Patricia Cornwell

[Jeff Leahy]

Absolutely Stewart many thanks...

I would imagine that this is the area Keith Skinner is researching but I guess you would have a better idea than I.

We will have to wait for the Next Addition of PC's book..which will not have the title 'case closed' on the cover.

Lets at least give Keith the courtesy of finding out....

If Sickert did Hoax letters that would open up a big can of worms.

Jeff

[Stewart P Evans]

Gurney Ivory Laid

The 'Gurney Ivory Laid' watermarked letters did not appear in the first edition (2002) of Cornwell's book, but do appear in the paperback edition (2003), as stated. Cornwell's researcher located some Sickert letters in California and three of them, written on his mother's stationery, bore the above watermark. According to Cornwell Peter Bower's discovery was that the three Sickert letters and two 'Ripper letters' come from 'a batch of twenty-four sheets of stationery with the watermark Gurney Ivory Laid. Bower reached this conclusion as, according to him, the manufacturers of this writing paper 'made relatively short runs of papers such as stationery, the sheets roughly guillotined to size and then folded and divided into quires of twenty-four sheets. Each individual quire of paper was then given a final trim in a hand-fed guillotine. Every guillotining would produce very slightly different turns. The match between the short edge cuts of the four identified sheets shows they came from the same quire of paper ... [or] group of 24 sheets.'

Put simply Peter Bower claims to have identified two Ripper letters and three Sickert letters as coming from the same batch of manufacturer's paper as identified by the pattern of the guillotine cut to the paper (which would be unique to that batch of 24) if you follow me. We are, apparently, not told the dates that these letters were written. A further Sickert letter was discovered in the British Library, written around 1890, which was addressed to a Miss E Case who had invited Sickert and his wife to a social event. Sickert's reply, apparently, is on the same Gurney Ivory Laid paper from the same batch of 24 as the two other Sickert letters and two Ripper letters on GIL paper.

This is all according to Peter Bower and is mainly based on the guillotining cut pattern on the edge of the paper. A claim is also made that four of the City letters signed 'Nemo' on Joynson Superfine paper were written by Sickert who used 'Mr Nemo' as a stage name. I am not sure how the positive identification was made here as on the next page of the book the phrase 'probably match' is used in relation to two of the Nemo letters and with the other two the phrase 'definitely matches' is used. There then follows a breakdown of Ripper-related letters claimed to have been written by Sickert which I would recommend a study of should anyone be that interested.

Peter Bower, I am not aware that he is a professor, is undoubtedly a paper expert and highly experienced. He knows more about paper than I ever will. Personally I remain unconvinced and I doubt that Sickert wrote any Ripper-related letter.

[Jeff Leahy]

Good point you include in your post Pirate Jack.
Particia Cornwell is not stupid.
EXACTLY.
A woman fully in control of mind and words.
By the way......
Wasn't it fraudulent when she put the words "case closed" into print, clearly stating them on her book,then failed to deliver the ultimate outcome within it's pages?

Yes anna that is largely what this discussion is about..since making this claim Patricia has stated that she has no intension of putting case closed on her next book....an olive branch perhaps?

The piont stands that the discovery made by Peter bower asks the question did sickert involve himself in teh case IE Hoax Letters?

[Jeff Leahy]

Hi Jeff,

I would hate to waste my time presenting a point that is incorrect when there are still so many other reasons Bower's claims are ridiculous. The points about it being scientifically impossible for anyone to look at cuts on a sheet of paper and make a eyeball decision to determine that they came from the same 24 sheets, especially without submitting the pages to double blind protocals and verification from other researchers, still stand, of course. Professor Bower and his wife also still have a long list of other bizarre claims that completely contradict what the experts not on Cornwell's payroll say.

Please can you give names of these experts you claim contradict Peter Bower?

PS I have just checked the English edition also Marked 'Fully Updated"

P224: His amazing discovery is this: three Sickert letters written on his mothers stationery and two Ripper letters come from a batch of twenty-four sheets of stationary with the watermark GURNEY IVORY LAID

[anna]

Good point you include in your post Pirate Jack.
Particia Cornwell is not stupid.
EXACTLY.
A woman fully in control of mind and words.
By the way......
Wasn't it fraudulent when she put the words "case closed" into print, clearly stating them on her book,then failed to deliver the ultimate outcome within it's pages?

[Dan Norder]

Hi Jeff,

My memory of the images and arguments Cornwell had in her paperback were that it was the Openshaw letter she said came from this batch and that had the mitochondrial-DNA results that were not not a match. If she's arguing for some other alleged Ripper letters entirely then there's no reason at all for anyone to care that the paper came from the same manufacturer (which is all the watermark would prove anyway), especially when Sickert would then have used paper from every large manufacturer in London, which narrows nothing down at all. I'm sorry if I gave Cornwell and Bower more credit than they deserved when it came to trying to argue for a reasonable chain of evidence between documents instead of a scattershot grab bag of unrelated documents. If I've mislead people on which watermarks were in question than I am glad for the correction. I would hate to waste my time presenting a point that is incorrect when there are still so many other reasons Bower's claims are ridiculous.

The points about it being scientifically impossible for anyone to look at cuts on a sheet of paper and make a eyeball decision to determine that they came from the same 24 sheets, especially without submitting the pages to double blind protocals and verification from other researchers, still stand, of course. Professor Bower and his wife also still have a long list of other bizarre claims that completely contradict what the experts not on Cornwell's payroll say.

