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

[caz]

Just because someone was never named as a suspect historically means nothing. Police have historically been quite bad at identifying suspects successfully on their own investigative steam (without the use of science, confessions, tip-offs, caught in the act, etc).

It is completely plausible that "a other" person was Jack the Ripper. Which leaves a wide open field of possibilities.

With serial murder in an age without fingerprints, DNA, cctv and all the usual mod cons, it must have been especially difficult to find any suspect who could usefully be linked to more than one of the victims - at most. I would tend to discount named ripper suspects who were/are only in the frame due to some easily identifiable connection with a single victim, but were cleared at the time or never even suspected. Serial killers who target strangers do so in order that their only connection with a victim will be the brief encounter leading up to murder, before they vanish leaving nothing of themselves behind. If the ripper was no exception, I would not expect him to have become a named person of interest in the first place, considering the massive pool he chose to fish in.

Even today, a killer may only be caught and identified when they get complacent and careless and make a mistake or miscalculation.

Love,

Caz
X

[Herlock Sholmes]

I explained the implausibility in my 3 Options but you resolutely refuse to say which one you feel id the actual on (in your opinion). In my opinion, they are all utterly implausible, but in your opinion any of them would be plausible so we have hit an impasse over which neither of us is going to climb so debating it further will border on he-said, she-said and that will not be edifying for anyone.



I would obviously agree but you would have to demonstrate that there had unequivocally been a hoaxer which - to date - has not been proven (Orsam's 'one-off' has not been unequivocally proven - merely unequivocally stated by him).



So that implausibility causes you to infer that actually they weren't there; whereas that implausibility simply reminds me that we would not be discussing Florence's initials on Kelly's wall if it were not for the scrapbook because those initials are still claimed to be absent by some posters (certainly not the huge numbers you arbitrarily take ownership of) and were never observed by endless Ripperologists, and therefore our super-perspicacious hoaxer truly was in a league of his own. If he ever existed, of course, which no-one has demonstrated yet.



Yes, in your version of events that is what happened - we know this because the hoaxer chose to indicate during four pages focused solely on Kelly's murder that we should pay attention to his wife's initials. Now, I understand that some people are unfortunately a bit slow on the uptake and can't make the link between a hint (the doggerel) and a circumstance (the doggerel's 'prediction' coming true) but that's a limitation they need to live with but one that I do not suffer from.



What's your point, caller? If Jack had chosen a different victim he could have woven a totally different story into the facts. How does any of that help us or guide us towards a meaningful conclusion? We can only operate with what we know and what we know is implausible in the extreme if the author of the scrapbook was not Jack the Ripper.

No ****, Herlock.



No-one can say that Simon Wood wasn't correct when he said that, but what differs in your irrelevant example of Simon's interpretation from my point regarding Florence's initials being on the wall of Kelly's room is that we have a 'prediction' of it in the scrapbook and this is where we hit out impasse because you think this is a trivial point because the hoaxer could have been the only person ever to have noticed Florence's initials on MJK1 whilst I contend that it is implausible in the extreme. I return to my earlier point, when two people have such a diametrically opposite view of the same information, the impasse created is highly unlikely to be unlocked through ere dialogue because neither is going to yield from their polarised views.



It's a wearisome canard, Herlock, which I honestly would not have expected of you. All the scrapbookist claimed was that "An initial here, an initial there, will tell of the whoring mother". If he was NOT referring to the 'FM' on Kelly's wall, he may well have been referring to more separated examples but - blow me - what a shame he completely missed the most obvious example on her wall (and how striking that they should be there if he was not referring to them).



No ****, Herlock.



It doesn't matter one iota whether you can discern those initials or not. Plenty of people have admitted that they can discern those shapes and - surprise surprise - the vast majority of them are not known Maybrickians. If someone can't discern the Magic Eye puzzles, is that because they do not work?



Now you are simply demonstrating how little attention you have paid to the Maybrick case over the years. If you were to trawl through the occasions where this hs been discussed elsewhere on the Maybrick threads, you would immediately retract this baseless claim.



Just absorb what you've just said. The hoaxer did NOT see the initials on Kelly's wall, but subsequent to his comment in his scrapbook, many people have. What an idiot that hoaxer was - imagine what mileage he could have made of those initials if only he'd seen the ones on the wall too!



The fact that you say you can't see what others can see is not an argument in favour of a hot, Herlock. It is simply an argument that you seem determined NOT to see what even Lord Orsam himself has gone on the record of acknowledging (that there are shapes which look like 'F' and 'M'). Surely you aren't saying you know better than even the Dark lord of Darkness?



