new info on the diary

[pinkmoon]

I think you are right, pinkmoon. What I should have added is that I don't think Maybrick wrote it at all. If he had, it would have been in his own writing because of the reasons I have already stated.
It is an old forgery, IMO, but I don't think Mr Barrett necessarily acquired it illegally. His wife's family have the answers and I think it is true that they had it for years.
However, I don't know enough about it all so I'm hoping to learn more from the book and come to my own conclusions.
I also believe that the pocket watch is connected in some way, but how, I don't know.

Hi Amanda my dear,the one connection between Mr Barrett and battlecrease house is the electricians who worked on it drank in Mr Barretts pub where he spent a lot of his time.

[MayBea]

Hi MayBea,

The problem is that a modern hoax (defined as post-1987) would have needed more than just one forger's involvement, particularly if you believe the watch was designed to be a companion piece or bandwagon hoax. An old hoax could have been the work of just one person with inside knowledge of the ripper crimes and the Maybricks...

I still fail to see how some contemporary 'insider' could randomly be involved and familiar with, and fortuitously link, a modern suspect that Ripperologists can't eliminate from contention as they have Cream and D'Onston. A modern forger would have more chance.

Unless you believe the insider had knowledge that Maybrick was the Ripper or, at least, a prime suspect, I can't see how Old Hoax is workable. The insider would have to be someone like Michael Maybrick with a grapevine network reaching London or another one of those "enterprising journalists".

[pinkmoon]

new info

Don't won't to appear rude but I'm still waiting to know when the new info about the diary will be let loose on the general public.

[Amanda Sumner]

We are all waiting to know when the new info about the diary will be let loose on the general public!
Nothing rude about that.
I am aware of the electricians, Pinkmoon, but it's difficult to decipher the truth from the lies, so I shall reserve further opinion until I've read the book and brushed up my knowledge on this intriguing subject.

[caz]

And I think you'd have done a reasonable job yourself, Caz (and you'd need to "dumb down" even less).

Ha ha, Ben that gave me real fits - along with all the classic howlers you have entertained us with over the years.

Love,

Caz
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[Ben]

You mean all those occasions where your attempts to criticise my writing have resulted in YOUR ignorance on the subject being exposed? Yep, I had a good old "howl" every time that happened.

[pinkmoon]

We are all waiting to know when the new info about the diary will be let loose on the general public!
Nothing rude about that.
I am aware of the electricians, Pinkmoon, but it's difficult to decipher the truth from the lies, so I shall reserve further opinion until I've read the book and brushed up my knowledge on this intriguing subject.

Amanda my dear you have hit the nail on the head with so many lies will we believe the truth when it is told to us again.

[caz]

I still fail to see how some contemporary 'insider' could randomly be involved and familiar with, and fortuitously link, a modern suspect that Ripperologists can't eliminate from contention as they have Cream and D'Onston. A modern forger would have more chance.

Unless you believe the insider had knowledge that Maybrick was the Ripper or, at least, a prime suspect, I can't see how Old Hoax is workable. The insider would have to be someone like Michael Maybrick with a grapevine network reaching London or another one of those "enterprising journalists".

Hi MayBea,

How do you mean 'randomly' involved? Maybrick wasn't (and arguably still isn't) a suspect, modern or otherwise. It was only the diary author who had the idea of making James the subject of a 'creative' ripper confession, and I would think it was because he/she already had an interest in both notorious cases and guessed it would make for a good old ripping yarn to splice the two. I doubt the hoaxer plucked Maybrick, a Scouser, out of the blue and then began researching to see if he could be forced into the frame for the murders in London.

A modern 'forger' would have had the chance to copy Maybrick's writing, but they didn't take it and it probably wouldn't have fooled the experts if they had. As it is, the handwriting was always going to let a serious forger down sooner or later, if money-making had been the object, which I don't believe it ever was.

Why not one of those "enterprising journalists"? Why not one of the very many ripper letter hoaxers - a wag who could have had inside info on both cases and wanted to 'do something with it'? No need at all for Maybrick to have been a contemporary suspect, let alone the ripper, for someone with a little knowledge, bags of imagination and more than a nodding acquaintance with the vernacular.

