The One Where James Maybrick was Jack the Ripper

[Iconoclast]

Could I just ask for some idea of when Anne said the above words and in what context?

You are quite right, Caz - this is a quotation from Anne's 'Tea & Cake' January 18, 1995 interview (in truth it was a discussion) so well after she had blabbed all to Feldman back in the day (July 1994).

If Anne hoped that Mike would write a nice little story based on the diary Doreen was expecting to see, we know how well that went, don't we? Anne had very little say in the matter, but it wasn't because she was keeping a secret about the diary from Mike; it was because he was keeping a secret from her, and she had sore misgivings about how he had acquired it.

This bit never fails to cork me, Caz. What on earth did Anne seriously think Mike was going to do with the possible journal of the world's most infamous serial killer? What would her imaginary book have looked like? Would it be fictional? Would it be fact-based? And did it not occur to her that the possible journal of the world's most infamous serial killer would generate phenomenal amounts of money if it could be shown to be true (and she could not possibly have known that it wasn't true if she genuinely had used it to prop up Caroline's toy sideboard since receiving it from old Billy when he moved into his new flat)?

I find the premise for why Anne gave Mike the scrapbook - frankly - about as believable as the latter (and indeed the former) having anything whatsoever to do with its creation.

But maybe that's just me?

PS Where ya been, kidda?

Cheers,

Ike

[caz]

Here Ike. Below is the statement by Anne Graham that I find so remarkable but note: its value will be entirely missed unless it is examined in conjunction with other statements she made around the same time.


AG: You see, I had to be very subtle in my approach in as much that I couldn’t say to him, we don’t get it published, we write a story around it. I just sort of give it to him bit by bit to try and make him understand it’s come from his idea, it was his idea. But I couldn’t do it! I had managed to manipulate him every, years, so many things, I just [inaudible] this one [laughs ruefully].


I already gave my own commentary about it on the 'Old Hoax' thread that you have abandoned.

Could I just ask for some idea of when Anne said the above words and in what context?

If this was following her out-of-the blue claim to have secretly and impulsively given Mike the diary via Tony, when people naturally wanted her to explain why she had done such a thing, and to try and understand her reasoning, I'm really not sure what's going on, because Palmer doesn't believe a word of any of it! The only way she could make this alleged trip down to Fountains Road sound less improbable was to say it was all bound up with the state of their marriage and seemed like a good idea at the time. Warming to that theme, it became a writing project she had in mind for Mike back in 1991, to give him something to do that hadn't originated from her. In the context of having told this big fat lie, concerning a secret she never actually had, which she was supposedly keeping from Mike, she naturally had to keep adding layers, including the one about needing to be "very subtle" in her approach so he wouldn't feel manipulated. But it was all part and parcel of the same tall story she was telling everyone, if the diary didn't come from her father and Mike knew exactly where he'd got it from.

If Anne hoped that Mike would write a nice little story based on the diary Doreen was expecting to see, we know how well that went, don't we? Anne had very little say in the matter, but it wasn't because she was keeping a secret about the diary from Mike; it was because he was keeping a secret from her, and she had sore misgivings about how he had acquired it.

[Herlock Sholmes]

I'm really not sure what you mean by questioning my claim that 'one-off' was a term used in the LVP, Herlock? Bizarrely (and it really is bizarre) you then immediately answer your own question in the very next sentence! It is the same as claiming, "There are no blue balls other than that blue ball over there."

I said, "I don't think there is much debate about the use of 'one-off' in the LVP". Seemed pretty clear-cut when I typed it. Anyone else struggling with it, I wonder? Anyway, Lord Orsam wasn't struggling with it. In his 'One Off Article', he cited those cases he had found where the author had used the term 'one-off' or 'one off':



So why did you say "I'm really not sure what you mean by "the use of "one off" in the LVP"? Which bit of that did you not understand?

I definitely didn't make any other claim. Let's just run the one through again. I said "I don't think there is much debate about the use of 'one-off' in the LVP" and you said you didn't know what I meant by that and then immediately told everyone what it was I meant. There are no blue balls in the world and never have been, other than that one over there, and what have you.

Now, on to your attempt to "help me out".



The journalist in the 1980s who claimed 'one off' was a contemporary expression - did he say 'one off instance' (or any 'one off' event) was contemporary? The way you have typed it, you make it sound as though he or she was claiming 'one off' - an expression found by Lord Orsam in 1884 - was contemporary. To truly "help me out", I think you'll need to explain your claim a little further, don't you?

And why would a journalist in the 1980s be any kind of judge and jury over anything? They (some) are wordsmiths not etymologists - why would a journalist have any greater insight than anyone else?

