25 YEARS OF THE DIARY OF JACK THE RIPPER: THE TRUE FACTS by Robert Smith

[Herlock Sholmes]

There's a tenured professor of anthropology at Idaho state university, his name is Jeffrey Meldrum. That guy is a perfect example of why you shouldn't rush to the word of a scientist merely because they're a scientist, and the list goes on and on.

Seriously, look him up when you've got a spare minute and need a good laugh.

I'm not saying, and never have, that we should just take the word of one or two 'experts' on any given subject. I'm just saying that they shouldn't be dismissed off hand. Some have said things like 'you only have to read the text to know it's a forgery.'
There is, and I'm afraid always have been, a pervading air of desperation to disprove the diary. It started from the day it first appeared, before anyone had read it in full.
As I've said before, it could be a forgery, I genuinely don't know but what I do know is that it's definately not amateurish. Nowhere near amateurish. A diary that science cannot disprove. A watch that science cannot disprove. And yet it's still amateurish!
And we have Mike 'Professor Moriarty' Barrett, fooling document examiners, ink experts and graphologists, arranging choreographed conspiracies involving the owner of Battlecrease and a company of electricians.
Let's try and be unbiased

[Abby Normal]

His first use of "Sir Jim" happens well into the diary (pp 24-25 of the facsimile), when the diarist is fantasising about getting a knighthood. It's likely that the writer coined the nickname "Sir Jim" there and then, rather than using a nickname that Maybrick might have used.

Before I am finished all of England will know the name I have given myself. It is indeed a name to remember. It shall be, before long, on every persons lips within the land. Perhaps her gracious Majesty will become acquainted with it. I wonder if she will honour me with a knighthood.

[…]

Abberline says, he was never amazed,
I did my work with such honour.
For his decree
he had to agree,
I deserve at least an honour so all for a whim,
I can now rise Sir Jim

By p55, he's changed his nickname to "Sir Jack" for no apparent reason - for all the rhyming scheme is worth, he could have left it at "Sir Jim" and it wouldn't have made a ha'porth of difference.

Victoria, Victoria
The queen of them all.
When it comes to Sir Jack,
She knows nothing at all.
Who knows, perhaps one day
I will give her a call
...

...There follow various riffs on the "Sir Jack" idea, repetitiously and with crossings-out, for three pages. Indeed, "Sir Jack" has the last word (p57), as neither it nor "Sir Jim" seem to appear in the diary ever again. It would be reasonable to conclude from all this that "Sir Jim" had no personal significance to the writer, but was instead a convenient bit of whimsy inspired by his imagining Maybrick's musing about a knighthood, to which purpose "Sir Jack" served him equally well.

"I will give her a call"?

They had phones in 1888?

[Kaz]

I'm not saying, and never have, that we should just take the word of one or two 'experts' on any given subject. I'm just saying that they shouldn't be dismissed off hand. Some have said things like 'you only have to read the text to know it's a forgery.'
There is, and I'm afraid always have been, a pervading air of desperation to disprove the diary. It started from the day it first appeared, before anyone had read it in full.
As I've said before, it could be a forgery, I genuinely don't know but what I do know is that it's definately not amateurish. Nowhere near amateurish. A diary that science cannot disprove. A watch that science cannot disprove. And yet it's still amateurish!
And we have Mike 'Professor Moriarty' Barrett, fooling document examiners, ink experts and graphologists, arranging choreographed conspiracies involving the owner of Battlecrease and a company of electricians.
Let's try and be unbiased

The provenance has buried the diary from the get go..

Its very sad that it ever fell into mikes grubby hands.

I often wonder what would be made of it IF the electricians had just given it to the owner of battlecrease!!??

[Herlock Sholmes]

I find it staggering that you think it would take a genius to pen that diary.

It would have taken someone more than intelligent than Mike Barrett. That's all I meant. No one said a genius.

[Sam Flynn]

"I will give her a call"?

They had phones in 1888?

They did, although they were pretty new-fangled in the 1880s and by no means as numerous as they would later become. Be that as it may, you could well have found another anachronistic expression; I'd like to know when "giving someone a call" became part of the casual vernacular.

Edit: I found a history of telephony in Britain here http://www.britishtelephones.com/histuk.htm. It states, among other useful bits of info, that there were 13,000 telephones in use in Britain in 1884, and the first "long distance" trial took place in 1885 between London and - you guessed it - Liverpool. The Diary's lucky streak continues... even if its use of the expression "give her a call" still strikes me as potentially too "modern" for 1888.

[Elamarna]

The provenance has buried the diary from the get go..

Its very sad that it ever fell into mikes grubby hands.

I often wonder what would be made of it IF the electricians had just given it to the owner of battlecrease!!??

Here again you are accepting an argument which cannot be proven as fact.

My understanding is that we have time sheets showing when the floorboards were raised, however we have no proof that the item came from under the floorboards. It is a valid hypothesis, however it cannot be proven while those involved deny it.

Such is research, such is reality


Steve

[Mike J. G.]

I'm not saying, and never have, that we should just take the word of one or two 'experts' on any given subject. I'm just saying that they shouldn't be dismissed off hand. Some have said things like 'you only have to read the text to know it's a forgery.'
There is, and I'm afraid always have been, a pervading air of desperation to disprove the diary. It started from the day it first appeared, before anyone had read it in full.
As I've said before, it could be a forgery, I genuinely don't know but what I do know is that it's definately not amateurish. Nowhere near amateurish. A diary that science cannot disprove. A watch that science cannot disprove. And yet it's still amateurish!
And we have Mike 'Professor Moriarty' Barrett, fooling document examiners, ink experts and graphologists, arranging choreographed conspiracies involving the owner of Battlecrease and a company of electricians.
Let's try and be unbiased

I'm not necessarily saying that you shouldn't trust people in a certain field, or that they have no credibility, because they do. But the whole issue is that we're not dealing with a specific piece of disputable science. Hoaxes are not something that are easily tested and either proven or dis-proven. The whole idea of a hoax is to deceive, and we see people, including notable scientists, being deceived all the time.

