Did Mike Barrett 'lift' Two Lines from the Michael Caine Miniseries?

[rjpalmer]

Abberline, Abberline, Abberline -- from the so-called Diary of Jack the Ripper



Let me say, by way of introduction, that it has long been suggested that the Maybrick Diary’s unidentified hoaxer may have owed a debt to the 1988 Michael Caine miniseries Jack the Ripper—primarily due to its depiction of Frederick Abberline.

‘Maybrick’ of the diary is obsessed with Abberline—he mentions his name over two dozen times and even writes poetry about him. It is fair to say that Maybrick is a monomaniac on the subject.

But this obsession has struck many as a modern trope. While Michael Caine's character dominates the miniseries, the Whitechapel Murder investigation of 1888-1889 was very much a team effort. The contemporary press refers to a wide range of policemen and police officials hunting the Ripper: Sir Charles Warren, Chief Inspector Donald Swanson, Dr. Robert Anderson, H-Division’s local Inspector Edmund Reid, J Division’s Inspector Joseph Helson, Inspector McWilliam of the City Police, the police surgeons Drs. Phillips and Blackwell, and others of less rank including Thicke, Spratling, Chandler, etc. A deranged monomaniac could have latched onto any one of these men.

Yes, Abberline was ‘seconded’ from Scotland Yard to help the local plod in September 1888---but so was Inspector Henry Moore, and Moore would even continue the investigation after Abberline’s departure in 1889.

Judging by the anonymous Ripper letters sent to the police and to the press in 1888, the one man who overwhelmingly captured the public’s imagination (and allegedly ‘Jack the Ripper’s’ imagination) was Sir Charles Warren---over 30 surviving anonymous letters are either addressed to Warren or directly mock him—no other policeman comes close. In thumbing through Evans & Skinner's Letters from Hell, Abberline is mentioned only once in the trove—but one can say the same thing about Chief Constable ‘Dolly’ Williamson, Police Magistrate Saunders, Sir James Fraser, etc.

In truth, Abberline’s prominence is a product of the 1960s and 70s. Early ‘Ripper’ books do not mention him. Carl Muusmann’s 1908 Hvem var Jack the Ripper? only mentions Sir Charles Warren, as does Leonard Matters’s classic, The Mystery of Jack the Ripper (1929). Edwin Woodhull’s When London Walked in Terror (1937) doesn't mention Abberline either-- even though Woodhull does refer to Warren, Macnaghten, Henderson, and Swanson.

The first author to put Abberline in a starring role was Donald McCormick in The Identity of Jack the Ripper (1959/1962). McCormick’s justification was the now ‘lost’ (and almost certainly fictious) Dr. Dutton’s Diaries which allegedly contained notes of conversations between Dutton and Abberline. Stephen Knight took up the baton in The Final Solution (1976) which, of course, led to the Michael Caine miniseries twelve years later. This 1988 miniseries even has Abberline investigating the Kate Eddowes murder in the City of London jurisdiction—a historical inaccuracy that is mirrored in the diary’s text, where the reader sees Abberline holding back a clue from the Eddowes investigation, which in truth was headed by Inspector McWilliam.

Although the diary’s debt to the Michael Caine miniseries has been theorized before, I’d now like to make a further suggestion: that the hoaxer ‘lifted’ two lines from the dialogue.

In recently watching the film after many years, one scene struck me as oddly familiar…

It involves the murder of Mary Jane Kelly.

More in a minute, while I load the clip...

[rjpalmer]

Here is “Maybrick’s” description of the murder of Mary Kelly (Harrison hardback, p. 242):





“I have read about my latest. My God the thoughts, the very best. I left nothing of the bitch, nothing. I have placed it all over the room…”

[rjpalmer]

The idea that the remains of Mary Kelly were placed ‘all over the room’ is not born out by Dr. Bond’s report.

