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

[Herlock Sholmes]

In his January 5, 1995 affidavit, Mike Barrett had the perfect opportunity to enumerate a long list of where he got his references from which he used in his hoaxed scrapbook but - instead - he seemed to deliberately focus on aspects of his 'creation' which were patently untrue. I wonder why that was?

If you or I had done what Barrett claimed to do, there is a good chance that our January 5, 1995 affidavits would have included:

"I got the reference to 'Punch' from the back of Fido (1987)".
"I got the reference to 'left my mark' from Fido (1987)".
"I spotted that 'Juwes' looked a bit like 'James' when I saw the GSG in [wherever]".
Et cetera.

There must have been many other references which he could have included which would have given us some degree of confidence that he had indeed been aware of a number of Ripper-related books but he chose to focus on things which he 'did' or which 'happened' which were simply untrue. It's almost as though he was - deep down - trying to show the world how little he knew and how little he had actually wanted to create that affidavit.

No?

Ike

When you talk about what should be in Barrett's affidavit, don't you have to first consider the process by which that affidavit was created? As to that, how precisely was it created? Did someone type up what he thought had occurred based on his conversations with a drunken Mike Barrett and did a drunken Barrett give the content of the affidavit any great consideration, or did he rely on the drafter for everything? How quickly was it written from start to finish? And if the person drafting it didn't think to ask the questions that you've identified, could that be the reason why the answers to them are not included in the affidavit?

[Herlock Sholmes]

One of the criticisms levelled against the case for James Maybrick - and, of course, many have been thought-up to try to disprove its potential authenticity - is that it is 'preposterous' to suggest that the 'Juwes' in the GSG were actually a simple cypher for 'James' and that James Maybrick therefore could have written the GSG as a 'funny Jewish joke' which he then mentioned in his scrapbook.

Many people on here iterate Martin Fido's original criticism (in Paul Feldman's video) but one person who noticeably did not (to my knowledge - I'm open to being corrected here as it won't make one iota to my underlying point) was that doyen of anti-scrapbookism, Melvin 'The Viper' Harris. I wonder why he would be so unexpectedly lenient over an opportunity to pile in ahead of the pile-in.

Hmmm ...

In his 1994 book which apparently sold very badly, almost certainly because of the attention being paid to Shirley Harrison's original text on Maybrick which Harris had invested so much effort in dismissing (because - as we know - he had loads of integrity just before he published a competing book about Jack the Ripper), Harris quoted his candidate Robert Donston Stephenson as claiming the following regarding the word 'Juwes' in the GSG:

[p112, The True Face of Jack the Ripper] "Now place a dot over The Third Upstroke (which dot was naturally overlooked by lantern light) and we get, plainly The Juives which, I need not tell you, is the French word for Jews".

Goodness, could it be any more obscure? But Harris is more than happy to keep quoting Stephenson's claims:

[p114] "Inspection at once shows us, then, that a dot has been overlooked by the constable who copied it, as might easily occur, especially if it were placed at some distance, after the manner of foreigners ... Therefore we place a dot above the third upstroke in the word Juwes, and we find it to be Juives, which is the French word for Jews. Strictly Juives and grammatically speaking, of course, it is the feminine form of Juifs and means 'Jewesses'."

Harris does not challenge Stephenson's self-fulfilling logic. Stephenson states, "Inspection at once shows us, then, that a dot has been overlooked by the constable who copied it, as might easily occur, especially if it were placed at some distance, after the manner of foreigners". If the dot was overlooked, how can it be said to have ever been there? This is simply a means for Stephenson to attempt to shoehorn in a dot which was not written down therefore could not be said to have been 'overlooked'. It was only overlooked if was there in the first place and if - therefore - it was meant to read 'Juives' which is what Stephenson wants us to believe.

Harris is happy to publish this errant nonsense and use it as part of his case against Stephenson. How many of us can recall the torrent of abuse which came his way at making such an unsustainable argument in order to pursue a point? Harris felt it was in line with his excessive integrity to do so therefore Harris - the original antiscrapbookist - must have found it equally acceptable to interpret 'Juwes' as a clever little cypher for 'James'.

Ike

I’ve got to ask why you always refer to the late Melvin Harris a "viper"? Is it simply because he didn't think the diary was genuine?

Is your point that because Harris might have made mistakes when writing a book about Stephenson, this means that the diary is more likely to be authentic?

Otherwise, I can't honestly see the purpose in attacking Harris's theory about Stephenson in a thread about the Maybrick diary.

[Lombro2]

It’s understandable when Ripper authors get viperish when discussing aspects of the case. They have invested a lot of time and effort in their theory and book. So I can understand it when they go spewing venom. I just brush it off or suck it up and spit it out unobtrusively.

Even Feldy told me I was “sick”. So what! I just told him I thought he was cool too.

