Who were they?

[Iconoclast]

It seems that defenders of the diary are absolved of any need to produce an example of this use of English during the seven decades that separate 1888 from 1958.

Show us just one example!

Care to revise your bullshit story?

(Thank you, Sam Gerrard.)

[Iconoclast]

If the expression was being commonly used before 1958, one would expect the Oxford English dictionary to be aware of its usage before 1958.

Anyone here can type 'top oneself etymology' or 'top oneself first usage' into Google Search.

The following entries appear:

The sense of topping oneself first showed up in the mid-20th century, according to the dictionary’s citations.

https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2...f%20topping%20 oneself,of%20Prison%20Life%2C%201958).

The first citation meaning commit suicide is from 1958: “He also took my tie and belt so that I could not top myself.”

https://notoneoffbritishisms.com/2012/03/08/top-oneself/

Where is the proof that the expression was in common usage in 1889?

Why would Maybrick have used an expression which was not yet in common usage?

Gary? Hello? Is that you, mate?

have you got two minutes?

Yeah. Yeah. I know, it’s another one of them. I know, I know, I couldn’t agree with you more - after all, it’s why I wrote my brilliant Society’s Pillar.

[Blushing] oh, that’s very kind of you, Gary!

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

What a load of toss. It is a shoddy poorly written hoax.

I send you half the Kidne I took from one women prasarved it for you tother piece I fried and ate it was very nise.

(Letter addressed to Mr Lusk)


So vexed in fact that I returned to the bitch and cut out more. I took some of it away with me. It is in front of me. I intended to fry it and eat it later ...

('Maybrick' diary)



The author of the diary borrowed from both the 'Dear Boss' and 'From hell' letters - both sure signs that it, like them, was a hoax.

[erobitha]

If the expression was being commonly used before 1958, one would expect the Oxford English dictionary to be aware of its usage before 1958.

Anyone here can type 'top oneself etymology' or 'top oneself first usage' into Google Search.

The following entries appear:

The sense of topping oneself first showed up in the mid-20th century, according to the dictionary’s citations.

https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2...f%20topping%20 oneself,of%20Prison%20Life%2C%201958).

The first citation meaning commit suicide is from 1958: “He also took my tie and belt so that I could not top myself.”

https://notoneoffbritishisms.com/2012/03/08/top-oneself/

Where is the proof that the expression was in common usage in 1889?

Why would Maybrick have used an expression which was not yet in common usage?

It was common enough usage in 1912 to be used to describe someone hanging themself in a written newspaper article. Dictionary or no dictionary, the evidence is there.

Why could it not have been used in spoken language in 1889?

Are you broken?

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

It was common enough usage in 1912 to be used to describe someone hanging themself in a written newspaper article. Dictionary or no dictionary, the evidence is there.

Why could it not have been used in spoken language in 1889?

Are you broken?

It may have been in usage in 1889, but you have not produced proof of that.

And it is you who wrote in # 361:

'Again, you do not have proof.'

Where is your proof?

[erobitha]

It may have been in usage in 1889, but you have not produced proof of that.

And it is you who wrote in # 361:

'Again, you do not have proof.'

Where is your proof?

So you moved the goalposts (like so many on here) from "Look everyone, I have proof James Maybrick could not be Jack the Ripper because of ABC".

Then someone like me says, "Hold up. Is ABC actually proof?"

Then someone like me shows how their statement cannot be proof.

The original declarer of the proof spins the tables round and says, now you must prove that Maybrick specifically did do XYZ."

No. I don't have to prove anything. I just have to demonstrate that your arguments are not as good as you think they are.

As I have stated, I am agnostic to the diary, but I am also a lone wolf and make my own decisions. You and others have to do better to prove it is a hoax, and those who believe Maybrick 100% wrote it must stand by their claims too.

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

More evidence that the diary is a hoax:

The author relates that he met Catherine Eddowes within a quarter-hour of killing Elizabeth Stride.

That would mean that he met her at about 1.10 or 1.15 a.m. and must have murdered her by 1.30 a.m., when Pc Watkins entered Mitre Square.

That is hardly possible, as Watkins did not see the body until 1.44 a.m.

[erobitha]

More evidence that the diary is a hoax:

The author relates that he met Catherine Eddowes within a quarter-hour of killing Elizabeth Stride.

That would mean that he met her at about 1.10 or 1.15 a.m. and must have murdered her by 1.30 a.m., when Pc Watkins entered Mitre Square.

That is hardly possible, as Watkins did not see the body until 1.44 a.m.

Hundreds of threads on this site about timing inaccuracies. It is only a valid point if everyone's sense of time in Victorian times was accurate. It wasn't.

Not evidence.

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

Yet more evidence that the diary is a hoax:

The author claims that he cut off the noses of both Eddowes and Kelly, but the murderer did not cut off Eddowes' nose.

He claims that he placed body parts 'all over the room', but this again is part of the folklore of the case.

It did not actually happen.

The real murderer would not have written that.

