Let's discuss the watch!

[Caroline Morris]

Here you go, Paul.

Take it away...

Love,

Caz
XXX

[Paul Butler]

Here you go, Paul.

Take it away...

Love,

Caz
XXX



Thanks Caroline, I’ll kick it off then.

The circumstances of the watch and it’s scratches coming to light as it did, just as Shirley Harrison’s book was going to press got it off to a really bad start. The coincidence of Albert discovering the scratches in the way he said he did understandably caused deep suspicions.

This seems to have been interpreted by many as some sort of “open season” to knock the poor thing in any way they could, and some absolute tripe has been said over the years by people who really should know better. Some of it still being repeated today, which is really disappointing.

It would be good IMHO to try and sort some of the wheat from the chaff now.

A good place to start might be the “sex” of the watch. To hear that this is still being queried after all this time is most odd. If this most basic point can’t be cleared up really easily then I don’t hold out a lot of hope!

Right from the start it was being claimed that the Maybrick watch was a lady’s watch. Throughout my working life I have been involved in the repair and restoration of mechanical antiques, clocks, music boxes, Gramophones and the like. I am not a watchmaker, but have had literally hundreds of Victorian watches through my hands over nearly 30 years.

Albert’s watch is an English, Lancashire made, mid 19th century, good but not exceptional 18 carat gold cased full plate fusee lever for those that care! It is provably a male one and would NEVER have been worn by a lady. Whoever picked this one out as raw material for his or her hoax, if that’s what it is, made a damned good choice.

Victorian lady’s watches were known as fob watches and are a helluva lot smaller and worn either on a neck chain, a breast fob or chatelaine around the waist. If anyone can find any old pictures of Victorian ladies wearing a waistcoat with watch and chain I’d love to see them (Music Hall Male impersonator acts excluded!)

I think it’s a shame the watch has taken a back seat to the Diary for so long. It’s been tested three times by two separate labs, and the findings are all consistent with each other. Something you could never say about the Diary tests!!!

I wonder what might have happened if the Diary had never come to light and all we had was the watch?

Regards to all,

Paul.

[Robert Linford]

Hi Paul

I'm thinking of Sherlock Holmes and his examination of the watch belonging to Watson (I think Watson's brother turns out to have been an alcoholic). So, does this watch show any sign of arsenic-induced abuse?

Robert

[Mr. Poster]

Hi ho

It’s been tested three times by two separate labs, and the findings are all consistent with each other.

Well now two of those tests were by the same chappie?

he's not likely to want to be seen contradicting himself now is he?

But.....two different labs produce similar results.

Although one lab had access to at least some of the results of the other lab which, to my mind, was a bit questionable but saying that, I am assuming the Johnson man had no motives in showing it to the second lab (assuming it was he who brought it along or something).

But in general, it is usually my opinion that University related labs tend to produce slightly better results for a number of reasons.....

p

[SirRobertAnderson]

I think it’s a shame the watch has taken a back seat to the Diary for so long. It’s been tested three times by two separate labs, and the findings are all consistent with each other. Something you could never say about the Diary tests!!!

Thanks for your post, Paul. Bear in mind that the samples used for the AFI tests didn't come directly from the Diary. :noidea:

[Paul Butler]

Hi Paul

I'm thinking of Sherlock Holmes and his examination of the watch belonging to Watson (I think Watson's brother turns out to have been an alcoholic). So, does this watch show any sign of arsenic-induced abuse?

Robert

Hi Robert

Wouldn't that be good?!!

(....and wouldn't it be lovely if the real world was as tidy and logical as Conan Doyle's?)

Paul

[Paul Butler]

Hi Mr Poster.

But.....two different labs produce similar results.

I think it’s actually a lot better than that. Wild said that he found nothing to contradict what Turgoose had found. He went on to conduct further tests that attempted to date the scratches using the enrichment of the silver content on the surface of the alloy due to aging. His conclusions after further testing were the same rather than similar to Turgoose’s.

As far as I am aware, Wild had full access to the previous Turgoose data.

I can’t imagine what motive Albert might have had for showing Wild the previous test reports. He had no reason to doubt his original belief that the scratches were old.

Hi Sir R.

I couldn’t agree more. The ink tests, or rather some of them, could have been conducted more rigorously. My point is that two independent scientists concluded that the scratches in the watch were tens of years old, and that nobody has really been able to contradict that, (except to try and suggest that both scientists were less than competent).

You can hardly say the same of the diary tests!

With the benefit of hindsight I really don’t think that the right questions were put to either Turgoose or Wild. So much more could have been learned at the time if they were. I really hope that one day we may get another set of watch tests done to answer those questions.

Well you can always hope I suppose!!!


Regards to all.

Paul.

[Robert Linford]

I;m going to get this question in even though it has nothing to do with the case : does the watch still go?

Robert

[Chris G.]

I;m going to get this question in even though it has nothing to do with the case : does the watch still go?

Robert

Hi Robert

I wish the watch would go. . . and the Diary too. :o

Chris

[Caroline Morris]

Hi Paul, Everyone,

Many thanks, Paul, for your informed comments about the watch's gender. I could never see the fuss over this issue in any case, since there would be nothing to stop the killer of several women scratching their initials inside a lady's watch and keeping it somewhere as a souvenir, if the fancy took him. It was faulty reasoning to start with, based on faulty facts.

