The Curious Case of History vs. James Maybrick

[Iconoclast]

Honestly Icon, I think this post exemplifies exactly why people have been giving you such a hard time. The logical leaps that must take place for all of those things to be true in the GSG puts your theory in the realm of black arts, the killing sites making symbols, and the royal conspiracy. It is, to put it frankly, an outrageous claim that on many levels is asinine to even propose.

I think back to the very famous case of a guy who found hidden messages in the bible predicting world events. He had a lot of people who thought he was full of bunk, so he issued a challenge. Find the assissination of a prime minister in moby dick and he will believe them. I'm sure you can see where this is going. People did just that. Not just assassinations of prime ministers but also JFK, MLK, and multiple others.

The simple truth of the matter is, when allowed to flip reverse, morph, read into, and exegarate letters and words you can find all sorts of things. There is no court of law that would allow any of the GSG stuff. And yet you list it (if I remember correctly) as the 2nd strongest reason for Maybrick as the Ripper. Not only is it a huge stretch to begin with but then on top of that it isn't even based off of the actual GSG but a copy written by someone else who may or may not have copied it completely accurately or with even proper spacing and on the right lines.

It all adds up to the entire argument being beyond preposterous. It isn't allowing the evidence to form your opinion. It's trying to warp the evidence to fit your opinion. No completely objective person would attempt to do any of the ludicrous and ridiculous stuff presented here. I also feel if you honestly stood back and tried to objectively look at the evidence as well you would feel the same way.

I realize this is very frank but the reason I took the time to type this isn't because I'm mad at you or I hate you. It's actually the opposite. You seem like a decent person who spent a lot of time on a theory and is somewhat put off by the reaction you have gotten. You come across as a pretty alright guy in most of your posts, especially in how you have handled the criticisms for the most part.

I have no idea if my post will make any difference to you or if you will even take it how I truly mean it, but I thought it important to lay out very clearly one of the main reasons that your original post was met with such vitriol.

Dane, don't sit on the fence, mate - tell me exactly what you're thinking.



Seriously, don't give it another thought - you think X is preposterous and I think X is possible. Nothing to lose sleep over. In reality, I can take more vitriol than any man alive - I was just trying to be nice is all.

Personally, I am comfortable that James Maybrick was Jack the Ripper. I happen to feel that a fair explanation of the GSG was that he was titillating himself by inserting his family into the crime scene on Sep 30. I happened to notice that the official Met Police transcription of the GSG yielded those names. I observed the statistical implausibility of that being the case whether it were true or not, and finally added that the hand of the GSG is evidenced in the journal. All I can use is the evidence that has passed down the years.

Here is the actual report itself (the one Warren attached to his Nov 6 1888 letter to the Home Office).



Someone more knowledgeable than I (shouldn't be difficult to find) will confirm for us if there is independent evidence supporting this being a felicitous transcription, but for now I think we can confidently say that this is the official version of the GSG, whether it was transcribed accurately or not.

PS Obviously the real issue here is why on earth this attachment has loaded properly when the other didn't.

[Iconoclast]

Here. To show I'm not trying to just be a jerk I'll even show the image for you. Sorry it looks like it does but Im on my iPad so it's the way I had to do it.

Edit: might have found a way to get it reasonable.

I appreciate it, Dane - and honestly enjoy the exchanges ...

[Iconoclast]

Prior to the discovery (if that's the right word) of the 'Diary', the name of James Maybrick had never once been linked to The Ripper Murders ...
Graham

That's because he was a middle class Liverpool cotton merchant, you know.

Next time there's an arsenic-addicted serial killer on the loose, the Police will be straight up (or down) the M6, fishing in the Mersey, I promise you.

Just because he came to light in 1991-3 genuinely doesn't preclude him from being Jack.

Your Friend,

Iconoclast

[Sam Flynn]

[ATTACH]16996[/ATTACH]

I'm doing everything in Ally's post (from Sam) and your post, but it just puts a link in to the file rather than the actual image.

