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

[Herlock Sholmes]

So now you finally give in to Toff Theory? Hidden in plain sight, eh?


Show me where anyone saw anyone remotely like Schwartz.

.

What does this sentence mean?

[Lombro2]

So now you finally give in to Toff Theory? Hidden in plain sight, eh?

Hutch is, of course, a corroborated witness.

Show me anywhere where Sarah Lewis specifically says she saw Hutchinson.

Show me where anyone saw anyone remotely like Schwartz.

I don't really trust any witness, even if he or she helps my theory right down to the horseshoe tie pin.

Looks like Cesare Lombroso, actually. I never saw that until now.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Ashtrakan Man kills your profile, not ours. You know the guy who blends into the background and doesn't stick out like Eric Heuermann...

And of course, I’ve never made that claim. You invented it. But who cares about accuracy?

[Herlock Sholmes]

Ashtrakan Man kills your profile, not ours. You know the guy who blends into the background and doesn't stick out like Eric Heuermann...

Hutch is, of course, a corroborated witness.

He blends in by appearing 15 years younger than he actually was, he trims his substantial moustache just for the occasion and then he somehow makes himself look Jewish which, considering he looks absolutely nothing like Jewish must have required some serious disguise work. Maybe he was singing 'hava nagila' to Mary?

Be serious for once.

[Darryl Kenyon]

Hutch is, of course, a corroborated witness.

Show me anywhere where Sarah Lewis specifically says she saw Hutchinson.

[Lombro2]

Ashtrakan Man kills your profile, not ours. You know the guy who blends into the background and doesn't stick out like Eric Heuermann...

Hutch is, of course, a corroborated witness.

[Herlock Sholmes]

“you are merely exercising your right to be deeply and unqualifiably patronising”

“your empty vessel jokes”

…..

In post #755, in response to a question by Roger, I explained the point about the red handkerchief (which Roger already knew of course)

In post # 758 you said “what the **** has the red handkerchief got to do with the price of fish?”

In #761 I explained about the description not resembling Maybrick (in a police investigation a witness giving a description that was nothing like the suspect might be seen as an issue don’t you think?)

Even though I was simply pointing this out (with no claim that it was proof of innocence) we got this response in post #762.

“I’m sure someone bigged-up some reference to ‘red handkerchief’ like it really showed insight on their part.”

I had said nothing ‘patronising’ or even ‘insulting’ and yet you go straight to this (plus number 758)

In #764 I again explained that I wasn’t claiming that this was proof. Only that it was a point against him; which it very clearly is. But you seem to find anyone who doubts Maybrick or the diary offensive Ike. Ever since I’ve recently posted on the subject you’ve assumed a position of “how dare this person who isn’t a member of the ‘club’ comment on a subject that he hasn’t been studying closely for years.” There is a word for that attitude but I won’t use it.

Then in post #770, and despite my very clear explanation you persisted with this:

“how does the author’s mention of ‘red handkerchief’ disprove the possible authenticity of the scrapbook?”

How many times did I need to explain the difference between ‘a point against’ versus something that ‘disproves’ the diary?

In post # 772 I explain yet again but totally in vain.

I then mentioned how long that you and others had had to refute David’s ‘one off instance’ point. This was simply a stating of the truth. Nothing more.

In #776 you say “The red handkerchief is irrelevant other than that it ties the Maybrick tale to Hutchinson's witness statement…” Which is a bit of a stunner to be honest. Then you even try to turn this poor description into a positive!:

“What is interesting is that 'Jack' was not a young man - he was not obviously 25 or whatever. He was clearly older. Hutchinson said 35.”

Genuinely unbelievable.

Then I mentioned the Double Event, where according to the evidence and the diary, Maybrick met up with Eddowes and stood around yacking for 20-25 minutes. Not an issue according to you. Not even worthy of mentioning.