And then we have your 1946 'one off job' example in which the author felt the need to explain that this was an engineering term. Hey, it's a bit like a BBC journalist in December 2024 feeling the need to clarify what 'in absentia' means, isn't it? Now, if we asked our December 2024 BBC journalist, "Did you clarify it because you thought absolutely no-one - other than you obviously - could possibly know what it meant or because you thought some people would not know what it meant?", which answer do you think you'd get?



Lord Orsam has his 'one off instance' argument and that is problematic but not conclusive. He has his 'Bunny's Aunt' argument and - frankly - I haven't stopped laughing at it yet. Then he has Mike Barrett's attempt to buy a Victorian diary in March 1992 which he uses to 'prove' that the scrapbook did not exist in its current form before March 31, 1992, and that Mike must have created it in 11 of the 12 days between then and April 13, 1992 when Mike took the scrapbook to London. And that's all he's got in his stable, Herlock. Everything else is bluff and bluster and twisting and turning and re-shaping of claims, comments, and even facts until they fit his narrative. What exactly is there to rebut other than 'one off instance' and the Victorian diary request? I've got all of his articles in my database of 800 folders and I've yet to see anything he has produced which required any serious rebutting other than those two things.

When you bought into the Lord Orsam 'legend', you really went in deep, didn't you?

I do so hope that has helped you out, Herlock.

Ike

The reason I said I wasn't sure what you meant was because I wasn't sure if you understood that in the LVP "one off" meant something very different to what it does today and very different to how it's used in the diary. In fact, I'm still not quite sure you understand this. To refer to the use of one-off in the LVP without making clear that it was only really used as a notation to signify a number in manufacturing/engineering gives an extremely misleading impression in the context of this discussion.

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.

[Iconoclast]

I'm really not sure what you mean by "the use of "one off" in the LVP. There wasn't really any use of it, other than as a esoteric technical notation in pattern making/engineering to indicate one item. That's the end of it.

I'm really not sure what you mean by questioning my claim that 'one-off' was a term used in the LVP, Herlock? Bizarrely (and it really is bizarre) you then immediately answer your own question in the very next sentence! It is the same as claiming, "There are no blue balls other than that blue ball over there."

I said, "I don't think there is much debate about the use of 'one-off' in the LVP". Seemed pretty clear-cut when I typed it. Anyone else struggling with it, I wonder? Anyway, Lord Orsam wasn't struggling with it. In his 'One Off Article', he cited those cases he had found where the author had used the term 'one-off' or 'one off':

The earliest known confirmed written use of 'one off' to indicate a quantity is found in the American Journal of Railway Appliances dated 1 July 1884.

So why did you say "I'm really not sure what you mean by "the use of "one off" in the LVP"? Which bit of that did you not understand?

I definitely didn't make any other claim. Let's just run the one through again. I said "I don't think there is much debate about the use of 'one-off' in the LVP" and you said you didn't know what I meant by that and then immediately told everyone what it was I meant. There are no blue balls in the world and never have been, other than that one over there, and what have you.

Now, on to your attempt to "help me out".

At the moment all I can see is you ignoring the evidence I included in my last post such as the journalist who expressly stated in the 1980s that "one off" was a contemporary expression. And the author who in 1946 compared a person to a "one off job" but had to explain what he was talking about and make clear that he was referring to a term used by engineers.

The journalist in the 1980s who claimed 'one off' was a contemporary expression - did he say 'one off instance' (or any 'one off' event) was contemporary? The way you have typed it, you make it sound as though he or she was claiming 'one off' - an expression found by Lord Orsam in 1884 - was contemporary. To truly "help me out", I think you'll need to explain your claim a little further, don't you?

And why would a journalist in the 1980s be any kind of judge and jury over anything? They (some) are wordsmiths not etymologists - why would a journalist have any greater insight than anyone else?

And then we have your 1946 'one off job' example in which the author felt the need to explain that this was an engineering term. Hey, it's a bit like a BBC journalist in December 2024 feeling the need to clarify what 'in absentia' means, isn't it? Now, if we asked our December 2024 BBC journalist, "Did you clarify it because you thought absolutely no-one - other than you obviously - could possibly know what it meant or because you thought some people would not know what it meant?", which answer do you think you'd get?

When something with such clear evidence has not been controverted it is incontrovertible. All I seem to hear from you is that you don't agree with Lord Orsam but where is your analysis and rebuttal of his work? Where, for that matter, is any analysis and rebuttal of his work? Just saying "carrots" and "hyphen" repeatedly doesn't even begin to cut it.

