Who was the author of the 'Maybrick' diary? Some options.

[Kaz]

There's only one person around here I think a fool, Kaz.

Keith Skinner doesn't need the likes of you trolling on his behalf.

I don't think Keith Skinner is a gullible fool, I think he is wrong about Anne's story. The last time I looked, there was no law against that. You're coming across as a silly child, you actually contribute nothing at all beyond sneering and scoffing. Is there a way I can 'mute' your posts so as to avoid wasting my time with a dull infantile troll?

Maybe if you didn't scoff and sneer yourself there'd be more of us contributing to the discussion?... you're disrespectful my ole flower!

Playing tag team with John...classy stuff.

[John G]

Hi John,

Shirley Harrison and Doreen Montgomery discussed the diary with Mike from the start, in the Spring of 1992, when he had supposedly only just acquired the scrap book to complete its creation. Others, like Paul Begg, Keith Skinner, Martin Howells and Paul Feldman, were discussing it with Mike at various points during 1993, well before his life fell apart and he finally claimed, in June 1994, to have authored it himself. None of the above, as far as I am aware, thought it feasible that he could have done this. Even Melvin Harris said he didn't have 'the capacity', although I'm not sure he ever actually spoke to Mike, so I don't know what informed his opinion.

Anne claimed that Mike was drinking heavily by 1988, but as others have pointed out, this need not have impaired his normal abilities to research and write unaided, of which little seems to be known, thanks to Anne tidying up his efforts. He did get sober in his later years, however, and wasn't always drunk as a skunk when making forgery claims, yet he never managed to produce a single piece of unaided writing, in or out of 'confession' mode, that remotely suggested he may once have had the right tools for the job. He could have been bluffing, of course, but if he pretended to be semi-literate all the time he was clinging to his 'dead pal' story, but then became genuinely semi-literate whenever he was desperate to prove otherwise, due to one too many ales, that must have been quite a feat, not to say very frustrating for him!

Love,

Caz
X

Hi Caz (again!),

Just to expand on my previous post. I've just been re-familiarizing myself with Shirley's book-I must confess I haven't read it for a number of years-and it is, of course, revealed that Anne tidied up Mike's newspaper articles.

[Henry Flower]

Maybe if you didn't scoff and sneer yourself there'd be more of us contributing to the discussion?... you're disrespectful my ole flower!

Playing tag team with John...classy stuff.

I don't care what you think.

[John Wheat]

Maybe if you didn't scoff and sneer yourself there'd be more of us contributing to the discussion?... you're disrespectful my ole flower!

Playing tag team with John...classy stuff.

But your contribution is largely non existent. Where is your evidence that Mike didn't fabricate the diary?

[Admin]

We have received report posts of personal attacks from this thread. Stop it. Since it is not limited to a single person and this thread seems poised to descend into personal sniping matches, the next person who indulges their spleen by engaging in a personal attack will get a one month vacation from the boards. Thank you.

Ps this admonition carries through all diary threads.

[caz]

it's irrelevant how he obtained the job as a freelance journalist, just as it's irrelevant as to his literacy skills. The fact is his name appears as the as the creator of the pieces published in the magazine. In other words the magazine has recognised that he was the author of those pieces. The articles must have been submitted in some kind of reasonable English, or else they would have went into the bin. By the way, you made the mildly mocking comment that DC Thompson are the publishers of The Beano. Well yes they are, but DC Thompson are a reputable publishing house, responsible for 200 million sales of newspapers, magazines, and yes comics per year, which include, The Sunday Post, The Dundee Courier, My Weekly, and The Scotsman to name but a few.

Hi Observer,

I thought anyone could call themselves a 'freelance' anything, without necessarily obtaining any regular paid work. But yes, of course everything submitted in Mike's name would need to have been of a good standard before accepted for publication, which is why, according to both Barretts, Anne had to step in and tidy up his celebrity interview articles. In fact, when Martin Fido saw the standard of Anne's research and written work, in a report she wrote for Shirley Harrison, he was 'flabbergasted' that she was not a professional researcher, and surprised that she would ever have 'let such a badly researched and misspelled document [as he described the diary] go out'.

If Anne was able to tidy up Mike's articles to a professional standard, it does rather beg the question 'what happened?' if she is also meant to have worked on the diary text and done her best to make JM come across as well educated and also well enough informed to have committed the murders.

Mind you, I have always felt the author was dumbing down to create the low, brutish character as portrayed in the diary, and therefore wasn't aiming for a carbon copy of the real JM or his handwriting, and certainly never intended for him to be a master of poetry or prose in his personal journal, along with all the murder and mutilation. Now that would have been fatal to any desire to have the diary taken seriously. Yet it seems to be condemned on those very grounds in some quarters, as if any hoaxer worth their salt should have written it to degree standard!

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Mike appears to be a kind of Walter Mitty character, whose statements often proved to be highly unreliable. For instance, according to Shirley Harrison he once made the bizarre claim that he was a member of MI5. He also said that he foiled an IRA attack and had been awarded the Queen's medal for gallantry. Suffice to say, anything Mike may have said should be taken treated with extreme caution.