So Caz, any time you want to be a viper, it’s okay.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Hi Lombro,

I hope you won't regard it as too viperish of me to return to your statement that, "it makes sense he wouldn’t leave out a confession with names and dates, and written in his own, nice, and legible hand."

I would like to make clear for the avoidance of doubt that I don't think your statement makes any sense at all. At the start of the narrative, the author hasn't yet committed any crimes, so the document isn't a confession at this stage, but it's still in a different handwriting to Maybrick's. Even if he anticipated that he was going to be taking his re-purposed photograph album to London on a killing spree, he would (presumably) have had it in his possession at all times, or in his lodgings while he was out murdering. In Liverpool it would surely have been kept in a secure place. In any event, if found by someone in a place only he had access to, it's not going to do him much good to say it wasn't his. It would have been obvious that he was the author, not least because it identifies his family members, regardless of the handwriting. The handwriting is also sufficiently legible for anyone to read and understand its contents.

Furthermore, there are no dates in the diary other than on the very last page, so I don't really understand why you mentioned dates.

For these reasons, I don't think that a fear of the "confession" being found by someone can explain why the forgery is not in Maybrick's handwriting. More realistic, perhaps, is that the forger thought that drug use might have altered Maybrick's handwriting which is something, as RJ Palmer tells us, Mike Barrett apparently raised with a handwriting expert.

[rjpalmer]

If the dot was overlooked, how can it be said to have ever been there?

???

Sorry, Tom, if I'm being dense. I've read this passage five or six times and I still have no idea what you are attempting to say.

When a person 'overlooks' something does it not mean that the object WAS there, and the observer just didn't see it?

It was only overlooked if was there in the first place and if - therefore - it was meant to read 'Juives' which is what Stephenson wants us to believe.

Yes, so what's the problem??? Stephenson is saying the constable overlooked the dot.

Stephenson wrote a contemporary letter, arguing that the writer of the graffito wrote 'Juives,' and not 'Juwes' as had been assumed, and this (Stephenson suggested) could mean the murderer was a Frenchman or someone who spoke French.

I'm not advocating the Stephenson theory, but whether this was "errant nonsense" is neither here, nor there, because Harris is arguing that Stephenson is sly and deliberately implicating himself through this errant nonsense (but as the Maybrick hoaxer might have said, "the fools will never grasp it").

There is an obvious difference between the errant nonsense of someone actually mentioned in the surviving MEPO files (R. D'Onston Stephenson) and who explained his theory in plain English, and the errant nonsense that Paul Feldman came up with in the 1990s based on his strained analyses of a hoax ("The James are the Men"...) where there is nothing in the diary to indicate the diarist meant 'James' was the joke.

I'm not really grasping what your point is, other than maybe both Stephenson and Feldman were half-baked Ripperologists who had theories about the graffiti?

I think the general idea behind Melvin's theory is that a contemporary half-baked Ripperologist/journalist might be the killer. There is actually an example of this in a modern European case were a journalist who had been covering a string of local murders, and dropping clues in his articles, turned out to be the perpetrator. If I recall, the man is still in prison.

So, although I tend to exonerate Stephenson, I don't agree that Melvin's theory was as inept as others take it to be. It's certainly an interesting story, if nothing else.

[Lombro2]

First page of the diary: "London it shall be".

This is why we have public forums. The platform should be respected for this reason. We come here to find the guys who can solve the case like a Rubik's cube. In no time. Of course they don't exist in a vacuum. That's why everyone is welcome.

Melvin's theory was pretty good if you use Maybrick as a standard. Outwardly a pillar of society. Just shorten the pillar four or five inches and you might have something.

Roslyn was a good contemporary Ripperologist too I might add. He analyzed real clues. He would have been good on the forums. Unless he turned into a viper author.

[Iconoclast]

Yes, so what's the problem??? Stephenson is saying the constable overlooked the dot.

If the constable 'overlooked the dot' then he couldn't have written it down so it can only be supposition that a dot was there. Sound logical enough, anyone? Unless there's a version with the dot in that wasn't the one the constable wrote down?

Seems like a bit of a problem to me. No?

I don't agree that Melvin's theory was as inept as others take it to be. It's certainly an interesting story, if nothing else.

I don't think I said or implied it was an inept theory (certainly not in the post you quoted). I found Harris' candidate quite interesting once he eventually got to the interesting stuff (at long last). As candidates go, Stephenson was surprisingly plausible, but obviously it wasn't him as it was Maybrick.

Ike

[Herlock Sholmes]

First page of the diary: "London it shall be".

That's the first surviving page but, as the first line starts in the middle of a sentence, we have to assume there was (supposed to be) at least one page written before that.