Luckily we had at least two people in the audience in Liverpool who are as well informed as you are - Shirley's hubby and Albert himself. So when Don Rumbelow came out with this old canard, Albert was able to set him straight. And as I have said before over on the Casebook boards, I have a book on watches, with page after page after bloomin' page of gentlemen's dress watches of the same dimensions and period as Albert's example, and, as you say, the ladies' watches of the period are smaller and significantly different.

I was also seriously disappointed to hear Don Rumbelow try to claim that both Wild and Turgoose had concluded that the scratches could only have dated back a few decades at most, and certainly nowhere near a hundred years or more. I've heard of torturing the English language to make words mean something different from the original intention, but this really takes the biscuit as far as I am concerned.

What's not to understand about a conclusion that the scratches, in their professional opinion, were likely to date back at least several tens of years [Wild] and more than tens of years and possibly much longer [Turgoose]? Does anyone see the upper limit that Don claimed was implied by those words? I see only a lower one, where 'at least several' can only mean a minimum of three decades, always bearing in mind the responsible caveat that a modern forger might just have had the skill and the know-how (that one expert, Wild I believe, admitted he would not have himself) to age the scratches artificially.

Finally for now, Don made much of the testimony of Dundas, who had given the watch a once-over in early 1992, before Murphy put it in his shop window, but didn't even mention Murphy's testimony, much to Albert's bemusement.

Dundas claimed the crude Maybrick/ripper scratches weren't there when he cleaned and fixed the watch, whereas Murphy claimed to be 99.9% certain they were there, because he had tried to improve the appearance of the scratched surface before putting it on sale.

This is extremely important evidence, since it is supported by Turgoose's observation that the Maybrick/ripper scratches pre-date the vast majority of superficial surface scratches (all those examined). What scratches could Murphy have been trying to minimise in early 1992, if none had been made on that inner surface by then that would have shown up under examination by Turgoose? And why would Murphy invent such a detail, which would have the effect of letting Albert off the hook and potentially putting himself on it?

Dundas claimed he remembered the watch in question, out of the hundred or so watches a week that passed through his hands, because it was a Verity (the name was on the dial, he said) and this was an unusual make. He was sure there were no Maybrick/ripper marks inside the watch, but oddly he didn't notice anything engraved on the actual back of the watch either - no intials, no nothing in fact. Assuming the JO wasn't a modern addition by a very cryptic modern hoaxer, Dundas didn't see an awful lot, did he?

Have a great weekend all.

Love,

Caz
X

[Paul Butler]

Hi Robert.

The watch was cleaned and serviced in 1992, so it’s very likely that it does still go!

Hi Chris.

Wishful thinking I reckon mate….!!!

I can really understand what a pain in the bum both watch and diary must be to many that have seriously studied JTR for many years. For me though, the Diary and watch saga holds at least an equal amount of interest to the likely never to be answered question of the identity of the Ripper, and I think that might apply to a few of us who were no more than casually interested in JTR prior to encountering Shirley Harrison’s book. It was such a compelling read, and I devoured it in two sittings and then read the whole thing again.

I was convinced that Gull was JTR at the time, due to the TV series, and it was only the diary that got me to look at the case seriously and take a proper interest in things JTR. So it’s not all bad!

What I really hope for in rejoining the Maybrick discussion is a sane and hopefully unbiased reassessment of the facts as we know them. Every attempt at proving diary and watch to be modern cheap fakes have failed, IMHO, by trying to shoehorn the facts rather selectively into a late 20th century hoax idea that just won’t work in so many ways.

The watch still sits there defiantly laughing at us all. Absolutely all the evidence we have says Albert didn’t create a hoax in the 1990s, so who did? Who might have wanted to finger Sir James at an earlier time? It’s fascinating to me and I really appreciate the mods efforts at maintaining thus far a civilised discussion between people of quite different persuasions.

O.K. Here endeth today’s lesson. :becky:

Regards to all.

Paul

[Paul Butler]

Finally for now, Don made much of the testimony of Dundas, who had given the watch a once-over in early 1992, before Murphy put it in his shop window, but didn't even mention Murphy's testimony, much to Albert's bemusement.

Dundas claimed the crude Maybrick/ripper scratches weren't there when he cleaned and fixed the watch, whereas Murphy claimed to be 99.9% certain they were there, because he had tried to improve the appearance of the scratched surface before putting it on sale.

This is extremely important evidence, since it is supported by Turgoose's observation that the Maybrick/ripper scratches pre-date the vast majority of superficial surface scratches (all those examined). What scratches could Murphy have been trying to minimise in early 1992, if none had been made on that inner surface by then that would have shown up under examination by Turgoose? And why would Murphy invent such a detail, which would have the effect of letting Albert off the hook and potentially putting himself on it?

Dundas claimed he remembered the watch in question, out of the hundred or so watches a week that passed through his hands, because it was a Verity (the name was on the dial, he said) and this was an unusual make. He was sure there were no Maybrick/ripper marks inside the watch, but oddly he didn't notice anything engraved on the actual back of the watch either - no intials, no nothing in fact. Assuming the JO wasn't a modern addition by a very cryptic modern hoaxer, Dundas didn't see an awful lot, did he?

Have a great weekend all.

Love,

Caz
X

Hi Caroline.

Some excellent points, and very well put.

I think we need to remember aswell that Dundas had not only Melvin Harris, but Paul Feldman pestering him, (and that’s probably putting it mildly!), for information to support their entirely opposite beliefs in the date of the watch scratches. I wouldn’t have blamed him if he made up anything to get them both off his back.