This myth can be traced to a dubious interview given by Inspector Henry Moore to the American journalist Richard Harding Davis in late August 1889 (reprinted in the PMG on 4 November 1889) but the idea that the victim’s flesh was left dangling from picture nails, etc. crept into the literature when it was repeated by Donald McCormick (1962) and Peter Underwood (1987).

I’ll return to this in a moment, but of more immediately concerned is the line I have highlighted:

“I left nothing of the bitch, nothing.”

This snarling boast is somewhat effective, but it doesn’t make a heck of a lot of sense.

Yes, the murderer carved up Mary Kelly horribly, but except for (possibly) her heart, he did leave her in No. 9 Miller’s Court.

As horrific as the murder was, this was no ‘inhalation’ murder committed by John Haigh, ‘the acid bath’ murderer’ of the 1940s who reduced his victims to a slimy residue; nor Buck Ruxton (the ‘Jigsaw Murder’ of 1935 who so completely dismembered his wife and maid, scattering their remains, that only tiny fragments were ever found); nor the American murderer Herman Mudgett and his French counterpart, Marcel Petiot—two monsters who cremated their victims in ovens, literally leaving ‘nothing’ but ashes and unidentifiable bone fragments.

In brief, Maybrick leaving ‘nothing’ isn’t an automatic or readily apparent way of describing the murder of Mary Kelly.

Indeed, there must be a hundred ways a hoaxer could have described Ripper’s horrific glut.

With this in mind, we now turn to the corresponding scene in the Michael Caine miniseries.
For the most part, the director David Wickes avoids gore. The miniseries is no ‘slasher’ film. The Kelly murder is only shown for a fragment of a second as Thomas Bowyer peeks through the window. The scene flickers so briefly across the screen that one’s eyes can’t entirely take it in, so the viewer must rely on Bowyer’s own (entirely fictional) description of what he had witnessed.

This comes at the 56:47 mark in Part 2. The audience sees Scotland Yard officers huddled outside of the room in Miller’s Court. A stunned Inspector Abberline walks from the room, his face pale, while another officer brings Thomas Bowyer (played by the actor David Ryall) over to be interviewed.

The camera then shows a close-up of a clearly upset and daze Bowyer who mutters in horror:

“Nothing left, nothing left of her.”


The link below shows the relevant 18 second clip:

https://www.youtube.com/clip/Ugkx97h3xNjy-BrubP6nqBaubS6yZ1qHurko?si=-8q0OVEjG4FN8f8F

[rjpalmer]

The memorable line utter by Thomas Bowyer:

“Nothing left, nothing left of her.”

becomes, in ‘Maybrick’s mouth:

“I left nothing of the bitch, nothing.”

The similarity is striking.

But note also Bowyer’s preceding line:

“these bits all over the room, down the walls'

become in the diary:

"I left it all over the room"

It’s as if the Diarist took the two lines, repeated them in reverse order, with only slight alterations.

“I left nothing of the bitch, nothing. I left it all over the room…”

‘Bits’ becomes ‘it’—perhaps a defect of memory by Mike Barrett or because Barrett found ‘it’ more effective.

Together, these entirely fictional two lines by Bowyer are very similar to the corresponding passage in the diary.

I can find no other source for these two lines---contemporary or non-contemporary.

So the question I pose is this.

What are the odds that 'Maybrick' (or a contemporary hoaxer from 1889) would briefly describe the Mary Kelly murder this way, and by pure coincidence, 100 years later the same phrasing would appear in the most popular 'Ripper' film of all-time?

A miniseries that, we shall see, re-aired in Liverpool only weeks before the diary turned up?

[rjpalmer]

Back in 2018, Keith Skinner kindly sent me the following message:

“Anne [Graham] had given me this information (about watching the 1988 Michael Caine television programme with Mike) very early on when I was trying to establish how much interest either she or Mike might have had in Jack the Ripper prior to that first telephone call from Mike ‘Williams’ Barrett to Doreen Montgomery on March 9th 1992.”