It does that for PDFs - it's only images that get automatically displayed. Saving the PDF as an image file would have worked, I'm sure.

[Iconoclast]

It does that for PDFs - it's only images that get automatically displayed. Saving the PDF as an image file would have worked, I'm sure.

Cheers Sam - that makes sense. I imagine that is how Dane fixed it.

[Iconoclast]

Honestly Icon, I think this post exemplifies exactly why people have been giving you such a hard time. The logical leaps that must take place for all of those things to be true in the GSG puts your theory in the realm of black arts, the killing sites making symbols, and the royal conspiracy. It is, to put it frankly, an outrageous claim that on many levels is asinine to even propose.
...
...

It all adds up to the entire argument being beyond preposterous. It isn't allowing the evidence to form your opinion. It's trying to warp the evidence to fit your opinion. No completely objective person would attempt to do any of the ludicrous and ridiculous stuff presented here. I also feel if you honestly stood back and tried to objectively look at the evidence as well you would feel the same way.

Dane,

Your post rattled around in my head for an hour or so until I finally remembered where I had heard it all before. From the video of The Diary of Jack the Ripper, on the subject of 'Juwes' making 'James in the GSG:

Martin Fido [obsessive diary-debunker, slightly right of Attila the Hun in his views]: To try to turn it into a James Maybrick message is to produce sheer, raving nonesense and anyone who holds it up as proof that the diary is genuine is going to be seen as barking mad. [No doubts where he stood on the matter, then, and probably representative of every Ripperologist/crime writer in town?]

Cut To:

Colin Wilson [Ripperologist and crime writer, bucking the trend slightly]: I don't think the 'Juwes' on the wall making 'James' is at all silly. On the contrary, you know, I think it's just one more little piece of evidence.

I don't think Colin Wilson was viewed as preposterous, Dane - but by implication of your post he surely would be (not as preposterous as I, of course, but getting there all the same).

If it is possible that 'Juwes' was James Maybrick's attempt to place his name in the records, then the rest of his message must yield some intentionality also. That's the position I took when I first sought to pursue the point, and I was not disappointed, nor - to be honest - terribly surprised. The rest of the GSG was Maybrick's attempt to place all of his significant adult family in the record. I don't think this is at all silly. On the contrary, you know, I think it's just one more little piece of evidence.

Icon

[Hatchett]

Hi,

Not to be picky, but you started this thread as submission in a court of law, but now you are resorting to blind speculation which would never been admitted into a court.

I think by doing this you have to admit that Maybrick has to be innocent, in law and in reasonable application of the law.

Best wishes.

[Dane_F]

Dane,

Your post rattled around in my head for an hour or so until I finally remembered where I had heard it all before. From the video of The Diary of Jack the Ripper, on the subject of 'Juwes' making 'James in the GSG:

Martin Fido [obsessive diary-debunker, slightly right of Attila the Hun in his views]: To try to turn it into a James Maybrick message is to produce sheer, raving nonesense and anyone who holds it up as proof that the diary is genuine is going to be seen as barking mad. [No doubts where he stood on the matter, then, and probably representative of every Ripperologist/crime writer in town?]

Cut To:

Colin Wilson [Ripperologist and crime writer, bucking the trend slightly]: I don't think the 'Juwes' on the wall making 'James' is at all silly. On the contrary, you know, I think it's just one more little piece of evidence.

I don't think Colin Wilson was viewed as preposterous, Dane - but by implication of your post he surely would be (not as preposterous as I, of course, but getting there all the same).

If it is possible that 'Juwes' was James Maybrick's attempt to place his name in the records, then the rest of his message must yield some intentionality also. That's the position I took when I first sought to pursue the point, and I was not disappointed, nor - to be honest - terribly surprised. The rest of the GSG was Maybrick's attempt to place all of his significant adult family in the record. I don't think this is at all silly. On the contrary, you know, I think it's just one more little piece of evidence.