Dundas knew nothing about those Ripper marks when he was sent the watch and his response really should have been that he hadn’t seen them, rather than that they weren’t there. How on Earth could he state as a fact that something he wasn’t looking for in the first place wasn’t there with any certainty? Particularly as I'm told that to see them at all it needs to be done with a squint, at dusk and with the light behind you! :D

Add to that the conversation Feldman allegedly had with Dundas later, when Dundas was clearly thinking about another watch entirely, a silver one, and I think the only reasonable way to treat Dundas’ evidence is to disregard it.

Feldman later used this conversation with Dundas to dream up a quite ridiculous conspiracy theory about two watches being used to cover up allsorts of skullduggery, and I for one don’t believe a word of it!

Have a good weekend yourself Caz.

Regards,

Paul

[Caroline Morris]

Hi Paul,

I think the crucial thing about Dundas's testimony is that he managed to misremember two of the most significant features of the watch in question. The Verity name does not appear on the face of Albert's timepiece, despite what Dundas said he recalled. And he didn't notice any engraving on the outside back, ie the ornate and distinctive JO.

The only way to reconcile such discrepancies is to conclude that Dundas was either describing Albert's watch very badly indeed, or he was thinking of another watch entirely. Either way, I don't know how any serious investigator could claim to have the remotest confidence in his bold claim that the scratches were not there when he serviced Albert's watch.

On the other hand, if Murphy noted any scratches at all on the surface in question, then according to Turgoose's observations, they included the Maybrick/ripper marks. When Melvin Harris et al used to talk about Murphy trying to 'buff out' scratches on that surface with jeweller's rouge, I bet they didn't realise they were actually supporting the case for the marks being there before Albert bought the watch. :)

I can well understand why many modern hoax theorists prefer to view the diary in isolation and to treat the watch as though Albert had kept it at the back of his drawer and forgotten about it.

Love,

Caz
X

[Robert Linford]

"There are too many clues."

Hercule Poirot, Murder on the Orient Express.

Sacre bleu!:suspicious:

[Chris G.]

Hi Paul, Everyone,

Many thanks, Paul, for your informed comments about the watch's gender. I could never see the fuss over this issue in any case, since there would be nothing to stop the killer of several women scratching their initials inside a lady's watch and keeping it somewhere as a souvenir, if the fancy took him. It was faulty reasoning to start with, based on faulty facts.

Luckily we had at least two people in the audience in Liverpool who are as well informed as you are - Shirley's hubby and Albert himself. So when Don Rumbelow came out with this old canard, Albert was able to set him straight. And as I have said before over on the Casebook boards, I have a book on watches, with page after page after bloomin' page of gentlemen's dress watches of the same dimensions and period as Albert's example, and, as you say, the ladies' watches of the period are smaller and significantly different.

I was also seriously disappointed to hear Don Rumbelow try to claim that both Wild and Turgoose had concluded that the scratches could only have dated back a few decades at most, and certainly nowhere near a hundred years or more. I've heard of torturing the English language to make words mean something different from the original intention, but this really takes the biscuit as far as I am concerned.

What's not to understand about a conclusion that the scratches, in their professional opinion, were likely to date back at least several tens of years [Wild] and more than tens of years and possibly much longer [Turgoose]? Does anyone see the upper limit that Don claimed was implied by those words? I see only a lower one, where 'at least several' can only mean a minimum of three decades, always bearing in mind the responsible caveat that a modern forger might just have had the skill and the know-how (that one expert, Wild I believe, admitted he would not have himself) to age the scratches artificially.

Finally for now, Don made much of the testimony of Dundas, who had given the watch a once-over in early 1992, before Murphy put it in his shop window, but didn't even mention Murphy's testimony, much to Albert's bemusement.

Dundas claimed the crude Maybrick/ripper scratches weren't there when he cleaned and fixed the watch, whereas Murphy claimed to be 99.9% certain they were there, because he had tried to improve the appearance of the scratched surface before putting it on sale.

This is extremely important evidence, since it is supported by Turgoose's observation that the Maybrick/ripper scratches pre-date the vast majority of superficial surface scratches (all those examined). What scratches could Murphy have been trying to minimise in early 1992, if none had been made on that inner surface by then that would have shown up under examination by Turgoose? And why would Murphy invent such a detail, which would have the effect of letting Albert off the hook and potentially putting himself on it?

Dundas claimed he remembered the watch in question, out of the hundred or so watches a week that passed through his hands, because it was a Verity (the name was on the dial, he said) and this was an unusual make. He was sure there were no Maybrick/ripper marks inside the watch, but oddly he didn't notice anything engraved on the actual back of the watch either - no intials, no nothing in fact. Assuming the JO wasn't a modern addition by a very cryptic modern hoaxer, Dundas didn't see an awful lot, did he?

Have a great weekend all.

Love,

Caz
X

Hi Caz

Sorry but I don't see anything out of order in Don Rumbelow's statement at the Maybrick Trial that the assessments of Wild and Turgoose that the scratches in the watch were likely to date back "at least several tens of years" [Wild] and "more than" tens of years and possibly "much longer" [Turgoose] did not date the scratches back as far as 1888-1889.

Also, you are not seriously suggesting that a forger engraved the initials "J.O." on the cover of the watch, are you?

Chris

[Caroline Morris]

Hi Chris,

The only claim Don was entitled to make was that neither Wild nor Turgoose concluded that the scratches definitely dated back to 1888-9. What their words do imply, very clearly indeed, is that they could date back that far. It's implicit in the language they both used. Neither suggested an upper age limit. So what Don was not entitled to claim was that, according to both experts, the scratches could not possibly date back more than two or three decades at most.

