Private sale

[Lechmere]

Jenni
I chose marginalist precisely because it is a play on words!
I remove you from the ranks of the marginalists.

However I do think that you were showing signs of being one - but it would not be productive to go through this thread picking out examples from your posts.

I actually did start this thread to discuss if there was more information on the collection's disposal not to regurgitate all the arguments over the authenticity - and I have other topics I want to discuss. I thought this would be shortish thread - although I obviously anticipated some backwash.

Heyes
Fisherman
You live in the land of Trolls surely!
Aren't you used to this sort of thing?

[Fisherman]

Heyes
Fisherman
You live in the land of Trolls surely!
Aren't you used to this sort of thing?

I´m getting there, Edward - I´m getting there ...
Fisherman

[Ally]

Jenni

However I do think that you were showing signs of being one - but it would not be productive to go through this thread picking out examples from your posts.

So this is your definition of "marginalist":

• In the context of this thread it was someone who does not address any of the points made in criticising the Marginalia and the process of its testing.

Who did not address any of the points made in criticizing the marginalia? I believe everyone who has posted here has addressed the points. The fact that most find your points ridiculous does not mean they have gone unaddressed.

• Instead they attack the critics of the Marginalia in a rude and personal manner based on their own pre-loaded prejudices, as exhibited by the repeated asking of the same question even when it had obviously been answered and the wilful misinterpretation of what was said in that answer – again based on their own preconceived and invariably inaccurate notions of what the poster (usually but not always me) meant.

By that definition you are a marginalist.

• It means failing to accept that when one of their repetitive questions is answered, that it is answered honestly, again because of their own preconceived notion of what is motivating the other person.

See above.

• It means being rude and aggressive without provocation.

Ditto

• It means the inability to concede a single point, even to the extent of agreeing to disagree.

Seriously were you filling out a personality profile when you wrote this list?

• It means looking through pages of posts for one stray or clumsily worded expression to somehow prove some obtuse point.

...

• It means adopting the role of ‘attack dog’ which in internet forum terms does not mean being a dog. It means defending their own standpoint by aggressively attacking anyone who puts forward a contrary notion to drown out their criticisms with personal abuse and misrepresentation.

And you have NEVER done this, right? Don't make me go back to several of your posts where I can find examples of that exact thing. You were one of the very first/ maybe the first to start the getting personal by describing people disagreeing with you as showing "coyness and irritation". Or was that your idea of flattery?

[Chris]

Trevor Marriott

Sorry, but I'm going to keep asking until I get an answer.

You need to explain why you publicly claimed that there was a "conclusive" finding by a handwriting expert that the marginalia were not written by Donald Swanson, when you knew that statement to be untrue.

[Trevor Marriott]

Trevor Marriott

Sorry, but I'm going to keep asking until I get an answer.

You need to explain why you publicly claimed that there was a "conclusive" finding by a handwriting expert that the marginalia were not written by Donald Swanson, when you knew that statement to be untrue.

See there you go again you really must try to stop asking questions when your back is against the wall and you have no answer to questions or facts you have been confronted with

The past is behind us. However as i have said what was said had the desired effect it panicked those connected to the marginalia into hastily bringing Dr Davies back for a second go. And after a second go his report is still inconclusive.

I remember Adam Wood saying to me that when the article came out in Ripperolgist I would be the only one left who would not accept it as being authentic. I hope he hasn't choked on those words.

So where does the Swanson family go now with the book. I guess those who advised him in the first instance have now beat a hasty retreat and left Nevil in a quandary as to what to do with the book. Because no one in their right mind is going to pay mega bucks for it as it stands.

Get Nevil to give me a call I might just be able to resurrect something from the damage caused by those advisers who clearly had their own agendas which in some we have seen before with regards to others issues in Ripperology

One question to you because i know you know the answer

Did Dr Davies charge a fee for his services ?

[Ally]

The past is behind us. However as i have said what was said had the desired effect it panicked those connected to the marginalia into hastily bringing Dr Davies back for a second go. And after a second go his report is still inconclusive.

The past is behind us? That's your excuse for not making right? So every murderer, rapist, extortionist and thief should just be allowed to go on their merry way because "the past is behind us". What kind of effing cop were you? What kind of moral compass is that?

