new info on the diary

[Kaz]

The echo mentioning 'an empty match-box' isn't mentioning the material its made from, its fair to say there's a purposeful omission. Is this what the diary is referring to anyway? Who's to say it wasn't something else completely?

Crime scenes were treated in a far different way to todays practices, exactly what was found and recorded no one really knows, maybe they just missed it, they missed the letters on the wall.... it just seems a massive assumption to pretend to know exactly what was meant and exactly what happened in the intervening years to various finds.

[James_J]

Pinkmoon,

Unfortunately we are UNABLE to conclusively determine the provenience of the Diary! By your argument, we should set aside all historical and critical investigation of the Diary until we can establish such provenience? I believe it is naive and unreasonable to do so!

Indeed, the opposite is true! Without the ability to determine provenience, the next logical and responsible step, is to critically examine and evaluate the content of the Diary. Surely this is blatantly obvious ? If we can prove the Diary is a hoax or genuine, through a detailed and critical evaluation of content, why should we wait [in the faint hope that provenience is established] before drawing some reasoned, preliminary conclusions? By your argument, we would have to ignore any historical errors, facts or accuracy contained within the Diary because we have not established valid provenience?

Perhaps I have misunderstood your argument, in which case it may help if you clarify your position.

Kind regards & Best wishes, James.

[pinkmoon]

Hi all,yet again we are putting the cart before the horse how on earth can we discuss content of the diary before we know where the diary has come from and who has written it.

[Chris]

Well at least after years of debate, during which the empty tin match box was held up by many as proof of a post-1987 hoax, and held up by one or two as proof that only the murderer could have written about it in his diary, it now appears it is in fact a red herring, and that anyone could have known about it from October 4th 1888 onwards - be they killer or hoaxer, ancient or modern.

Not really, because the modern hoax argument is that the wording of the inventory is exactly duplicated in the Diary. For that matter, Maybrickites can still argue that the Echo report doesn't mention that the matchbox was made of tin.

But at least the idea that the police deliberately withheld mention of the matchbox has been laid to rest.

[caz]

I think the transcripts of the Echo were added to Casebook only around six or seven years ago.

Maybrick and matchboxes aside, the fact that this detail appears in only one report of the inquest (or only one that anyone has noticed) must tell us something interesting about the way the inquest was reported. I had assumed there were a fair number of essentially independent reports of the inquests, but this suggests otherwise.

Hi Chris,

Well at least after years of debate, during which the empty tin match box was held up by many as proof of a post-1987 hoax, and held up by one or two as proof that only the murderer could have written about it in his diary, it now appears it is in fact a red herring, and that anyone could have known about it from October 4th 1888 onwards - be they killer or hoaxer, ancient or modern.

A step forwards or a step backwards? I plump for the former.

Love,

Caz
X

[MrBarnett]

Hi James,

Thanks for your patience. I confess I really don’t know very much about the diary. I am just challenging what seem to me to be flaws in the arguments as put forward on this thread. For example, the suggestion that claiming Stride as a victim in some way argues against a modern forger. Surely the very opposite is true. A forger had to go one way or another, either omit any reference to Stride from the diary, thereby implying she was not a JTR victim, or included her as one of his victims. Damned if you do and damned if you don’t, no doubt. But if you look at the recent poll on the Stride killing, the majority of people on here do consider her one of JTR’s. And I don’t imagine that at any time since 1888 there was a consensus or even a significant majority against Stride as a JTR victim, so a modern forger would have been simply following the herd. Omitting her would have been the contrary action, but if the forger were himself pro-Stride it would have gone against the grain to leave her out.
Regards,

MrB

[James_J]

Hi MrB and thank you for your response!

Of course I am happy to concede that, given the discovery of the matchbox reference made by contemporary newspapers, a modern forger could have read the appropriate article and hence included the reference. However you raise another interesting question - if a modern forger was aware that the empty matchbox was referenced by the newspapers, why should he infer that Abberline was withholding information?

There are also other important considerations that must be acknowledged. We have established that if the Diary was the work of a modern forger, he/she was diligent and resourceful to the EXTREME. Why then, does the author so often fly in the face of modern, “expert” opinion ? Allow me to provide several important examples;

The Diary surfaced in 1992. Contemporary authorities on the Ripper case did not consider any of the Ripper letters as authentic. The author of the Diary claims ownership of several, including the [Dear Boss Letter [25th September]. Many also questioned whether Elizabeth Stride was killed by the murderer. Again, the author of the Diary claims ownership. Why would any modern forger, having gone to considerable lengths to acquire the correct information, deliberately contradict modern thinking - especially on issues as controversial and dubious as the Ripper correspondences?

We must also begin to consider the human aspect of the Diary. As noted before, why should any modern forger have entrusted the Diary to Michael Barrett, who by all accounts does not appear the most respected or trust worthy individual ? Furthermore, there does not appear to be any serious money involved should the Diary be considered genuine - who really stands to gain from the “hoax” ? The modern forger must also be associated closely to the Johnson family - owners of the Maybrick watch. To date, scientific analysis appears to suggest that engravings made on the back of the watch are consistent with Victorian date and are unlikely to be the work of a modern forger [see previous comments]. How do we suppose our modern forger fabricated the Maybrick watch, or is this perhaps a “lucky coincidence” ?

Other information contained within the Diary, not relating to the Ripper murders is also significant. How any modern forger selected Maybrick, someone never before associated with the Ripper crimes, as a suitable suspect is a significant challenge. As previously stated, Maybrick was a hypochondriac and visited his doctor on hundreds of occasions. He was also a prominent business man, travelling frequently to America and various regions of England. It would have taken only one record of these ventures to clash with the dates of the Ripper crimes, and our modern forgery would have been exposed. Remarkably, not one ever did! Another “lucky coincidence”?

In addition, the intricate web of illegitimate children and lovers left by James Maybrick could not have been known to a modern forger. I will again point you to the work of Shirley Harrison and Paul H. Feldman who researched this field extensively and draw reasoned, logical conclusions relating this to the Ripper mystery.

These are just some of the points which challenge to the notion of a modern hoax, and the list is not exhaustive. My own research is focused on several important features of the Maybrick case. I am currently in the process of compiling a family tree of the Maybrick & Graham dynasty, unearthing and confirming several interesting connections! Recent mention of the “Hammersmith” reference, [Diary] is also very intriguing. Any ideas or fresh insight here may prove very useful!

Best Regards & Kind wishes, James

[MrBarnett]

Hi Chris,

One of my great-grandfathers was killed on the Isle of Dogs in 1885. I have found two quite detailed reports, one in the London Standard and another in The East London Advertiser, which describe an unprovoked daytime attack. But there are several other shorter reports from across the country depicting the incident as a night time pub brawl. The wording of these provincial reports is identical, so obviously from the same source, but why there should be this different interpretation of the event I don’t know. The relevant point here, though, is that one original report, or possibly a skewed précis of one of the Standard or ELA reports was copied nationwide with errors intact.

MrB

[Chris]

I think the transcripts of the Echo were added to Casebook only around six or seven years ago.

Maybrick and matchboxes aside, the fact that this detail appears in only one report of the inquest (or only one that anyone has noticed) must tell us something interesting about the way the inquest was reported. I had assumed there were a fair number of essentially independent reports of the inquests, but this suggests otherwise.

[Stephen Thomas]

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

[/I]

They didn't. They said empty tin matchbox.

Like wot a normal person wud say.

[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

[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.

[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.

[MrBarnett]

Hi pinkmoon,

Many thanks for the warm welcome.

Regards,

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.