No matter how many times people bring up how unlikely it would be for Barrett to deceive science, we have countless examples that prove that such a thing happens more often than you'd think.

Nessie, Piltdown man, Bigfoot, Cottingley Fairies, et, etc.

People also have an odd notion about what science is about. Science is not about disproving things, and I don't understand anyone who makes such a claim. Science is about proving things using verifiable and tested methods, and so far, nobody has proven that the diary was even written in the 1880's, never mind that it was written by Maybrick, nor that Maybrick was the Ripper.

If science were about disproving things, it'd still be stuck trying to dis-prove leprechauns.

[Mike J. G.]

It would have taken someone more than intelligent than Mike Barrett. That's all I meant. No one said a genius.

History is rife with examples that people seem to want to avoid acknowledging, though, Herlock.

Arthur Conan Doyle was fooled by a couple of little kids, lest we forget. Roger Patterson continues to fool scientists who want to be fooled to this very day, including the late Grover Krantz, Jeff Meldrum and many other notable names in science.

A hoax is devised to create deception. Deception is what happened.

[Kaz]

Here again you are accepting an argument which cannot be proven as fact.

My understanding is that we have time sheets showing when the floorboards were raised, however we have no proof that the item came from under the floorboards. It is a valid hypothesis, however it cannot be proven while those involved deny it.

Such is research, such is reality


Steve

If the electrician swore they took it? signed on oath, then what?

The naysayers would just come back with, "THEY WERE PAID OFF!"

We simply can't win...

but the coincidences are stacking up and up and up for the diary being the real deal!

[Abby Normal]

They did, although they were pretty new-fangled in the 1880s and by no means as numerous as they would later become. Be that as it may, you could well have found another anachronistic expression; I'd like to know when "giving someone a call" became part of the casual vernacular.

Thanks Sam

Considering it had only been invented approx. a decade earlier I find it hard to believe that someone writing in 1888 would use it as part of an expression, or know about or as you said, if it had even become a common phrase.

"I will give her a call" sounds rather modern to me, certainly not Victorian. Perhaps another example of Maybrick (or old hoaxer) using a phrase for the first time?!?

[Mike J. G.]

If the electrician swore they took it? signed on oath, then what?

The naysayers would just come back with, "THEY WERE PAID OFF!"

We simply can't win...

but the coincidences are stacking up and up and up for the diary being the real deal!

I hope this is tongue-in-cheek, lol.

[Mike J. G.]

Thanks Sam

Considering it had only been invented approx. a decade earlier I find it hard to believe that someone writing in 1888 would use it as part of an expression, or know about or as you said, if it had even become a common phrase.

"I will give her a call" sounds rather modern to me, certainly not Victorian. Perhaps another example of Maybrick (or old hoaxer) using a phrase for the first time?!?

Maybrick was the International Man of Coincidence.

He originated a few well-known phrases, drank in pubs before they came to be, was the world's most elusive killer, a successful cotton-merchant, wrote in two entirely different styles, rhymed, versed, and he was also poisoned in a well-known and much publicized case that also saw another first with Flo' being sentenced at St. George's Hall.

I'd not be a bit surprised to learn that Maybrick also invented the common net for a goal in football, instead of John Brodie.

[Sam Flynn]

Considering it had only been invented approx. a decade earlier I find it hard to believe that someone writing in 1888 would use it as part of an expression, or know about or as you said, if it had even become a common phrase.

Indeed, my trusty Google Book search finds its first match for the phrase "gave/give him/her a call" (in a telephone sense) in the latter half of the 20th Century. More firsts for Maybrick?

[Mike J. G.]

More firsts for Maybrick?

It's time for my poem again, me thinks!

The good Sir Jim,
he wasn't dim,
he invented expressions,
such as "one-off," he did.

He had two types of hand,
with which he would fool all the land.
A walking enigma, that you'd never understand.

"Tin match-box empty", he may well have listed.
He even drank in the 'Poste House' before it ever existed!

He was the Torso Man, and Saucy Jack,
he knew his way around London in the bitter pitch black.

The good Sir Jim,
Jack of all trades,
arsenic, strychnine and a butcher's blade.

A diary he wrote,
to explain all his deeds,
satisfying the questions and quelling the needs.

So a salute to Sir Jim,
please raise a toast,
to the fabled James Maybrick,
and his blotchy-faced ghost.


There's no way I could've written this, btw, I'm just a simple lad from Liverpool.

[Sam Flynn]

It's time for my poem again, me thinks!

The good Sir Jim,
he wasn't dim,
he invented expressions,
such as "one-off," he did.

He had two types of hand,
with which he would fool all the land.
A walking enigma, that you'd never understand.

"Tin match-box empty", he may well have listed.
He even drank in the 'Poste House' before it ever existed...


There's no way I could've written this, btw, I'm just a simple lad from Liverpool.

It's too clever, Mike. On a scale where your "funny little rhyme" scores 10, I'd score the diary's poems at 3, or 4 at the very most. This is purely on a comparative basis, of course, but I don't think it's an unfair comparison. The diary's poems are incredibly poor, and its prose isn't of a much better standard either.