That claim was simply wrong.

I'm certainly not suggesting a forger engraved the JO on the cover of Albert's watch. That's what modern hoax theorists will have to claim if they want us to take Dundas's testimony seriously. He didn't see the JO - he didn't see anything in fact - engraved on the cover of the watch he believed was the one sold later to Albert.

How would you explain it, unless Dundas was very short-sighted or was talking about the wrong watch?

Love,

Caz
X

[Paul Butler]

Hi Caroline.

I think something else useful to remember here is the time period Albert had available to him to put the Ripper scratches there, between purchasing the watch and Turgoose examining it in August 1993. It was only a matter of months, and yet we are to believe that Turgoose was fooled into thinking these freshly made scratches, which exposed clean shiny gold to the atmosphere for the very first time, were likely to be decades old and possibly more?

Absolutely all of the evidence available to us really does stack up heavily against this being a modern hoax.

The fact that Turgoose observed that the repair mark H9/3, (I think its actually SC9/3 the more I look at it), was on top of the Ripper marks, making the latter earlier than the date of that particular repair, is of particular interest to me. It does clearly put the date of the scratches earlier than the date Albert bought the watch, but it could also indicate something considerably more significant about the date the Ripper marks were made.

Jewellers used repair marks in the past to provide them with a quick way of establishing when they last handled the watch. There was no standard way of doing this, but the whole exercise would be utterly pointless if it did not in some way indicate a date. This simple type of code was so that it was not obvious to the customer that the jeweller was dating his work. Albert’s watch has another repair mark, 1275 off the top of my head, which was almost certainly made in 1875. The Ripper marks are nowhere near this one fortunately!

SC9/3 postdates the Ripper marks, and it is distinctly possible that a date of September 1903 is indicated! Now wouldn’t that be a bit of a sensation if true? JM being accused of being JTR within 15 years of his death?

I do hope that further tests will be done someday on the watch as well as the diary. Neither Turgoose nor Wild were asked the right questions at the time in my opinion. It would also be an easy thing to replicate what Albert has been accused of doing in another watch and testing that to see if similar results are found.

Regards to all,

Paul

[Caroline Morris]

Hi Paul,

I'm looking at Turgoose's report as I type, and he does describe it as the 'copper plate H'. So presumably it looks more like H than SC under the microscope.

Also, Turgoose observes that in the central region, the '5' is inscribed across the 'J'. I can only assume he means here that the 1275 was engraved after the J of Jack was put there.

Albert could not have even heard of the Maybrick/ripper connection until April 22nd, 1993, when the first story appeared in the local press which named Maybrick as the supposed diary author.

By the beginning of June, Albert and his workmates had discovered the scratches in the watch and made the connection with the recent diary news, and the wheels were set in motion to get them examined by a professional. Albert is insistent that his brother Robbie didn't even know he'd bought a gold watch the previous year until Albert told him what had been found inside it.

Also, people forget that Albert was not made of money, and the watch was not Ratner's cr*p. :lol: He had noticed and admired it in Ron Murphy's shop window some weeks before he had a nice win on the horses and was tempted to splash out. He justified this to himself with the thought that it would be a nice little investment for his young granddaughter. It was typical of Albert, as I found out when hubby and I met up with him and his wife in Friday's Bar at the Adelphi Hotel. We took a stroll to find somewhere to eat and on the way Albert popped across the road to the bookies to pick up his winnings. He then insisted on blowing them on a Chinese meal for the four of us and wouldn't take no for an answer. That's the type of man he is.

The idea that Albert (or Robbie, or Albert covering for Robbie) would ever vandalise an item of this nature and value, and drag his granddaughter into the deception, apparently just for jolly, and then pay out hundreds of pounds on top of his original investment for testing, which could have exposed his vandalism for all he knew and landed him and his family in one hell of a mess, is frankly even more preposterous than the idea that Mike Barrett forged the diary himself for hard cash.

Love,

Caz
X

[Paul Butler]

Hi Caroline.

I just dug out my Turgoose and you’re spot on about his observation about the “5” of 1275 being later than the Ripper marks. This bothers me a bit, as clearly it can’t mean an impossible date of 1875, so if a date is indicated it must be 1975, which is entirely plausible I suppose. It has been placed immediately below the ?9/3 mark, which is not only logical for a subsequent repair, but is something I have seen on many occasions before. Sometimes there can be a dozen or more all below one another in chronological order.

I haven’t got my diary books to hand to check, but I know the watch came into the Murphy family some years before it was eventually sold. I wonder if it was cleaned or repaired in 1975?

I still don’t think that “H” is an “H”. Maybe “JC” rather than “SC”. Maybe even “JE” or “TC”. I just can’t make it an “H”.

If anyone close enough felt inclined to look in the Liverpool trade directories for just after 1900 for any jewellers with any of those initials, it could be a very worthwhile exercise.

As for Albert’s involvement in any hoax or fraud, I certainly don’t believe he had anything to do with it, and have never found any reason to think he wasn’t telling the absolute truth. If he was going to make it up he could have done a much better job by saying he had the watch for years and knew about the Ripper marks but didn’t make a connection until the diary story broke. His story that he coincidentally discovered them at the same time as “The diary of Jack the Ripper” was going to press has understandably caused some consternation and added grist to the mill for the modern hoax theories.

More work must be done on the watch, but the likelihood that the scratches are decades old might just possibly mean that the Diary was created by someone in the past who was aware of it’s existence.

Regards.

Paul

[Paul Butler]

OK chaps. Now listen up.