You basically just stated that you out and out lied just to engender some sort of response in a group of people completely unrelated to anything? And you want to hold yourself up as the beacon for the path forward for "truthful ripperology"??

Are you kidding me?

[Chris]

However as i have said what was said had the desired effect it panicked those connected to the marginalia into hastily bringing Dr Davies back for a second go.

I very much doubt that your lie had any such effect. That would have been the case only if anyone involved took you seriously, which I don't think they did even then.

But thank you for telling us why you lied.

[AdamNeilWood]

I remember Adam Wood saying to me that when the article came out in Ripperolgist I would be the only one left who would not accept it as being authentic. I hope he hasn't choked on those words.

Don't worry, I'm quite well thanks. But if you can point me in the direction of where I said that, and also the phrase "You will then be the only person on the planet that does not believe it is totally genuine" as you quote me as saying in your new book, I'd be very grateful.

[AdamNeilWood]

However as i have said what was said had the desired effect it panicked those connected to the marginalia into hastily bringing Dr Davies back for a second go.

And as I have said, perhaps you can describe the chain of events which really led Dr Davies to conduct a second examination.

[Jenni Shelden]

[QUOTE=Lechmere;275732]Jenni
I chose marginalist precisely because it is a play on words!
I remove you from the ranks of the marginalists. [QUOTE]

Hi Ed,
thank you very much, apology accepted

best wishes
Jenni

[AdamNeilWood]

For the first report, the annotated copy of ‘The Lighter Side Of My Official Life’ together with a notebook that had belonged to DS Swanson as a control sample, was sent to the Metropolitan Police’s Forensic Science Service, where Dr Davies examined it.
This was in 2006, very soon after the book had been loaned to the Scotland Yard Crime Museum.

For clarification, the green-bound notebook sent to Dr Davies along with the annotated Lighter Side formed part of the small collection loaned to the Crime Museum - it was not supplied for testing by the Swanson family separately. The two items were sent to Dr Davies for examination by the Museum's then Curator Alan McCormick.

This was an arms length investigation with distance between the examiner and the principals – Ripperologists, the family and also as the Metropolitan Police had only just obtained the book on loan there was no established Met link. Remember Dr Davies works for the Met.

He did at the time, but left the Met in 2010.

Dr Davies was personally contacted by Adam Wood in 2012 in order to carry out a second test essentially to get a new opinion on the shaky text in the light of new documents being discovered. Dr Davies went to Bill Swanson’s house to conduct the test and Adam Wood was also present.

Dr Davies had a room to himself, with Bill Swanson and myself in another part of the house.

By this time the Marginalia occupied centre stage at the Scotland Yard Crime Museum and had influenced the Met website to push Kosminski as the lead candidate along with the implication that Scotland Yard had in effect sussed out whodunit.

With Dr Davies leaving the Met in 2010 and the Swanson collection removed from the Crime Museum three months before the second examination, there was no link to the Met at all at the time of this new test.

Dr Davies accepted a letter dated 1923 as being in similar shaky style to the shaky text and in essence gave the Marginalia a clean bill of health.
I would suggest that the 1923 letter should not just be accepted at face value, that it in turn should be tested.
Dr Davies seems to have discounted the possibility that the Marginalia and associated documents could be more than a clumsy attempt at forgery – a slightly more sophisticated effort in other words – where a deliberate attempt at copying had been made.

Do you have a problem with Dr Davies accepting the green-bound notebook at face value as a control sample for his first examination?

There is a further coincidence that the News of the World journalist who we are told dealt with the first attempt at publication, Chares Sandell, died in August 1987.
In late September 1987 Jim Swanson contacted the Telegraph about publishing a story about the Marginalia.

It has already been established that Jim Swanson contacted the Telegraph as a result of them publishing stories on the Ripper.

Was the version of the Marginalia that the Telegraph saw in 1987 the same as the version the News of the World saw in 1981?
Proof of this hangs on the veracity of the unpublished article that was found in the Scotland Yard Crime Museum. If it can be shown to be genuine then it will go a long way towards establishing the bona fides of the Marginalia itself.

Lastly – as Trevor accurately pointed out, given the controversy and given the need for caution as outlined above (under option 3), a second opinion on the handwriting using essentially the same methodology as used by Dr Davies would be extremely beneficial.
I have been recommending that this would best be carried out as part of a process of selling the collection via a reputable auction house and Adam seems to have indicated that this is a possibility.