(Casebook, 'Acquiring a Victorian Diary,' 01-24-2018 at 09:57 PM)

Thus, we know that Mike (and Anne) had watched the Michael Caine miniseries before anyone had laid eyes on the ‘Diary of Jack the Ripper.’

If Barrett was the hoaxer, one possible objection is that there was a three-and-half year gap between the miniseries airing on British television and when Barrett brought the diary to London in April 1992.

If the diary was a very recent concoction (as suggested by Joe Nickell, among others) would Barrett have been able to remember two lines from a 1988 miniseries?

Possibly not, but a television schedule published in the Liverpool Daily Post in 1992 reveals a significant fact: the Michael Caine miniseries re-aired in Liverpool on the night of Tuesday, 14 January 1992.

This was only a little over eight weeks before Barrett called the London literary agent, Doreen Montgomery, informing her he had the Diary of Jack the Ripper.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Excellent observations Roger. As you say, the similarity in what was written in the diary when compared to what Bowyer said in the mini-series couldn’t stand out more. Likewise the second quote. The chances that those two quotes were taken directly from the mini series by our forger have to be high.

I doff the deerstalker in your direction Mr. Palmer.

[rjpalmer]

Hi Herlock,

It might be worth mentioning that there was one other scene, also in Part Two, that raised my eyebrows. It’s not quite as startling as the first example, because if the hoaxer used it, he took more care to cover his tracks.

At about the six minute-and-a-half minute mark, a demonstrative Abberline (rather ridiculously from a historic point-of-view) lectures the local plod of J-Division.

Here’s the short clip:

https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxGokeMTttcVySlmBNHi0GAF_kulN6LsSA?si=gpx99KYgtr GqvXDf

"Now he must be drenched in blood. Pints of it.”

Compare to the diary:

“I have not allowed for the red stuff, gallons of it in my estimation. Some of it is bound to spill onto me. I cannot – allow my clothes to be blood drenched, this I could not explain to anyone least of all Michael.”


(This comes before ‘Maybrick’s’ first London murder. He is eager to start his campaign while visiting London, but at the last moment he realizes he hasn’t ‘allowed’ for the blood).

‘Pints’ is changed to ‘gallons.’ Admittedly, ‘drenched’ might be an obvious choice of words to describe having pints/gallons of fluid on one’s clothing, but so would ‘soaked,’ ‘doused,’ ‘logged,’ ‘swamped,’ ‘deluged,’ ‘sopping,’ ‘sodden,’ ‘splashed,’ etc.

(Further on, there is a memorable scene when Abberline throws a bucket of water onto the floor to demonstrate how little blood it takes to make a large pool—he then admits there had only been two pints in the bucket).

Rather clumsily, the diarist never expands on his worry about being ‘drenched’ in blood, nor explains how he solved this problem. As fiction, it’s rather poor—he breaks Chekov’s famous rule that if a dramatist mentions a gun, the gun better go off before the end of the play. It’s as if the hoaxer just brought up the idea almost as padding but doesn’t know—nor bothers to explain—the answer to his troubles.

(In the Caine miniseries, the lack of blood was explained by the Ripper using a coach).

Cheers.

[Geddy2112]

Abberline, Abberline, Abberline -- from the so-called Diary of Jack the Ripper

Let me say, by way of introduction, that it has long been suggested that the Maybrick Diary’s unidentified hoaxer may have owed a debt to the 1988 Michael Caine miniseries Jack the Ripper—primarily due to its depiction of Frederick Abberline.

I wish the dairy has said 'George, get me a razor...' Love that line.

It involves the murder of Mary Jane Kelly.

It is strange how Chinese Whispers get passed down through the generations (apart from Lechmere's family of course. ) Like well before the 1970s my nana would use the term 'Royal Jack' in a threatening way. I doubt she had read any books on the subject. I can also remember picking up a book in a London Hotel in the late 70s, early 80s and asking my mother if the picture in the book was real, it was of Mary Kelly. I thought this was Sutcliffe as at the time I thought he was the original Ripper, not someone from 1888. My mother claimed it was not a real picture because she'd understood Mary Kelly had all her intestines hung around the room like some awful Christmas decoration. Of course it was the real crime scene picture but shows how 'strong' passed down tales can be.

