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Originally posted by Iconoclast
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One thing Lord Orsam does very impressively, I think, is to demonstrate that between the first known use of the expression "one off job" in 1912 and 1945, the phrase "one off" was only ever used in respect of the manufacturing process to refer to a unique job, pattern or product. There are zero instances of it being used as in the diary to describe an event, occasion or instance (such as hitting ones' wife). You've rather missed the point of the 1946 occurrence. It's not just that the author had to explain it. It's that he didn't refer to the unique Scotsman as a one off. What he said was that the Scotsman was like a "one off job", which he made clear was a term used by engineers. That is the clearest possible demonstration that "one off" was not a stand alone expression in the English language as late as the end of the Second World War but only known with the suffix of "job" which was only really familiar to engineers. This is more than 55 years after Maybrick is supposed to have used it in the diary.
This is entirely corroborated by the Herald journalist Jack Webster who grew up in the 1930s, 40s and 50s and had obviously never heard of people being described one offs until he was at least aged 30, which knocks the idea on the head that it was a term used in conversation which simply hadn't been recorded.
What I find particularly compelling is the way Lord Orsam shows that starting in the late 1950s there is a very clear pattern of slowly increased use of what he refers to as the metaphorical use of the expression "one off". So we find one or two limited examples from the late 1950s, with it growing steadily during the 1960s and what he refers to as an explosion of use during the 1970s. It's really quite stark. What he did was use every searchable database he could find, including those which include texts from both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, to locate the first known examples of all the different metaphorical type "one off" expressions. Not only are there none in the LVP but there are none in the first half of the twentieth century either. One example that particularly struck me was from The Stage, searchable copies of which go back to the nineteenth century. Until the 1960s there is not a single mention of a "one off play" or a "one off drama" but after that time there are loads of examples of it. There cannot be any other explanation for this other than that "one off" was not in use in the English language before the Second World War to describe anything unique outside of a physical item or product or job in the manufacturing world.
I've never seen anyone comment on these findings or provide any other explanation for what strikes me as glaringly obvious. Naturally it's not the only problem. "bumbling buffoon", "top myself" and "spreads mayhem" are all anachronistic expressions which should not be found in an 1888 document. "bumbling buffoon" is almost as impossible as "one off instance" because the word "bumbling" wasn't used this way until Time magazine used it in the 1920s to describe bumbling politicians. Thank you for reminding me of the mistake made by the forger in thinking that Florence had gone to London to see her sick aunt, a mistake made by a barrister in court and reproduced in the secondary literature, but something which Maybrick would have known not to be true. We now know that the key to Miller's court wasn't taken away by the killer because it had gone missing long before Kelly was murdered. The breasts were not placed on the table. These were all mistakes made by the forger, something which probably won't surprise you if the forger was Michael Barrett.
Given all these glaring errors there doesn't seem to be a single reason to think that the diary is or even might be genuine. The use of the impossible "one off instance" is all the proof we need that it's a fake. I'm trying to be helpful to you to stop you wasting your time on something which the evidence demonstrates is obviously a modern creation.
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