Lord Orsam has his 'one off instance' argument and that is problematic but not conclusive. He has his 'Bunny's Aunt' argument and - frankly - I haven't stopped laughing at it yet. Then he has Mike Barrett's attempt to buy a Victorian diary in March 1992 which he uses to 'prove' that the scrapbook did not exist in its current form before March 31, 1992, and that Mike must have created it in 11 of the 12 days between then and April 13, 1992 when Mike took the scrapbook to London. And that's all he's got in his stable, Herlock. Everything else is bluff and bluster and twisting and turning and re-shaping of claims, comments, and even facts until they fit his narrative. What exactly is there to rebut other than 'one off instance' and the Victorian diary request? I've got all of his articles in my database of 800 folders and I've yet to see anything he has produced which required any serious rebutting other than those two things.

When you bought into the Lord Orsam 'legend', you really went in deep, didn't you?

I do so hope that has helped you out, Herlock.

Ike

[Herlock Sholmes]

Hi Herlock - It's up to you, of course, but for the sake of your own sanity, it may be time to hang up your hat on the grounds that 'you can lead a horse to water,' etc., etc.

Based on the commentary of Ike, as well as his supporter on JTR Forums, the counterargument is this: figures of speech can be in 'oral' circulation for decades before someone has the bright idea to write them down. This claim can't be proven, of course, since there weren't cassette players recording speech in the 19th Century, but it is a neat and convenient way to brush your concerns under the rug and you can't disprove it per se, though you can certainly point out the enormous absurdity it presents.

To their way of thinking "bumbling buffoon" and "one-off instance"--phrases instantly recognizable when 'Mr. Williams' brought his photo album to London in 1992--were also in circulation in the 19th Century orally but, as far as they can prove, only one single, solitary person in the entire English-speaking world thought to write them down:

you guessed it,

James Maybrick, in his secret journal of 1888/9.

They can comb the law reports, comic novels, parliamentary debates, editorials, etc. but so far, James Maybrick, and only James Maybrick, is their wordsmith.

Five more decades passed, these phrases still in 'oral' circulation the entire time, but again no one thought to write them down, until around World War II, when suddenly dozens of people--maybe even hundreds of people-- all had the same brainstorm at the same time and began to write them down.

As I say, you can't disprove their thinking is impossible, but we can certainly wonder why on earth anyone would want to espouse such a bizarre theory knowing everything we already know about Barrett and the photo album.

Hi Roger, I have to believe that Ike is discussing this matter in good faith (excuse the religious pun!) and will listen to reason. As he said, in essence, to you yesterday, and as he's demonstrated repeatedly during the discussion, he doesn't remember a lot of things, so I'm very happy to help him refresh his memory!

[Herlock Sholmes]

I don't think there is much debate about the use of 'one-off' in the LVP, Herlock, so I'm not sure what your point is. If I dig into Orsam's treasure trove of convoluted reasoning, I am sure I will find that he himself has provided numerous examples but - if he hasn't - I will stand corrected.



Seriously, Herlock, if that's the best you've got - slinging cheap insults - then I'd like to remind you that you're at the very back of a very long queue and none of your predecessors have stopped me arguing for what I believe is almost certainly an authentic document. It's not a religion (obviously it's not - that's just another cheap insult which has been hurled many times before you found it lying around). It's just a belief which I hold based upon what is and is not demonstrably true. You keep saying that Orsam has demonstrated that 'one off instance' could not have been expressed in 1888 and I question the validity of the claim.



If it were truly incontrovertible, I'd be the first to agree. But it is not incontrovertible therefore it is simply problematic not conclusive and I won't be going anywhere until the scrapbook is conclusively shown to be a hoax. I haven't seen that conclusive proof yet despite the plethora of claims which routinely are fired off as if we all had.

To be clear (and I've said this many times before but you do not appear to have believed me when I have said it or you haven't read it when I've posted it), if the scrapbook is ever proven conclusively (i.e., properly) to be a hoax, my interest in it will end immediately and you'll all never hear from me again. There's an incentive for you all! I can see the arguments for a hoax and I can see how superficially they seem compelling but when you dig into them they are not conclusive. Not even vaguely conclusive. I resent the implications that I am trolling, taking the piss, an idiot, a religious maniac - oh, I've had them all over the years. I honestly couldn't give a ****. I will not stop until conclusive proof is provided not simply the old tropes. I'd have thought by now that that would have been pretty obvious to everyone but maybe it needs more frequent iteration than it currently receives from me?

Ike

I'm really not sure what you mean by "the use of "one off" in the LVP. There wasn't really any use of it, other than as a esoteric technical notation in pattern making/engineering to indicate one item. That's the end of it.
,
If you tell me on what basis you question the validity of Lord Orsam's claim, I'll try to help you out. At the moment all I can see is you ignoring the evidence I included in my last post such as the journalist who expressly stated in the 1980s that "one off" was a contemporary expression. And the author who in 1946 compared a person to a "one off job" but had to explain what he was talking about and make clear that he was referring to a term used by engineers. Both of these piece of evidence alone flatly contract the idea that "one off" was such a common expression that someone in 1888 casually added "instance" to the end of it and used it both in conversation with his wife and in a diary. It's just about the most anachronistic thing imaginable in a questionable diary making sensational claims which has no provenance and was given to the world by a known con artist who also happened to be a freelance journalist with writing pretensions.

