New Ideas and New Research on the Diary

[caz]

Absolutely, Caz. I was merely attempting to answer your question though: "Who are these people, John, who 'go on' as though the diary [I prefer a small d] were a literary masterpiece?"

I found some others by the way:

Poster "Ron Beckett", 31 August 2008, in thread "One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary" at #72: "The Isreali writing specialist thought it was a masterpiece as do other literary people who have knowledge of arsenic and strychnine addiction."

Poster "Iconoclast", a.k.a. Ike, 23 July 2019, in thread "The Diary—Old Hoax or New?" at #21: "For our post-1987 hoaxer, you are looking for a creative genius who was willing to give away his greatest masterpiece..."

Poster "Lombro2", 14 February 2025, in this thread, #39: "We (actually I and no one else) can concoct—I mean construct—a seamless narrative of how Michael Barrett created his masterpiece."

Oh and a poster called "Caz", 19 December 2017 in thread "Acquiring a Victorian Diary" at #225: "It's also the only window Mike knew would have been available to him, in which to obtain a more user friendly book and get his masterpiece penned in time for its debut in London."

And poster "Caz" again, 5 September 2023, in thread "One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary" at #10061: "Crafty old Palmer. He misses out the bit about Mike taking what's already in the old book he got from Eddie, and copying it into this genuine Victorian diary, to pass off as his own literary masterpiece."

Funny old world, isn't it?

Nice bit of sarcasm there, Herlock, except that in my own examples which you quoted above, I was going by what Mike Barrett evidently thought of the diary, when he was claiming to have authored it himself. He wouldn't have taken the 'credit' if he had considered it to be more 'shabby hoax' than 'literary masterpiece', would he? He wanted the world to think he was a great writer of fiction.

That's why I asked John Wheat who else, besides Mike, thought of the diary in that way.

I'm sorry if you were confused, but the context should have explained what I meant, if you found and read the relevant posts yourself, and didn't just find the isolated quotes in your inbox.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

This point rang a bell for me Caz as a couple of weeks ago I read Ike’s Society’s Pillar. I took a quick second look and one of the main themes is that the diary is not a "shabby hoax". Here are some of the things I found in that essay:

"the signs of complexity in the Maybrick scrapbook should at least dispel the myth that the document is necessarily a ‘shabby’ hoax" - page 30

The document has "A consistent narrative and psychopathology" - page 31

"As easy as it is to claim that the story which unfolds reflects a ‘shabby’ hoax, the reality is that it actually required a significant amount of attention to detail and research which – collectively – reflect a complex and intimate analysis of the known facts around Maybrick’s life and the crimes he is supposed to have committed as well as of the typical mind functioning at the time of the crimes" - page 31

Cites Professor David Cantor as saying that if not by James Maybrick himself the only other possibility for authorship of the diary was that "it was written by a shy, but emotionally disturbed genius, who combined the novelist’s art with an intelligent understanding of serial killers, the agreed facts of Jack the Ripper and James Maybrick". page 32

"this otherwise genuinely complex document" - page 32

Cites Harrison saying of Dr David Forshaw that "His principle conclusion was encouraging: he said for a forger to have faked this deceptively simple diary he would have needed to master a profound understanding of criminal psychology and the effects of drug addiction" - page 32

"Three eminent researchers in their fields have gone on the record as supporting the notion that the Victorian scrapbook is psychologically deeply complex." - page 33

Cites Canter as saying that the author of the diary was using "a powerful literary device" which would have turned into self-parody if used by "a less skilful author" - page 36

"The letter from Margaret Baillie puts paid to any assumption that the Victorian scrapbook is a slipshod piece of work. It implies that the document is either extremely well-researched or else it is authentic." - page 36

"deep complexity in the scrapbook" - page 39

"if this was the work of a hoaxer, then it is yet another excellent example of the complexity of the research which consistently underpins his work." - page 47

"If it represents the author’s attention to detail in creating a hoax, it is jaw-droppingly precise and would unequivocally prove the inherent complexity of research required to complete this otherwise apparently superficial fraud." - page 48

"It is a particularly masterly touch of the hoaxer that he has James Maybrick quite clearly laying claim to the sobriquet ‘Jack the Ripper’," - page 49

"Given the truly outstanding research conducted by whoever concocted a Jack the Ripper hoax from the life of James Maybrick, his efforts deserve to be fairer witnessed than they have been to date." - page 54

"it is a crime to have written such a hoax (as money ultimately exchanged hands as a consequence), but it is a far greater crime that the brilliance, the complexity, the audaciousness, and the good fortune of the hoax has not yet been fully appreciated" - page 55

