Steps involved in making a modern diary forgery

[Tab]

Thanks for the welcome MayBea.

So it looks like number 3 is pretty elementary, even for someone back in the prehistoric days of the 80's.

Number 1 seems to have divided opinion. It seems that finding a suspect would be very time consuming. You could spend months researching someone only to find a glaring reason why they don't work, you'd then have to start from scratch with someone else. You could repeat this indefinitely until you are lucky enough to find someone that works. Is this really feasible? Would be an interesting experiment to try.

Tab

[Sally]

Hi Tab -Welcome to the forums.

1) Finding and researching a plausible suspect that no-one has heard of as yet and building a story and motive around that person and his/her life.
2) Finding an unused/mostly unused scrapbook, journal, photo album, notebook... from the late 19th century (or thereabouts).
3) Finding some ink that is consistent with ink used in the late 19th century, and doesn't contain any modern ingredient or contaminant.
4) Disguising your modern handwriting style (Not really sure about this one).
5) Not screwing up a really tiny detail somewhere when writing the whole thing that instantly gives the game away.

1] If that's what happened, the forger would have had to have been quite bright and extremely determined. Alternatively, he/she/they may have had an existing interest in Maybrick [or at least have been familiar with him] and one day thought to themselves [Hey, it'd be great if I/we could pass Maybrick off as JTR! Now, what will we need....?'

2] Not as difficult as you'd think.

3] To replicate convincingly would take in-depth knowledge. Then again, the Diary appeared in the wake of the Hitler Diaries; so perhaps the forger[s] thought a bit of effort was worthwhile?

4] Not really applicable. People writing regularly in the 19th C tended to develop their own style. It didn't always look 'Victorian'

5] Is this a problem? If the Diary is forged, then the forgers can put whatever they like in there. They need a reasonable working knowledge of the case, yes, to avoid any major boo-boos - but they can get away with being fairly general in what they include. At the same time they are at liberty to add whatever invented detail they like. Would such detail be regarded as evidence of forgery; or would they instead be regarded as new, previously unknown information? If the Diary was able to convince, then it'd be the latter.

Thanks for raising some interesting questions. I think it'd be an interesting experiment to see whether the Diary could be easily replicated - are you going to give it go?

[pinkmoon]

Don't forget the most important ingredient for the recipe ....a gullible public.

[Purkis]

Don't forget the most important ingredient for the recipe ....a gullible public.

But there was no gullible public was there? The Sunday Times had all but destroyed the story by the time Shirley Harrison's book was published, and I think you'd be hard pressed to find a member of the public who's even heard of the Diary these days.
If it was conceived as a hoax in order to make money out of a 'gullible public', well then it was a monumental failure in every respect.

[GUT]

But there was no gullible public was there? The Sunday Times had all but destroyed the story by the time Shirley Harrison's book was published, and I think you'd be hard pressed to find a member of the public who's even heard of the Diary these days.
If it was conceived as a hoax in order to make money out of a 'gullible public', well then it was a monumental failure in every respect.

G'day Purkis

By all the reports I have seen it actually made what I anyway would consider a good return.

[Purkis]

G'day Purkis

By all the reports I have seen it actually made what I anyway would consider a good return.

Really? For the diary of Jack The Ripper?
From the reports I have read, the main protagonist made a few grand and pissed it up the wall before paying his bills. Most involved just about broke even or made a modest return considering the work and the stress involved, while others went unpaid and one person lost everything, more, or less.

[GUT]

Really? For the diary of Jack The Ripper?
From the reports I have read, the main protagonist made a few grand and pissed it up the wall before paying his bills. Most involved just about broke even or made a modest return considering the work and the stress involved, while others went unpaid and one person lost everything, more, or less.

Some people here no a lot more about the diary than I do, at least one know Mike Barrett fairly well and from everything I have gathered they dd a lot better than break even, have been told that sales of Hardback approached 200,000 alone.

[Purkis]

Some people here no a lot more about the diary than I do, at least one know Mike Barrett fairly well and from everything I have gathered they dd a lot better than break even, have been told that sales of Hardback approached 200,000 alone.

'Ripper Diary' by Linder, Morris and Skinner is an excellent read, and very enlightening in terms of who made what out of the Diary. Basically, after the various legal battles, nobody made much money at all, and for years afterwards various parties (scientists and 'experts' who had been consulted) were billing the publisher for ridiculous amounts in the misguided belief that the Diary had made loads of money.

[pinkmoon]

As we have recently seen any attempt to put a name to jack the ripper causes a lot of people to short circuit their common sense I think this is what happend with the diary.As for the money side a lot of people got involved the glint of gold short circuited their common sense as well.

[Cogidubnus]

And yet I've just heard Tom Wescott on a podcast, stating that on a $16 paperback book, the author typically receives 35c, the real gains being made by the publisher...

Personally I'd be wary of claims that authors in a minority field like JtR can make a huge fortune...I think a nice little earner is possible if the book is good enough, but when the laborious intellectual process is analysed, the hourly rate probably doesn't look that good.

We're talking a limited sphere of interest here...not Tom Clancy or Lee Child stuff

All the best

Dave