photograph makes the K look far more distinct and 'unified' than what we see in the high-resolution photograph of the watch on this site, originally provided by Stephen Ryder. Was computer enhancement used to make the "K' more distinctive, and could this have inadvertently made the image look different than the one on the watch?

I am not suggesting deliberate deception--I'm just noting that it looks very different.

Here's Hartley's photo of the K:




The entire letter has the same level of darkness, suggesting the same depth and that it was all formed in a single etching movement.


But, as I say, this is noticeably different from the photograph supplied by Stephen Ryder:





Look carefully.

The K in the Ryder photo looks more like a dark X with a small additional 'arm,' and the loop is far lighter and isn't even definitively part of the same letter formation.

Indeed, it looks considerably fainter and trails upward into a tail at the '11 o'clock' position, far above the letter, where it is lost among other faint scratches that cross horizontally.


You can see what I mean in the following photo:

What I believe to be the K is marked in blue. The loop above it is different than what is in Hartley's photograph. It doesn't go down and connect to the lower 'arm' of the letter K as the Hartley photograph shows; instead, it misses it and goes to the upper left. That's what it looks like to me.




As such, I suspect it is part of the network of superficial scratches on the surface of the watch as described by Turgoose and is not actually part of the lower most etching. There appears to be a gap between the loop and the lower arm of the "K" that is missing in Hartley's rendition.



I am not suggesting the photograph was deliberately doctored, but they look significantly different to me, and would be curious to know the provenance of Hartley's photograph.

Anyway, considering how difficult it is to get a conclusive photograph of the etchings, I think the signature would have to be re-examined under a microscope to determine whether all of these marks are actually part of the lower etching.

More later.

[caz]

This will sound as rude as hell, and I hope that 'Ero' and 'Ike' realize that it is nothing truly personal, but who says that the signature looks like Maybrick's? The same two blokes who think they see 'FM' written on Kelly's back wall? Sorry, but that's not conclusive.

Has the signature ever been authenticated by an actual accredited handwriting expert, or is it just a matter of amateurs giving their opinions--sometimes in the same breath that they decry amateur opinions?

Here's my amateur opinion.

Personally, I am not convinced that this famous 'loop' on the k is actually part of the signature. To me, the depth looks different from the rest of the crude scratches that make up the 'k' (which just looks like a rudely fashioned X) and I suspect that it is actually part of the network of superficial, sharp-edged, and suspicious scratches that cover the surface of the watch, and thus the viewer sees what he or she wants to see.

It would take another microscopic examination to determine whether this is correct or not.

If one actually traces the direction of the hand movements that make up Maybrick's proven signature, the letter formation of the individual letters is not the same as those that make up 'Maybrick' on the watch. As I say, that is my amateur opinion--but if anyone doubts me, do the exercise for themselves.

Over a period of 30 years, I don't recall anyone actually seeking the opinion of an accredited expert. The accredited experts that looked at the diary all dismissed it as clearly not written by Maybrick. Were any of them asked about the watch?

No expert is needed to see that the signature in the watch is in the same form as the real James Maybrick used in the 1880s.

We are all entitled to our opinions on how similarly, or differently, the individual letters are formed, compared with, say, the Maybrick signature on his marriage licence, but there is no denying that the form the signatures take is the same, and they are equally legible, and far from a hard to decipher squiggle, as the real deal could so easily have been.

It's not really hard to see how you arrived at your opinion that the signature is not similar to Maybrick's, and presumably could therefore have been made by virtually anyone, including yourself, using little more than guesswork and an old tool. But can you, hand on heart, claim that this is an objective opinion, not tainted in any way by your deeply held suspicions about the Barretts, and by extension the Johnsons?

[rjpalmer]

Is this an exercise in how much skulduggery you can read into a single sentence - a sentence written by Feldman, of all people, who could have read a conspiracy into a recipe for rice pudding, if he saw the name Graham or Johnson attached to it? You do a good job, RJ, but Feldman was the master.

I'd have been more than 'cold and distant', and referred Feldman straight to you, had he phoned me insisting I had two watches, one bought to cover up for another, that was passed down to me from my great grandmother, Lizzie Borden. And let me assure you, it wouldn't be because you have me wrapped around your finger.

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.