Icon

Hello Icon,

You are completely free to believe whatever you want and to take whatever logical leaps you think probable.

As Hatchett points out however, and was one of my points in the post you quoted, none of this GSG stuff would ever be admitted into court. Since your original post was as presenting it to a jury that is how I took it and responded.

When you boil down everything to its core the case against Maybrick is based: 1) around a diary not in any of his known handwriting, missing pages, which cannot even be proven to be his and is inconclusive as to whether it is even from the period and quite possibly a hoax. 2) writing on a wall which possibly has no link to JTR, if link is accepted has no visible connection to Maybrick at all, no actual picture of it even exists and the contemporary records of it contradict each other, and any link can only be established based off of flipping, rotating, and rearranging letters seeming at random to present whatever message the person wants to. 3) A watch that has some carvings in it that don't even list all of the proposed victims that he supposedly killed possibly being linked to one of his old friends.

This wouldn't even make it to trial much less come back a guilty verdict. If I were looking to build a circumstantial case around any suspect, Lechmere would have 100x a stronger argument simply because he was actually known to be the first person to discover a body.

[GUT]

Hello Icon,

You are completely free to believe whatever you want and to take whatever logical leaps you think probable.

As Hatchett points out however, and was one of my points in the post you quoted, none of this GSG stuff would ever be admitted into court. Since your original post was as presenting it to a jury that is how I took it and responded.

When you boil down everything to its core the case against Maybrick is based: 1) around a diary not in any of his known handwriting, missing pages, which cannot even be proven to be his and is inconclusive as to whether it is even from the period and quite possibly a hoax. 2) writing on a wall which possibly has no link to JTR, if link is accepted has no visible connection to Maybrick at all, no actual picture of it even exists and the contemporary records of it contradict each other, and any link can only be established based off of flipping, rotating, and rearranging letters seeming at random to present whatever message the person wants to. 3) A watch that has some carvings in it that don't even list all of the proposed victims that he supposedly killed possibly being linked to one of his old friends.

This wouldn't even make it to trial much less come back a guilty verdict. If I were looking to build a circumstantial case around any suspect, Lechmere would have 100x a stronger argument simply because he was actually known to be the first person to discover a body.

In fact would most like get the prosecutor assigned to traffic court, (if they were really lucky).

[Iconoclast]

Hello Icon,
3) A watch that has some carvings in it that don't even list all of the proposed victims that he supposedly killed possibly being linked to one of his old friends.

Not in any great disagreement on your points, Dane - opinions differ, go figure, etc..

But I'm sure there were 7 sets of initials in the watch corresponding (one assumes) to the seven women he believed he killed.

I'm probably wrong on that but I'll check it anyway ...

Your old mate,

Icon

No - looks like it was just the canonical five ...

[Dane_F]

So I did some word search of my own on the GSG. Some will be shocked at what I found.

[Dane_F]

Not in any great disagreement on your points, Dane - opinions differ, go figure, etc..

But I'm sure there were 7 sets of initials in the watch corresponding (one assumes) to the seven women he believed he killed.

I'm probably wrong on that but I'll check it anyway ...

Your old mate,

Icon

Let's assume there were 7. What were the dates of the 7 murders? Did any of the "non C5" happen before the GSG (I'm pretty sure at least one did)? If so then that would kinda blow the whole 4-0 thing out of the water. He would have claimed all the murders up to that point, not just the canonical we think of now.

[GUT]

So I did some word search of my own on the GSG. Some will be shocked at what I found.

I always thought it was Dane.

[Iconoclast]

So I did some word search of my own on the GSG. Some will be shocked at what I found.

Very good - I like it!

[Iconoclast]

Let's assume there were 7. What were the dates of the 7 murders? Did any of the "non C5" happen before the GSG (I'm pretty sure at least one did)? If so then that would kinda blow the whole 4-0 thing out of the water. He would have claimed all the murders up to that point, not just the canonical we think of now.

Dane, the 4-0 represents 'win' as in ed-win.