Then I just made a general comment, my opinion and nothing more that the diarist using “down a whore” appears contrived to tally with the letter (“I’m down on whores…) How many people say, when they are intending to attack or kill them, they they intend to ‘down them?’ Again it’s proof of nothing and I didn’t claim that. It was my own impression and nothing more but you, Ike, appear to believe that it’s borderline blasphemy to raise doubts. Again, i’d said nothing insulting. But you were straight in with:

“..to prevent my dear readers being mugged of a very strong candidate on the basis of Rendell-like, soft-minded, horrendously presumptive, lazy and vaingloriously gloating logic fails.”

……


Ike, you and I used to get on fine until I took a bit of an interest in the diary (something I now regret) when I immediately became an enemy (sad to say it’s not only you that appears to take that same approach). A Johnnie-come-lately; a ‘newbie’ who shouldn’t dare to comment. And yes, me agreeing with, and respecting the research of David Orsam just adds to it I’m sure. I’m on the wrong side. I’m with the ‘bad guy,’ is what the situation appears to be. And here we are. All that I did was raise points which are points not in favour of Maybrick. Something that we do for all suspects but you appear to believe that Maybrick and the diary should be immune. I just think that the whole issue of the diary has become too much of a personal issue for you. You’ve become protective of it. Sorry, but that’s my opinion. But when I’ve done nothing but raise points and debate and yet all that I’ve received is irritation, anger and condescension then I can only conclude that someone is too close to the subject.

[rjpalmer]

Thanks, Ike. Although it was inevitable, perhaps, that my post would be seen as 'patronizing,' I can only assure you that it was not written in a spirit of hostility or ridicule. One can hardly blame the curious public for wondering why an intellectual like Professor Rubinstein, who was accomplished enough to earn a PhD, teach for many years in various universities, win awards, publish books, etc. would hold so many eccentric beliefs, and by extension, to wonder about your own faith in a relic almost universally accepted as a fake.

And it's not like you haven't bombarded Martin Fido, Kenneth Rendell, Maurice Chittenden, etc. etc., with accusations of conventional thinking motivated by either a cowardly protectionist attitude for their reputations or lazy "superficial thinking."

In truth, I have no particular animosity towards Colin Wilson, William Rubenstein, Richard Wallace, and similar eccentric thinkers. I can even find myself in a frame of mind where I can see their usefulness---supplying a much-needed mental enema to those with overly stuffy minds or those too inclined to embrace knee-jerk skepticism.

But do I agree with their findings?

Almost never.

[Iconoclast]

The pleasure of being a controversialist, of swimming against the academic grain, of shouting 'I believe!' when no one or nearly no one else is willing to do so.

I believe wholeheartedly that the Maybrick scrapbook looks superficially inauthentic. I say that not only of the artefact but also of the content. I also believe wholeheartedly that this is the reason why so many people are quick (and some not so quick) to discount it as a hoax or a joke or whatever. I think it is the easiest option to accept. I believe that the likes of Kenneth Rendell thought he was on Easy Street when claiming that the scrapbook was inauthentic and I believe that other commentators followed suit (whether influenced by someone else's conclusions or because they too adopted a superficial view of this most controversial of documents or both).

I also believe wholeheartedly that the Maybrick scrapbook is suitably old. I believe that the ink was laid down many decades before 1992. I believe that the content - whilst not always consistent with what we understand the facts to be and whilst revealing little new that could subsequently be checked against the evidence - does not contain any one flaw which categorically reveals it to be a fraud (and that certainly includes Orsam's much-inflated 'flaws').

I also believe that the circumstantial evidence - when accumulated - presents a remarkable series of links between the crimes and Maybrick which I find too implausible to casually discard (however convenient it may be for others to do so).

If I had good reason - beyond the superficial - to consider that the Maybrick scrapbook was genuinely inauthentic, I would embrace and own it. But I do not. Until I do, I shall continue to make its case for it.

Let us be clear: if I had to stake my life on the truth of the matter, I would stake my life on authenticity. It's not a crime to be convinced in the face of a hostile crowd. Just because a boxer has been hit for twelve rounds doesn't necessitate the assumption that he is hurt and certainly not beaten. And just because almost no-one else seems to be willing to put their name to his beliefs does not mean that he has no spine for the fight.

