Maybrick Diary Typescript 1992 (KS Ver.)

[Kattrup]

Possibly--and I'm open to being wrong-- but there is no "e" after the "t," so technically, it this were the case, wouldn't it read fastst?

Finest is six letters; fastest is seven.

Yes, I think so

[rjpalmer]

Here are three examples of the diarist writing "finest," from page 217. One has the "i" dotted, two others don't.

To me, the last example on the right ("very finest") looks similar to the supposed word "fastest" on pg. 261, only without the upward smear.

The penman's "n" sometimes looks like the penman's "s"

[Iconoclast]

2023-12-17 Finest vs Fastest.pdf

Apologies for the rubbish reproductions but it was the best I could do before me tea.

Whilst I would accept that there is no way one could be categorical about whether the word is 'finest' or 'fastest', and I do take on board RJ's point that it does appear to be six letters not seven, I cannot 'see it' as 'finest' in the smudged form that we have: there does not appear to be a dot above the 'I', and the second letter does have the strong appearance of an 'a', and the smudge for what would have to be an 'e' (if the word was 'finest') is consistent with the smudging of the 'longer' letters elsewhere (the 't' and the 'h' of 'with', for example).

As I say, I can't call it categorically but my vote would go for 'fastest' because that's how it reads to my eye but that may simply be habit rather than insight.

PS Well it showed-up when I previewed it! Looks like RJ has beaten me to it, anyway.

[rjpalmer]

Side by side comparison.



What I am suggesting is that there is *possibly* the loop of an "e" in the left-hand word (at the base of the alleged 't') and it is smeared upward along with the other smears, giving the illusion of a t, which is also helped out by the long crossbar.

But, in case it sounds like I am pushing this interpretation, I'll leave it at that. I certainly acknowledge that I cannot tell with any certainty.

[Sam Flynn]

Given the speed and audacity of the Ripper murders, perhaps Maybrick wrote that he'd "purchase the fastest knife"

[caz]

Oh boy, Sam, I just caught up with this thread and was thinking precisely the same as you. Was 'Sir Jim' boasting that he was the fastest knife in the East?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

The main thing is that the Barretts thought the word should be 'finest' - not 'fastest' - when preparing the typescript.

Unfortunately, that doesn't reveal whether they chose the word and it became unclear when transferred by hand from the word processor to the guard book, between 31st March and 13th April 1992; or whether they read it as 'finest' in the guard book - just as Palmer does - when transcribing it onto the word processor.

I'm more interested in page 6, where Mike has written by hand: HE ENdS PAgE THiS WAy, next to a hand drawn squiggle.

It reads like an observation, describing how the diary author ends the relevant page in the guard book. But then I would say that, wouldn't I?

If it's meant as a reminder, or an instruction, to reproduce this squiggle when the text is copied into the guard book, and to leave the rest of the page blank [the handwritten version only takes up about a third of that page], I have to wonder what the point is. It would mean printing off that page to add the instruction by hand, presumably when Mike has finally found what is needed to accommodate the text and has worked out that there will be more than enough room to spare. If he had got his 1880s "diary" with at least 20 blank pages of unspecified size, he could have ended up trying to cram it all into just 20 tiny pages.

I get the word-processed asterisk marks to indicate the crossed out lines, because the relevant pages don't then need to be printed off before the lines can be struck through manually in the guard book. But it works the other way round equally well, to indicate directly on the transcript where lines are crossed out in the guard book. I don't know who crossed them out manually on the transcript, or when, but I see no reason why the Barretts would have spent time and effort doing so before Mike handed over both documents to Doreen.

Having said that, the diary is legible enough without a typescript, so I do wrestle with the image of Mike printing off his own literary hoax, only to hand it over to Doreen as it was created on the word processor, along with the book into which he has just had Anne transfer it by hand. There's a fine line between 'audacious' and 'unhinged'!

Showing off the creative writing process would be a bit like taking an old maths exam, where you gained marks for showing your workings.

Anne claimed it was typed up from the diary and printed off for Mike to take both to London, in the spirit of doing things properly if he was determined to do it at all. She must have known it would be used by anyone asked to help with the research into its contents, which included Mike himself. If Anne was lying, she also knew very well what Mike had handed over, and didn't stop him.