"the reference to ‘society’s pillar’ provides a rather neat play on the final syllable of his name - ‘brick’ – a literary device which the James Maybrick (as portrayed in the Victorian scrapbook) frequently delights in." - page 63

"when the moment requires literary expansion, we get it". - page 108

When viewed as a whole, we are being told by Ike in his essay that, if the diary is a forgery, it is extremely well-researched, if not outstandingly researched, inherently and deeply complex, brilliant, masterly, audacious, with a consistent narrative and psychopathy, written by someone with a profound understanding of criminal psychology and the effects of drug addiction, an intelligent understanding of serial killers, a jaw-droppingly precise attention to detail and an ability to use literary devices and literary expansion. It seems to me that a fair summary of all that would be that Ike is saying that if the diary isn't genuine, it's a literary masterpiece. Perhaps that's the type of thing John was thinking of?

Revisiting this one briefly, Herlock, as I didn't have time to make the point originally, I can't see where the above quotes collectively give the impression of the 'literary masterpiece' to which John Wheat objected. I referred to the diary being written in a 'simplistic style'; not that I thought that made it 'a 'shabby hoax', which would be something very different, and I see that Forshaw used the words: 'deceptively simple'.

I think our individual definitions might well vary, because I think of 'a literary masterpiece' as a work of the highest quality prose or poetry, on a par with examples of classic literature by famous authors, and I don't think anyone was arguing that the thoughts expressed in the diary are, or should have been, remotely comparable with that kind of masterpiece. If the real James Maybrick had left school with a talent like that, I daresay his career would have taken a rather different course. And had the diary contained poetry and prose of a high enough quality to have been published in its own right as decent literature, it would have been all too obvious that the real Maybrick hadn't authored it.

What we should be looking at, surely, is whether the diary reads in any way like a serial killer's thoughts might have done, not whether its author was aiming for a Pulitzer prize for fiction. Is it not more of a dog's dinner of simplistic, poorly written drivel, doggerel and fantasy, ranging from self-pitying to self-congratulatory to self-loathing and back again, reflecting a hopelessly flawed individual, whose inner man-child refuses to obey the rules of a civilised adult society when it comes to acting out whatever criminal desires he may be harbouring?

Love,

Caz
X

[Iconoclast]

Hi Ike.
The song was 'A Warrior Bold,' and you can judge for yourself the quality of the verse and decide why he might have employed a lyricist moving forward, if this was indeed his work.
Prepare yourself to be underwhelmed:
A Warrior Bold (1883)
Do I understand correctly that you are arguing that James Maybrick (as with Bernard Ryan) was under the mistaken belief that his own brother wrote his own lyrics?
Couldn't you use the same gambit to "explain away" any error in a dubious document? He "mistakenly" believed he left certain parts of Mary Kelly on the table, he "mistakenly" believed his neighbor's name was Mrs. Hammersmith, he "mistakenly believed" that his wife's godmother was her aunt, etc? etc? etc? ad infinitum?
Why do you allow the diarist this luxury, but you do not extend it to Alan Gray who was, after all, not writing from his own experience, but was left to interpret the ramblings of an insufferable drunk?
The flaw in your methodology is obvious enough.
RP

Oh gawd, the mud's back!

You go from interpreting something I wrote about Michael Maybrick to James Maybrick (rightly or wrongly) mistakingly believing some things which naturally led you to infer that Alan Gray's crappy attempt at an affidavit should therefore be given some kind of priority treatment as a holy work.

Only you, RJ - only you ...

Oh, and Orsam ...

There's no need to do this complicated dance of interconnection and consequence just because you want to argue something which has no link or logic whatsoever. It would be simpler if you just said, "Skipping all my traditional extremely tenuous attempts to draw logical conclusions from thin air, Alan Gray's affidavit was clearly an honest attempt to capture the never-changing views of Honest Mike".

Do I understand correctly that you are arguing that James Maybrick (as with Bernard Ryan) was under the mistaken belief that his own brother wrote his own lyrics?

To avoid this unique form of mud-slinging, let me be clear: I do not know what James Maybrick believed his brother did but I do know that the James Maybrick portrayed in the Maybrick scrapbook evidently believed that his brother Michael wrote lyrics and - lo! - you admit yourself that he did so I'm really not sure why when we are in agreement we needed to go down strange roads and avenues throwing the brown stuff at peoples' windows.

The flaw in your methodology is obvious enough.

That that should be the worst that can be thrown at me - coming from the man whose own methodological floor appears to be far lower than mine has ever been.