[JSchmidt]

Not to spoil anything but if I may quote Mrs. Cornwell's book
"The A Pirie & Sons watermarks we found on Sickert stationery include a watermarked date of manufacturing, and the three partial dates on the Ripper letters with the A Pirie & Sons watermark are 18 and 18 and 87. The 87, obviously, is 1887. "

[Dan Norder]

Hi Stewart,

I was pretty sure it was you who had posted it, but I didn't want to put you on the spot by mentioning it if you didn't have time to find it and post it again. Thanks for that.

[Jeff Leahy]

You're a good guy, Jeff, so I'm gonna say that if you want to pick out a poster to lock horns with, you're better off picking someone other than Dan. You could argue that the sun is hot and he'd somehow prove you wrong. In any event, we drew names and it's your turn to go have fun with Perry Mason. Sorry, chap.

Yours truly,

Tom Wescott

Yes Tom this is sought of part of the problem. Dan Norder argues that the sun isn't hot, bully's and presses his piont home, and a little clique of casebook posters follow along behind, without ever contacting their own brains or considering if actually the sun might be extremely HOT indeed? Which I can assure you it is...FACT.

The documents Dan Norder has cited and shown photographs of and which he claims to be the documents which Peter Bower says came from the same batch of 24-sheets are watermarked PIRIE AND SONS. But the Sickert and Ripper letters which Peter Bower in fact says come from the same batch of twenty-four sheets are watermarked GURNEY IVORY LAID.

It would seem that Norder has based his conclusions on an assessment of the wrong documents – presumably documents he ASSUMED (asumption being the Mother of) were being discussed, and Norder did not question his own assumption but confidently and perhaps arrogantly maligned PETER BOWER, even though Peter Bower is a highly respected forensic paper historian who has written extensively about watermarks and is unlikely to have made such a fundamental slip as failing to notice that the watermarks were from different years?

Yet you all pile in behind Dan, screaming and shouting about nasty old Patricia Cornwell and how horrible shes been about you all (Seven Years ago), and none of you have ever stopped to consider basic's...Patricia Corwell might be many things but STUPID she at least is not. (and neither are her lawyers).

Where as you guys appear to have staked your reputations on a man that clearly makes his arguements up as he goes along, throws rediculus sweeping and unsubstanciated comments about..largely against people who have forgotten more about the case than he will ever know.

Source: The above information in fact comes from the US paperback edition of Patricia Cornwell’s book – the one with ‘Now Updated with New Material’ on the jacket, in which Patricia wrote on pg. 173: ‘Almost impossible to dismiss are discoveries Bower made after the initial publication of this book. Dr. Anna Gruetzner Robbins discovered a small number of Sickert letters at a Getty Research Institute in Santa Monica, California, and I went to see them. I made measurements of the stationery, described watermarks and the paper and sent the information to Bower. He was excitd enough about what he saw to travel from London to the Getty Institute and examine the original letters. His amazing discovery is this: Three Sickert letters written on his mother’s stationery and two Ripper letters come from a batch of twenty-four sheets of stationery with the watermark Gurney Ivory Laid.’

So let me spell this out GURNEY IVORY LAID..

Now all go back and check the water marks again...

Norder’s confident assertions about Peter Bower are based on inadequately researched and under-informed assumption. Which leaves me with the question how many other Dan Norder assumptions have you all backed your Ripperology veiws and reputations behind?

Anyway I beleive that is 'Game Set and Match'

I trust you will all at least give Keith Skinner the 'benefit of the doubt' from now on, and at least LISSEN to what he has to say...he is after all a major force in Ripperology..where as Dan Norder is apparently Not.

It will be interesting to see if Dan Norder is big enough to apologuise?

Jeff

[The Good Michael]

Yup. And the fine distinctions of Scottish, Irish and Welsh might be relevant to the people who live in the UK, but to the rest of the world, they're all just English.

Ally,

I don't know about that. I always refer to those of Scottish and Welsh heritage as the Greater British, and to the Irish as the Beyond British, but what do I know?

Mike

[Ally]

Yes I am aware of that. If you read the thread, you would see that I was replying to Grave Maurice's comments that "all Americans are known as yanks" and making a corollary with UK people. If we are all yanks, you are all English. The comment wasn't meant to be taken literally.

[truebluedub]

Ally,
point of info the Irish are not British unles they were born in NI. We don't even have an ethnic identity of Britishness thanks to the brainwashing of the Irish education system, which prevents us from developing a hybridised Irish identity.
Kind Regards
Chris Lowe

[Cap'n Jack]

'we may return to a more productive relationship'.

Such is my honest and urgent desire also, Stewart.

[Stewart P Evans]

Watermark

Unfortunately the only images I have access to are the ones Cornwell provided in the hardback version of her book. Other than a small section that was trimmed off while doing my quick scans, those are the only parts of the watermarks that her images show.
I may be mistaken, but I think at some time in the past someone else had posted a better image of the Openshaw letter watermark, but I don't have that. Perhaps someone else might provide that.

Dan, I photographed the watermark in the Openshaw letter a long time before Patricia Cornwell even knew that the letter existed.


(Image copyright S P Evans)

[The Grave Maurice]

...but to the rest of the world, they're all just English.

Yikes. It's a good thing all the Brits are asleep right now, or you'd be hearing from them.