And it is hardly a 'single sentence' nor an isolated observation. Feldman tells us how Robbie was with Albert (and a solicitor!) when he was shown the watch the first time.

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.

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.

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



Nor was it even just Feldman's opinion. He writes that Keith Skinner had misgivings about Robbie's "enthusiasm" (p. 32)



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.

[caz]

I don't understand why, if the watch is genuine, Maybrick would have scratched his name in it? Or write 'I am Jack'? Why would he need/want to do that? It just seems a little too far fetched and too much of a coincidence. Fair enough if his name had been engraved in the watch or there was some provenance linking him to it but there does not seem to be. Also isn't it a watch for a woman? For me when you combine it with the bonkers tale of the diary and all its question marks and now this pretty intensive look at Maybrick as a person, it just seems totally fake to me.

I totally understand why people want it to be real. It would be amazing to tie everything up and say we finally have the culprit. But this just isn't. And as the years pass by this all just seems more and more an amateurish hoax. May have been convincing a few years back but now, no chance.

No, it isn't a woman's watch, although I have never understood why that canard was regularly wheeled out as if it was evidence of a 1993 hoax.

It is only evidence that if some old nonsense is claimed often enough it will spread far and wide and become accepted as the truth - despite proving nothing at all either way.

If it is meant to have been engraved by a serial killer of women, as a secret record of his crimes, why would there have been any concern over whether it was typically worn by a man or a woman?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Just as well because I can't see it matters. I can imagine scratching a passable signature on a metal surface is difficult. A hoaxer would almost certainly have made multiple practice runs before attempting the watch. In fact, I think it more likely a hoaxer would get a good signature than Maybrick who, because it was his watch, may have just made do with a once off instance. Short of Maybrick having a hobby metal engraving, the hoaxer, in my opinion, is more likely to come up with the more accurate signature.

It's a question of how a hoaxer in 1993 could have known how James Maybrick might typically have signed his name in the 1880s, without accessing a single authenticated example.

He could have had a middle name, for example, and might always have used it, or just the initial, when signing.

It could have taken many different forms, and yet this hoaxer guessed the one form that matched - even if some claim to see no great similarity between the signature in the watch and a genuine Maybrick example.

How do I sign my name? How would you have gone about finding out, back in 1993, if you wanted to play a prank, scratching my signature into a valuable piece of gold jewellery? What would you use for your multiple practice runs? Not gold, surely? How would you rate your chances of getting a reasonable likeness, when you don't even know what form my signature takes?

Why would you even bother with a signature, when initials, or the individual letters of my surname, using capital letters, would have sufficed and been so much less likely to differ fatally from my own?

Answers on a saucy postcard...

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Caroline Brown and now Marcus Aurelius Franzois have also argued that the appearance of the watch in a shop window in the spring of 1992 is too coincidental, and thus they associate the watch with the horde of items allegedly removed from Battlecrease on 8 March 1992---the same caper that you associate with the floorboards of Maybrick's study having been lifted for the first time in over 100 years.

You only make a fool of yourself with such inane utterings, RJ.

The timing of the watch appearing in the shop window is highly suggestive, and would be a big fat coincidence if unconnected to the documented double event of 9th March 1992. That's it, as far as I'm concerned. I leave it to others if they wish to speculate further or reach any definite conclusions based on these known facts.

I don't 'associate' the watch with a 'horde of items' [calm down, old chap, you'll do yourself a mischief] allegedly removed on 9th March 1992.

As far as I'm aware, none of the electricians actually mentioned a watch, and IIRC only one - who wasn't present on that day - mentioned a tin box and a wedding ring, which allegedly turned out to be brass. But Albert's gold watch would have had an obvious value to anyone finding it, and could have been pocketed quickly before anyone else saw it, unlike the "old book", wrapped in yellowing brown paper, which might easily have had no value at all as far as the finder knew.

As such, I am far from confident that we have been give the whole story. Not by Dr. Turgoose, but by the man who had Albert wrapped around his finger: Robbie Johnson.

Is this an exercise in how much skulduggery you can read into a single sentence - a sentence written by Feldman, of all people, who could have read a conspiracy into a recipe for rice pudding, if he saw the name Graham or Johnson attached to it? You do a good job, RJ, but Feldman was the master.

