The Diary — Old Hoax or New or Not a Hoax at All?​

[Herlock Sholmes]

Based on an argument I think is bonkers and I’m being kind.

But I’m in the minority according to you so it doesn’t matter. Of course, I’m actually in the majority of the people who actually understand the argument.

Based on an argument which you have proven time and time again that you don’t understand Lombro. If you did understand it you wouldn’t keep mentioning ‘one off’ as a stand-alone phrase. But you keep doing it.

You and the defenders have now had 10 years to come up with one example from somewhere, just one, that refutes the point. But none of you have. And do you know why Lombro? Because that point of rebuttal doesn’t exist. 10 whole years and counting…..

All that you have is “surely this can’t be the case.” That’s it. David Barrat provided full evidenced proper research. Tracked through the years and following the way that language works in reality. You on the other hand rely on desperate wish-thinking. It’s sad to see that you and others are so committed to this fake that you will do and say absolutely anything to try and prop it up….as today’s lamentable, easily disproven charade has proven.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Go back to arguing with the people who agree with you on your conclusion. Maybe they’re wrong like you but for the right reasons. Or maybe they’re right about how the fake diary wasn’t faked for the right reasons, unlike you and yours, which is something you appear not to abide.

So I ran your post through an online English to Italian translator and then back from Italian to English to see if it would help me understand it better and it came up with this:

"Go back and discuss with the people who agree with your conclusion. Maybe they're wrong, like you, but for the right reasons. Or maybe they're right that the fake diary wasn't fabricated for the right reasons, unlike you and your family, which you apparently don't accept."

I'd say it probably makes more sense in this form.

[Lombro2]

Go back to arguing with the people who agree with you on your conclusion. Maybe they’re wrong like you but for the right reasons. Or maybe they’re right about how the fake diary wasn’t faked, and for the right reasons, unlike you and yours, which is something you appear not to abide.

[Lombro2]

Based on an argument I think is bonkers and I’m being kind.

But I’m in the minority according to you so it doesn’t matter. Of course, I’m actually in the majority of the people who actually understand the argument.

[Herlock Sholmes]

I have no interest in the guy who fenced the artifact but I am forced to talk about Mike. That's just your hand forcing others. You want to talk Mike but then you say your not interested. Why? Because you got nothing on him?

This is not one of a million fake paintings. This is one diary of Jack the Ripper. Saying it's like another piece of fake art and we don't need to know anything about it is like saying:

There are lots of fake mermaids, I don't have to find out anything about that alleged Loch Ness monster on the shore of Loch Ness!


You have a theory with nothing to back it up and no interest in backing it up, but only in arguing aggressively with anyone with a competing theory of how it was created and even with anyone on how it was NOT faked, and only arguing with rhetoric and cherry picking. And then saying it doesn't matter how it was made and who did it when you can't make any headway.

Nothing real. Nothing new.
Nothing else to do?

Are you now just repeating what didn't even make sense the first time round?

That the diary is fake is fully backed up. Nothing else matters.

Proven. Conclusive. End of.

[Lombro2]

I have no interest in the guy who fenced the artifact but I am forced to talk about Mike. That's just your hand forcing others. You want to talk Mike but then you say you’re not interested. Why? Because you got nothing on him?

This is not one of a million fake paintings. This is one diary of Jack the Ripper. Saying it's like another piece of fake art and we don't need to know anything about it is like saying:

There are lots of fake mermaids, I don't have to find out anything about that alleged Loch Ness monster on the shore of Loch Ness!


You have a theory with nothing to back it up and no interest in backing it up, but only in arguing aggressively with anyone with a competing theory of how it was created and even with anyone on how it was NOT faked, and only arguing with rhetoric and cherry picking. And then saying it doesn't matter how it was made and who did it when you can't make any headway.

Nothing real. Nothing new.
Nothing else to do?

[Herlock Sholmes]

Says the man who can’t be pinned down on anything except inauthenticity, and pins all of that on one thing he thinks is indisputable but is debatable at best, and argues incessantly against people who dispute what he thinks is still possible even when his possibilities are being disputed by people who agree with his main conclusion.

Nothing real. Nothing new.
Nothing better to do?

"who can't be pinned down on anything except inauthenticity". Are you serious, Lombro? What else is there other than inauthenticity?

It's the beginning and end of any investigation into a historical artifact.

By way of illustration, in a 2024 episode of the BBC programme "Fake or Fortune", relating to a painting supposedly by the artist Mondrian which turned out to be a fake, probably (but not provably) by a convicted art forger known to the police, the art expert Philip Mould said: "We come across fakes in the art business all the time but I have to say how rare it is potentially to identify the faker themselves." His co-presenter, Fiona Bruce, replied: "And of course only the faker will know the truth and is unlikely to admit it."

