Where do current experts stand on the Diary?

[Graham]

The idea of writing a diary in the event of a failed appeal to support the over turning of a death sentence is far fetched and ludicrous in the extreme. If the diary ever saw the four walls of battlecrease, it did so as the work of mr maybrick himself.....even that seems more plausible as an argument.

Hi Jason,

I agree that using a document like the 'Diary' to effect the reprieve of a convicted murderer is indeed far fetched; and I don't believe it was written with that purpose in mind. However, I don't agree with your feeling that if the 'Diary' ever was in Battlecrease then it must have been written by James Maybrick. How, for instance, would you explain the handwriting?

James Maybrick was not a particularly popular man. He had enemies both in his business and personal lives. His wife didn't think much of him. He was a serial adulterer.

Graham

[Jason]

I agree that using a document like the 'Diary' to effect the reprieve of a convicted murderer is indeed far fetched; and I don't believe it was written with that purpose in mind. However, I don't agree with your feeling that if the 'Diary' ever was in Battlecrease then it must have been written by James Maybrick. How, for instance, would you explain the handwriting?

Sorry I was being sarcastic . I don't think he wrote it either , I was merely trying to illustrate that the idea was even more preposterous than the one of James being Jack the Ripper or have being the author .

[Kaz]

The handwriting pretty much does prove that 'JM' didn't write the diary, I'm afraid - unless you wish to view this with the eye of faith. It doesn't matter whether he had a 'split personality' or not; there would still be signs of concurrence between the handwriting of his personalities; and a person trained to see those similarities - not a graphologist - would see them.

Hannah Koren based her verdict on graphology. She's a graphologist. Graphology isn't a science - it doesn't even have a coherent method, since opinions vary on exactly which handwriting charactersitics signfy which personality traits.

For anybody to decide that the person who wrote the Diary was a serial killer is untenable, and little more than a parlour trick. I see it as akin to Astrology. Even if there were a proven correlation between handwriting and personality, the very best that could be hoped for would be general trends.

The Diary script doesn't match Maybrick's known handwriting as far as I'm aware. That's the bottom line.

I mentioned it fooling Hannah Koren because Pink moon mentioned it all being a rough draft, whether you believe graphology has any scientific clout or not, Hannah is an expert on handwriting and categorically refutes the diary being a hoax.

What kind of comparisons have been made 'trait' wise? I've seen a picture of james maybrick using the over exaggerated swirl under his signature.


Trying to keep an open mind towards the people surrounding the diary, it appears to me the vast majority of debunkers actively debunk by calling them all liars, scammers, amateurs, con artists, criminals etc etc

[caz]

Hi All,

The reasons usually given for the handwriting not matching Maybrick's do not seem very convincing to me.

A mistake on the part of imperfect forgers who were seeking to improve on the quickly disproven Hitler Diaries, which sent their creator to jail? Nah, don't think so, Phil. You could get everything else right, but get the writing completely wrong and you've had it before you even start.

An inability to access any genuine Maybrick handwriting to copy? Unlikely, if the forger(s) had used Bernard Ryan's book as a source of Maybrick info, given that this included the helpful fact that the will was written in Jim's 'rather shaky hand on blue paper'. More likely, perhaps, if the diary was written longer ago, by someone who had no means of finding any examples and hoped that nobody else could either, or that none had survived.

I don't really buy Sally's suggestion that because even a good copy would almost certainly be uncovered by expert document examiners, maybe the culprit decided it was preferable to use their own undisguised handwriting. That would be like using orange crayon to fake ten pound notes because the best brown ink would still not have been convincing enough. Why bother doing it at all, if the object was to make the world believe this was the unaided work of James Maybrick? On top of that, if the penman or woman was a known associate of Mike Barrett, using their undisguised hand would have been very silly indeed and I doubt we'd still be here discussing it.

No, for me the simplest and most logical explanation is that the handwriting was never meant to be mistaken for Maybrick's, so no attempt was made to make it look like his, possibly because the author never dreamed anyone would ever take the content seriously.

I still suspect it was designed to be a satirical spoof at the late 'Sir' James's expense, in light of the very public demonisation of his wronged widow Florie.

Love,

Caz
X

[The Good Michael]

No, for me the simplest and most logical explanation is that the handwriting was never meant to be mistaken for Maybrick's, so no attempt was made to make it look like his, possibly because the author never dreamed anyone would ever take the content seriously.

Or the creator couldn't find any examples of Maybrick's writing? It would have been difficult before email and internet to locate a copy of his will, for example.

Mike

[Lechmere]

I keep thinking Kaz is Caz and have to re-read their posts to make sure who is saying what.
Is one a clumsy forgery of the other?

PS And if so how can we authenticate the true one?

