new info on the diary

[Amanda Sumner]

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.

[caz]

As a newbie, my observations may be a little naive, but I've read all these posts with interest and much has been made of the empty match box. Chris raised the point that in the very short time the Ripper had to do his ghastly deeds, somehow he found the time to go through her things as well. This seems very unlikely and even less likely, to me, that he noticed it was empty too. According to this report though, the matchbox was found in her pocket...so the Ripper, very obligingly, carefully put it back after discovering that there was nothing it! It just does not ring true, so, based on that and other things, I think the diary is a modern hoax, probably written before the late 1980's.

Hi Amanda,

But as I went on to explain, this was a straw man argument, as the diary makes no mention of the ripper needing to find the time to 'go through her things as well' and notice that the match box was empty. Equally he had no need to 'carefully put it back' afterwards. Why not? Because the diary also mentions the tea and sugar Eddowes had on her person. That in no way implies 'Sir Jim' must have gone through her things to know about those items as well. All the real killer had to do was read the reports of his foul deeds in the papers, just like everyone else on the planet (including all the hoaxers) to get such information. And that's exactly what the diary tells us 'Sir Jim' did. Concerning the Kelly murder, 'Sir Jim' writes: I have read about my latest, my God the thoughts, the very best. He was supposedly reliving it all courtesy of the newspapers and composing his awful doggerel using a combination of what he could recall from personal experience and details (such as Eddowes's tea and sugar) that he would only have read about after the event.

And for all we know, the real killer could have found his own tin match box empty (ooh, same phrasing there, by pure coincidence ) while walking with his victim to Mitre Square, and given it to her by way of a sweetener.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Can anyone honestly say they'd be PROUD to be 'potentially' related to JTR?

I for one would go out of my way to keep that little nugget a secret.

Hi Kaz,

Interestingly, the late Brian Maybrick was quite laid back about his long dead relative being accused of the ripper murders.

And you should see how robustly the poster Lechmere argues his case against Charles Lechmere, who merely found one of the bodies. His partner (a delightful lady) doesn't seem to mind, despite being a direct descendant.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

I'm still amazed any one could be so sure about it coming out of maybricks house (under the floorboards or wherever) and NOT think it was penned by James's hand??

I hold my hands up as one such person, Kaz.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Got my copy from amazon for £5...

You wos robbed, Steve.

Love,

Caz
X

[Amanda Sumner]

You make some very valid points there, Caz, and I shall look forward to reading your book when it arrives.

[caz]

Hi caz,forger should have not claimed authorship of the letters sent to the police also why didn't he try to copy the writing of the dear boss letter never understood that.

Did you read the post you were responding to here, pinky?

If the author (not 'forger') was simply producing a more elaborate ripper hoax than all those daft ripper letters, which could never have been taken seriously in a million years, he/she could claim authorship of anything they damn well liked, and had no need to copy the writing of anything or anyone. The author of the Dear Boss letter and the Saucy Jacky postcard chose a different hand for each, so there's a precedent right there. If this wag had wanted to leave no doubt at all, he could have done so easily enough by making the handwriting identical. He apparently didn't care. It was more about causing mischief than seeking to prove anything. And that's what I see in the diary.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

As I stand at the moment, I do not get why Maybrick would have felt the need to change his writing at all.
He says he wanted the diary found, so, if it was a type of 'confession' why bother?
If he wrote it purely for his own enjoyment, to experience the thrill of reliving his crimes, why bother?

Hi Amanda,

Not that I believe Maybrick had anything to do with it, but 'Sir Jim' only decides he wants the diary found right at the end, after the murders and when he is on his death bed. It wasn't a 'confession' as such when he was planning and executing the murders. In fact, he worries about someone coming across his thoughts and wonders if he should destroy them.

But I agree, I can't see why the real killer would have bothered to disguise his hand, since there are enough clues in the content to identify who he is meant to be.

Love,

Caz
X

[Graham]

Hi Caz,

I completely agree with you regarding the non-Maybrick origin of the diary, and like you I have always thought it an old hoax or joke.

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

[Kaz]

I hold my hands up as one such person, Kaz.

Love,

Caz
X

Something you want to get off your chest, caz?

[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.

[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]

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

[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...

[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.