[rjpalmer]

The point, of course, was that this Maybrick myth ran and ran for many years before Ms. Trivia's excellent research identified one or more named songs where the lyrics were written by Michael.

Hi Ike.

Livia Trivia, whose source was Michael Maybrick's obituary, identified one song with the lyrics supposedly written by Maybrick. She wrote that the lyricist's name was Edwin Thomas, adding that it was 'coincidentally' the name of Maybrick's brothers. Whether this is the correct explanation, I do not know. This was supposedly one of Maybrick's earliest tunes, if not his earliest, penned in the early 1870s, but not published until after he became well-known.

The song was 'A Warrior Bold,' and you can judge for yourself the quality of the verse and decide why he might have employed a lyricist moving forward, if this was indeed his work.

Prepare yourself to be underwhelmed:

A Warrior Bold (1883)

Do I understand correctly that you are arguing that James Maybrick (as with Bernard Ryan) was under the mistaken belief that his own brother wrote his own lyrics?

Couldn't you use the same gambit to "explain away" any error in a dubious document? He "mistakenly" believed he left certain parts of Mary Kelly on the table, he "mistakenly" believed his neighbor's name was Mrs. Hammersmith, he "mistakenly believed" that his wife's godmother was her aunt, etc? etc? etc? ad infinitum?


Why do you allow the diarist this luxury, but you do not extend it to Alan Gray who was, after all, not writing from his own experience, but was left to interpret the ramblings of an insufferable drunk?

The flaw in your methodology is obvious enough.

RP

[John Wheat]

Would you, lads? Would you really want to know the 'actual' evidence?

I find that hard to believe because, Herlock, you are all about believing anything that makes Barrett look like a hoaxer, however implausible or unreasonable your 'evidence' is; and John, you haven't written more than any one of my paragraphs in the entire time you've been posting on Maybrick threads. Are you both serious about uncovering the truth or just about perpetuating myths and regurgitating ill-thought-out tropes and keyboard tics?

The truth is that no-one can provide 100% evidence of who Jack the Ripper is so we have to rely on the best of what we have available. Your truth hangs heavily on the shoulders of a man who couldn't stand up to piss most of the 1990s - it is fundamentally driven by an agenda to ignore what blatantly contradicts any possibility that Barrett was a hoaxer and thus to leave yourself with that most telling of conclusions - "but he said he did it".

I'll save what I've got for SocPill25 but I know much of what I've got is already public domain - in these Maybrick threads which you are either too late to or else have not arsed yourselves to read.

Yes I would like to what the actual evidence is?

[Iconoclast]

Isn't this somewhat lame, Ike?
Imagine a hoax diarist, circa 1981, bemoaning how his famous brother Sir Elton John is a wonderful writer of lyrics and rhyming verse. It's an obvious ****-up, because E.J. used Bernie Taupin and other lyricists and admitted he was lousy at it.
The fact that you can scour his vast catalogue of albums and find one highly personal but terrible song where he wrote the lyrics would hardly take away from the bald fact that the hoaxer didn't know his subject matter.
In the case of Michael Maybrick, Melvin Harris wrote this:
"Michael has never enjoyed renown or reputation as a writer of verse, either in the past or now. In fact, the comprehensive collection of his works held by the British Library does not list a single composition of his that has lyrics written by him. "
His point is that the hoaxer just stupidly believed Bernard Ryan's text, which wrongly identified 'Stephen Adams' as both the composer and the lyricist.
I've never been to the British Library, Ike, but the next time you visit, why not confirm Melvin's findings?
What was the name of this famous tune where Stephen Adams wrote the lyrics?
I don't recall if Feldman even named it. Can you refresh my memory on the evidence?
RP

Lame, not lame, RJ.

To give a proper answer to this would take more time than I have. I would have to check back to see which song lyric or songs lyrics Livia Trivia had first identified as being written by Michael. I would also have to check to see how significant the songs were where the lyrics were written by 'Edwin Thomas' - a pseudonym rather blatantly based upon his two younger brothers. I don't recall the details and I really don't have the time or inclination to dig deeper in an example which never needed to be significant to have profound meaning.

Even without the time to dig into the specifics here, it is clear that the author of the scrapbook believed that Michael Maybrick wrote lyrics as well as music. I don't think he needed Bernard Ryan to believe this. It is clear that he could simply have known.

The point, of course, was that this Maybrick myth ran and ran for many years before Ms. Trivia's excellent research identified one or more named songs where the lyrics were written by Michael. In that regard my point was very well made - it's not a race and even if it were it is far from over so everyone keep their powder dry on 'one 'off' instance', please, because the fireworks have gone off far too early in the past.