It was established from the day the Swanson family decided to sell that the collection might be sold through a reputable auction house.

[Observer]

Leaving aside hand writing comparisons to determine whether the marginalia is genuine or not, I'd like to make a couple of points.

I think I'm correct in stating that the marginalia came to light shortly before the 100th anniversary of the Ripper murders. Should Mr Swanson want to fake the marginalia, would he (in the late 1980's) be aware that a police seaside home existed ? I believe not.

Secondly, for a relatively small sum of money, would Mr Swanson risk prosecution for fraud? I think not.

I believe the marginalia to be genuine.

[pinkmoon]

Leaving aside hand writing comparisons to determine whether the marginalia is genuine or not, I'd like to make a couple of points.

I think I'm correct in stating that the marginalia came to light shortly before the 100th anniversary of the Ripper murders. Should Mr Swanson want to fake the marginalia, would he (in the late 1980's) be aware that a police seaside home existed ? I believe not.

Secondly, for a relatively small sum of money, would Mr Swanson risk prosecution for fraud? I think not.

I believe the marginalia to be genuine.

Got to remember there was a lot of publicity about the hundred year anniversary I bet a lot of people on here first became interested in this case during that time.I always expected some fake notes regarding macnaughtons "private information" to turn up after 100 year anniversary I certainly wasn't expecting a diary from Liverpool a few years later.I think because of this diary business any document will be treated with scepticism I remember when Mr Stewart p Evans published he rather excellent book shortly after the diary turned up I thought old letters from an old book shop here we go again but Mr Evans book turned out to be a well reasearched and genuine piece of work.Also you will have to admit that IF the handwritten notes are forged in the Swanson book then the motive could be quite simple MONEY.

[Lechmere]

Thanks for the clarification of a number of issues Adam.

I hadn’t appreciated that Dr Davies was no longer working for the Met in 2012. That shows you should always read the forward!
This doesn’t affect the possibility that Dr Davies was sub consciously influenced by his past association with the Met, which includes the book’s association with the Crime Museum in the recent past. Furthermore the company for whom he acts as a consultant, Forensic Access Limited, works closely with the police.

I had remembered you saying that Dr Davies was left alone on a room to conduct his study.

It is interesting that you ask about the green bound ledger or notebook which was used as the basis for comparison with the first test. Because while I was typing the post that you are referring to it made me consider whether that was a valid or rather, totally safe, basis for comparison. As I recall the notes were mostly written in the 1880s - but came from the same Swanson collection.
The safest comparison would be with Swanson’s reports in the Public Record Office but I suspect that there may be difficulties in obtaining access to the originals – which I presume were in Swanson’s hand and not copied by a clerk.

With respect to the timing of Jim Swanson’s approach to the Telegraph, who is to say it was not influenced by his hearing of Sandell’s death just a few weeks before? It could of course just be coincidental that the person who he had dealings with at the News of the World, and so far as we are aware the only ‘outsider’ who knew the content of the Marginalia, had just died.
I just pointed out the coincidence, just as it may be purely a coincidence that Sandell’s unused article turned up in the Crime Museum in July 2011, the same month the News of the World went out of business and the same month a collection of other News of the World-Marginalia related documents were discovered.

[Observer]

Got to remember there was a lot of publicity about the hundred year anniversary I bet a lot of people on here first became interested in this case during that time.I always expected some fake notes regarding macnaughtons "private information" to turn up after 100 year anniversary I certainly wasn't expecting a diary from Liverpool a few years later.I think because of this diary business any document will be treated with scepticism I remember when Mr Stewart p Evans published he rather excellent book shortly after the diary turned up I thought old letters from an old book shop here we go again but Mr Evans book turned out to be a well reasearched and genuine piece of work.Also you will have to admit that IF the handwritten notes are forged in the Swanson book then the motive could be quite simple MONEY.

I'm aware of the publicity surrounding the case back in 88. I remember it well. I think I'm safe in saying though that none of the experts in the field at the time, let alone amateurs like I, had an inkling that a police convalescent home in Brighton even existed in 1888. How then would Mr Swanson, should he hope to perpetrate a hoax, know of it's existence?