When something with such clear evidence has not been controverted it is incontrovertible. All I seem to hear from you is that you don't agree with Lord Orsam but where is your analysis and rebuttal of his work? Where, for that matter, is any analysis and rebuttal of his work? Just saying "carrots" and "hyphen" repeatedly doesn't even begin to cut it.

[Herlock Sholmes]

'In absentia' is basically now an English language term which derived from Latin (and didn't change along the way). Its 'Latinness' has nothing to do with how well it is understood by English speakers. You'll note that the author didn't even bother with italics - a clear sign that the expression is now firmly embedded in English. It's also incredibly obvious what it means (what else could it possibly mean?) so the fact that he or she felt the need to clarify what it meant should give caution to anyone who attempts to undermine the use of 'top himself' in 1888 on the simple basis that the author felt compelled to clarify what it meant.



Agreed. This is all irrelevant but - for the record - I agree that Orsam has shown that the expression started as a design term meaning 'one product only from this design' and that expression was used variously over time in the same way for different quantities. No argument there so let's not keep repeating it.



Here is where you err, Herlock. You are taking Orsam's assumptions and turning them into concrete fact and that won't do, I'm afraid. Orsam has definitely NOT shown that the concept of a 'one-off event' could not have been articulated in any form (in speech, in writing, or in print) in 1888. He has simply assumed it because he hasn't found any examples of it. He may well not have used Google Ngrams (I hadn't recalled I had claimed he specifically had but I won't argue the toss as I may have done) but he has certainly drawn this conclusion and it is a biased conclusion based upon his desire for it to be true. This is why I keep reminding everyone about 'freshly picked carrots'. Why 'freshly picked carrots' and not, say, 'naughty fresh coy juicy sausage', I hear you ask? Well, the answer is simple: 'One off instance' (no hyphen) appears in the Maybrick scrapbook and is contested and - lo! - so does 'freshly picked carrots' and is not contested, and yet both notions fail to register on Google Ngrams around the critical time of the crimes. I had assumed throughout our discussion that you knew the scrapbook well enough to know this but now I'm wondering whether you did or not? Unsurprisingly, 'naughty fresh coy juicy sausage' does not appear in Maybrick's scrapbook so we have no need to debate it (any more than we need to debate the likelihood of any other notion which is not expressed in Maybrick's scrapbook actually being used in 1888).



According to Lord Orsam who has no actual evidence that the conjunction of 'one-off' (with hyphen, note) and an event (in the case, 'instance') had not been made in 1888. I'm sure he would not deny the conjunction of 'freshly picked carrots' had been made long before 1888, but he barks up the wrong tree when he attempts to undermine the conjunction of 'one off' and 'instance' on the basis that the original meaning of 'one off' lived on long after 1888. It's utterly irrelevant. What is relevant is demonstrating how the long life of the original meaning of 'one-off' has any bearing at all on the possibility of an offshoot by 1888. If you can clarify that one for us (and Lord Orsam), I think we will all be well impressed.



According to Lord Orsam of whom I had not previously realised you were such an acolyte, Herlock?



And how many examples of 'freshly picked carrots' have we found from that same time period? RJ found his first in 1921 and you can rest assured he'd have been busting a blood vessel to find one from earlier. Does this mean the notion of 'freshly picked carrots' would have been met with bemusement in the markets of oldee England? How certain can you be (for example, would you genuinely bet your child's life on it being so) that 'one-off' and an event had not by 1888 been conjoined sufficiently for a Liverpool cotton broker to casually record it in his murderous scrapbook? And how would you prove it was so? Oh - we know - by citing the lack of examples in the literature.

Just like 'freshly picked carrots', note.

Ike

As I said, with "in absentia", you're comparing apples with oranges. Not only is "top myself" not a Latin legal term but, as at 1993 (and possibly today for all I know), it wasn't recorded by dictionary compilers as having been used before 1958. That's a massive gap from 1888. I'm not aware of a single recorded example of "top myself" prior to the Second World War. I'm not nitpicking when I mention that the 1877 example as found in print was "top himself". The reason I'm not nitpicking is that it shows the extreme rarity of its use. So the context for the two expressions is totally different. "top myself" is plainly anachronistic for an 1888 diary. Now, as I keep saying, that doesn't mean that it was impossible to be used because "top" already meant hang in 1888 and "hang myself" would be an unsurprising thing for someone to have written. But it's just highly unlikely given its extreme rarity before WWII. This is in total contrast to "one off instance" which could not have been written in 1888 due to "one off" not meaning unique then.