Have you ever passed a bus stop, Herlock, and seen loads of people in some sort of orderly queue very close by and then wondered, "I wonder what they're queuing for?". I think you must have done. Does everything need to be spelled-out in fine detail for it to be true or is a little inference a reasonable faculty to invoke occasionally?



The alternative would have been, "An initial there on the wall and the logically second one right next to it, will point you towards the 'whoring mother's initials ('whoring mother' being my wife Florence". It isn't the version the author went for. I wonder why? Ah yes - he was employing inference even if you don't appear to share that skill.



Again, what on earth is your point, caller? If his wife's name was Fanny Maybrick, no-one would have had to do anything. Her name wasn't Emma and it wasn't Elizabeth, it was Florence and we can see her initials. Granted, the 'F' may 'in reality' have been intended as an 'E'. How does that change the fact that her name was Florence and the initials appear to be the right ones in the right order in a photograph taken of the very room he was spending four pages talking about?



Don't worry yourself about that. You see what you see and that is fine. You will find more than enough people who admit to seeing 'shapes' which look like 'FM' so you don't even need to worry about whether you should have gone to SpecSavers or not. But what you would never do - because it would be intellectually dishonest to do so - would be to claim that those 'shapes' could NOT be 'F' and 'M' because to do so would bring you into conflict with everyone who has ever just admitted that they do look like 'F' and 'M', Lord Orsam included, a commentator whose authority over 'one-off' you are not won't to question so perhaps you should extend him the courtesy of not assuming that all you can see is all that anyone else can see.



Try as hard as you like, Herlock, as you whittle your way down the alphabet, but many people are reading this (I promise you) thinking, "Why's he making such a huge attempt to wish-away what is very easy to see?". You see, they see the 'shapes' that look like 'F' and 'M' and they freely admit to it, and they STILL think it's a hoax, which is their right.



Before I (or anyone else) puts in the hard yards of creating something so that you can see what so many others do not need markers for, can I ask that you simply look to the immediate left of the 'M' that you can see and then stretch your imagination just a little bit to see if you can contrive an 'F' from what resides there, please?



This was my favourite bit of your entire post. I gave you what I thought you were after from my hard drive from a poster who also had a theory that he had seen an 'M' elsewhere, and you immediately chastised me for attempting to help you! Classic internet generation. Where's your manners, Herlock? Do you think just because we don't know who each other are we can just be impolite? A simple, "Thank you but that wasn't what I meant - probably my fault" would have been appropriate in any other walk of life but not here in the digital nightmare that is the absolute curse of the modern age. And then you double-down on this by implying that the fact you didn't get what you demanded is evidence that what you demanded doesn't exist? I don't have one, but maybe someone somewhere does and will be kind enough to post one for you. But don't demand it, Herlock; and don't think that not getting what you demand means you're magically more correct in what you believe is true.

PS Apologies for all the auto-correct errors - there are too many to correct and I want my lunch.

Ike, could you please identify the "plenty of people" who say that they can see "FM" on the wall in the photograph as it’s a very general statement that needs clarifying.

Surely you can’t think that you provided what you thought I was after with that image. I specifically and expressly asked for an image with the "FM" overwritten which is precisely what you did not provide You still haven't done it, even though, if it's clear and obvious, it should be very simple. I've already told you that I've looked at the shapes and the best I can discern is a "T". I don't want to "contrive" an "F". Why should I? And what a weird thing for you to ask me to do. You are saying it's crystal clear. So why can't you just overwrite it?

Most of the rest of your post is filled with you misunderstanding pretty much everything I said I’m afraid. It will be too tiresome to go through every single instance - especially as I think that my post was clear - but when I said that absent the diary one wouldn't expect to find the initials of Jack the Ripper's wife at the crime scene, that wasn't me inferring that they weren't there. The point was that it's the diary which shapes the narrative as to their significance. If a non-fiction writer, in a book published in Jan 1992 claiming that Maybrick was the Ripper, had attempted to argue that an "F" supposedly carved by Maybrick on Kelly's arm and an "M" supposedly on the wall represented the initials of Florence Maybrick, the natural response of any reader would have been "why the heck would he have done that?" It's only the diary that tells us firstly that he was killing prostitutes in substitution for his wife and secondly that he placed an initial here and there, in random different places, to leave the police a massive (but irrational) clue which he was satisfied they would never find. The reader might reasonably have thought, "well perhaps he left the "M" on the wall to signify Maybrick but why should we think that the shape carved into Kelly's arm is an "F" which goes together with the "M" to form "FM"?". It's just not natural.

