new info on the diary

[MayBea]

Hi May,
I'm sorry I didn't thank you for providing that Josh Billings example. It just goes to show you can rarely tie a few short words down to a definitely ascertained source, and usually one's biases are on full display when one tries.

Thank you, caz,
For a while there, I thought I had a Google Miracle to match Mike Barrett's "library miracle". Your suggestion was much better.

As a pro-Diarist, I thank you and wish I could come up with an equivalent anti-Diary suggestion to return the favour. I'll try to keep my eyes and mind open.

[Chris]

It was a prank, a spoof, a burlesque, a hoax, a practical joke ...

The Diary is a joke. We agree. Ha ha.

[James_J]

Good to see that some pro-Diarists are still interested in the mystery. Until we can uncover new evidence, I believe the Diary will continue to divide opinion.

James.

[Steve S]

Hello James , Is it so far beyond the realms of possibility that the Author was indeed privy to inside information that was not in the public Sphere ..
just because it was not revealed to the masses , it does not necessarily have follow that the killer was the only one to know ..

cheers

moonbegger

A valid point..........

[caz]

Thank you, caz,
For a while there, I thought I had a Google Miracle to match Mike Barrett's "library miracle". Your suggestion was much better.

Hi May,

But it needn't be either/or. If the wag who composed this overlong, flowered up confession was a fan of G&S humour, with inside info about that empty match box, he could also have known the Josh Billings piece and matched up the two in his mind. Each one of us must absorb thousands upon thousands of literary references and song lyrics during our lives - unless our name is Mike Barrett.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

The Diary is a joke. We agree. Ha ha.

So could you comment on something that was no joke at the time, Chris? I asked why you thought the police held back the 1 Tin Match Box, empty from every newspaper account, if the killer could not have been expected to know it existed.

Any ideas, since it was you who introduced the straw man argument about the killer wasting precious time at the scene going through the victim's possessions in the darkness, coming across the match box and finding it empty?

Here you are:

Either the killer - in that pitch-black corner of Mitre Square, with no time to spare at all - conducted a very detailed search of Eddowes's possessions and ascertained that the matchbox was empty...

Can you say with a straight face that this was the scenario the police were working on when deciding not to mention this one item?

Come on, Chris, I know your mind is sharper than that. Ha ha.

Love,

Caz
X

[Chris]

Can you say with a straight face that this was the scenario the police were working on when deciding not to mention this one item?

What's the evidence that they did?

[Frank]

If the police held back the tin match box, empty, why did the Echo of 4 October mention it:

THE MURDER DISCOVERED

Inspector Edward Collard, of the City of London Police, was next examined. He said - At five minutes before two on Sunday last I received information at Bishopsgate Police-station that a woman had been murdered in Mitre-square. After dispatching the intelligence to headquarters and to Dr. Gordon Brown, I proceeded to the Square. I there found Dr. Sequeira, several police officers and a body of a woman lying in the north-west corner of the Square. The body was not touched until the arrival of Dr. Gordon Brown. He, however, arrived shortly after I got there. The medical gentleman examined the body, and Sergeant Jones afterwards picked up , on the left side of the deceased three small black boot buttons, a small metal button, a metal thimble and a small mustard tin containing two pawn-tickets. The body was afterwards removed to the mortuary. There was no money in her pockets. There was some tea and sugar, a piece of flannel, some soap, a cigarette case, and an empty match-box in her pocket. The portion of an apron (produced) was what deceased was wearing, and corresponds with the piece of apron which has been found in Goulston-street. Chief Detective McWilliams arrived at Mitre-square soon after the murder was discovered. He was accompanied by a number of detectives, and they made inquiries at the various lodging-houses in Spitalfields, and several men were stopped and searched in the street, but without any satisfactory result. I have a house-to-house inquiry made in the vicinity of Mitre-square (continued witness) to see if we could find any person who heard or saw anything unusual in the square that night.

[MayBea]

But it needn't be either/or. If the wag who composed this overlong, flowered up confession was a fan of G&S humour, with inside info about that empty match box, he could also have known the Josh Billings piece and matched up the two in his mind.

Billings seems to have been popular at the time so it's possible. Match box empty doesn't seem to hold anything as an argument anymore, although I'll admit it was an interesting anomaly worthy of discussion at one time.

What about Hammersmith? Anyone hammer that one out yet?

What about Hammersley? This link says Hammersley is the origin of Hammersmith, not Hammerschmidt. http://www.houseofnames.com/Hammersm...ry?A=54323-292
There is a male C.J. Hammersley in Liverpool in 1881 and a Martha Hammersley in 1891.

[MrBarnett]

Hi All,

I hope this is not a silly newbie question.