Maybrick is all over the forums at the moment, but hardly a word about his watch. The diary gets all the attention, and the watch seems to be ever the bridesmaid, yet in my view it’s got a lot going for it in this debate.

Nobody so far seems to have been able to explain it away anything like satisfactorily.

We have three sets of very interesting test results, (and some good solid written evidence too), that this is nothing like the “bandwagon hoax” created by Albert Johnson and his mates that has been claimed over and over again.

1. The “handwriting” is not a problem like the diary. We don’t have other examples of James scratching his name in gold, and never will, but the signature in the watch certainly appears to have been made by the same hand that signed his marriage certificate.

2. The surface of the inside of the watch has been forensically analysed by two respected metallurgists on three occasions and their independent views, with the usual caveats, is that the scratches are likely to be at least several decades old.

3. Turgoose was able to tell us after examination with the SEN that the scratches were made in a certain order, based on which overlaid which. The “Maybrick” scratches are the earliest set of scratches that are present on the watch today. Earlier even than most of the superficial scratches caused by wear and tear.

4. The Murphy’s said they saw some scratches when they had the watch cleaned for sale. If the “Maybrick” ones are the earliest, then they must have been there before the watch was sold.

5. There are two sets of neatly engraved letters and numbers in the back of the watch, which are both more recent than all the “Maybrick” ones. These are very likely to be repairers marks, showing that the watch was serviced at least twice prior to the Murphy’s service, (carried out by Tim Dundas), and since the “Maybrick” marks got there.

None of this adds up to a recent or shoddy hoax does it?

Did I miss anything Caz?

Regards to all.

Paul

[Caroline Morris]

Hi Paul,

I'd just add that Dundas could not have been remembering the right watch when he insisted there was nothing there when he serviced it, unless all the engravings, marks and scratches were made later.

He said there were no engravings on the back of the watch, so if he couldn't see the ornate and prominent JO on the case, how the hell could he have seen marks on an inside surface that were barely visible to the naked eye? (I couldn't even see them in a good light with the magnifying glass Albert's wife Val held for me!)

Love,

Caz
X

PS Pedantic of me I know, but it's the marriage licence that has been compared with the watch, not the certificate. I believe they are two separate documents. But I don't know if the certificate exists or has been examined.

[Paul Butler]

Morning Caz.

No not pedantic at all. Typo on my part. As far as I can remember you don't sign the certificate itself anyhow. Thanks for the additions.

Dundas was remembering a silver watch when he said the scratches weren't there. He is a repairer who sees literally dozens of the things in the course of a week. Expecting him to remember one watch out of all of those is akin to me asking you what you had for your dinner on any particular date last September. Rather pointless and an act of desperation on Harris' part if you ask me.

Just a couple of extra points.

Shirley Harrison records that the real James did have a gold watch, (no surprises there!), and that it seems to have disappeared from James', (or should that be James's?), effects before the sale of the Battlecrease contents, so somebody took it!

One of the Battlecrease servants was married to a man who conveniently had the initials J.O., the same initials that appear today on the back of the watch.

How many more coincidences do we need before we should really start thinking that this watch actually did belong to the real James?

If we forget the diary for a minute and look at the watch in isolation, then to my mind its damned convincing as it stands.

Regards.

Paul

[Caroline Morris]

Hi Paul,

Well we do know that the servant who left Battlecrease in 1887 to marry JO, after working for the Maybricks for five years - Emma Parker - spent six weeks alone with Jim and baby Gladys in a hotel in North Wales in early 1887 while Florie was back home with Bobo, who had scarlet fever.

It would be interesting to know when Emma first met John Over, and if he came to Battlecrease while the couple were courting. Knowing what a womaniser Jim was, it's quite conceivable that he tried it on with Emma in Wales and, whether she was up for it or told him to get knotted, he may have resented JO for stealing her away later that year and out of his control.

'Sir Jim' would have seen JO as a rival, and his watch as a fair exchange for the robbery of one of his female employees. "The bitch has gone off with her whoremaster. Very well then, I will take something to remember them by - ha ha." :fear:

When the real James died, someone found a gold watch among his possessions. If it had JO on the cover, it would have been obvious who it belonged to. But would the finder have wanted to expose the dead man as a thief, by returning it to its rightful owner?

Love,

Caz
X

[Adam_Douglas]

Maybe Im quite a simple minded person

But if one believes in the watch AND the diary (and I guess one goes with the other) - why does the diary mention another murder in Manchester, and yet no initials for that victim on the watch?

[Big Jon]

Maybe Im quite a simple minded person

But if one believes in the watch AND the diary (and I guess one goes with the other) - why does the diary mention another murder in Manchester, and yet no initials for that victim on the watch?

Hmmm... Very good question.

I'm gonna wildly speculate...

Maybe the author/engraver knew it would be the Whitechapel murders he would be remembered for, not the Manc one, so only engraved them onto the watch?

[Caroline Morris]

More wild speculation...

Whoever engraved the initials in the watch only knew those initials.

Nobody has found a report of a murder in Manchester that would fit, so there would be no initials to know.

When serial killer Peter Kurten made his first murderous attack on a girl during sex, he left her for dead in the Grafenburg Woods. No body was ever found, so it is believed that she probably survived and managed to crawl away, keeping the sordid and terrifying ordeal to herself. He would not have had any reason to know her initials but it seems that he believed he had killed her.

A hoaxer could have picked up on this and woven a similar episode into the diary.