And we simply come back round to where we started this line of discussion. If a Jack the Ripper diary emerged with the word "television" in it, would you say it might be genuine? After all, the first known use of the word was in 1900, a mere 12 years after 1888. If someone could have formed the word in 1900, why not in 1888? So, would you rule out such a diary as a fake or would you say, well, we need to sit around and wait before concluding because perhaps one day someone on JTR Forums might find the word in an old newspaper? The question surely answers itself, and you must see how ridiculous it would be to do the latter. It's as ridiculous to be hoping for an example of "one off instance", or anything similar, to be found from the nineteenth century as it would be hoping for an example of "television" from that century or arguing that people might have been using the word in their day to day conversations but it was just never recorded.

When you say that Lord Orsam desired the diary to be fake, what evidence do you have for that? He's stated a number of times that prior to 2016 he had an open mind about whether the diary was fake or not and genuinely wanted to find out whether it could be real. He said he conducted weeks of research, going through nineteenth and early twentieth century books and manuals tracing the evolution of "one off" from a quantity to a description of uniqueness. He wasn't seeking to confirm a bias as I understand his approach.

I've already explained to you why "freshly picked carrots" has never been contested. It's because it's not an expression. It is two verbs/ adverbs followed by a noun. And all three words existed in 1888. So, even if Maybrick had been the first person to put those three words together there would be nothing surprising about it just like there's nothing surprising about me (probably) being the first person to have ever written about a naughty fresh coy juicy sausage. If I was cleverer I could probably cut it down to three words never written before. So you really are barking up the wrong tree with the carrots stuff.

The absence of a hyphen makes no difference to the meaning of "one off instance" so I have no idea why you keep mentioning it. The expression doesn't require a hyphen. It's often used without one. Lord Orsam even pointed out that the 1973 Shorter Oxford Dictionary omitted the hyphen.

The funny thing about myself and Lord Orsam is that if you look back over our early discussions which took place in, I think, your incontrovertible thread, there were some rather testy exchanges between us on the very subject of one off. However, since reading everything he's had to say and, in particular, reading the failed attempt of Robert Smith, as well as many others to try and refute the point, I've come to the conclusion that he is 100% right about this.

I see that the end of your post returns to "freshly picked carrots" having failed to understand that I was saying that the absence of that expression from the 19th century is not the reason why the diary is fake. That would be a foolish conclusion The reason the diary is a fake is because the expression "one off instance" could not have been formed in 1888 due to "one off" not yet meaning unique as not only Lord Orsam's extensive research demonstrates but so every dictionary and phrase origin book tells us.

[rjpalmer]

Hi Herlock - It's up to you, of course, but for the sake of your own sanity, it may be time to hang up your hat on the grounds that 'you can lead a horse to water,' etc., etc.

Based on the commentary of Ike, as well as his supporter on JTR Forums, the counterargument is this: figures of speech can be in 'oral' circulation for decades before someone has the bright idea to write them down. This claim can't be proven, of course, since there weren't cassette players recording speech in the 19th Century, but it is a neat and convenient way to brush your concerns under the rug and you can't disprove it per se, though you can certainly point out the enormous absurdity it presents.

To their way of thinking "bumbling buffoon" and "one-off instance"--phrases instantly recognizable when 'Mr. Williams' brought his photo album to London in 1992--were also in circulation in the 19th Century orally but, as far as they can prove, only one single, solitary person in the entire English-speaking world thought to write them down:

you guessed it,

James Maybrick, in his secret journal of 1888/9.

They can comb the law reports, comic novels, parliamentary debates, editorials, etc. but so far, James Maybrick, and only James Maybrick, is their wordsmith.

Five more decades passed, these phrases still in 'oral' circulation the entire time, but again no one thought to write them down, until around World War II, when suddenly dozens of people--maybe even hundreds of people-- all had the same brainstorm at the same time and began to write them down.

As I say, you can't disprove their thinking is impossible, but we can certainly wonder why on earth anyone would want to espouse such a bizarre theory knowing everything we already know about Barrett and the photo album.

[Iconoclast]

A full 20 years after Feldman, Robert Smith, with all his resources, tried to find a nineteenth century example of "one off" but failed miserably. We're now eight years on from that. Still nothing. There must come a point when actual evidence wins the day in your mind, mustn't there? Otherwise a belief in the diary is more like a religion based on faith alone.

I don't think there is much debate about the use of 'one-off' in the LVP, Herlock, so I'm not sure what your point is. If I dig into Orsam's treasure trove of convoluted reasoning, I am sure I will find that he himself has provided numerous examples but - if he hasn't - I will stand corrected.