[rjpalmer]

Michael Maybrick did actually write lyrics

Isn't this somewhat lame, Ike?

Imagine a hoax diarist, circa 1981, bemoaning how his famous brother Sir Elton John is a wonderful writer of lyrics and rhyming verse. It's an obvious ****-up, because E.J. used Bernie Taupin and other lyricists and admitted he was lousy at it.

The fact that you can scour his vast catalogue of albums and find one highly personal but terrible song where he wrote the lyrics would hardly take away from the bald fact that the hoaxer didn't know his subject matter.

In the case of Michael Maybrick, Melvin Harris wrote this:

"Michael has never enjoyed renown or reputation as a writer of verse, either in the past or now. In fact, the comprehensive collection of his works held by the British Library does not list a single composition of his that has lyrics written by him. "

His point is that the hoaxer just stupidly believed Bernard Ryan's text, which wrongly identified 'Stephen Adams' as both the composer and the lyricist.

I've never been to the British Library, Ike, but the next time you visit, why not confirm Melvin's findings?

What was the name of this famous tune where Stephen Adams wrote the lyrics?

I don't recall if Feldman even named it. Can you refresh my memory on the evidence?

RP

[Iconoclast]

That really is a remarkably long and convoluted way of saying that there's no actual evidence supporting the notion that Maybrick wrote the scrapbook.

Wow, did I say that?

We all know it, Ike.

Bully for you!

The idea that you're saving something up which has never been mentioned before is, well....don't make me laugh.

Hey, I'm trying to sell a book here and make some moolah.

One off instance’ is THE proof that the diary is a modern forgery. You and others have had years to find just one single example to disprove David’s point. Nothing. Not one thing even remotely close. Surely that must tell you something?

Well, we have been here before and it can take years to uncover that, for example, Michael Maybrick did actually write lyrics so I'm taking my heed from this fact and just keeping my powder dry. It's not a race, you know.

[Iconoclast]

I don't understand why, in your mind, everything had to happen on the same day.

It doesn't have to have happened on the same day and I feel confident that I never claimed it had to. The fact that it DID happen on the same day means that the coincidence (pah!) was at its exquisite apogee and why would I water that down by imagining it having happened on some earlier day we didn't know about???

Clearly it didn't all need to happen on the same day ...

Correct - it could still have been a coincidence the day before or the day before that but - as each earlier day passed - the coincidence would get increasingly watered-down. But it wasn't, was it? It was neat because it happened on the SAME day.

... which means we may well be talking about a simple coincidence.

Well, we could well be talking about a coincidence, but only a statistical simpleton would imply from this that such a coincidence would be simple. It would be anything else other than simple.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Would you, lads? Would you really want to know the 'actual' evidence?

I find that hard to believe because, Herlock, you are all about believing anything that makes Barrett look like a hoaxer, however implausible or unreasonable your 'evidence' is; and John, you haven't written more than any one of my paragraphs in the entire time you've been posting on Maybrick threads. Are you both serious about uncovering the truth or just about perpetuating myths and regurgitating ill-thought-out tropes and keyboard tics?

The truth is that no-one can provide 100% evidence of who Jack the Ripper is so we have to rely on the best of what we have available. Your truth hangs heavily on the shoulders of a man who couldn't stand up to piss most of the 1990s - it is fundamentally driven by an agenda to ignore what blatantly contradicts any possibility that Barrett was a hoaxer and thus to leave yourself with that most telling of conclusions - "but he said he did it".

I'll save what I've got for SocPill25 but I know much of what I've got is already public domain - in these Maybrick threads which you are either too late to or else have not arsed yourselves to read.

That really is a remarkably long and convoluted way of saying that there's no actual evidence supporting the notion that Maybrick wrote the scrapbook. We all know it, Ike. The idea that you're saving something up which has never been mentioned before is, well....don't make me laugh.

‘One off instance’ is THE proof that the diary is a modern forgery. You and others have had years to find just one single example to disprove David’s point. Nothing. Not one thing even remotely close. Surely that must tell you something?

[Herlock Sholmes]

The distance to travel was eight miles - they'd have to be driving in a Trabant to take longer than about 20 minutes!



I wasn't aware that Rigby's claim was that the visit to the university was definitely March 9, 1992, but - even if it was - let's call it another hour and a half so less than two hours and Eddie's in his local with the brilliant playwright Barrett hovering when he sees the old scrapbook.

You're right - it's quite impossible.

PS Are timesheets always accurate, do you think? Doddsy's in school. Who's checking?