Love,

Caz
X

[fido]

The watch, surprisingly, has been the most intriguing Maybrickian item ever since the tests were carried out. Pace the optimistic hope that doubts about the watch might lead us back to favourable doubts about the diary, the diary is, alas, hopelessly damned. Nothing in it to suggest that it is really genuine; packs of lies from the couple who have purported to give its provenance; a completely implausible story. Implausible misspellings and solecisms. It's a fake, "And there's an end on't".
Yet two independent scientific tests both saying the watch's scratches are tens of years old, and one offering the belief that further testing might very well place it in the requisite decade of the 1880s? These absolutely prevent me from making the equally confident declaration that the watch scratches are fake that would otherwise definitely be the case. (Because the scratches, pace Robert Smith don't look convincing, the opportune timing of the watch scratches' discovery is far more suggetive of a diary-inspired fake then a genuinely coincidental moment when the watch was looked at; the inscriptions seem far more probable as the creation of a modern day forger than a 19th century murderer).
I use some of the lab reports on the diary to show my students the tendency of laboratories to find the results wantd by those who commission them - a result, I'm sure, of unconscious bias rather than corruption.. But with two different methods and no one from outside suggesting that there is an obviously better one and we're all too unscientific to know why these produced questionable results, I'm in no position to do the samwe for the watch.
Whatever the explanation, I don't think for one minute the watch suggests seriously that James Maybrick was Jack the Ripper. But I am mystified about its actual nature, with, I admit, a strong incliunation to put good history before extraneous science unless there is something as clear as Hanratty's DNA before us.
One query - are we sure that both the tests covered the most important part of the scratching - the name Maybrick?
Martin F

[Caroline Morris]

One query - are we sure that both the tests covered the most important part of the scratching - the name Maybrick?
Martin F

Hi Martin,

There appears to be no question about that. But you can confirm it for yourself because both watch reports can be found over at the Casebook.

Dr Turgoose found that 'am J' (from 'I am Jack') and the name Maybrick were 'the earliest visible markings' and 'show no differences' in respect of the implement used.

Love,

Caz
X

[Caroline Morris]

I have had some very sad news from Val Johnson. Albert passed away on Saturday.

Caz

[Chris G.]

I have had some very sad news from Val Johnson. Albert passed away on Saturday.

Caz

Sorry to hear this, Caz.

Chris

[Mike Covell]

As I mentioned earlier, this is a very sad piece of news, and I send my thoughts to Mr. Johnson's family.

[SirRobertAnderson]

Rumors that Abraham Lincoln's pocket watch carried a secret message from the Civil War have been confirmed.Time to settle a rumor about Lincoln's watch



Rumors that Abraham Lincoln's pocket watch carried a secret message from the Civil War have been confirmed.
A pocket watch owned by the 16th president was said to have a hidden message engraved by a watchmaker the day the Civil War began. The Smithsonian opens, and closes, the case.

By Neely Tucker

March 11, 2009

Reporting from Washington -- For more than 150 years, Abraham Lincoln's pocket watch had been rumored to carry a secret message from the Civil War, supposedly written by an Irish immigrant and watchmaker named Jonathan Dillon.

Dillon, working in a Maryland watch repair shop in 1861, told family members that he -- by incredible happenstance -- had been repairing Lincoln's watch when news came that Ft. Sumter had been attacked in South Carolina. It was the opening salvo of the Civil War.


Dillon told his children -- and, half a century later, a reporter for the New York Times -- that he opened the watch's inner workings and scrawled his name, the date and a message for the ages: "The first gun is fired. Slavery is dead. Thank God we have a president who at least will try."

He then closed it up and sent it back to the White House. Lincoln never knew of the message. Dillon died in 1907.

The watch, meanwhile, was handed down and eventually given to the Smithsonian Institution in 1958. It didn't run anymore. No one had pried open the inner workings in ages. The old watchmaker's tale was just that.


Then Douglas Stiles, Dillon's great-great-grandson, alerted Smithsonian officials to the family legend last month. He was a real estate lawyer in Waukegan, Ill., he explained. He'd heard the legend around the dinner table as a child, but had just discovered a New York Times article from 1906, quoting Dillon as telling the story himself.

Truth? Lore?

On Tuesday morning, in a small conference room on the first floor of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, officials decided to find out.

Expert watchmaker George Thomas used a series of delicate instruments -- tweezers, tiny pliers -- to pull apart Lincoln's timepiece.

He put on a visor with a magnifying lens and talked as he worked. Some of the pins were nearly stuck, he explained. The hands of the watch were original, with a case made in America and the workings from Liverpool.

The Illinois rail-splitter had splurged: The watch, Thomas said, would be the equivalent to a timepiece costing "$5,000 or more" today.

Then he pried off the watch's face, pulled off the hands, and turned it over to see the brass underside of the movement.

The audience, watching a monitor, gasped.

Split into three different sections to get around the tiny gears was this razor-thin etching: "Jonathan Dillon April 13, 1861. Fort Sumpter [sic] was attacked by the rebels on the above date. Thank God we have a government."

The old man's memory had not been exact. He had not forecast the end of slavery, or Lincoln's crucial role in its demise. And the fort had actually been attacked on April 12.

But it was there, a little bit of history that had been resting on Lincoln's hip, unseen during days of war and rebellion, the Emancipation Proclamation and the rest, and then resting, unseen, for more than a century and a half.

Stiles was delighted. "That's Lincoln's watch," he said, "and my ancestor wrote graffiti on it!"

Tucker writes for the Washington Post.

[Chris G.]