Otherwise a belief in the diary is more like a religion based on faith alone.

Seriously, Herlock, if that's the best you've got - slinging cheap insults - then I'd like to remind you that you're at the very back of a very long queue and none of your predecessors have stopped me arguing for what I believe is almost certainly an authentic document. It's not a religion (obviously it's not - that's just another cheap insult which has been hurled many times before you found it lying around). It's just a belief which I hold based upon what is and is not demonstrably true. You keep saying that Orsam has demonstrated that 'one off instance' could not have been expressed in 1888 and I question the validity of the claim.

Now that you've been presented with this incontrovertible fact, the game you're playing must surely be over.

If it were truly incontrovertible, I'd be the first to agree. But it is not incontrovertible therefore it is simply problematic not conclusive and I won't be going anywhere until the scrapbook is conclusively shown to be a hoax. I haven't seen that conclusive proof yet despite the plethora of claims which routinely are fired off as if we all had.

To be clear (and I've said this many times before but you do not appear to have believed me when I have said it or you haven't read it when I've posted it), if the scrapbook is ever proven conclusively (i.e., properly) to be a hoax, my interest in it will end immediately and you'll all never hear from me again. There's an incentive for you all! I can see the arguments for a hoax and I can see how superficially they seem compelling but when you dig into them they are not conclusive. Not even vaguely conclusive. I resent the implications that I am trolling, taking the piss, an idiot, a religious maniac - oh, I've had them all over the years. I honestly couldn't give a ****. I will not stop until conclusive proof is provided not simply the old tropes. I'd have thought by now that that would have been pretty obvious to everyone but maybe it needs more frequent iteration than it currently receives from me?

Ike

[Iconoclast]

I already gave you the illustrative example of "naughty fresh coy juicy sausage" but you simply ignored it.

I ignored it because I didn't understand its relevance given that it doesn't appear in the Maybrick scrapbook.

Ike

[Iconoclast]

In absentia is a Latin legal term which a lot of people won't understand. You keep comparing apples with oranges, or carrots with raspberries.

'In absentia' is basically now an English language term which derived from Latin (and didn't change along the way). Its 'Latinness' has nothing to do with how well it is understood by English speakers. You'll note that the author didn't even bother with italics - a clear sign that the expression is now firmly embedded in English. It's also incredibly obvious what it means (what else could it possibly mean?) so the fact that he or she felt the need to clarify what it meant should give caution to anyone who attempts to undermine the use of 'top himself' in 1888 on the simple basis that the author felt compelled to clarify what it meant.

What you don't seem to be grasping is that the fact that examples of "one off" or "one off instance" can't be found from the nineteenth century is only part of the reason why it was impossible for someone in 1888 to have used that expression. The key point is that Lord Orsam has shown how "one off" evolved over time from a mere quantity, no different from, say, "six off" to become an expression of its own meaning unique ...

Agreed. This is all irrelevant but - for the record - I agree that Orsam has shown that the expression started as a design term meaning 'one product only from this design' and that expression was used variously over time in the same way for different quantities. No argument there so let's not keep repeating it.

... and that this hadn't happened in 1888.

Here is where you err, Herlock. You are taking Orsam's assumptions and turning them into concrete fact and that won't do, I'm afraid. Orsam has definitely NOT shown that the concept of a 'one-off event' could not have been articulated in any form (in speech, in writing, or in print) in 1888. He has simply assumed it because he hasn't found any examples of it. He may well not have used Google Ngrams (I hadn't recalled I had claimed he specifically had but I won't argue the toss as I may have done) but he has certainly drawn this conclusion and it is a biased conclusion based upon his desire for it to be true. This is why I keep reminding everyone about 'freshly picked carrots'. Why 'freshly picked carrots' and not, say, 'naughty fresh coy juicy sausage', I hear you ask? Well, the answer is simple: 'One off instance' (no hyphen) appears in the Maybrick scrapbook and is contested and - lo! - so does 'freshly picked carrots' and is not contested, and yet both notions fail to register on Google Ngrams around the critical time of the crimes. I had assumed throughout our discussion that you knew the scrapbook well enough to know this but now I'm wondering whether you did or not? Unsurprisingly, 'naughty fresh coy juicy sausage' does not appear in Maybrick's scrapbook so we have no need to debate it (any more than we need to debate the likelihood of any other notion which is not expressed in Maybrick's scrapbook actually being used in 1888).

That's why "one off instance" could not have been written in 1888 (but other word groupings such as "top myself" or "freshly picked carrots" could have been).