Similarly, when I said not to forget that the forger controls the narrative, that wasn't me insisting that the diary is a forgery, which is a different argument . It's simply me trying to explain to you that there is nothing remotely implausible about a forger making use of random shapes in a photograph to cunningly weave those shapes into a narrative of his own design. The trick is not to be fooled by such a possibility.

The one other thing I'd like to pick you up on is your claim that you've explained the implausibility of a forger incorporating the shapes into a draft fake diary. I've re-read your post #56, which is what I assume you're referring to, and nowhere do I find any sort of explanation of this. Please just quote it if you think I've missed it. What I do see, however, is you saying that your option 1 "is the statistically only plausible explanation". What on earth does this mean? What statistics can you possibly be referring to? I insist that it is perfectly plausible that a forger, who had already decided to make Maybrick the Ripper, would go through the available Ripper books, including photographs, to seek out anything, however tenuous, which could be linked to James Maybrick and then use that in the diary text. It seems entirely natural and obvious to me. So what am I missing?

[caz]

No. I'm just pointing out the fact that debunkers should enjoy hoaxes if what they're debunking is a hoax. And proponents should enjoy promoting their "artifact" (or video) if their "artifact" is real.

When they get all worked up over it, then it give the impression of religious extremism or political fanaticism, and they appear to be overcompensating for their inner feeling of inadequacy regarding themselves and their belief or disbelief. It would shake my belief in them and what they have to say.

I used the Patterson-Gimlin Film example because it was used before by others for Ike. Ike is not the mainstream of this Unsolved Mystery. Ike is the Woo Factor.

I was thinking only the other day, Lombro2, that the diary 'debunkers' often come across as a miserable lot, given that they presume to be at the winning post, looking back and down, intellectually at least, on the rest of the field, with its teeny tiny minority of happy Maybrick campers, and equally small but perfectly formed group of grinning Barrett and Maybrick sceptics.

Love,

Caz
X

[rjpalmer]

Why would Mary be the only victim to be the recipient of the initials as mentioned in the diary? Weren't they all substitutes for the hatred he had for Florence? Why don't we see initials in the other murders? What would have been special about Mary in this regard?

c.d.

If I might make a small observation. It's not just Mary Kelly.

The diarist also claims to have left 'his mark' while cutting up Kate Eddowes' face.



Since there are many ways to describe cutting into someone's cheek, it is interesting to note that same word 'mark' was used in the same context by Martin Fido in his 1987 book (page 75).



"his personal mark on the victim" compared to the diary's "left my mark."

Fido was the first to make this observation.

The second, interestingly enough, was the Ripperologist Michael John Barrett, the diary's original owner and promoter, who before the public had even seen the diary, pointed out to Shirley Harrison behind the scenes that an 'M' could be found on Eddowes' cheeks.



The 'mark' M was carved on the cheeks of Eddowes....a fact that Mike Barrett was the first person to notice.

Rhetorical question: did Barrett know what the diarist meant because he was the one who wrote the text, and was so lazy that he even used the same word that Fido had used?

Either way, Barrett clearly scanned the photographs looking for clues. Whether he did this while he and his companion(s) were writing the text or only while explaining the text to Harrison, I'll leave you to decide.

[rjpalmer]

The supposed 'M' on Eddowes' cheeks poses an interesting dilemma for the 'Old Hoax' theorists, among many other improbabilities and hurdles they face.

Why? Well, if they believe that by 'left my mark' the diarist means an M (the first initial of an 'initial here and initial there') as explained by Mike Barrett of all people, they will need to explain how their old hoaxer came up with this idea.

There is no visible 'M' in the surviving photographs of Kate Eddowes, which were taken after her face was stitched back up.

They will need to instead rely on the wildly improbable theory (in my opinion) that their unidentified old hoaxer visualized these flaps and conceived the idea of an 'M' based on the medicalize of Dr. Phillip's description of the post-mortem.

By contrast, a new source became available in the 1960s. A sketch of Eddowes' injuries was unearthed, and this was published by Professor Francis Camps in the Hospital Gazette in 1966. This sketch (as even Shirley Harrison admits) shows the inverted V's making an 'M' on Eddowes' cheeks that are by no means evident in the earlier published photographs.

I really do have to wonder if Martin Fido would have made such fanfare about the killer leaving 'his mark' had he not been aware of this sketch. One could easily miss the startling nature of these marks without knowing about this sketch.



Yup, Barrett really did have a talent for noticing things in the diary's text when he wasn't doing other useful things, like tracing the obscure source of 'O Costly' during a 'serious week' in the Liverpool Library.

Shalom.

[caz]

The only thing I might consider reporting, Ike, is your colossal waste of bandwidth.