Love,

Caz
X

[Sam Flynn]

IMHO, the Barretts were probably right to read it as "finest". Grand National timings are fairly similar over the years, and the winning times for those races Maybrick might have attended demonstrates this. Omitting the few occasions when either the clock stopped (true!) or the race crept over the 11 minute mark, we can see that most races lasted just over 10 minutes for the most part.

1871 9m 35s *
1872 10m 14s
1874 10m 4s
1875 10m 22s
1877 10m 10s
1878 10m 23s
1879 10m 12s
1880 10m 20s
1882 10m 42s
1884 10m 5s
1885 10m 10s
1886 10m 10s
1887 10m 14s
1888 10m 12s
1889 10m 1s

BTW, the 1871 result casts doubt on the claim that the 1889 National was the fastest on record.

[Iconoclast]

IMHO, the Barretts were probably right to read it as "finest". Grand National timings are fairly similar over the years, and the winning times for those races Maybrick might have attended demonstrates this. Omitting the few occasions when either the clock stopped (true!) or the race crept over the 11 minute mark, we can see that most races lasted just over 10 minutes for the most part.

1871 9m 35s *
1872 10m 14s
1874 10m 4s
1875 10m 22s
1877 10m 10s
1878 10m 23s
1879 10m 12s
1880 10m 20s
1882 10m 42s
1884 10m 5s
1885 10m 10s
1886 10m 10s
1887 10m 14s
1888 10m 12s
1889 10m 1s

BTW, the 1871 result casts doubt on the claim that the 1889 National was the fastest on record.

Four points (for all readers) ...

1) There is no way that James Maybrick could instinctively know that the 1889 GN was the fastest he had ever seen (we are not that perspicacious a species), but he didn't need to as it was presumably published in the following day's newspapers - possibly with a list of previous times going back to 1871 from which he could quickly see that he had just watched the fastest race of his lifetime. For the record, as I think Lord Orsam has previously noted, he hadn't seen the 'fastest' race of his life, he had seen the 'least amount of time' race of his life (as the 1889 GN was shorter than many previous years) but Maybrick probably didn't realise that.

2) To my knowledge, no-one has ever claimed that the 1889 GN was the 'fastest on record' (James Maybrick certainly didn't claim it in his scrapbook).

3) If the Barretts had read it as 'the finest I have seen', I wonder what they could possibly have thought James would be thinking using a general term such as 'finest' rather than a specific term such as 'fastest' for a horse race (not a fan so not able to comment)? They don't appear to have thought about it too long otherwise they might have stopped themselves and come to some other conclusion.

4) I am delighted to find that you do not subscribe to the argument that the Barretts wrote the text in the scrapbook.

Ike

[caz]

IMHO, the Barretts were probably right to read it as "finest". Grand National timings are fairly similar over the years, and the winning times for those races Maybrick might have attended demonstrates this. Omitting the few occasions when either the clock stopped (true!) or the race crept over the 11 minute mark, we can see that most races lasted just over 10 minutes for the most part.

1871 9m 35s *
1872 10m 14s
1874 10m 4s
1875 10m 22s
1877 10m 10s
1878 10m 23s
1879 10m 12s
1880 10m 20s
1882 10m 42s
1884 10m 5s
1885 10m 10s
1886 10m 10s
1887 10m 14s
1888 10m 12s
1889 10m 1s

BTW, the 1871 result casts doubt on the claim that the 1889 National was the fastest on record.

Hi Sam,

As Ike has pointed out, the diary itself does not claim that the 1889 race was 'the fastest on record'. The character named 'Sir Jim' puts it this way: 'True the race was the f..... I have seen.'

If the Barretts read the word in the diary as 'finest', rightly or wrongly, would that not imply that they were interpreting someone else's words?

Or did you mean they read the word 'finest' in some other source and pinched it for their own use?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

On the very first line, the typed version includes the words: 'they would stop this instance', while the handwritten version has: 'they would stop this instant'.

If Anne was transferring the former to the latter, in a skilfully disguised but mock-Victorian handwriting [as one theory goes], did she see this schoolboy error in an instant and render it correctly in the guard book?

Or is it just possible that the typed version contains a Barrett malapropism, as a result of misreading someone else's handwriting and assuming what the word should be?

Put it another way: we've all seen one of those tv crime dramas, with a flashback to the wrongdoer practising a signature over and over, for the purpose of committing fraud and cashing in on their victim's assets.

The culprit usually gets buckled in the end, but it tends not to be because they carelessly enclosed their practice sheet with the forged document, when sending it to the intended recipient.