For someone like yourself Ike, who has read everything on the case (probably several times) I wouldn’t have thought a Johnnie-Come-Lately would need to explain this. Rigby's story, as set out by Robert Smith, is that during a tea-break while working at Battlecrease he overheard two of his colleagues mentioning something to do with Battlecrease. At some point after this, so the story goes, he was given a lift into town by one of them, stopping off at Liverpool University while Rigby waited in the vehicle. The idea, so the theory goes, is that Eddie Lyons was trying to get the diary authenticated by the university. If, on your version of events, this didn't occur on 9th March 1992 when could it possibly have happened? Yet on 9th March 1992 Rigby recorded 8 hours on his timesheet, making it difficult to see when he would have had time to get to the university to enable Eddie to get to the Saddle before 3.30.

But the main point is that had the electricians worked in Battlecrease and lifted the floorboards a few days earlier than 9th March, this would be at least as good for your theory if not better because so many things don't then have to have been done in such a condensed time period. The idea that electrical work being done on 9th March makes it more likely that the diary was found than if such work had been done a mere few days earlier is obviously an illusion. Feldman thought the floorboards had been lifted in 1989 and was excited by that! I don't understand why, in your mind, everything had to happen on the same day. Clearly it didn't all need to happen on the same day, which means we may well be talking about a simple coincidence.

[rjpalmer]

and Mrs I wants me downstairs to watch Celebrity Big Brother

Doesn't such a request qualify as mental cruelty? Fortify yourself with a pint, Ike, and be thankful it's not The Masked Singer.

[Iconoclast]

Hi Ike,
I'm now up to Line 25 on the 1040 Form, so I'm entitled to a small break. Next year I promise to start my taxes before Barrett Believer Day (April 13th)!
I think, if you read carefully, that Herlock was commenting on "the Battlecrease theory"---ie., as presented on this forum--and not to a specific comment by Mr. Rigby.
I'm not sure he could do otherwise, since most of these statements come to us through a gatekeeper rather than from access to unedited transcripts.
Do you see how this might pose a problem as we discuss things?
RP

To be clear, though, RJ (and I have my own self-assessment to complete now soon enough, by the way) the gatekeepers do not include me. The information I have is 95%+ provided by Keith Skinner and James Johnson so they are your (and Lord Orsam's) gatekeepers. I've kept 99%+ of it to myself because I'm not stupid - I was never asked to keep it to myself but I am Machiavellian enough to work out that being indiscreet could also be costly. Sometimes my frustration boils over and I post a snippet. My bad. Generally, I count my blessings that they haven't yet worked out what an evil bastard I am. Please no-one tell them.

With regard to the university, I feel that it was Rigby who made the claim about it. I would have to check but I can't recall anyone else mentioning the university and - frankly - it doesn't excite me because I don't think he named the day. Anyway, I'd have to check back through 800+ folders and Mrs I wants me downstairs to watch Celebrity Big Brother (yes, even after the remarkable Mickey Rourke was kicked-off yesterday).

[Iconoclast]

I'd like to know too.

Would you, lads? Would you really want to know the 'actual' evidence?

I find that hard to believe because, Herlock, you are all about believing anything that makes Barrett look like a hoaxer, however implausible or unreasonable your 'evidence' is; and John, you haven't written more than any one of my paragraphs in the entire time you've been posting on Maybrick threads. Are you both serious about uncovering the truth or just about perpetuating myths and regurgitating ill-thought-out tropes and keyboard tics?

The truth is that no-one can provide 100% evidence of who Jack the Ripper is so we have to rely on the best of what we have available. Your truth hangs heavily on the shoulders of a man who couldn't stand up to piss most of the 1990s - it is fundamentally driven by an agenda to ignore what blatantly contradicts any possibility that Barrett was a hoaxer and thus to leave yourself with that most telling of conclusions - "but he said he did it".

I'll save what I've got for SocPill25 but I know much of what I've got is already public domain - in these Maybrick threads which you are either too late to or else have not arsed yourselves to read.

[rjpalmer]

I wasn't aware that Rigby's claim was that the visit to the university was definitely March 9, 1992

Hi Ike,

I'm now up to Line 25 on the 1040 Form, so I'm entitled to a small break. Next year I promise to start my taxes before Barrett Believer Day (April 13th)!

I think, if you read carefully, that Herlock was commenting on "the Battlecrease theory"---ie., as presented on this forum--and not to a specific comment by Mr. Rigby.

I'm not sure he could do otherwise, since most of these statements come to us through a gatekeeper rather than from access to unedited transcripts.

Do you see how this might pose a problem as we discuss things?

RP