Hi John,

Some people feel that if Mike could come out with such fanciful and ludicrous claims, fuelled by alcohol or not, then he was just the kind of person they'd expect to have forged Jack the Ripper's diary. I look at it the other way round. Since he was capable of making obviously false and boastful claims of this nature, why should we believe that his claims to have fooled Feldman, Harrison and co with a fake JtR diary were not more of the same? They were certainly received by Feldman, Harrison and co as obviously false and boastful.

Nobody ever asked or expected to see Mike's MI5 recruitment paperwork or gallantry medal, because nobody believed those fantasies for a moment, yet with nothing to show for when and how such a diary project came into being, or when and how all the research and writing was done, or when and how all the materials were obtained and what became of them, people can be totally convinced by Mike that this wasn't just another of his fantasies, but - to pinch a familiar line of his - the God's honest truth this time. If this had been a disputed painting, which had had the misfortune to end up in Mike's hands, owing to his contacts, I have little doubt he'd have turned his Turner into a Michael 'Mallord' Barrett if and when the going got equally tough for him, and we'd now be discussing his abilities with a paintbrush.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

But since when did Druitt - or Cream, JK Stephen, James Kelly, to mention but three others - attract such rabid adherents as Maybrick? And how many popular, oft-repeated documentaries or news articles have appeared in their name?

Who and where do you see all these 'rabid' adherents to Maybrick as the ripper, Gareth? There are far more modern/older hoax adherents posting daily on the message boards. And if Maybrick documentaries and news articles are relatively 'popular', doesn't that merely mirror the 'most popular' result here? You would surely not suggest it's because the same 'rabid adherents' watch each documentary over and over again, or buy fifty copies of each news article, to rig their popularity.

Love,

Caz
X

[Sam Flynn]

Mind you, I have always felt the author was dumbing down to create the low, brutish character as portrayed in the diary

I get precisely the opposite impression, Caz. To me, the author is trying to "dumb up", so to speak, but falls flat on his/her arse in the attempt.

[caz]

Hello Caz,
Hope things are going well for you...

Very well thanks, Cris. Hope it's the same for you.

How was the handwriting comparison done and by whom? If you might know.

I believe Sue Iremonger was supplied with samples of the Barretts' handwriting along with James Maybrick's, when she was asked to examine the diary handwriting. If she checked for any similarities, she apparently found none.

But I was thinking more about anyone who has seen the diary or facsimile since 1992, who has also had access at any time, from the Barretts' childhood upwards, to examples of their handwriting, in school exercise books, handwritten correspondence, job application forms, you name it. Nobody has ever piped up, to my knowledge, and said that, actually, they could see certain points of similarity in the letter formation, language use, sentence construction etc.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

I get precisely the opposite impression, Caz. To me, the author is trying to "dumb up", so to speak, but falls flat on his/her arse in the attempt.

Yes I know you do, Gareth. But would you have been any more impressed by a Liverpudlian cotton merchant and arsenic-eating mutilator of street sex workers, who displayed a word perfect A* work of creative writing worthy of the Booker Prize? And if so, why?

Love,

Caz
X

[Hunter]

Thank you, Caz.
Hope you have a fine weekend. I'm gonna try to.

[caz]

And you have so far presented no evidence that he couldn't. Considering all the bullshit and backtracking concerning the diary the onus is on those who believe Mike didn't fabricate the diary to prove it. As your one of the loudest voices saying Mike couldn't possibly have written the diary either give some evidence that he couldn't have possibly written it or shut up.

Nice.

If you were to pick on one of the men with mental health issues back in the ripper's day, who 'confessed' to the Whitechapel murders, and insisted he was guilty because he had admitted it, the onus would most certainly NOT be on me or anyone else to prove you were barking up the wrong tree, no matter how long and loud we might protest. It would be entirely down to you to provide the evidence that this man's confession was not just the desperate, self-destructive, attention-seeking fantasy of an ill man at the end of his tether, but provably true - or shut up.

That said, I'm not asking or expecting you to shut up on the subject of Mike's confession. You are merely invited to consider whether it just might have been the desperate, self-destructive, attention-seeking fantasy of an ill man at the end of his tether.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

When asked to give some evidence to back up that Mike didn't fabricate the diary your silence is deafening Caz

What? Because I actually have a life away from these boards, which means I can't sit here reading and responding immediately to each new post? Come on, John, give me a break. You previously told me to shut up and now I read that my silence has been deafening.

It must be equally deafening on the other diary threads, which I simply haven't had time to catch up with yet, and won't be doing so for some time to come, as I am taking a break next week to show my better half round the better pubs and sights of Liverpool. The diary saga will not be featuring.

Love,

Caz
X

[Henry Flower]

Life is too short to deal with morons like Kaz. I'm outta here.

Caz, it's a pity you didn't have the class to apologise for a real dick move.