[Scott Nelson]

One is a cleaner. The other is clean.

[Sally]

I keep thinking Kaz is Caz and have to re-read their posts to make sure who is saying what.
Is one a clumsy forgery of the other?

PS And if so how can we authenticate the true one?

Dear Edward,

I truly sympathise - it's easy to become confused over an odd letter or two.

P.S. Depends on your criteria.

[Sally]

Hi Caz,

A mistake on the part of imperfect forgers who were seeking to improve on the quickly disproven Hitler Diaries, which sent their creator to jail? Nah, don't think so, Phil. You could get everything else right, but get the writing completely wrong and you've had it before you even start.

I agree. I doubt a forger who was thorough enough to obtain appropriate paper and ink would make a fundamental error. Possible (what isn't, these days?) but unlikely.

An inability to access any genuine Maybrick handwriting to copy? Unlikely, if the forger(s) had used Bernard Ryan's book as a source of Maybrick info, given that this included the helpful fact that the will was written in Jim's 'rather shaky hand on blue paper'. More likely, perhaps, if the diary was written longer ago, by someone who had no means of finding any examples and hoped that nobody else could either, or that none had survived.

Ok – but does this answer the question of whether the forgers could have had access to a reasonable sample of Maybrick’s handwriting? Was Maybrick’s handwriting actually reproduced in Bernard Ryan’s book?
Otherwise I agree with Mike here: how easy/difficult would it have been for a modern forger to obtain a sample of Mayrbrick’s handwriting from which to copy?

I don't really buy Sally's suggestion that because even a good copy would almost certainly be uncovered by expert document examiners, maybe the culprit decided it was preferable to use their own undisguised handwriting. That would be like using orange crayon to fake ten pound notes because the best brown ink would still not have been convincing enough. Why bother doing it at all, if the object was to make the world believe this was the unaided work of James Maybrick? On top of that, if the penman or woman was a known associate of Mike Barrett, using their undisguised hand would have been very silly indeed and I doubt we'd still be here discussing it.

I think I raised it as a possibility if a genuine sample of Maybrick’s handwriting was either unknown or unobtainable. It is a widely-held, popular belief that the handwriting of a lunatic in the clutches of his madness is unrecognisably different to his ‘normal’ handwriting. Sort of Jekyll and Hyde Syndrome – feeds in to the notion that the sum total of ourselves can be determined by some form of divination. I’m almost surprised that nobody’s decided that James Maybrick had criminal features.

But no, it wouldn’t be like using an orange crayon to fake a ten pound note, because actually, the non-resemblance of the Diary script to Maybrick’s known writing doesn’t seem to have hindered speculation much, does it?

As we’ve discussed on this very thread, Hannah Koren believed that the Diary was written by a deranged serial killer type; and she wasn’t the first to suggest that the writer gave the impression of being psychologically disturbed (although I think on that occasion the verdict came from psychologists rather than a graphologist)

The idea that a lunatic James Maybrick could still have written the Diary, in spite of the differences in script, is obviously difficult to extinguish.

No, for me the simplest and most logical explanation is that the handwriting was never meant to be mistaken for Maybrick's, so no attempt was made to make it look like his, possibly because the author never dreamed anyone would ever take the content seriously.

Perhaps that’s so, Caz – you may well be right. As I said, I’m quite happy to consider the Diary as an old hoax; written by persons and for purposes unknown. On the other hand, I don’t think a modern forgery can be ruled out either at present.

[pinkmoon]

Hi All,

The reasons usually given for the handwriting not matching Maybrick's do not seem very convincing to me.

A mistake on the part of imperfect forgers who were seeking to improve on the quickly disproven Hitler Diaries, which sent their creator to jail? Nah, don't think so, Phil. You could get everything else right, but get the writing completely wrong and you've had it before you even start.

An inability to access any genuine Maybrick handwriting to copy? Unlikely, if the forger(s) had used Bernard Ryan's book as a source of Maybrick info, given that this included the helpful fact that the will was written in Jim's 'rather shaky hand on blue paper'. More likely, perhaps, if the diary was written longer ago, by someone who had no means of finding any examples and hoped that nobody else could either, or that none had survived.

I don't really buy Sally's suggestion that because even a good copy would almost certainly be uncovered by expert document examiners, maybe the culprit decided it was preferable to use their own undisguised handwriting. That would be like using orange crayon to fake ten pound notes because the best brown ink would still not have been convincing enough. Why bother doing it at all, if the object was to make the world believe this was the unaided work of James Maybrick? On top of that, if the penman or woman was a known associate of Mike Barrett, using their undisguised hand would have been very silly indeed and I doubt we'd still be here discussing it.