Cheers.

It takes two to tango, as they say, and it's not as if Ike is ever left to do his own thing on the dance floor.

If a whole ballroom full of amateur hoofers feel compelled to watch his every move and then dance to our own very different tunes, we should all shoulder a strictly fair share of the blame - for the bandwidth use and the band's discordant notes.

Murder on the dance floor not permitted. [Thank you, Sophie Ellis-Bextor, who went to my school.]

Love,

Caz
X

[Iconoclast]

So what am I missing?

Nothing that I suspect I could ever illuminate for you.

I absolutely do not need to labour through all of the Maybrick threads to find those examples of posters who accept there are shapes which could be interpreted as the initials 'F' and 'M' simply because you are on a passing visit. If you don't believe me, that's fine with me.

If you feel I haven't illuminated the plausibility challenges of the assumption that the 'hoaxer' was the first and only noter of the 'shapes' then I have failed in my mission.

[caz]

A bit like the familiarity of 'one-off' in the 1970s, Mike McCartney - using the name Mike McGear - was a very well-known member of The Scaffold whose biggest hit was the highly entertaining Lily the Pink in the late 1960s. Everyone knew he was Paul McCartney's brother then, and many of a certain age may do so still.

I think you need to seriously reassess what you appear to imagine to be the limitations of our knowledge of British English (and British pop stars) from a sadly very long time ago indeed as it seems to me that you are rather badly informed.

I loved your Books Published graph, mind.

Thank you very much for the Aintree Iron. Second biggest hit?

Lily the Pink was the only pop song my Dad ever liked. He didn't thank me very very much for playing Little Red Rooster or Hey Joe at full blast.

I don't think Florie Maybrick would have liked the Scaffold very much.

I wonder if Roger McGough would be the equivalent of Fred Weatherly, Michael Maybrick's partner in rhyme, whose works featured in the Christmas Day 1884 edition of The Times, with none other than our dear old friend Richard Crashaw putting in an appearance in the adjacent column. [Thank you very much, Rob Clack, for sending me the particulars many moons ago.]

You really couldn't make it up - so it's fortunate that I didn't, as Clacky is my witness.

Love,

Caz
X

[rjpalmer]

I absolutely do not need to labour through all of the Maybrick threads to find those examples of posters who accept there are shapes which could be interpreted as the initials 'F' and 'M' simply because you are on a passing visit.

Let me help you out here, Ike. As you will no doubt recall, one poster who forcefully admitted to seeing the initials was 'Sam Flynn' (Gareth) on JTR Forums.

Unfortunately for you, but more so for the 'old hoax' theorists, he took this as evidence the diary was created after 1972 when Farson's book was published (I think the first edition actually dates to 1971).

"No, because they're there "for all eyes to see" in the photograph. I know they're blood spatter or photographic artefacts, and so do you, but they could be taken for an "F" and an "M" written on the wall... indeed, they have been and still are perceived to be the initials of Florence Maybrick by some people! If people can think that now, why couldn't somebody seeing the photograph between 1972 the diary's emergence have thought the same?"

[Same point Herlock is now making]

And

"it is perfectly reasonable to suggest that the diary's "an initial here, an initial there, will tell of the whoring mother [Florence Maybrick]" was inspired by the "FM" in the MJK1 photograph, which only became available to the public in popular books published from 1972 onwards (Farson, Rumbelow, Knight...)

This is pretty fundamental to the date of the diary's composition."

Again, Ike, these objections are more of a kick in the teeth to the 'old hoax' theorists than to you since he remarks the same blurry FM is not evident in the early reproductions, though as I understand it, even the old hoax theorist dismiss the idea that there is an 'FM' on the wall, or that the text refers to it, comparing these ideas to seeing figures in the clouds and jumping to faulty interpretations about the text.

But this only my understanding and they will need to explain it for themselves, if, that is, they don't mind picking on a 'persecuted minority.'

All the warmest wishes.

[c.d.]

I am wondering if someone could put together a best evidence photograph supposedly showing the initials with an accompanying poll. Choices could include: yes, mostly definitely see them; sort of looks like initials; could be but it is a stretch; no, don't see anything at all etc.

I would be interested to see what people think.

c.d.

[c.d.]

I would also include a disclaimer that a vote for seeing the initials does not necessarily indicate a vote for the authenticity of the diary.

c.d.

[caz]

I don't know exactly what was in the forger's mind and I don't particularly care.

Afternoon Herlock,

We don't disagree about many things, but I will never begin to understand why anyone commenting on the diary's text would not 'particularly care' what was in the mind of its unidentified creator.