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

Hundreds of threads on this site about timing inaccuracies. It is only a valid point if everyone's sense of time in Victorian times was accurate. It wasn't.

Not evidence.

It is indeed evidence that the author of the diary was not the Whitechapel Murderer.

As I have pointed out before, there were many people who provided timings in the case of the Mitre Square murder and their timings are not in conflict with one another at all.

That means that Watkins' timings are reliable.

And that means that the diary author's claim that he met Eddowes by 1.15 a.m. is impossible.

[Ms Diddles]

"What a load of toss" - Can someone help me out here. As a Yank, I am having trouble understanding this expression. I know what a tosser is. Great expression by the way. And I assume that load of toss means it is nonsense, garbage, b.s. etc. But how does that derive from the expression itself?

c.d.

Hi c.d,

I believe that in this context the use of "toss" as a noun refers to the....errrrm..... end product of tossing as performed by the aforementioned tosser.

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

No ike i just want someone to show evidence where Maybrick fits in where Dr Browns testimony states

[Coroner] Would you consider that the person who inflicted the wounds possessed anatomical skill? - He must have had a ''good deal'' of knowledge as to the position of the abdominal organs, and the way to remove them

So to you also the same question applies.

Your yet to show evidence a ''Cotton Merchant'' knew how ,or learned this skill as Dr Frederick Browns expert medical opinon given under oath alludes too . So were back to speculation and conjecture and guesswork where Maybricks is concerned.

Where is the evidence James Maybrick had aquired this ''''Good Deal ''of knowledge ?

That is a very pertinent question, but one which could and should be asked about the other popular suspects.

I have been criticised for arguing that Druitt was so busy teaching at a public school, practising as a barrister, and playing cricket, that he would not have had time to walk the streets of Whitechapel at night, looking for victims.

The fact that he was in Dorset at the time of the first murder underlines that point.

How could Druitt also have been finding time to study human anatomy?

Where is the evidence that Aaron Kosminski had anatomical knowledge?

We are told that as a hairdresser, he was practically working in a paramedical field.

Where is the evidence that Victorian hairdressers knew how to locate a human kidney?

We are told that he once worked in a hospital in Poland.

How do we know he was not a porter?

Where is the evidence that Lechmere knew how to locate a human kidney?

We are told that he must have worn a bloodstained apron from handling meat.

How would that enable him to locate human organs?

Where is the evidence that Sickert knew how to locate a human kidney?

He was an artist and the closest he came to a course in human anatomy was the sessions he had with nude models in his studio.

[Abby Normal]

Yet more evidence that the diary is a hoax:

The author claims that he cut off the noses of both Eddowes and Kelly, but the murderer did not cut off Eddowes' nose.

He claims that he placed body parts 'all over the room', but this again is part of the folklore of the case.

It did not actually happen.

The real murderer would not have written that.

eddowes nose was cut off. so was kellys. also, part of eddowes ear was cut off. get your **** straight before you go up against the diary defenders lol

[rjpalmer]

Actually, he's right. The hoaxer got it wrong.

Describing the Kelly murder, the diarist writes:

"I placed it all over the room, time was on my hands, like the other whore I cut off the bitches nose, all of it this time."

Yet, Dr. Thomas Bond, in describing the Kelly murder scene, writes:

"The face was gashed in all directions the nose [,] cheeks, eyebrows and ears being partially removed..."

Oops. Partially removed?

The hoaxer not only got it wrong, but emphatically wrong, because she/he stupidly stressed that "all of it" had been cut off.

As for 'placing it all over the room,' for those who have read Lord Orsam's Diary Deep Dive, this is almost certainly an error borrowed from Odell.

Alas, considering that the bogus handwriting and the provenance, etc., doesn't faze the True Believer, he will hardly balk at swallowing this small embarrassment--a willing appetite for swallowing embarrassments being the key attribute of a Diary True Believer.

It's kind of like Kipling's 'If"

If you can swallow twenty pounds of blather before breakfast
If you can turn a blind eye to the pen
If you can twist logic into pretzels
You'll can be a Maybricknick, my son!

[Al Bundy's Eyes]

The diary is not genuine and here is the proof:



'Perhaps I should top myself and save the hangman a job.'

(Maybrick Diary)




The sense of topping oneself first showed up in the mid-20th century, according to the [Oxford English] dictionary’s citations. Here are some suicidal examples:

“He also took my tie and belt so that I could not top myself” (from Frank Norman’s Bang to Rights: An Account of Prison Life, 1958).


https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2...Life%2C%201958).

Hello again,

"Top Myself" is one of the poorer anachronisms in my opinion.

If anyone has found "bumbling buffoon" yet, or "one off" that doesn't involve horses ages or bees from the 1970's I'd be interested to see it.

I've said it before, it doesn't seem implausible for either phrase to have been in use, 'bumbling buffoon' sounds quintessentially Victorian, and yet, not one single example found. The earliest, by a long shot, use of both phrases, is in the Maybrick diary. Cotton merchant, serial killer, pioneer of the English language.

Or it was written in the latter 20th century.

Whatever happened to The Baron?