Love,

Caz
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[caz]

You mean all those occasions where your attempts to criticise my writing have resulted in YOUR ignorance on the subject being exposed? Yep, I had a good old "howl" every time that happened.

Yeah, but only 'exposed' by you, Ben, with the aid of your unique thesaurus, which tells you to use all sorts of words in completely the wrong context and declare yourself right. How does it feel to be the only one in step?

On the subject of cutting and pasting your pet phrases because you can't be arsed to clarify your arguments for Hutchinson's guilt for all those who remain wholly unconvinced, does it not occur to you that you would only have needed to say it once if you had said it 'perfectly' the first time? Since repeating it verbatim a million times has had little or no effect, it must only be perfect from your own perspective, just like your oddball use of language.

Love,

Caz
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[Kaz]

Yeah, but only 'exposed' by you, Ben, with the aid of your unique thesaurus, which tells you to use all sorts of words in completely the wrong context and declare yourself right. How does it feel to be the only one in step?

On the subject of cutting and pasting your pet phrases because you can't be arsed to clarify your arguments for Hutchinson's guilt for all those who remain wholly unconvinced, does it not occur to you that you would only have needed to say it once if you had said it 'perfectly' the first time? Since repeating it verbatim a million times has had little or no effect, it must only be perfect from your own perspective, just like your oddball use of language.

Love,

Caz
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[MayBea]

...A modern 'forger' would have had the chance to copy Maybrick's writing, but they didn't take it and it probably wouldn't have fooled the experts if they had. As it is, the handwriting was always going to let a serious forger down sooner or later...X

But why would a serial killer, taking on Victorian England in a bloody campaign, and then going home to a dark corner to write about his crimes, revert to his Victorian schoolboy script?

At least Dear Boss was written in red, for jolly, I assume. The Diarist got it right.

James Maybrick is a great suspect, uneliminated until you can find him an alibi like he was at a "party in Sandringham" or "playing cricket at Blackheath"....

[Ben]

Yeah, but only 'exposed' by you, Ben, with the aid of your unique thesaurus, which tells you to use all sorts of words in completely the wrong context and declare yourself right.

But only in this weird fixated fantasy of yours does this occur. The reality, however, is that you whenever you've criticised a particular word I've used - usually as some form of petty, small-minded distraction from an argument you were frustrated over losing - a cursory examination of the dictionary and thesaurus proves me absolutely 100% correct, and you entirely wrong.

But here you are again, attempting the same puerile stunt on a Maybrick thread.

does it not occur to you that you would only have needed to say it once if you had said it 'perfectly' the first time?

No, it doesn't.

The few posters here (three at most) whose egomania I seem to tap into - and whose night's sleep is seemingly dependant on trying to "bring me down a peg or two" - know precisely what my position on any given subject is. They simply prefer to raise previously challenged arguments in the hope that I don't respond with the very same counter-arguments which they understood perfectly well the first time, and the second, and the third...

Apologies to everyone else for the non-Maybrick content of the above, but I feel obliged to defend myself when one of my usual detractors decides to pick a fight with me out of nowhere.

[Ben]

I meant, of course:

"The reality, however, is that whenever you've criticised..."

Not the sort of thing I'd normally need to point out, but given the latest obsession...!

[caz]

But why would a serial killer, taking on Victorian England in a bloody campaign, and then going home to a dark corner to write about his crimes, revert to his Victorian schoolboy script?

Hi MayBea,

Not sure I follow you. All I know is that nobody - not even Feldman - has ever been able to claim that the diarist's handwriting even remotely resembles any known sample of James's.

In contrast, the scratched signature on the watch bears, in my view, a very passable, if coincidental, resemblance to James's signature on his marriage licence. I can't explain that.

Love,

Caz
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[caz]

Hi Ben,

I apologise for touching a nerve. It was churlish of me - in the correct sense of the word of course.

At least while you are here in the crazy world of the diary you aren't compelled to keep cutting and pasting the same old stuff over in Hutchland, in your tireless efforts to hammer arguments home that everyone apparently understood the first time.

Anyway, this isn't a 'fight' Ben. Calm down dear, it's only a commercial - for Hutchinson no less. You should be thanking me.

Love,

Ben
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