I also remember the 'Mary Kelly' shot in the 1988 miniseries giving me the creeps, not as much as those 'two-faces' mixing together, that really freaked me out. In those days it was VHS so you could not get a decent freeze frame even though I tried. It was not until DVD times you could get a decent freeze frame and to be honest if you have seen it it's a fairly poor representation of the murder, I believe it's at 90 degrees to what it should be, an obvious shop dummy splashed in overly red paint if I remember correctly. But it was poor, probably took someone ages to create for what, a split second it was on the screen haha. Still a brilliant movie.

Great work on the spot RJ... awesome.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Hi Herlock,

It might be worth mentioning that there was one other scene, also in Part Two, that raised my eyebrows. It’s not quite as startling as the first example, because if the hoaxer used it, he took more care to cover his tracks.

At about the six minute-and-a-half minute mark, a demonstrative Abberline (rather ridiculously from a historic point-of-view) lectures the local plod of J-Division.

Here’s the short clip:

https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxGokeMTttcVySlmBNHi0GAF_kulN6LsSA?si=gpx99KYgtr GqvXDf

"Now he must be drenched in blood. Pints of it.”

Compare to the diary:

“I have not allowed for the red stuff, gallons of it in my estimation. Some of it is bound to spill onto me. I cannot – allow my clothes to be blood drenched, this I could not explain to anyone least of all Michael.”


(This comes before ‘Maybrick’s’ first London murder. He is eager to start his campaign while visiting London, but at the last moment he realizes he hasn’t ‘allowed’ for the blood).

‘Pints’ is changed to ‘gallons.’ Admittedly, ‘drenched’ might be an obvious choice of words to describe having pints/gallons of fluid on one’s clothing, but so would ‘soaked,’ ‘doused,’ ‘logged,’ ‘swamped,’ ‘deluged,’ ‘sopping,’ ‘sodden,’ ‘splashed,’ etc.

(Further on, there is a memorable scene when Abberline throws a bucket of water onto the floor to demonstrate how little blood it takes to make a large pool—he then admits there had only been two pints in the bucket).

Rather clumsily, the diarist never expands on his worry about being ‘drenched’ in blood, nor explains how he solved this problem. As fiction, it’s rather poor—he breaks Chekov’s famous rule that if a dramatist mentions a gun, the gun better go off before the end of the play. It’s as if the hoaxer just brought up the idea almost as padding but doesn’t know—nor bothers to explain—the answer to his troubles.

(In the Caine miniseries, the lack of blood was explained by the Ripper using a coach).

Cheers.

That’s another interesting one Roger. I don’t know if you can get the whole script for the entire series here?

https://www.scripts.com/script/jack_the_ripper_11114

[Abby Normal]

Abberline, Abberline, Abberline -- from the so-called Diary of Jack the Ripper



Let me say, by way of introduction, that it has long been suggested that the Maybrick Diary’s unidentified hoaxer may have owed a debt to the 1988 Michael Caine miniseries Jack the Ripper—primarily due to its depiction of Frederick Abberline.

‘Maybrick’ of the diary is obsessed with Abberline—he mentions his name over two dozen times and even writes poetry about him. It is fair to say that Maybrick is a monomaniac on the subject.

But this obsession has struck many as a modern trope. While Michael Caine's character dominates the miniseries, the Whitechapel Murder investigation of 1888-1889 was very much a team effort. The contemporary press refers to a wide range of policemen and police officials hunting the Ripper: Sir Charles Warren, Chief Inspector Donald Swanson, Dr. Robert Anderson, H-Division’s local Inspector Edmund Reid, J Division’s Inspector Joseph Helson, Inspector McWilliam of the City Police, the police surgeons Drs. Phillips and Blackwell, and others of less rank including Thicke, Spratling, Chandler, etc. A deranged monomaniac could have latched onto any one of these men.

