On The Trail Of The Forgers

[Mrsperfect]

Don't believe it!

Hi. I read the diary when 1st published and I thought YUCK! I know that there are many people who Honest to God believe in its provenance and I've read the books and articles that support it.

But I welcome an author who has definitive proof that it is a forgery so we can lay it to rest. It wasn't Maybrick and some one who can lay that furphy to rest sooner than later...bring it on!

Best wishes
Det

G'day Cobbers

I thought I better explain what a furphy is, thanks to google............


The most distinctive product to carry the Furphy brand would certainly be the water cart. The presence of the cart in military camps in Australia during the First World War led to the name of Furphy becoming an indelible part of our language. The carts were typically placed near the latrine area, the only place in the camp where soldiers were out of the controlling eye of their officers allowing them the freedon to express their thoughts on the latest news that was, at best, unreliable. Known as a "Furphy" Water carts were used extensively in Europe and the Middle East to carry water to the troops. The drivers of the carts were notorious sources of information and gossip for the men as they moved from camp to camp. As could be expected, not all their news was reliable and so it was that the word Furphy rapidly became a synonym for suspect information or rumour.

So, if you've heard different, it's a complete furphy!

Regards,

Eileen

PS I thought it was impossible to prove a negative?

[detective abberline]

Who?

Who is the individual no one wants to mention?

Cheers

[detective abberline]

G'day Cobbers

I thought I better explain what a furphy is, thanks to google............


The most distinctive product to carry the Furphy brand would certainly be the water cart. The presence of the cart in military camps in Australia during the First World War led to the name of Furphy becoming an indelible part of our language. The carts were typically placed near the latrine area, the only place in the camp where soldiers were out of the controlling eye of their officers allowing them the freedon to express their thoughts on the latest news that was, at best, unreliable. Known as a "Furphy" Water carts were used extensively in Europe and the Middle East to carry water to the troops. The drivers of the carts were notorious sources of information and gossip for the men as they moved from camp to camp. As could be expected, not all their news was reliable and so it was that the word Furphy rapidly became a synonym for suspect information or rumour.

So, if you've heard different, it's a complete furphy!

Regards,

Eileen

PS I thought it was impossible to prove a negative?

Hello. Thanks for taking your time to explain to me what a furphy is. But still, if there is credible and I emphasize credible proof that Maybrick's diary is a load of...oops my lack of English is showing then more power to him. I bought the wretched thing when it was 1st published. What a waste of money. Not English money of course. But beware I will be in the midst of you later this year. I welcome serious discussion about serious suspects like Druitt. God bless him. He is still the front runner not arsenic ingesting losers from Liverpool.

Cheers

[Omlor]

More fun.

It has now been suggested elsewhere that secret evidence that has never been made public and has only been whispered about can nonetheless be used to let Mike and all other potential modern forgers "off the hook" and make the debate about their involvement "water under the bridge."

Here's the wonderful quote:

The Battlecrease documentation lets Devereux, Kane, the Barretts (and whoever A.N. Other may have been) off the hook for creating the thing, even though the police did the same job years ago. So it's all water under the bridge really.

The great irony of this invocation of unreleased and unpublished alleged evidence is that it was written by the very person who is here calling on Steve to release his unreleased and unpublished alleged evidence.

I love Diary World. First this Paul Butler character alleges that some unnamed modern ripper author researched and wrote about a Ripper suspect solely as a diversionary tactic "to deflect the limelight away from the diary," despite the fact that Paul obviously cannot support this ridiculous claim with even a shred of evidence, and then we are told that despite all the textual evidence and all the other indications, all possible modern forgers are now "off the hook" in any discussion because of secret evidence that no one is allowed to see.

One thing is for sure, Steve is certainly not out of place in this crowd. And this is just the thread the diary debate currently deserves.

--John

[Chris George]

Hello all,

While this is all amusing enough, I'd like to interrupt the festivities here to offer a public challenge. Since it concerns a sentence about the diary, I thought I'd post it here where the current diary chatter is taking place.

Elsewhere on the internet today I read a post by one Paul Butler. In it, he refers to, "a latter day ripper author 'fitting up' a very implausible hospital in-patient as some sort of attempt to deflect the limelight away from the diary!"