No, for me the simplest and most logical explanation is that the handwriting was never meant to be mistaken for Maybrick's, so no attempt was made to make it look like his, possibly because the author never dreamed anyone would ever take the content seriously.

I still suspect it was designed to be a satirical spoof at the late 'Sir' James's expense, in light of the very public demonisation of his wronged widow Florie.

Love,

Caz
X

Could it have been a rough draft meant to be written up all neat and tidy in a proper diary with maybricks hand writing copied properly

[pinkmoon]

I mentioned it fooling Hannah Koren because Pink moon mentioned it all being a rough draft, whether you believe graphology has any scientific clout or not, Hannah is an expert on handwriting and categorically refutes the diary being a hoax.

What kind of comparisons have been made 'trait' wise? I've seen a picture of james maybrick using the over exaggerated swirl under his signature.


Trying to keep an open mind towards the people surrounding the diary, it appears to me the vast majority of debunkers actively debunk by calling them all liars, scammers, amateurs, con artists, criminals etc etc

The saga of the diary takes a whole new meaning when you meet Mr Barrett i have met him a lot of times over the years he is a very interesting character but the impression you come away with is that he is not capable of forging this also no body in their right mind would get him involved in any scam .

[caz]

Or the creator couldn't find any examples of Maybrick's writing? It would have been difficult before email and internet to locate a copy of his will, for example.

Mike

Hi Mike,

If Bernard Ryan was able to discover that the will was written in Maybrick's rather shaky hand on blue paper, before email or the internet, anyone using Ryan's book as a source would have been able to make enquiries and presumably locate the relevant document, just as other researchers would have located wills and such before modern technology.

I did make the point in my post that the diary author may have created it at a time when they had no idea if any examples survived and hoped nobody would be able to question it on that basis.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

I keep thinking Kaz is Caz and have to re-read their posts to make sure who is saying what.
Is one a clumsy forgery of the other?

PS And if so how can we authenticate the true one?

How is a K remotely like a C in written form?

Get a grip, Ed.

Love,

CCCaz
X

[caz]

Hi Caz,

Ok – but does this answer the question of whether the forgers could have had access to a reasonable sample of Maybrick’s handwriting? Was Maybrick’s handwriting actually reproduced in Bernard Ryan’s book?

No, but where there's a will, there's a way.

Otherwise I agree with Mike here: how easy/difficult would it have been for a modern forger to obtain a sample of Mayrbrick’s handwriting from which to copy?

As easy, I guess, as it was for Shirley, Feldy, Keith Skinner and co to access examples (for the likes of Sue Iremonger to examine and compare) when beginning their own research in 1992. There is no evidence of anyone making similar enquiries before they did. If Mike Barrett, for instance, had been making a nuisance of himself, trying to get hold of examples, I doubt people would have forgotten it in a hurry.

It is a widely-held, popular belief that the handwriting of a lunatic in the clutches of his madness is unrecognisably different to his ‘normal’ handwriting. Sort of Jekyll and Hyde Syndrome – feeds in to the notion that the sum total of ourselves can be determined by some form of divination.

It is also well known that serial killer Peter Kurten wrote a letter to a newspaper in a hand that even his own wife could not recognise as his. Maybe the diary author was thinking along similar lines, that Maybrick's writing should not look like his own when in 'Sir Jim/Jack' mode. That would not detract from the possibility that this was all part of a literary burlesque, rather than any serious attempt to frame James for the murders.

But no, it wouldn’t be like using an orange crayon to fake a ten pound note, because actually, the non-resemblance of the Diary script to Maybrick’s known writing doesn’t seem to have hindered speculation much, does it?

Ah, but how clever and prescient are you suggesting the culprit was, to have foreseen this would be the case, especially if it was all planned in the immediate wake of the Hitler Diaries fiasco? In that atmosphere, one would have thought a Jack the Ripper confession in the wrong handwriting would have died even more quickly. The Sunday Times was certainly not about to be bitten twice.

Love,

Caz
X

[Graham]

In the UK any member of the public can apply for a copy of a Will, in writing to the Probate Office. This as far as I can tell was the case in 1889.

In Feldman's book is a sample of the various styles of handwriting produced by one person with a multi-personality syndrome. It does seem a bit far-fetched to me, but I'm no expert.

Surely, if the 'Diary' was produced in, and stored in, Battlecrease House at or just after the time of Maybrick's death, there would have been numerous samples of his handwriting available for the forger. However, as the Hitler Diaries showed, forging some other person's handwriting isn't so easy as it might sound. I really don't think Maybrick wrote the thing.

Caz uses the expression 'literary burlesque', and I rather fancy that may be quite close to the truth....and if I know Caz there could well be a little clue in that expression....

Graham