Hi Sir Bob

Thanks for posting this. The article doesn't seem to make note of another scrawl in the watch, "Jeff Davis" who of course was the President of the rival Confederate States of America! This appears writ large on a piece of metal screwed to the rest that is etched with the cited inscription about Fort Sumter. Curious. :rolleyes:

Christopher T. George

[SirRobertAnderson]

This story makes mention of Jefferson Davis, Chris.

Published: March 10, 2009

WASHINGTON — Confirming a rumor that has circulated for generations, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History opened a gold pocket watch that belonged to Abraham Lincoln on Tuesday and discovered a message secretly engraved there by a watchmaker who repaired it in 1861.



The story of the engraving had been passed down through the years by descendants of Jonathan Dillon, the watchmaker, without ever being verified. Then recently one of his great-great-grandsons, Douglas Stiles, a lawyer from Waukegan, Ill., discovered an April 1906 article in The New York Times in which Mr. Dillon described making the engraving.

In the article Mr. Dillon, then 84, recounted that he was working at M. W. Galt & Company, a watch shop on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, in April 1861 when the shop’s owner, Mr. Galt, hurried upstairs to tell him, “War has begun; the first shot has been fired.”

“At that moment I had in my hand Abraham Lincoln’s watch, which I had been repairing,” Dillon told The Times, adding that he later learned it was the first watch that Lincoln ever owned.

An immigrant from Waterford, Ireland, he told The Times, “I was the only Union sympathizer working in the shop.”

The National Museum of American History acquired the watch in 1958 through a bequest by a great-grandson of Lincoln. Approached by Mr. Stiles last year about the Times article, the museum’s curators brought in expert watchmakers to open the timepiece.

“It’s a good opportunity to show how we do the research about the collection,” Brent D. Glass, the museum’s director, said on Tuesday. The opening of the watch was also timed to coincide with “Abraham Lincoln: An Extraordinary Life,” an exhibition that opened at the museum in January.

Harry R. Rubenstein, the curator of the exhibition, said the museum had considered opening the watch in private and then decided to include the public. “It’s a moment of discovery, and you can only discover things once,” he said. “We wanted to share it.”

Working under a strong light with magnifying glasses and minute tools, George Thomas, a master watchmaker from Towson, Md., had a bit of difficulty removing one of the pins but finally opened the back to reveal the underside of the watch movement.

“The moment of truth has come,” he said. “Is there or is there not an inscription?”

He called Mr. Stiles, who attended the event with his brother, Don, 57, of Bloomington, Minn., to deliver the verdict. “There is an inscription!” Mr. Stiles said with elation.

“My goodness, that’s Lincoln’s watch,” he said later in wonderment. “My ancestor put graffiti on it.”

The inscription is not entirely accurate. Aside from misspelling Sumter, Mr. Dillon was evidently unaware that the opening shot of the Civil War had been fired on April 12, not April 13.

It also seems that Mr. Dillon’s memory of the message was a little fuzzy as recounted in the 1906 article. He remembered his engraving as reading: “The first gun is fired. Slavery is dead. Thank God we have a President who at least will try.”

The back of the watch movement also bears two other inscriptions: “LE Grofs Sept 1864 Wash DC,” probably engraved by another repairer, and what appears to be “Jeff Davis.” Whether the latter was intended as a retort by another watchmaker to Dillon’s pro-Union sentiments is unknown. (Jefferson Davis was the president of the rebel Confederacy.)
The discovery of the Dillon message is likely to hearten enthusiasts of Lincoln lore. “It’s a different message, but it still has that hopeful sound that the union will hold together, the country will go on,” Mr. Rubenstein said. “That Lincoln carried this hopeful message in his pocket unbeknownst to him — it casts you back.

Mr. Glass, the museum’s director, said it came as little surprise that the message did not mention slavery after all; Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in separate executive orders in October 1862 and January 1863.

“In 1861 the preservation of the union was the key issue, and the abolition of slavery came later,” he said.

Mr. Glass likened the watch’s engraving to a note Thomas Jefferson attached to the underside of the writing table on which he wrote the Declaration of Independence. In the note, Jefferson wrote of the importance of preserving the desk because of what it was used for.

“I think there is a human instinct to want to communicate to the future,” Mr. Glass said.

Mr. Thomas said the timepiece was in “mint condition” and had its original hands. He said that it was made in Liverpool in the 19th century, but that the gold case in which it resided for generations was made in the United States.

Although Mr. Rubenstein described the timepiece as Lincoln’s “everyday pocket watch,” acquired when he was practicing law in Springfield, Ill., Mr. Thomas said it looked almost untouched. “It seems the president did not wear it much,” he said.

Mr. Stiles said he had first heard the story of the watch engraving sometime in the 1970s from a great-uncle. Last year, he said, a cousin in Ireland mentioned the story to him, which prompted him to start searching the Internet.

At the end of Tuesday’s news conference, museum curators asked if the watch could be wound in the hope that those present could “hear the ticking, the sound that Abraham Lincoln heard,” as Mr. Rubenstein said. It was the sole letdown of the day.

“It’s frozen,” Mr. Thomas said. “It hasn’t been touched in a hundred years.”

The watch was reassembled and will be returned to view at the museum, along with a detailed photograph and a transcript of the engraving.

“Does it change our view of history? No,” Mr. Glass said. “But it adds to our understanding of how an ordinary person was affected by the events of the day.”