Would anyone commenting on the named ripper suspects, and arguing for one or against another, admit they don't particularly care what was in the unknown killer's mind?

It would seem to me rather fundamental to any discussion about the murders or the diary, to care about what was going on in the head of whoever you personally think may have been responsible for either. How else are you going to explore the possibilities if you 'don't particularly care'?

You don't need to think of the diary as in any way linked to the ripper murders to have an interest in both phenomena, and therefore to care what goes on in the mind of the person who would create and spread their own brand of mayhem - whether it's for 'shits and giggles' or something infinitely more sinister.

Love,

Caz
X

[Herlock Sholmes]

Nothing that I suspect I could ever illuminate for you.

I absolutely do not need to labour through all of the Maybrick threads to find those examples of posters who accept there are shapes which could be interpreted as the initials 'F' and 'M' simply because you are on a passing visit. If you don't believe me, that's fine with me.

If you feel I haven't illuminated the plausibility challenges of the assumption that the 'hoaxer' was the first and only noter of the 'shapes' then I have failed in my mission.

It's not that I don't believe you, Ike, old pal, it's just that I think your memory may be at fault.

I also think you've elevated the notion of the forger being the first person in the whole world to see shapes in the photograph to something far more significant than it really is. After all, who between 1973 and 1992 would have been looking for such shapes, and why would they have been looking?

Who would ever have had the thought process that the killer might have left his own initial on the wall? Or his wife's initials, either on the wall or carved into Kelly's body? Why would the killer (in a normal pre-diary world) ever have done any such thing? It's kind of senseless and not normal.

Might Kelly have written her killer's name in blood on the wall? Perhaps, but given the manner of her death, it seems (and would always have seemed) unlikely that she would have had the time or opportunity to do so, and certainly with such a large "M". The killer would have seen it and obliterated it.

So why would anyone in the world, in truth, have been looking at the wall to see if they could discern any letters on there? It would have made no sense.

Even if they saw things that looked like an "M" or an "F" they would surely have ignored it and put it down the grains of wood on the wall or artifacts in the photo or, if it must be put down to human writing, random and irrelevant graffiti. What else could they have realistically done with that meaningless information? Who would have cared?

For the forger, however, who could make up any narrative they wanted in the diary, it made perfect sense to scan everything.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Afternoon Herlock,

We don't disagree about many things, but I will never begin to understand why anyone commenting on the diary's text would not 'particularly care' what was in the mind of its unidentified creator.

Would anyone commenting on the named ripper suspects, and arguing for one or against another, admit they don't particularly care what was in the unknown killer's mind?

It would seem to me rather fundamental to any discussion about the murders or the diary, to care about what was going on in the head of whoever you personally think may have been responsible for either. How else are you going to explore the possibilities if you 'don't particularly care'?

You don't need to think of the diary as in any way linked to the ripper murders to have an interest in both phenomena, and therefore to care what goes on in the mind of the person who would create and spread their own brand of mayhem - whether it's for 'shits and giggles' or something infinitely more sinister.

Love,

Caz
X

Hi Caz,

It’s just that all that I see in the mind of the creator is a desire to make a few quid. Perhaps he read something on the Maybrick case and thought ‘what if the wife killed him because she discovered that he was the ripper’? It’s exactly the same as coming up with a plot to a novel. So for me, it has nothing to do with the case. I’m as convinced as I can be that it’s a modern forgery. I have absolutely no doubts at this point in time. I’m interested in the ripper murders and a forged diary isn’t connected imo.

[Iconoclast]

I am wondering if someone could put together a best evidence photograph supposedly showing the initials with an accompanying poll. Choices could include: yes, mostly definitely see them; sort of looks like initials; could be but it is a stretch; no, don't see anything at all etc.

I would be interested to see what people think.

c.d.

So would I, c.d., and I think the choices should be:

"Do you see the shapes which - it has been suggested - resemble an 'F' and and 'M' in this photograph?"
Yes, I know exactly which shapes are being referred to and they do resemble 'FM' in my opinion (granted, the 'F' is fainter than the 'M')
Yes, I know exactly which shapes are being referred to but they do not resemble 'FM' in my opinion
No, I cannot see the shapes at all

There are far more people read these posts than actually post themselves so if anyone knows how to make a poll, please step up to the plate here. Any volunteers (before we get 20 of them!)?

I would strongly recommend Farson (1973) as I don't think I've ever seen those 'shapes' more clearly elsewhere:



Mind you, the Huffington Post published a good one:



The more you blow the photograph up (or the more you home in on just the initials), the harder it is to detect the 'shapes', but that is true of most older photographs (of anything), I suspect.