I would certainly have to suspend my disbelief in a drama featuring the Barretts, in which they purposefully print off their own 29 practice sheets to accompany their fraudulent diary, which Michael Barrett of Goldie Street, Liverpool, then delivers in person to Doreen Montgomery in London.

But there would have been no need for any of this back in the real world, inhabited by real people, in which the real Anne Barrett claimed to be dead against Mike trying to get the diary published. But he was determined. If left up to Mike, might he not simply have taken the guard book to London and let Doreen decide whether to get it photocopied and transcribed - or to 'send him packing' without even a rejection slip?

We know that a decision was made in Goldie Street to get the typed version to Doreen, supposedly representing a transcript taken from the guard book. But I don't know what incentive, or obligation, there would have been to provide anything at all, if the typescript instead represents the creative writing process behind a Barrett hoax.

Perhaps that should be the next question for those who still think it does: cui bono?

Love,

Caz
X

[rjpalmer]

BTW, the 1871 result casts doubt on the claim that the 1889 National was the fastest on record.

The 1871 race was held on March 21st.

By a stroke of luck, the 1871 census was held less than two weeks later, the night of April 2nd, and shows James Maybrick, aged 31 (he was 33), living in the family home in Mount Pleasant, Liverpool, only about 5 miles from the racetrack at Aintree.

(In reality, the enumerator fudged a wee bit, because Maybrick had left Liverpool aboard the Royal Mail Steamer Cuba the previous day, April 1st. The shipping list survives).

With a long unpleasant voyage ahead of him and ultimately bound for the malarial climes of Norfolk, would not James have taken the opportunity to see the Grand National, one of the highlights of the sporting and social events of the season?

One could argue that the phrase 'the fastest I have seen'...if that's what it says...is actually an error, like poor Mary Kelly's nose.

Enjoy your holiday.

[caz]

Coincidentally, I mentioned Mount Pleasant only this morning in an email, in connection with a claim Mike Barrett once made to have found his infamous Sphere volume 2 in a second-hand book shop there. He may well have been thinking of Reid of Liverpool, whether or not this was yet another of his lies.

I agree with Palmer that IF Maybrick saw the 1871 race, and IF the word in the guard book is 'fastest', then one could argue that it is an error by whoever put it there - and not one Maybrick himself could have made IF his memory by the end of March 1889 was up to making an accurate comparison with the race he had seen 18 years previously.

It's a great spot.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

In the spirit of allowing for possibilities, one could argue that if and when Anne came to transfer the word 'finest' from the typescript to the guard book, at some point between 31st March and 13th April 1992, she may have decided that 'fastest' would be a more appropriate superlative, but didn't have the time or inclination to look into the actual history of the race, not really thinking that anyone else would, because a) it was only a work of fiction anyway and b) Doreen would probably send Mike packing because it wasn't very good fiction.

Bottom line, though, is still the fact that the word according to Mike's word processor is 'finest'.

Love,

Caz
X

[rjpalmer]

I agree with Palmer that IF Maybrick saw the 1871 race, and IF the word in the guard book is 'fastest', then one could argue that it is an error by whoever put it there - and not one Maybrick himself could have made IF his memory by the end of March 1889 was up to making an accurate comparison with the race he had seen 18 years previously.

It's a great spot.

Sarcasm duly noted.

So, you weren't too impressed with Ike's suggestion that Maybrick "didn't need to (remember) as it was presumably published in the following day's newspapers - possibly with a list of previous times going back to 1871 from which he could quickly see that he had just watched the fastest race of his lifetime."

Me, either.

It's so nice when we can agree.

But, having already determined the photo album confessional is a hoax, there is no reason to speculate or care that 'Maybrick' made an error--I was looking at it from the perspective of the hoaxer.

If it says 'finest,' then we have an Agatha Christie 'Ten Little Indians' moment where the three little books needed to create the text are whittled down to two, which again undermines the theory of sophistication.

If it says 'fastest,' one wonders why the hoaxer would have written this if the 1871 Grand National time was faster (or of less duration) and Maybrick was alive & well & living in Liverpool in March 1871. The hoaxer could have only known this--if know it they did--by consulting a list. And such a list would have raised doubts in the mind of an audience. Even a writer of historical fiction doesn't want to drop a potential clanger if it can be helped.

But I am straying too close to discussing the authorship question, so I must end it there.

RP