James_J appeared on here, seemingly very assured and knowledgeable, citing the 'withholding' of the empty matchbox as key evidence of the diary not being an historical fake. Then Frank comes up with an 1888 press report which mentions the match box. My question is: has Frank made an amazing discovery or is James_J not as knowledgeable as he appears?

MrB

[pinkmoon]

Hi All,

I hope this is not a silly newbie question.

James_J appeared on here, seemingly very assured and knowledgeable, citing the 'withholding' of the empty matchbox as key evidence of the diary not being an historical fake. Then Frank comes up with an 1888 press report which mentions the match box. My question is: has Frank made an amazing discovery or is James_J not as knowledgeable as he appears?

MrB

Hi Mr Barnett firstly I would like to welcome you to this wonderfull site which I'm sure will bring you lots of enjoyment and information.The content of this diary should not be discussed untill we have proof of its history by that I mean little things like where it's been for over a hundred years and how Mr Barrett actually got his hands on it.

[MrBarnett]

Hi pinkmoon,

Many thanks for the warm welcome.

Regards,

MrB

[James_J]

MrBarnett thank you for your interest! I would also like to congratulate Frank for his discovery of the Matchbox reference - Echo, October 4 1888. I have been making my observations based on the research of P. Feldman, Shirley Harrison & noted ripper authors. None could find any reference to the matchbox through contemporary newspaper coverage. On the face of it, we may have stumbled upon fresh evidence & historical insight! I must accept that a forger could have, in theory taken this off-hand reference from the appropriate article.

However, my belief that the Diary does not rest solely on the empty matchbox. I am continuing to research the Maybrick case and hope to post some new theories and evaluations soon. In the meantime, I may point you to some of my previous observations about the Diary, posted on this thread. If you have any further questions, please feel free to ask!

Best Regards, James.

[MayBea]

Match box empty may have started as a pro-Diary argument but it quickly was turned around by Melvin Harris into an anti-Diary one because of the phraseology matching the police list. I always thought of it as anti-Diary, pro-Modern Hoax, ever since.

These were items found in the police list and Feld p54 creates a little drama around one item: "The fact is that the empty tin matchbox did not appear in any press report at the time." ...There is no mystery, since the Diary is a modern forgery. ... "tin matchbox empty" is written in that style because it is nothing but a quote from the police list (1 Tin Match Box, empty) which was not in print until 1987. Harris, Guide Through the Labyrinth, Bold mine

Maybe the tin part was still withheld. Good find by Frank though. A new research miracle. The blame for missing it should go to both sides of the argument.

P.S. Hammersley for Hammersmith was suggested back in 2008 by Mr. Poster http://www.jtrforums.com/showthread.php?t=4112 Post 9. Haven't seen any follow-up though.

[MrBarnett]

Hi James,

I’m sure your belief in the diary doesn’t rest solely on the empty matchbox, but it was something you emphasised repeatedly to support your position that ‘there is NO conceivable way that the diary is the work of an old forger’. You went so far as to say ‘there is no conceivable means by which a forger operating at or around the time of the ripper crimes, could have gained sufficient knowledge of the case to include references such as the empty tin matchbox’

Now that it appears that the empty matchbox information appeared in the press in 1888, and has therefore been available to researchers ever since, are you prepared to concede that it is at least possible that other such information, apparently unknown in ripperological circles, may also have been accessed by a forger at any time prior to the 1980s? I am not talking here about gossip or unauthorised access to official records, though both of those seem perfectly plausible to me. What Frank appears to have come up with is a nugget hidden in plain sight in the mainstream British press. Unless you can confidently state that this is the very last piece of undiscovered material in such sources, you must surely accept that there may be others yet to be found which could have been used by either an old or modern forger. Surely that is at least ‘conceivable’?

I have no axe to grind either way on the subject of the diary, although my instinct is to be generally sceptical and to favour a relatively modern forger over an older one.

In one of your posts you ask why a forger would bother to translate his careful research into doggerel. One reason springs immediately to my mind: if the forger were modern, doggerel would be less vulnerable to expert scrutiny than an attempt at contemporary prose. With an attempt at Victorian prose, just one anachronous idiom and the whole house of cards comes tumbling down. With doggerel, any inconvenient construction can be dismissed as mere coincidence. This seems to me to suggest a more modern forgery.

In another post you quote the diary: ‘O, Mr Abberline, he is a clever little man, he keeps back all that he can’ and say that is an explicit reference to the matchbox. Now that we know the existence of the matchbox was not kept back, what are we to make of that? Would the omission of something as inconsequential as a matchbox in any case have lead the real Ripper to suspect deliberate withholding on the part of Abberline? Probably not. Would a contemporary forger, without the benefit of a hundred years of ripper research and online resources to flag up the omission? Unlikely. However, a modern forger, steeped in ripperological minutiae, might well have stumbled upon the Echo report and, realising it was not generally known, rubbed his hands with glee as he include a reference to it in his work.

MrB