Vote the Diary

[MayBea]

Thank you, Pcd. It was indeed Purkis with the 'random scrawlings'.

1888 was famous for The Diary of a Nobody serialized in Punch starting in May. But I think everyone will agree that Jekyll and Hyde was a major inspiration.

Imagine Hyde writing at the back of the doctor's appointment book!

[Pcdunn]

And a man like Jack the Ripper would too?

As Pcdunn said, it's "random scawlings of a drug addict", and it's the secret confessions of a serial killer who's a businessman by day.

It makes sense that he'd hide his ravings in the back of one of his office stub books, and then rip out the section with office records, because he was found out by the office boy, or even for symbolic reasons as his alter ego took over.

You could say a modern forger didn't want to present his Jack as someone engaged in a something 'girlie' such as diary keeping but it was considered a feminine pursuit since at least 1880.

[]

Purvis wrote about the "random scrawlings", not me.

As for diary keeping, any well-educated man who was an author, poet, explorer, scientist, politician, frequently did keep "journals" (another word for diaries, meaning "day books"). We know as much as we do about seventeenth century London due to the Diaries of Samuel Pepys.
The shift to diary-keeping being perceived as a feminine or juvenile pursuit may have coincided with the expansion of business and commerce in the Victorian and Edwardian ages, as men felt they had more important things to do (and less spare time for writing down the weather and their menu for dinner.)

[MayBea]

A very simple basic fact about the diary that is always forgotten about a man like Maybrick would have used a proper diary.

And a man like Jack the Ripper would too?

As Pcdunn said, it's "random scawlings of a drug addict", and it's the secret confessions of a serial killer who's a businessman by day.

It makes sense that he'd hide his ravings in the back of one of his office stub books, and then rip out the section with office records, because he was found out by the office boy, or even for symbolic reasons as his alter ego took over.

You could say a modern forger didn't want to present his Jack as someone engaged in a something 'girlie' such as diary keeping but it was considered a feminine pursuit since at least 1880.

https://books.google.ca/books?id=QkPWAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA74&lpg=PA74&dq=keeping+diaries+feminine+pursuit&source=bl&ots=9qF8Ftl4z5&sig=wGHg3kh5700dTeOYv401lZ8_MDU&hl=en&sa=X&ei=WzfWVICDAce6ggTknIHQDQ&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=keeping%20diaries%20feminine%20pursuit&f=false

[GUT]

I think it's important to remember that despite the title that it has become known by, the document isn't actually written as a diary.
It is the random scrawlings of a troubled drug addict. The type of thing that would be written on impulse in whatever blank pages initially came to hand, rather than in a book specially selected and purchased iin advance, in which to document one's descent into addiction and psychosis.

And where do we find proof James was psychotic?

[Purkis]

I think it's important to remember that despite the title that it has become known by, the document isn't actually written as a diary.
It is the random scrawlings of a troubled drug addict. The type of thing that would be written on impulse in whatever blank pages initially came to hand, rather than in a book specially selected and purchased iin advance, in which to document one's descent into addiction and psychosis.

[GUT]

I have often torn out a draft of my fiction from a notebook, either because it has been finished (or I'm mad at my efforts and starting over!), so that isn't so odd to me. At the same time, the speculation that the "diary" contained unrelated material, such as photos, can't be overlooked in the modern hoax solution. It just makes too much sense.

But that's a notebook being used as a notebook, not a scrapbook, photo book being used as a "diary".

[Pcdunn]

I have often torn out a draft of my fiction from a notebook, either because it has been finished (or I'm mad at my efforts and starting over!), so that isn't so odd to me. At the same time, the speculation that the "diary" contained unrelated material, such as photos, can't be overlooked in the modern hoax solution. It just makes too much sense.

[GUT]

I've still not seen a convincing explanation as to why a supposedly prosperous man like Maybrick didn't write his 1888 journal in either an 1888 diary or at least a previously unused contemporary document. Both would have been readily available and easily affordable. Acquiring either might, however, have presented almost insurmountable difficulties to a latter-day forger who would then have been compelled to abandon the attempt at deception or to choose a less convincing alternative from what was available to him/her at the time of writing.

Not on solitary thing to explain why he had to rip the first few pages out either.

I have at times used old books to make notes when I am in a hurry and can't find anything better, but I don't then rip the other pages out to me that is the biggest pointer that something is "fishy".

[pinkmoon]

I've still not seen a convincing explanation as to why a supposedly prosperous man like Maybrick didn't write his 1888 journal in either an 1888 diary or at least a previously unused contemporary document. Both would have been readily available and easily affordable. Acquiring either might, however, have presented almost insurmountable difficulties to a latter-day forger who would then have been compelled to abandon the attempt at deception or to choose a less convincing alternative from what was available to him/her at the time of writing.

A very simple basic fact about the diary that is always forgotten about a man like Maybrick would have used a proper diary.

[Bridewell]

I've still not seen a convincing explanation as to why a supposedly prosperous man like Maybrick didn't write his 1888 journal in either an 1888 diary or at least a previously unused contemporary document. Both would have been readily available and easily affordable. Acquiring either might, however, have presented almost insurmountable difficulties to a latter-day forger who would then have been compelled to abandon the attempt at deception or to choose a less convincing alternative from what was available to him/her at the time of writing.

[Bridewell]

Why would any forger pick a suspect living 200 miles away from the crime scene?

Either the diary is a forgery (in which case the forger did pick a suspect living 200 miles away) or it isn't. This is ripperology, a world in which a theorist can speculate that Vincent Van Gogh committed these murders at a time when all the available evidence shows that he was in the South of France.

Maybrick fitted the "top-hatted toff" figure of the public's imagination and a contemporary forger (assuming, for the sake of argument, that such an individual existed) would have had the added benefit of knowing that his framed suspect was dead and therefore in no position to issue a denial.

[GUT]

You prefer floor boards?

Well it's better for me.

[MayBea]

The mattress just doesn't work for me.

You prefer floor boards?

[pinkmoon]

What so straight after he died?

And then what of the claims that it was found in Battlecrease by electircians, you know to me the whole thing might have more chance if there weren't so many different stores

The mattress just doesn't work for me.

Absolutely right with all the lies told concerning the dear diary what ever we are told we will never believe it such a shame .I have no doubt though that the electricians drinking in Mr Barretts pub is the only thing that connects Mr Barrett to the diary.

[GUT]

According to The Definitive Casebook, Anne Graham thinks the Diary was smuggled out of Battlecrease wrapped in the laundry and given to her father's grandmother, Elizabeth Formby, who ran a laundry and whom she believed was the local fence.

What so straight after he died?

And then what of the claims that it was found in Battlecrease by electircians, you know to me the whole thing might have more chance if there weren't so many different stores

The mattress just doesn't work for me.