I would like here to challenge Mr. Butler (who I think also reads these pages) to name the author he is describing here and to offer one single piece of evidence of any sort that supports his claim that the author's work on another suspect was conducted as "some sort of attempt to deflect the limelight away from the diary."

This is a serious charge that Mr. Butler has made, suggesting that the work of a published author was written strictly as a diversionary response to the diary controversy. It implies that the motive behind the work was duplicitous and self-consciously dishonest.

So, Paul, let's see your evidence for this provocative claim. You're a brave man elsewhere, throwing out such a charge. Let's see you defend it. And if you can't, let's see you admit that you just made this whole thing up.

Put up or shut up,

--John

Hello John

I read this claim by Paul Butler on that other forum but because the statement was made among a number of other statements it slipped by me. The evidence is though that the late Melvin Harris was writing about and researching D'Onston as early as the 1980's, so that was before the Diary surfaced. He discusses D'Onston in his 1989 book, The Ripper File. On the other hand, he didn't give D'Onston a full book-long treatment until his 1994 book, The True Face of Jack the Ripper, a year after the appearance of Shirley Harrison's The Diary of Jack the Ripper. Perhaps the timing of the appearance of Harris's True Face gave Paul the impression that it was meant, as he says, "as some sort of attempt to deflect the limelight away from the diary". On the contrary, however, I think Mr. Harris published True Face because he deeply believed, rightly or wrongly, in the credibility of Roslyn D'Onston as the Ripper and not just as a counter to the Maybrick Diary.

Chris

[Omlor]

Hi Chris,

Thanks for setting the record straight. So Paul's claim that Melvin Harris "fitted up" someone as the Ripper in order to "deflect the limelight away from the diary" is simply false.

Well, that's not unusual, I guess.

It is a bit sad, though.

-- John

[Chris George]

Hi Chris,

Thanks for setting the record straight. So Paul's claim that Melvin Harris "fitted up" someone as the Ripper in order to "deflect the limelight away from the diary" is simply false.

Well, that's not unusual, I guess.

It is a bit sad, though.

-- John

Hi John

Glad my message helped.

To give Paul Butler the benefit of the doubt, he possibly was not aware that Melvin Harris wrote three books on the case, The Ripper File, Jack the Ripper: The Bloody Truth, and The True Face of Jack the Ripper, in which he slowly developed his case against Robert D'Onston Stephenson aka Roslyn D'Onston.

It's also true that, due to the vehemence of Mr. Harris's opposition to the Diary, the appearance of The True Face of Jack the Ripper on the heals of the original Diary book by Shirley Harrison might give the impression that Harris was trying to counter the candidacy of Maybrick.

In fact, that notion, though I believe untrue, might be partially supported by the fact that Harris spends part of True Face in publishing in that book appendices discussing the Diary and Maybrick's will. But in the end we would have to say that Harris's book stands by itself and is a book on the case against D'Onston independent of the author's opposition to the Diary.

Chris

[Omlor]

Hi Chris,

"To give Paul Butler the benefit of the doubt, he possibly was not aware that..."


Possibly. One would hope he was just making his claim (that a modern author deliberately "fitted up" an "implausible" candidate "as some sort of attempt to deflect the limelight away from the diary") without knowing all the facts.

One would hope that's all it was.

--John

[caz]

Hi Detective Abberline,

Stephen mentioned the man whose identity you seek. He is the only one who can say who he was calling a crook, a coward and a traitor.

It's up to Stephen to show he has the honesty, the balls and the principles to name this man.

Obviously if the man is no longer with us, Stephen has been dangling a slightly different kind of bait. But that will only let him off one type of hook.

Well, as long as we're picking out quotes...

"Someday, when the scientific tests of the diary's paper, ink and age have been definitively concluded, a genuine expert will work with a responsible publisher to produce a study that thoroughly examines all these possibilities."

Written December 12, 1993.

"Someday...."

--John

Yeah, the problem being how to distinguish a genuine expert from the other kind. We'd need a genuine expert to do that, and then we'd need another genuine expert to say that one was genuine, but if we knew we had a genuine expert to do that, we would be able to recognise other genuine experts and we wouldn't then need a genuine expert to do it for us, in which case we would have the genuine expertise to find our own genuine expert, which none of us apparently has - and so on.