You can read a thousand motives into my beliefs, and my reasons for spending countless hours collating the information I have been so generously made privy to (yet more this very afternoon in the post) but please be in no doubt that you are merely exercising your right to be deeply and unqualifiably patronising when you impute deep psychological drivers into my black and white and maroon blood. I say this of all who so engage not merely he to whom I here reply.

The reason why I persist is the defence of the truth of the matter and until I know it with sufficient certainty, I will not stop - at least not by my own volition. You can all take great delight in making your empty vessel jokes regarding my raison d'être for doing what I do but please do not fool yourselves that you can make an argument by simply mocking the reasons others make theirs.

Ike

[Herlock Sholmes]

No, they do not. You're quite right, Mr. Sholmes.

But Ike seems to operate on the optimistic principle that only lethal blows can kill the questioned document (the handwriting/'one off instance'). It's like believing that a boxing match can only be decided by a TKO. As long as the boxer isn't dead at the end of the final round, he can congratulate himself that he is still breathing, even though he was relentlessly pummeled by countless body blows.

Along with the points you raise, we can asked dozens more. Why is the bloody thing written in an old photo album with obvious damage where something has been peeled off the inside cover? Why did one of the handwriting experts claim the handwriting was not only not Maybrick's, but isn't even Victorian? Why was Barrett hunting for a diary with a minimum of twenty blank pages? Why does Maybrick wrongly claim he cut off all of Mary Kelly's nose? Why does he call his wife's godmother her aunt? Why does he claim he left breasts on the bedside table when the killer left them on the bed? Why can't anyone locate Mrs. Hammersmith? Why can't anyone identify a strangulation murder in Manchester, when the Victorians held countless inquests and reported them in the newspapers? Whey did Dr. Simpson detect chloroacetamide in the diary's ink? Why did Baxendale find the ink suspiciously fluid? Why did Anne Graham frequently contradict herself? How did the diarist stumble on the exact contorted grammar of a police inventory list when writing about the tin match box? Why isn't there a single obscure fact about Maybrick's life that couldn't have been lifted from the very book that Barrett named at the 1999 Cloak and Dagger meeting? Are we supposed to believe that the Dear Boss author and the writer of the Lusk Letter were one in the same? And on and on and on, body blow after body blow.

Ike can often come up with various implausible explanations or counter explanations for these objections, of course, but no amount of perfumed discourse can really hope to mask the stench of grave suspicion that rolls off each and every page or rolls off the behavior of Mike and Anne. Which raises the obvious question: given all this, why would anyone still think the diary is authentic?

I think it must be the same impulse that made Dr. Rubinstein argue that the plays of Shakespeare were written by an obscure Elizabethan diplomat. The pleasure of being a controversialist, of swimming against the academic grain, of shouting 'I believe!' when no one or nearly no one else is willing to do so.

It's a strange hill to die on, but if it makes them happy and wiles away the hours, I suppose there is relatively little harm in it. I personally find the Lechmere theory more annoying because it trains people to think uncritically about what constitutes guilt and what constitutes evidence.

That said, I confess that I'd like to see the Maybrick Hoax taken 'off the books,' but there's no way to do it without Anne Graham's cooperation, but she's not talking and some still believe that she was telling the truth.

RP

A perfect summing up Roger. Apart from the anachronistic ‘one off instance’ and all of the frankly embarrassing attempts to negate it, your list is more than ample evidence to state with a high level of confidence that this is clearly a forgery. The first in your list, under any normal circumstances, would absolutely scream forgery. A well-to-do business who, if memory serves, talks about buying a top quality knife with which to begin his campaign, can’t afford even a cheap diary or a partially used one or an unused notebook or even a leger book. No, he gets an old album for photographs, removes the photographs and then tears out pages. How can this be accepted as reasonable for a second? Then we have the ‘innocent’ Barrett searching for a Victorian diary. Imagine him standing up in court and being asked why he was looking for one. The answer would have had the jury rolling around laughing. Then the ‘coincidence’ of the exact (and individualistic) grammar of the inventory list. Come on.

