New Ideas and New Research on the Diary

[rjpalmer]

What are the odds that the first and only (?) image of a donkey beside a grave that comes up in Google Images is from Liverpool?

Is this Michael Barrett's Donkey Photo--the one he said was in the "photo album" that he allegedly turned into a Ripper Diary?
A Pet Cemetery

A donkey pauses beside a gravestone at the pet cemetery of an R.S.P.C.A. home for animals in Liverpool. (Photo by © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images) by Anonymous


A donkey pauses beside a gravestone at the pet cemetery of an... News Photo - Getty Images

Hi Lombro,

Congratulations, but alas, you're seven years, one month, and one day late to the party. I posted this same image back in January 2018:

Acquiring A Victorian Diary - Casebook: Jack the Ripper Forums


I, too, thought it mighty coincidental that Merseyside, of all places, had a pet cemetery where donkeys roamed free, and that the image of a donkey by a grave dated to between the two wars...which is oddly suggestive of Barrett's description of the supposedly imaginary photo album.

If I recall, when I originally posted the image Caroline Brown dismissed it as another one of Barrett's lies---speculating that he had seen the donkey photo sometime during his life and just threw it in to his supposedly fictional confession as a bit of useful detail.

I don't find that very convincing. What would be the point of inventing a photograph of a donkey by a grave that no one would be able to verify or confirm? Would such a ploy have even crossed his mind?

After all, it took a quarter of a century for such a photograph to show up on the internet---was Barrett playing the 'long game'?

Or were these donkeys in the pet cemetery local Liverpool celebrities and showed up in local photo albums in the 1930s and 40s?

(Melvin Harris, skeptical that the Maybrick photo album was necessarily Victorian, said he saw very similar albums, with similar bindings, dating to as late as the 1930s)

Are you still convinced the album was a figment of Barrett's imagination?

Regards,

The Professor or The Madman--take your pick.

[John Wheat]

This has to be about the most pointless thread of them all.

[Lombro2]

DETAILS

Restrictions:
Contact your local office for all commercial or promotional uses. Exclusive licensing is not available for this image.
Credit:
Hulton Deutsch / Contributor
Editorial #:
613495854
Collection:
Corbis Historical
Date created:
January 01, 1937
Upload date:
October 07, 2016

[Lombro2]

What are the odds that the first and only (?) image of a donkey beside a grave that comes up in Google Images is from Liverpool?

Is this Michael Barrett's Donkey Photo--the one he said was in the "photo album" that he allegedly turned into a Ripper Diary?
A Pet Cemetery

A donkey pauses beside a gravestone at the pet cemetery of an R.S.P.C.A. home for animals in Liverpool. (Photo by © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images) by Anonymous


A donkey pauses beside a gravestone at the pet cemetery of an... News Photo - Getty Images

[Lombro2]

It was a dark and stormy night one wet weekend, Michael Barrett was thinking about the Hitler Diary and how he himself was a frustrated artist just like Adolf. Jack the Ripper, he thought, must be a frustrated artist too.

He also was probably a guy who felt inferior and liked the letter M and rooted for Manchester because Manchester is so manly with a Man Chest. That's why he liked to put Ms all over the place in Whitechapel. He probably had an M in his name too like Monty but not Monty. "Now if I could just find someone with the letter M in his name, I know I can write a Diary of Jack the Ripper."

He looked in all the indexes of his British History books and then remembered Tales of Liverpool which told the story of Florence Maybrick. Her husband was James Maybrick. It says he went to London in 1889 to visit his doctor. That's it! His name has an M and it has a brick like the Wentworth Buildings. He even has a famous artist brother. He's probably jealous of him.

"Oh Anne! Where's that old Victorian photo album you had? You know the one with the picture of the donkey on a grave!"

[Lombro2]

A forger would therefore be implying that Maybrick waited for an appropriate office journal and then used it to create a--shall I say it--Doppelganger.

You really can't make it up. It must be true.

Call it the Double Doppelganger Theory!

[Lombro2]

You and I probably just assumed James ripped the pages out and handed the sheaf of papers to Lowry like that. The author, of course, thought it through…

He removed the items from the original journal, including the business label on the inside cover. And then waited for a suitable alternate journal to stick them in. Before “returning” it.

[Iconoclast]

I thought so too. Imagine my shock when I read it was after.

The Diary does mention Lowry asking for the book “long before” the Kelly murder. It’s before his visit to Michael at the “end of June”.

So he’d have waited about six months before returning the pages and/or the “items” in them.

I put that one on a par with "Which is further west, Carlisle or Edinburgh?".

[Lombro2]

I'm fairly confident he wrote that long before the Kelly murder. Could be wrong, of course ...

I thought so too. Imagine my shock when I read it was after.

The Diary does mention Lowry asking for the book “long before” the Kelly murder. It’s before his visit to Michael at the “end of June”.

So he’d have waited about six months before returning the pages and/or the “items” in them.

[Herlock Sholmes]

I'm fairly confident he wrote that long before the Kelly murder. Could be wrong, of course ...

But, also, the diary author doesn't say that Lowry made him rip out the pages, does he?

[Iconoclast]

In the Diary, Lowry "makes him" rip out the pages after the MJK murder.

I'm fairly confident he wrote that long before the Kelly murder. Could be wrong, of course ...

[Lombro2]

I'm going with a pig's kidney.

The way Anne likes making porkers....

[Lombro2]

In the Diary, Lowry "makes him" rip out the pages after the MJK murder.

So if Maybrick was using the inside cover as a cutting board, then the stains obviously wouldn't get on his confession.

Barrett must have done the same. Good thinking! Leave just one page just in case it's still wet which it would probably be in his case.

[rjpalmer]

Sheep, pig, or human?

Knife drippings? Nice touch!

Robert Smith should have the stain tested if he has the courage of his convictions.

What are the odds? Human blood or flaxseed oil?

[Lombro2]

Sheep, pig, or human?

Knife drippings? Nice touch!