Love,

Caz
X

PS Oh and John, your comparison between unpublished diary documentation which Keith Skinner and I have seen, and the provably false bilge that Stephen Powell has been spouting about Feldy and others has been duly noted. I notice you are also quicker to condemn Paul Butler, for daring to suggest that the late Melvin Harris used one of his implausible D'Onston theory books to give the diary a good and timely bashing, than you are to condemn Stephen Powell, for repeatedly insisting that the late Paul Feldman ruined himself financially, ruined his health and ruined his marriage, 'researching' the origins of a document which he himself had planned to create. Your comparison criteria could do with a tweak or six hundred.

[Ally]

Caz,

That's kind of a disingenuous comment. I remember you excoriating Harris and to a lesser extent Stewart Evans back in the day for having evidence they claimed to be proof positive of the Diary's origins, and refusing to say what it is. And yet now you are doing the same thing. Shouldn't you hold yourself to the same standards you held Harris back in the day?

[Omlor]

Well, I'm glad something I wrote here has now been "duly noted."

But let's be clear about one thing.

Paul Butler did not "suggest that the late Melvin Harris used one of his implausible D'Onston theory books to give the diary a good and timely bashing."

Paul Butler wrote that Melvin Harris deliberately "fitted up" an "implausible" suspect just to "deflect the limelight away from the diary." That's nonsense Caroline. And you know that's nonsense. The fact you can't simply say that, the fact you feel you have to argue otherwise, is telling, to say the least.

And I certainly do not buy your idea that we will never be able to find a genuine expert to do a thorough analysis of the diary using the latest available technologies and produce definitive results. But I'm not surprised you believe that. It explains a lot.

Fifteen years later,

--John

[Jenni Shelden]

i was thinking wouldn't it be nice if we didnt discuss this nonsense at all?

[ellen]

Mr.Powell, please lay out your case in plainspeak.

I am willing to listen to you, but you must lay out your ideas/opinions/arguments in a clear concise manner.

Please drop the bad poetry and use bullet points. Maybe, this way, you could convince rational people that you have something they should listen to.

I hope you do not take offense by my post as I meant none. I truly would like to make sense of your ideas/private knowledge, etc. It seems even Shirley Harrison thinks you have a kernel of truth somewhere, but no one can figure it out in all that mush you've been serving up.

So, please, lay your thought out clearly and maybe you'll gain some converts.

[Steve Powell]

A Recipe for Mush.

Howdy Ellen in Indiana,
Thanks for having a listen, that's all I ever asked for here.
I 've tried to lay out my position on the 'case'
in a way that it would attract attention.
Attention not to myself - as I don't give a fig about that -
but for the truth of the provenance of the diary.
Sure, I 've written bad poetry, put dog's heads on people,
made comics and used Oswald as a patsy for Maybrick,
but I told Anne Graham back years ago that I would
'give it a real good go' on trying to get people to realize
that the diary is just a cheap hoax forgery,
by her and my old English mate, Steven Park,
with the help of several others.
And the 'mush' that I've been serving up?
It's made with real meat.
I also hate bullet points and guns for that matter.
The only way I've been able to write in a 'clear concise manner'
is in the book I am currently writing about it, because,
If I write two lines on the casebook here,
I have to write two-hundred lines after that to quantify the original two,
and it takes up too much time, energy and patience to do that, constantly.
I make no excuses for my way of getting my message across
and realize it drives some people nutso (like Notso),
but heck Ellen, some people understand it better
with a comic or 'bad' poetry.
As for 'converts?'
I'm just pointing in the right direction,
the trail you take is your own decision.
Nice to hear from you Ellen.

Steve Powell
thu28feb2008

[caz]

Caz,

That's kind of a disingenuous comment. I remember you excoriating Harris and to a lesser extent Stewart Evans back in the day for having evidence they claimed to be proof positive of the Diary's origins, and refusing to say what it is. And yet now you are doing the same thing. Shouldn't you hold yourself to the same standards you held Harris back in the day?

Unfortunately Ally, the cat's out of the bag in my case isn't it? It's a bit pointless for me to pretend he was never let out.

There is a clear distinction, however, between evidence that would have killed the diary stone dead and stopped anyone trying to write about it, profit from it, or dream up ever more fanciful theories about it, had it emerged and successfully exposed the diary's creator(s), and evidence that can only confirm where the diary came from and when, but not who really did create it or why.

Love,

Caz
X