All of your list plus the diarist claiming to have been Hutchinson’s man and yet the description is nothing like Maybrick. Plus the fact that he claimed that he met Eddowes at sometime around 1.10 and yet this man, according to the diary desperate to kill and mutilate after Stride, was standing around chatting to her in Duke Street 20-25 minutes later. And yet Ike and others try to brush all of these off because they aren’t individually alibi’s.

The accumulation of zingers cannot be brushed aside and yet that attempt is made. On and on it goes. How can this have been propped up for so long? It’s a forgery. It’s obviously a forgery. Perhaps it will be accepted as a forgery in 40 years time when they still wouldn’t have rebutted the one off instance (no hyphen) point.

[Lombro2]

We all know an illiterate actor named Guglielmo didn’t write it.

[Lombro2]

One negative paternity—I mean Chloroacetamide—test trumps all your subjective witness statements, language interpretation and handwriting analysis.

Out for the count a long time ago.

That’s blood folks, under all the cherries.

[rjpalmer]

These are points that do not favour Maybrick.

No, they do not. You're quite right, Mr. Sholmes.

But Ike seems to operate on the optimistic principle that only lethal blows can kill the questioned document (the handwriting/'one off instance'). It's like believing that a boxing match can only be decided by a TKO. As long as the boxer isn't dead at the end of the final round, he can congratulate himself that he is still breathing, even though he was relentlessly pummeled by countless body blows.

Along with the points you raise, we can asked dozens more. Why is the bloody thing written in an old photo album with obvious damage where something has been peeled off the inside cover? Why did one of the handwriting experts claim the handwriting was not only not Maybrick's, but isn't even Victorian? Why was Barrett hunting for a diary with a minimum of twenty blank pages? Why does Maybrick wrongly claim he cut off all of Mary Kelly's nose? Why does he call his wife's godmother her aunt? Why does he claim he left breasts on the bedside table when the killer left them on the bed? Why can't anyone locate Mrs. Hammersmith? Why can't anyone identify a strangulation murder in Manchester, when the Victorians held countless inquests and reported them in the newspapers? Whey did Dr. Simpson detect chloroacetamide in the diary's ink? Why did Baxendale find the ink suspiciously fluid? Why did Anne Graham frequently contradict herself? How did the diarist stumble on the exact contorted grammar of a police inventory list when writing about the tin match box? Why isn't there a single obscure fact about Maybrick's life that couldn't have been lifted from the very book that Barrett named at the 1999 Cloak and Dagger meeting? Are we supposed to believe that the Dear Boss author and the writer of the Lusk Letter were one in the same? And on and on and on, body blow after body blow.

Ike can often come up with various implausible explanations or counter explanations for these objections, of course, but no amount of perfumed discourse can really hope to mask the stench of grave suspicion that rolls off each and every page or rolls off the behavior of Mike and Anne. Which raises the obvious question: given all this, why would anyone still think the diary is authentic?

I think it must be the same impulse that made Dr. Rubinstein argue that the plays of Shakespeare were written by an obscure Elizabethan diplomat. The pleasure of being a controversialist, of swimming against the academic grain, of shouting 'I believe!' when no one or nearly no one else is willing to do so.

It's a strange hill to die on, but if it makes them happy and wiles away the hours, I suppose there is relatively little harm in it. I personally find the Lechmere theory more annoying because it trains people to think uncritically about what constitutes guilt and what constitutes evidence.

That said, I confess that I'd like to see the Maybrick Hoax taken 'off the books,' but there's no way to do it without Anne Graham's cooperation, but she's not talking and some still believe that she was telling the truth.

RP

[Lombro2]

Why do you think Feldman called me "sick"? I don't think it was just because I said the Maybrick Bible inscription doesn't provide enough of a handwriting sample to be useful.

PS Your example reminds me of Robert Pyle's Crossing the Dark Divide book. In his intro, he says he will not be discussing the supernatural theories. Then his book ends with someone or something throwing a stick at him in the middle of nowhere on the Continental Divide.

[rjpalmer]

You'll probably be disappointed to learn, Lombro, that Professor Rubinstein realized that he was entering Cloud Cuckoo Land when writing Shadow Pasts, so he used the introduction to distance himself from Bigfoot and UFOs.

Can't win them all.