In other words, just like with items in the art business, the identity of the forger of the diary is a mere footnote to the only important question of whether the diary is genuine or fake, to which we already know the answer. I've no interest in discussing the identity of the forger or forgers of the diary, although it seems important to others. I merely wanted to know why it couldn't be the Barretts. It turns out that no one can explain why it couldn't be them, and only a member of the Barrett family who lived in 12 Goldie Street will know the truth (of which one is dead), so what else of genuine interest is there to say about this obviously fake diary created after 1945?

[Lombro2]

Says the man who can’t be pinned down on anything except inauthenticity, and pins all of that on one thing he thinks is indisputable but is debatable at best, and argues incessantly against people who dispute what he thinks is still possible even when his possibilities are being disputed by people who agree with his main conclusion.

Nothing real. Nothing new.
Nothing better to do?

[Herlock Sholmes]

The ‘Waffleometer’ is going into overdrive again.

[Lombro2]

I will protect your "one-off poem" about a "one off minority opinion".

This is the internet so there are no visible minorities. There are only oral, verbal, written, intellectual, ideological etc minorities.

[Observer]

I see that the lads have been having a go at waxing lyrical, so here's a one from me

I'm not a Manc

Or a wealthy Yank

Nor yet a foreign skipper

I'm a one-off Scouse

Who smacked his spouse

Yours truly Jack the Ripper

For our friends across the seas, Manc is pronounced Mank, an abbreviation for Mancunian. They are know in the UK as Mancs.

[Observer]

"Nice one, Obs.

Put it down to the pedant's revolt.

If you think the pedants are revolting, I may need to change my deodorant.

Love,

Caz of the Lowest of Lower Middles.
X"

Hi Caz, the quote function wouldn't work for me so had to copy and paste your post.

Very good by the way, nice to see some jolity around, these parts. The Maybrick threads seem to have took on a lot of nastiness of late. Also the length of the posts. I think you've said in the past, like me, that you are of retirement age, so we have an excuse, in short, time to kill. But I honestly can't understand where some posters find the time for numerous mini documentaries. It's a full time job it appears. Anyway c'est la vie.

Enjoy your late night cocoa, I have mine all milk

[Herlock Sholmes]

Minorities must be crap to you.

You do know we're talking about an unsolved mystery like any other. I've investigated many. The one thing you start to see is that the majority and the mainstream are invariably wrong. That's why I equate you with mainstream Squatchology or Nessiology. Why wouldn't I?

And let's establish the options here. It's Barrett or Maybrick. Modern forgery equals Barrett. Unless you want to be on Scott's or Caz's side. I can't understand why you argue with them so hard when you think they may be right. Absolute confusion or obfuscation.

Wow.

How low are you prepared to sink? We’ve had a false and unfounded hint at sexism and now you are really scraping the bottom of the barrel with talk of ‘minorities’ solely because I said that your support of the diary was a minority opinion - which it is.

Shame on you for using those kind of tricks.

[Lombro2]

And this is why only about half a dozen people in the world are gullible enough to believe that the diary is genuine. You are sitting there as a member of a tiny club of desperates sticking your fingers in your ears and stamping your feet, shouting “it’s real, it’s real, it’s real.”

I also have no idea what you mean when you say: "So it had to be put there by Barrett". Put where?

Minorities must be crap to you.

You do know we're talking about an unsolved mystery like any other. I've investigated many. The one thing you start to see is that the majority and the mainstream are invariably wrong. That's why I equate you with mainstream Squatchology or Nessiology. Why wouldn't I?

And let's establish the options here. It's Barrett or Maybrick. Modern forgery equals Barrett. Unless you want to be on Scott's or Caz's side. I can't understand why you argue with them so hard when you think they may be right. Absolute confusion or obfuscation.

[Herlock Sholmes]

The argument that keeps being presented to me about one-off is this:

One-off did not exist before 1945. So it had to be put there by Barrett.

To me, it’s the equivalent of me saying to an evolutionist:

Dinosaurs did not exist before Adam. So the dinosaur bones had to be put there by the devil.

I wouldn’t say that in the first place, much less keep repeating it to an evolutionist.

So why would someone do what is, to me, essentially the equivalent here over and over. One off, okay. A million off? Come on!

After all this time, Lombro, and you still don't understand what I've told you?

No one is saying that "One-off did not exist before 1945". What I've said time after time is that figurative or metaphorical type expressions involving "one off", such as "a one off instance", did not enter the English language until after 1945. In fact, the first known written usage of such an expression is 1958. The first recorded example in the Oxford English Dictionary is from 1968.

I also have no idea what you mean when you say: "So it had to be put there by Barrett". Put where?

Just to be clear, the argument that Barrett (or the Barretts) created the diary is separate from the fact that expressions such as "a one off instance" did not enter the English language before 1945. So the way you've expressed it is completely wrong.

You seem to have misunderstood a different point which is that, with the diary being ceated after 1945 (which we know it was), there is no realistic way it could have ended up under the nailed down floorboards of Battlecrease in 1992, which knocks out the so-called "Battlecrease evidence" that we're not even allowed to see (and no wonder).