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

[ohrocky]

Is it probably not the time to come to a conclusion on this long running saga? Why not have a poll? The diary is real or the diary is fake. Mr Sholmes leading the prosecution and Mr Ike for the defence. Only members registered as of whenever the poll is launched (to avoid any shenanigans!) can vote.

I doubt anybody is going to be persuaded to change their mind as a result of the same arguments being rehashed over and over. The losing side commits to not raising the issue again. It's done.

[John Wheat]

Ive said this before, there is no chance the diary was written by Maybrick. And in all likelihood it was written by the Barretts.

[Herlock Sholmes]

So yet again Ike resorts to anger and personal insults merely because his precious diary has been challenged by someone that hasn’t wasted thirty years of his life desperately trying to prop it up and defend it beyond the realms of reason, sense and fairness. All in the name of personal ego. In my posts I’ve used no personal insults. As a matter of fact I’ve always communicated with Ike in a friendly manner which, until recently had been reciprocated but, as soon as I posted anything critical of this fake diar the mask began to slip. Now Ike has thrown the mask away completely and this is the language that I get in response to points that I made :


“Mendacities.”

“someone trying to make an educated argument but not knowing how to.

(repeated twice - perhaps in his rage Ike forgot that he was repeating himself)


“Johnny-Come-Lately’s with a pompous view of their limited knowledge of the case.”


“Johnny-Come-Lately dilettantes plagiarising the opinions of others.”

Quite an accusation. Does this mean that we are not allowed to read and agree with the opinions of others? Or does this apply only to the o-unions of one person?


“the same asinine, ill-thought-out remarks.”


We see true colours being revealed here I’m afraid. Ike questions my knowledge of ‘the case.’ I’d suggest that Ike himself has absolutely no interest in ‘the case’ as a whole as he has merely read the diary, become convinced that it’s real, and has focused a large part of his life on it. I see no evidence of any great knowledge of the case in general. Many people on here have favoured suspects but how many can we name who never, ever post on anything but their own suspect? This is hardly evidence of an open mind is it? Someone only willing to consider one option and that every point raised against it must be wrong. Hardly a fair minded approach? Only with this type of approach can someone look on a man producing a supposedly genuine Victorian diary only to find that before he had produced it the man in question had attempted to purchase a blank Victorian diary. How many people in real life would seek to brush aside this example aside? How many would believe the concoction of embarrassingly feeble excuses? How many would say “yeah right”?

Ike has provided his responses in his post, many of them desperate of course, but for any point made opposing ones can be suggested; it doesn’t mean that they are correct though. Ike is like a theologian; a religious ‘excuse maker’. No matter how silly or unbelievable the point Ike will take the time and effort to come up with a worthy piece of fiction to ‘rebut’ the point. Explanations or just excuses? Ike assumes his points are correct though and he does this because he has no choice…he must defend.

It’s sad that Ike should resort to this attitude. He appears to feel that discussion of the diary is a closed shop open only to those who have served a thirty year apprenticeship in the murky world of diary lies, lies and more lies. There is a mountain of evidence that the diary is a modern forgery and the fact that the author of the diary simply couldn’t have used the expression ‘one off instance’ is the absolute game over proof despite ten years of effort to disprove the point and a list of embarrassing, desperate efforts to do so.

Perhaps Ike should have another look in that mirror and ask himself why this fake is so important to him? So important that he resorts to anger and personal insult to anyone who questions it?

[Iconoclast]

Lord, you try to have a break from this superficial sort of 'analysis', but - to protect your dear readers - you constantly have to come back in and correct tropes, canards, biases, non sequiturs, and often mendacities.

• A diary strewn with errors. The Maybrick scrapbook is not strewn with errors unless you want to see it that way.
• A diary with at least one anachronistic phrase. The Maybrick scrapbook does not contain any proven anachronistic phrases: it does, however, contain seemingly more modern language which certain posters insist are only modern in origin (or, at least, post-1888).
• The guy who presented it to the world just happened to have previously tried to purchase a Victorian diary. For which there are multiple explanations which people who are not Johnny-Come-Latelys will have been exposed to many times in the past. And - no - I'm not going to iterate them to correct one person's indolent 'analysis'.
• A diary where the alleged author doesn’t try to hide his identity and yet ‘disguised’ his handwriting. The author of the Maybrick scrapbook may or may not have 'disguised' his handwriting - given that we have no other example of James Maybrick's handwriting when writing solely for his own eyes, that is a yet another lazy non sequitur and another prime example of someone trying to make an educated argument but not knowing how to.
• A well to do business man can’t even avail himself of a proper diary or even a notebook. He is reduced to emptying a photo album and tearing out pages. The Maybrick scrapbook appears to have been written in an old company book of mementos and/or business cards which may have lain fallow for some time: it is possible that Maybrick impulsively used it late one evening to record his thoughts. There is internal evidence within the scrapbook's text (and the imprints on the cover sheet) that this is what he did.
• A description within the diary of the killer and it’s f*** all like the proposed author. There is no description of James Maybrick (nor anyone else) in the Maybrick scrapbook.
• He mistakes his wife’s relative. It is not in the least bit surprising that Maybrick thought of Florrie's godmother as her aunt. It's a non-argument made by someone trying to make an educated argument but not knowing how to.
• He gets the location of the breasts wrong. The author of the Maybrick scrapbook describes putting Kelly's breasts on the table which was - at that point - bare. He later says he thought of leaving them at her feet. As the table became more full of viscera, it is perfectly plausible that Maybrick moved the breasts again but subsequently forgot, influenced as he may have been by the newspapers over the next few days.
• He invents a non-existent neighbour and murder. Mrs Hamersmith (Hammersmith) may not have been his neighbour as such, or she may have been his neighbour and - either way - missed the ten-year censuses of 1881 and 1891 (I think they are ten-yearly). Her name may have been (as argued here before but not read by Johnny-Come-Latelys with a pompous view of their limited knowledge of the case) 'Mrs Bridge' and 'Hammersmith' may have been Maybrick's nickname for her (via her husband). Or Mrs Hamersmith/Hammersmith may have been called something else entirely and Maybrick had not realised. When I was a student, I worked as a barman in a local Newcastle bingo and social club and a Down's syndrome customer called me 'Gary'. I didn't correct him which was - in retrospect - a mistake as six months later the entire basement hall where I tended the bar was calling me 'Gary'. My name was not (and is not) Gary. With regard to the two Manchester 'murders', it is not clear that they were actually killed but - even if they were - there is no guarantee that they would be recorded in the newspapers. They would be today, but we do not know with any certainty that that would also be true in 1888.

So, dear readers, I hope you can see that superficial arguments crumble at the slightest consideration. You should always listen to those with a high degree of knowledge about the case, not Johnny-Come-Lately dilettantes plagiarising the opinions of others, including those who may have sensationally 'resigned' from the Casebook. Everyone is entitled to hold their own opinions about the case but no-one is allowed to have their own facts. It seems my role here is far from done.

Lesson: A document which looks for all the world suspect and superficially fraudulent may not be so. All that is gold does not glitter. Or, something otherwise gold may not glitter.

PS How about we all wait a few days or weeks and then someone post the same asinine, ill-thought-out remarks again? And then again. And then again. And then again. And then again. And then again. And then again. And then again. And then again. And then again. And then again. And then again. And then again. And then again. And then again. ...

[Lombro2]

To show your fairness in all things Ripper, can you tabulate a list of all the things that have been thrown at the Diary that you agree didn't stick?