New Ideas and New Research on the Diary

[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.

[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]

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.

[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?

[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

[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.

[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

[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

[Herlock Sholmes]

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

Is that an accusation that you would like to state more openly Caz?

[Iconoclast]

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.

Crikey, my Inbox was full of comments regarding your comments, above!

First email:

— Pall Mall Gazette on Michael Maybrick's death :…When he wrote his first song, "A Warrior Bold," he was living in chambers. He had a bad cold and was unable to sing at Wolverhampton, where he had an engagement. While in bed he wrote the words and music of that song and took it to Mr. Arthur Chappell, or Chappell and Co….)
No-one claims it anymore, however. Some two decades after publication of Harrison’s first book, Casebook: Jack the Ripper contributor Lydia Trivia unearthed examples of songs – mostly older than Maybrick’s more established works – where he alone had written both music and lyrics.
—ISLE OF WIGHT COUNTY PRESS / SATURDAY AUGUST 30th 1913 - DEATH OF MR. MICHAEL MAYBRICK. His first song was “A Warrior Bold,” which remains one of the most popular of its class. He wrote it while lying ill in bed, and accepted 5s for it plus a royalty.)

Second email:

In 1873, while ill in bed, he [Michael Maybrick] wrote the words and the music to his first big song, A Warrior Bold, and within a few years had earned well over a £1000 in royalties (Chris Jones citing the Edinburgh Evening News, 17th December 1877 as his source.)

Third email:

Michael Maybrick, writing under the pseudonym Stephen Adams, composed the song “A Warrior Bold” with lyrics by Edwin Thomas. The song was first published in 1871 by Chappell in London. This piece marked the beginning of Maybrick’s career performing his own compositions in the early 1870s, a period during which he gained popularity for his songs, often collaborating with lyricist Frederic E. Weatherly. (Source: ChatGPT / Wikipedia)

---------------------

Now, my reading of all this is that 'A Warrior Bold' was entirely written by Michael Maybrick in 1870 or 1871 and that Lydia Trivia had 'unearthed examples of songs – mostly older than Maybrick’s more established works – where he alone had written both music and lyrics'. This implies to me that there was more than sufficient evidence that James Maybrick would have learned from his brother directly that the latter wrote lyrics as well as music. Certainly, I would say that it is somewhat more likely than that a hoaxer inferred this from Ryan's brief comment that Michael was a composer and author of songs.

"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." (Melvin Harris)

Does that include those written in the name of Stephen Adams and Edwin Thomas?

[Iconoclast]

Is that an accusation that you would like to state more openly Caz?

Is that an accusation you'd like to deny at all Herlock?

[Herlock Sholmes]

Is that an accusation you'd like to deny at all Herlock?

What is the accusation, Ike?

That's what I was asking.

[Iconoclast]

What is the accusation, Ike?
That's what I was asking.

So true, Herlock.

[Herlock Sholmes]

So true, Herlock.

Do you have some kind of Orsam obsession, Ike?

I wouldn't mind but it was simplicity itself to find those "literary masterpiece" quotes by entering the word "masterpiece" in the CB search function for Maybrick threads. I found them all in about two minutes. The idea that I needed Orsam, or anyone else who likes Spandau Ballet, to send me those quotes to my inbox, which appears to be the suggestion from you and Caz, is both insulting and crazy.

I do wonder, however, if you found it as amusing as I did that even though Mike Barrett never apparently once used the expression "literary masterpiece" to describe the diary, Caz decides to attribute it to him because she assumes that's what he must have thought of it, and this explains why she referred to it herself at least twice as a literary masterpiece. Then she's puzzled as to why John feels the need to say that the diary is no literary masterpiece. Hilarious.

But it really brings me back to my central question which I've been asking over and over without any sensible reply. Why could the Barretts not have jointly created that relatively short 63 page error strewn, historically inaccurate, grammatically poor, badly spelt, document? After all, it's noliterary masterpiece, is it?

[Iconoclast]

But it really brings me back to my central question which I've been asking over and over without any sensible reply. Why could the Barretts not have jointly created that relatively short 63 page error strewn, historically inaccurate, grammatically poor, badly spelt, document? After all, it's noliterary masterpiece, is it?

Lord, awesomely bad memory by one of us. Did I not acknowledge recently that your desperately unevidenced theory is at least theoretically possible? I’m sure I did but maybe I dreamed it.

While we’re on the subject of Spandau Ballet, I’ve often wondered if Barrett wasn’t a closet fan too - after all, did he not steal the following line for his literary masterpiece?

With a thrill in my head and a pill on my tongue …