Yes, Abberline was ‘seconded’ from Scotland Yard to help the local plod in September 1888---but so was Inspector Henry Moore, and Moore would even continue the investigation after Abberline’s departure in 1889.

Judging by the anonymous Ripper letters sent to the police and to the press in 1888, the one man who overwhelmingly captured the public’s imagination (and allegedly ‘Jack the Ripper’s’ imagination) was Sir Charles Warren---over 30 surviving anonymous letters are either addressed to Warren or directly mock him—no other policeman comes close. In thumbing through Evans & Skinner's Letters from Hell, Abberline is mentioned only once in the trove—but one can say the same thing about Chief Constable ‘Dolly’ Williamson, Police Magistrate Saunders, Sir James Fraser, etc.

In truth, Abberline’s prominence is a product of the 1960s and 70s. Early ‘Ripper’ books do not mention him. Carl Muusmann’s 1908 Hvem var Jack the Ripper? only mentions Sir Charles Warren, as does Leonard Matters’s classic, The Mystery of Jack the Ripper (1929). Edwin Woodhull’s When London Walked in Terror (1937) doesn't mention Abberline either-- even though Woodhull does refer to Warren, Macnaghten, Henderson, and Swanson.

The first author to put Abberline in a starring role was Donald McCormick in The Identity of Jack the Ripper (1959/1962). McCormick’s justification was the now ‘lost’ (and almost certainly fictious) Dr. Dutton’s Diaries which allegedly contained notes of conversations between Dutton and Abberline. Stephen Knight took up the baton in The Final Solution (1976) which, of course, led to the Michael Caine miniseries twelve years later. This 1988 miniseries even has Abberline investigating the Kate Eddowes murder in the City of London jurisdiction—a historical inaccuracy that is mirrored in the diary’s text, where the reader sees Abberline holding back a clue from the Eddowes investigation, which in truth was headed by Inspector McWilliam.

Although the diary’s debt to the Michael Caine miniseries has been theorized before, I’d now like to make a further suggestion: that the hoaxer ‘lifted’ two lines from the dialogue.

In recently watching the film after many years, one scene struck me as oddly familiar…

It involves the murder of Mary Jane Kelly.

More in a minute, while I load the clip...

double post lol

[Abby Normal]

The memorable line utter by Thomas Bowyer:

“Nothing left, nothing left of her.”

becomes, in ‘Maybrick’s mouth:

“I left nothing of the bitch, nothing.”

The similarity is striking.

But note also Bowyer’s preceding line:

“these bits all over the room, down the walls'

become in the diary:

"I left it all over the room"

It’s as if the Diarist took the two lines, repeated them in reverse order, with only slight alterations.

“I left nothing of the bitch, nothing. I left it all over the room…”

‘Bits’ becomes ‘it’—perhaps a defect of memory by Mike Barrett or because Barrett found ‘it’ more effective.

Together, these entirely fictional two lines by Bowyer are very similar to the corresponding passage in the diary.

I can find no other source for these two lines---contemporary or non-contemporary.

So the question I pose is this.

What are the odds that 'Maybrick' (or a contemporary hoaxer from 1889) would briefly describe the Mary Kelly murder this way, and by pure coincidence, 100 years later the same phrasing would appear in the most popular 'Ripper' film of all-time?

A miniseries that, we shall see, re-aired in Liverpool only weeks before the diary turned up?

the similarities are amazing. too much for to be a coincidence imho. good find rj

que diary defender refutation nonsense

[erobitha]

the similarities are amazing. too much for to be a coincidence imho. good find rj

que diary defender refutation nonsense

More interesting is the undeniable coincidence of the 9th of March 1992. This case is choc full of them.

[Geddy2112]

That’s another interesting one Roger. I don’t know if you can get the whole script for the entire series here?

Crikey, even from memory that is not very accurate. Unless it's altered for the final cut...

[mpriestnall]

"My name is Jack the Ripper. Not a lot of people know that!"