new info on the diary

[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
X

[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
X

[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
X

[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.

[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.

[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
X

[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.

[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.

[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]

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.

[Ben]

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

I don't "repeat" pet phrases so much as copy and paste them. When it is necessary to combat the same nonsense over and over, it becomes a bit of arse to use different words when the first ones did the job perfectly.

[Kaz]

Only the couple of pounds I put on over Christmas, Kaz.

I've been saying much the same thing here - like a broken record - since about 2007. I would love to see some strong evidence to change my thinking, but so many of the arguments are based on strong personal convictions, which do not find as much support in the diary itself as some would like to claim.

Love,

Caz
X

A couple of pounds on your chest?? Wow, your husband is one lucky chap!

I know your stance on the diary, wasn't fully aware you thought it came from James's house... if I did I forgot, christmas was heavier in other areas for myself...

[caz]

Something you want to get off your chest, caz?

Only the couple of pounds I put on over Christmas, Kaz.

I've been saying much the same thing here - like a broken record - since about 2007. I would love to see some strong evidence to change my thinking, but so many of the arguments are based on strong personal convictions, which do not find as much support in the diary itself as some would like to claim.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Hi Caz,

Simply because something was written at the end of the 19th century doesn't mean that the prose should read like a Gilbertian libretto or something Matthew Arnold might have penned. I have a lot of old family correspondence hand-written by a number of people between about 1875 and 1925, and the prose varies from 'formal' to very informal, almost as a modern decently-educated person might compose. The hand-writing itself also varies from formal and legible to an almost-indecipherable scribble. I see no reason why the prose and penmanship of the diary should rule out its being an old production.

Execrable though some of the English in the diary might be, it's a damn sight better than a lot of posts to the various forums I contribute to. OK, so a keyboard possibly requires more skill than a pen, but trying to read something that has no punctuation or use of upper case is a nightmare.

Best,

Graham

Hear hear, Graham! I have just read your post after posting some very similar thoughts myself. Glad I'm not alone.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Not to the abysmal level of much of the English contained in the Diary, Caz. But you know my views on that

(I really missed you at the Ripperconf, by the way. Hope to see you at another.)

Hi Sam,

Have you not read some of the equally abysmal stuff that passes for English on these boards, by posters with English as their first language, who can boast a better and longer education than the real James Maybrick had?

In any case, it's my belief that the Lusk letter was written by someone who was only pretending to be semi-literate, so why could the same not apply to the diary author? If our hoaxer was having fun at Maybrick's expense, why wouldn't 'Sir Jim' come across as even more of an uneducated oaf than he may have been in real life? He wasn't a murderer in real life either, was he? So just as the author didn't need to operate on the level of a murderer to turn 'Sir Jim' into England's most wanted, he need not have been genuinely abysmal at English in order to portray 'Sir Jim' in that way. Forgive me, but your argument is not too dissimilar from the one that accuses certain artists of being murderers because of the sinister images they paint. The diary was made up, so we can only judge the writer's minimal writing skills, not his upper limits.

Moreover, the author makes no bones about the fact that 'Sir Jim' wishes he could produce better creative writing, cursing his brother for being the talented one. Right there is an acknowledgement of the diarist's shortcomings, which to me smacks of a huge piss-take, by someone who could write perfectly well (if not at the great literature level) when the occasion called for it, but not here where the intention was self-evidently to show the subject in the worst possible light.

Airing in a Closed Carriage is a novel from 1943 by Joseph Shearing, based on the Maybrick case. Shearing also portrays James as an uneducated brute of a man trying to climb the social ladder but with none of the social graces to go with it - a nouveau (not so) riche with delusions of grandeur. The spelling in the diary of 'rondaveau' (assuming this wasn't a mistranscription of the original - it's quite hard to decipher in the facsimile) would be entirely in keeping with such a portrayal, and I'm sure this would have been no accident.

Mike Barrett would certainly have had to 'dumb up' several levels to compose one sentence, and his distinctive 'style' would still have been all over the thing like a rash.

I think our Ben could have done a reasonable job without dumbing down too much, especially where it involved repeating pet phrases over and over.

Love,

Caz
X

PS I miss your Tit Willow - must do it again at a future ripper meeting or conference.