I'd have been more than 'cold and distant', and referred Feldman straight to you, had he phoned me insisting I had two watches, one bought to cover up for another, that was passed down to me from my great grandmother, Lizzie Borden. And let me assure you, it wouldn't be because you have me wrapped around your finger.

Would you have read something sinister into my reaction, when it would merely have indicated a natural distaste for Feldman's brand of lunacy, and my knowledge that you would be better equipped to send him packing post haste?

[Aethelwulf]

What does that even mean?

It’s just drivel. If it’s a hoax (complicated or not) then let’s see how it was a hoax. Right now the evidence weighs in favour of the watch being at least decades old in 1993. So come on then, how, who, why and when?

I’ve done my part.

Fine you don’t believe the watch is real, but you have offered nothing that challenges the facts.

If you don't like the facts then carry on ignoring them.

The fact is there is no evidence that links the watch or diary to Maybrick, or any evidence they are even genuine in the first place.

[rjpalmer]

Perhaps I could begin to consider your latest arguments for a hoax, which had to be planned and executed between late April and early June 1993 for your diary theory to have better than a zero chance, if you would go back to the beginning and explain, in very simple terms, how and why your hoaxer attempted to mimic an authenticated Maybrick signature, when there was absolutely no need

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?

You can make an art form of distracting the attention away from the more difficult posers [sic?] regarding Albert's timepiece, but they won't go away on their own.

I suspect most see it t'other way round.

Hartley's obsession with an inconclusive and understudied timepiece is a convenient way to distract away from the glaring issues that face an obviously hoaxed diary, about which we have a great deal more information.

And at the risk of droning on in the same boring way, these glaring issues include an allusion to a police inventory list not available until the 1980s, unbonded ink, the lies and suspicious behavior of the Barretts, etc., etc, and handwriting that looks nothing at all like Maybrick's--as determined not by us amateurs, but by the best document examiners on either side of the Atlantic.

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

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?

[erobitha]

I would imagine a quick look online would turn up hoaxes many times more complicated than the watch/diary.

What does that even mean?

It’s just drivel. If it’s a hoax (complicated or not) then let’s see how it was a hoax. Right now the evidence weighs in favour of the watch being at least decades old in 1993. So come on then, how, who, why and when?

I’ve done my part.

Fine you don’t believe the watch is real, but you have offered nothing that challenges the facts.

If you don't like the facts then carry on ignoring them.

[caz]

It does, however, pose a real problem for Caz...

I don't have problems, RJ, only potential solutions.

But once again you think you can speak for me. You can't, so do yourself a favour and stop trying. This is not a competition.

Perhaps I could begin to consider your latest arguments for a hoax, which had to be planned and executed between late April and early June 1993 for your diary theory to have better than a zero chance, if you would go back to the beginning and explain, in very simple terms, how and why your hoaxer attempted to mimic an authenticated Maybrick signature, when there was absolutely no need, and how you know that all the engravings, as seen under the microscope, could have been achieved using old and corroded tools - IIRC a different one for each set of initials.

You can make an art form of distracting the attention away from the more difficult posers regarding Albert's timepiece, but they won't go away on their own.

And I'm in no hurry to go anywhere either.

[erobitha]

Really? The only evidence I can see is that of a hoax. None of it makes any objective sense. So he writes the diary and then just to be on the safe side that people in the future know he was Jack the Ripper he scratches his name and all the other stuff into a watch? You really have to stretch the old imagination to accept all of this don't you?

Who said the order of the events had to have unfolded in the order you describe? Why can’t the watch have existed potentially before the diary?

I am simply trying to get to the truth here and my logical brain is telling me the watch is the key and probably always has been.

As much as I disagree with RJ and others on key points, what he and they are doing is perfectly correct. We must challenge all aspects to do with the watch and diary and if we are left still asking questions or requiring more information then we need to reasonably look at those challenges.

However, we are at a place with the watch that we cannot just simply dismiss it because it’s inconvenient to our own theories and assertions. There is too much too ignore.

In answer to RJ’s point regarding the marriage certificate. What guarantee did the forger have that was even by Maybrick’s hand? Was it not common place for clerks to copy signatures for the church’s own records? The same M on that is extremely similar to that in the bible of Sarah Ann Robertson.

When will you accept the coincidences are too much? Is that you require a world expert in signature verification? What exactly will it take? Albert believed no amount of testing would please some people.

I think Albert was very wise.