According to Lord Orsam who has no actual evidence that the conjunction of 'one-off' (with hyphen, note) and an event (in the case, 'instance') had not been made in 1888. I'm sure he would not deny the conjunction of 'freshly picked carrots' had been made long before 1888, but he barks up the wrong tree when he attempts to undermine the conjunction of 'one off' and 'instance' on the basis that the original meaning of 'one off' lived on long after 1888. It's utterly irrelevant. What is relevant is demonstrating how the long life of the original meaning of 'one-off' has any bearing at all on the possibility of an offshoot by 1888. If you can clarify that one for us (and Lord Orsam), I think we will all be well impressed.

It's the critical difference between the two expressions because "one off" did not mean unique.

According to Lord Orsam of whom I had not previously realised you were such an acolyte, Herlock?

The fact that no one in over 30 years has found any 19th century examples only corroborates that fact.

And how many examples of 'freshly picked carrots' have we found from that same time period? RJ found his first in 1921 and you can rest assured he'd have been busting a blood vessel to find one from earlier. Does this mean the notion of 'freshly picked carrots' would have been met with bemusement in the markets of oldee England? How certain can you be (for example, would you genuinely bet your child's life on it being so) that 'one-off' and an event had not by 1888 been conjoined sufficiently for a Liverpool cotton broker to casually record it in his murderous scrapbook? And how would you prove it was so? Oh - we know - by citing the lack of examples in the literature.

Just like 'freshly picked carrots', note.

Ike

[Herlock Sholmes]

To put this to bed, I don't think that the author of the piece in the Derby Mercury feeling the need to explain what 'top himself' meant tells us anything whatsoever regarding the rarity of the expression (therefore its so-called anachronistic nature). Why, just this morning, reading the BBC News, I noted the following:



I guess that whole in absentia thing is just too recent a term and clearly needed to be explained, eh? You can just imagine the confusion of his or her readership had they not added the helpful parenthesis.

Of course, the retort will be that we will find 'in absentia' thousands of times every year in Google Ngrams but we do not find 'hang himself' (or its logical parallels such as 'hang myself') in Google Ngrams back in 1888, and yet we know from our friend at the Derby Mercury that he or she at very least knew what the term meant (and was kind enough to explain it to a potentially slightly insulted audience).

Hey, freshly picked carrots anyone?

Ike

In absentia is a Latin legal term which a lot of people won't understand. You keep comparing apples with oranges, or carrots with raspberries.

What you don't seem to be grasping is that the fact that examples of "one off" or "one off instance" can't be found from the nineteenth century is only part of the reason why it was impossible for someone in 1888 to have used that expression. The key point is that Lord Orsam has shown how "one off" evolved over time from a mere quantity, no different from, say, "six off" to become an expression of its own meaning unique, and that this hadn't happened in 1888. That's why "one off instance" could not have been written in 1888 (but other word groupings such as "top myself" or "freshly picked carrots" could have been). After all, Lord Orsam gave you the incontrovertible fact about "one off instance" in 2016, before the Derby Mercury discovery, yet he didn't mention once "top myself" as a factor which disproved the diary even though there were then no known 19th century examples. That is, no doubt, because "top" already meant hang. It's the critical difference between the two expressions because "one off" did not mean unique. The fact that no one in over 30 years has found any 19th century examples only corroborates that fact.

[Herlock Sholmes]

According to Lord Orsam whose reasoning is that the expression was not given on Google Ngrams until 1982 (now read 1976). I am using 'freshly picked carrots' merely as an example of something which Google Ngrams does not pick up until 1947 (now read 1921) but which rather obviously would have been in the common lexicon (of - at very least - the spoken word) in 1888.



I trust you aren't seeking to have us believe that Lord Orsam has proven that the notion of 'freshly picked carrots' could not possibly have been spoken aloud in 1888? What - to iterate my original conclusion - he has done is highlight something problematic but not conclusive. I'd like conclusive, please, before I get out of Dodge for the last time.



In Lord Orsam's opinion ...



I don't carry an encyclopaedia of Casebook and Forums posts in my head (I have a life beyond them even if others don't) and would certainly not expect anyone else to either. As long as the material facts are there, I'm good with that. To nit-pick simply highlights some other agenda which I don't think I deserve. And - lo! - you have confirmed that I was right: the article did appear in or around 1888 and it did show that 'top himself' had been clarified to mean the very specific 'hang himself' where later the expression would come to mean the very general 'kill himself', however rarely you may assume it was used (rarely enough for the author to feel the need to clarify what it meant but not therefore necessarily rarely enough to never be used). Now, this means that another brave claim was 'topped' in the moment Gary (IIRC) posted it - Maybrick could perfectly well have used the expression 'top myself' in his scrapbook, and that's that. Another 'this-one-kills-the-scrapbook-stone-dead' canard died on a scaffold at dawn.