Of course, saying "London it shall be" is not a confession of anything but, like I've already already said, carefully disguising his handwriting to hide his identity while, at the same time, writing things like "dearest Gladys is unwell yet again", "Edwin...my dear brother", "the bastard Lowry". "I will visit Michael for a few weeks", "Bunny and the children are all that matter" and then the absolute giveaway, "I may return to Battlecrease", while taking the trouble to disguise his handwriting, would an be utterly bizarre thing for Maybrick to have done. So we can be very confident that hiding his identity had nothing to do with the handwriting.

[rjpalmer]

If the constable 'overlooked the dot' then he couldn't have written it down so it can only be supposition that a dot was there. Sound logical enough, anyone? Unless there's a version with the dot in that wasn't the one the constable wrote down?

Seems like a bit of a problem to me. No?

I'll have to dig out Harris's book from storage, Ike, and see the whole context in case you've left something out, but from what you've written I'm not seeing the logic.

R D'O S is suggesting that the constable, using dim lantern light, overlooked the dot and also wrote it down in his notebook without the dot. That's how I'm reading it.

"Inspection at once shows us, then, that a dot has been overlooked by the constable who copied it, as might easily occur, especially if it were placed at some distance, after the manner of foreigners ... "

R D'O S then writes:

"Therefore we place a dot above the third upstroke in the word Juwes, and we find it to be Juives..."

In using the rhetorical "we," isn't it R D'O S who is supplying the dot, and not the constable?

Anyway, what you seem to be suggesting is that Harris didn't have the 'integrity' to go after Feldman's analysis of the graffiti because it too closely mirrored the analysis of his own suspect, Stephenson.

But I don't see where Stephenson's analysis being half-baked and nonsensical (if indeed it is) is really much of an issue for Harris, so it comes out as a bit of a self-own, as if you are inadvertently acknowledging that Feldman's own analysis is incoherent and nonsensical.

I suppose I can see it from both angles. Maybe it was an issue that Harris didn't feel like raising; I also don't recall if he ever addressed it. He might have seen it as so ridiculous that it required no commentary.

Anyway, I need to go up into the attic, so you've inspired me to dig out the book.

Thanks for that.

[Lombro2]

We can agree now then that the handwriting in the Diary is James Maybrick undisguised, natural, serial killer hand.

Unless you have a suspect that you are sure of, you can't logically object to that or any other idea, categorically.

I could never understand how someone who has no hard suspect and thinks the case is completely unsolved with nothing knowable, or "the more you learn, the less you know", can then state anything about the case or oppose anything categorically. So Melvin and Ike make some sense and one of them could very possibly be correct.

[Iconoclast]

I'll have to dig out Harris's book from storage, Ike, and see the whole context in case you've left something out, but from what you've written I'm not seeing the logic.
R D'O S is suggesting that the constable, using dim lantern light, overlooked the dot and also wrote it down in his notebook without the dot. That's how I'm reading it.

If the constable overlooked a dot that was there or did not see a dot at all and therefore did not write it down in his notebook (or whatever), how would Stephenson know??????????

What got written down by the constable was 'Juwes' or - in Stephensonspeak - 'Juives' but not with the dot. So if the constable did not write down the dot, how on earth can Stephenson or anyone else claim a dot was overlooked?

It can't be claimed with any kind of authority because all we have is what the constable wrote down and he did not report or write down a dot. If he did not refer to a dot, why would anyone subsequently argue that he overlooked one?

If we are allowed to do that, can I just say that the constable also overlooked the 'Maybrick' that was written straight after the 'Juwes', please? After all, if we put the overlooked 'Maybrick' back into the GSG, we get something that looks like 'James Maybrick'. Hey - who knew Ripperology could be so easy to solve?

Ike

[rjpalmer]

Good Lord, Ike. Don't be so thick. Stephenson is explaining his theory, and as theorist often do, he is telling his audience what happened as if he were a fly on the wall watching it all unfold and stating it as a fact. The audience knows this. It's an unspoken but acknowledged "contract" between the theorist and his audience.

The word "Maybrick" looks nothing like the word JUWES or any other word in the graffito. Your analogy is inappropriate.

By contrast, JUIVES in cursive does look remarkably similar or identical to JUWES and since this French word means JEWS, that is what the graffiti artist meant (according to Stephenson) which means the constable simply didn't notice a tiny dot and thus didn't record it, wrongly writing JUWES instead of JUIVES.

Stephenson is not saying he has all this down on CCTV and can prove it, he's explaining his theory of what happened from the viewpoint of the fly.

By the way, Old Bean, in glancing through Society's Pillar, I notice repeated references to someone named Tom Westcott. There is no such person.

Well, there probably is some such person, but he didn't write the book mentioned. You might want to polish your glasses and fix that before the spelling police sees it.

There is an alleged suspect named Dr. William Wynn Westcott, so it is an understandable slip of the keys.

Ciao.