Ah ha - the old switcheroo! Stephen Adams only writing music was the Canard to End All Canards at one time. Turning it 'round as you have does not alter the fact that that particular award no longer has its trophy. It is a dead canard. Warnings from history, and all that, anyone?



We heard you the first time, Herlock. It may well be true (that's what makes it problematic) but it isn't yet a certainty (that's what makes it inconclusive).

Ike

Ike, I think I've read all of Lord Orsam's articles about "one off" and I'm quite sure he's never once mentioned Google Ngrams. In fact, I seem to remember him saying he'd never used it. He says on his website that he found the "one off instance" quote in a 1981 edition of a book by Charles Handy and he then checked the earlier 1976 edition in which he confirmed its appearance. I don't know what you mean when you say that Lord Orsam has proven something about "freshly picked carrots". I suspect that like me he would view it as irrelevant for the reasons I've already explained. It's not an expression in its own right, it consists of three separate words which all existed with the same meaning as today in 1888, so it can't be compared in any way to "one off" or "one off instance". I already gave you the illustrative example of "naughty fresh coy juicy sausage" but you simply ignored it. It's not just Lord Orsam's opinion that "one off" didn't exist in 1888, it's confirmed by every single dictionary and phrase origin book, not to mention language experts. It's confirmed by every piece of evidence. Did you see that he found a journalist in 1986 literally describing "one off" as a "contemporary phrase"? He's also shown that as late as 1946, one writer had to explain to his readers the concept of a "one off" person, specifically stating that the expression "one off job" was something an engineer would say. In 1997, Paul Feldman accepted that any linguistic anomalies would prove the diary to be a fake. Shirley Harrison was still managing to fool the world at that time with her one big example which she'd never even seen and almost certainly never existed. A full 20 years after Feldman, Robert Smith, with all his resources, tried to find a nineteenth century example of "one off" but failed miserably. We're now eight years on from that. Still nothing. There must come a point when actual evidence wins the day in your mind, mustn't there? Otherwise a belief in the diary is more like a religion based on faith alone.

There was no "switcheroo" by me. What I was saying was that one argument about something in the diary, whether good or bad, cannot possibly affect another argument. It's no good saying that an attack on the diary once failed so every other attack must fail too. Each one needs to be considered on its merits.

You once asked for an incontrovertible fact to be found that the diary was fake. No one has controverted the evidence that "one off" is a 20th century expression which proves the diary to be fake. Now that you've been presented with this incontrovertible fact, the game you're playing must surely be over.

[Iconoclast]

On "top myself", you completely misunderstand me and demonstrate a surprising ignorance of the topic at the same time. What was found on JTR Forums was an article in the Derby Mercury of 1877 in which a prisoner said that he felt so mad that he could get up and "top himself" there and then. The journalist was compelled to explain to his readers that "By topping himself he meant hanging himself". The word "top" had meant "hang" long before this so, to me, there is nothing extraordinary about someone putting the existing word "top" together with "myself" to form "top myself". But this is the only known nineteenth century example and it had to be explained. And what was actually written was "top himself" not "top myself". As far as I'm aware, we still don't have a known example of "top myself" before the Second World War which shows how rarely it was used. So, for sure, it wasn't literally impossible for someone to have written "top myself" in 1888 but it's still an anachronistic expression which should not be found in a document from 1888. That's the point I was making.

To put this to bed, I don't think that the author of the piece in the Derby Mercury feeling the need to explain what 'top himself' meant tells us anything whatsoever regarding the rarity of the expression (therefore its so-called anachronistic nature). Why, just this morning, reading the BBC News, I noted the following:



I guess that whole in absentia thing is just too recent a term and clearly needed to be explained, eh? You can just imagine the confusion of his or her readership had they not added the helpful parenthesis.

Of course, the retort will be that we will find 'in absentia' thousands of times every year in Google Ngrams but we do not find 'hang himself' (or its logical parallels such as 'hang myself') in Google Ngrams back in 1888, and yet we know from our friend at the Derby Mercury that he or she at very least knew what the term meant (and was kind enough to explain it to a potentially slightly insulted audience).

Hey, freshly picked carrots anyone?

Ike

[Iconoclast]

Dear me, Ike. The quote was uploaded by you. That's the trouble with the diary friendly folk. Their eyes roll over the words, but they don't actually read them or pay attention to what is being said.

I think it's the trouble with human beings, RJ. We don't all have hours in the day to memorise everything that gets posted, even when we ourselves post it.

PS And - yes - I was flush with the joys of Newcastle's rather understated 4-0 demolishing of Leicester (it could have been 7 or 8), though I was rather niggled with myself for nipping downstairs for a cup of cwoffee (no donuts or eggs over easy) at 1-0, getting side-tracked by Mrs I's Christmas decorating, and getting back upstairs to find it was suddenly 3-0. Rookie footy error there.