[Caroline Morris]

Hi Chris,

I'm sure Sir Robert can send you what he has on the "Jeff Davis" if you only wate a whil longer. :kiss:

Love,

Caz
X

[Caroline Morris]

Blimey - how's that for perfect "timing"?? :faint:

The Late Caz (but only by seconds)
XXX

[Caroline Morris]

I thought one argument about the "other" watch was that nobody could possibly have added a subsequent repair mark or inscription without noticing the barely visible markings already on the surface and drawing them to everyone's attention.

In this case, although the original inscription must have been as clear as day when the later ones were added, there seems to be no indication that the second inscriber thought it worth mentioning to anyone.

Love,

Caz
X

[Caroline Morris]

Hi Sir Robert,

I always have a funny feeling about March 9th (9/3 - also the date that a certain Liverpudlian first told Doreen Montgomery about the existence of a certain diary) in connection with "that" watch, for a number of reasons, some more obvious than others. So I was half expecting something to happen on Monday, but nothing like this.

It seems that a different 19th century timepiece with Liverpool connections has chosen to "reveal all" this week.

You couldn't make it up.

Love,

Caz
X

[Paul Butler]

Hello again Caroline, Chris, Sir Bob and all.

Its nice to be back!

This is intriguing isn't it? The parallels between Lincoln's watch and the "other watch" are striking. Both sets of scratched messages in a place where they would least likely be found, (to misquote a certain diary), one under the dial, and the other inside the inner back of the case. Both requiring the movement to be removed before they could be seen. Both with what are most likely to be repairer's marks put there after the original scratchings were made!

Regards to all,

Paul.

[String]

Does anyone know if there's a picture/s of the watch on the web?
I seen it in a book ages ago, can't remember the title, and would like to see it again.

[Big Jon]

http://www.jamesmaybrick.org/

There'sa pic on here, click on Maybrick watch.

[String]

Thanks Jon.

For anyone not familiar with the case the accompanying explanation is very interesting too.

[Caroline Morris]

Hi Paul,

Great to see you posting again!

It's not often that an oral tradition passed down through the family is finally verified, as in the case of Lincoln's timepiece.

One can imagine only too well what would have happened if these inscriptions had been discovered before the Maybrick ones. We'd all be 100% convinced that the latter were done on the back of the former, just as so many people assume the diary was hoaxed on the back of the very quickly discredited Hitler Diaries. And in the case of the watch we'd all be 100% wrong.

If Albert had left his watch in the drawer, instead of taking it into work that day in 1993, and had died unaware of what was inside the back of it by then, and the discovery was only made, say, next week, who would even bother to call for tests, in the light of the Lincoln discovery? Yet the results would be much the same as before, only with a further sixteen years to add on to the age of all the engravings.

Love,

Caz
X

[Paul Butler]

Hello again Caroline, its great to be here.

I haven't heard that anyone is demanding forensic tests on the Lincoln watch yet, but then I suppose its an entirely plausible notion that Lincoln's watchmaker wanted to leave a message hidden in a watch for posterity's sake, but entirely implausible that "Sir Jim" might feel the need to do the same thing at least 17 years later, whether his message was imagined or otherwise! :)

Regards to all.

Paul

[Tracy Ianson]

Did any new evidence ever come about with regards to the watch?

I have to ask :-

1. If I am looking in the right place, (approx 3:00 on the watch), then is it not weird the K on the end of Jack is different to the K at the end of Maybrick - this would indicate different authors, surely?

2. I remember reading somewhere that jewellers/pawnbrokers would sometimes initial goods they received, so they could keep track of them, could the initials on the watch not be from them and not victims?

[Paul Butler]

Hi Tracy.

If there are any differences with the letters "k", then I suppose that might be explained by the fact that the Maybrick one is intended to be part of James' signature. Funny how the watch scratches are more like the real JM's handwriting than the diary text...!

Personally I don't really see any difference that couldn't be explained by the sheer awkwardness of getting intelligible scratches into such a confined space.

Pawnbrokers did mark the insides of watches that came into their possession sometimes. These were usually ledger numbers however.

I think the coincidence of five different pawnbrokers, with initials the same as the five victims of Jack, having had the watch pass through their hands one at a time might be even bigger than the one that caused the watch to turn up such a short time after the diary emerged.

Good to see someone still interested in the origins of the watch Tracy. Its been the poor relation to the diary throughout, but might yet be the one to provide a few answers.

regards.

Paul

[SirRobertAnderson]

Funny how the watch scratches are more like the real JM's handwriting than the diary text...!


Good to see someone still interested in the origins of the watch Tracy. Its been the poor relation to the diary throughout, but might yet be the one to provide a few answers.

regards.

Paul

When all is finally said and done, it will be the Watch that tells the true story. I apologize for being cryptic, but time will indeed reveal all.

The Diary, while clearly of Victorian origin, is in many ways a false lead. Probably not written by Maybrick, but from Battlecrease nonetheless.

The Watch is True North. The rest is what it is....from Hell no doubt. Certainly hasn't done anyone in contact with it or obsessed with it much good. (Well, I can think of ONE exception but until the story is over I reserve judgment on that....)

[Tracy Ianson]

Hi Paul.

Thanks for the reply. I only hope you have a photo of the watch nearby otherwise what I have wrote will probably be confusing!!

If there are any differences with the letters "k", then I suppose that might be explained by the fact that the Maybrick one is intended to be part of James' signature.

Okay, to me, the K on the Maybrick is quite precise and neat. The long stalk flicks to the left at the top, the round bit meets the stalk and the lower K stalk has a nice curve. To me looking at it, it is as though whoever inscribed it first drew a P then did a diagonal line through it to make a K

The I am Jack k, seems sloppy and awkward. The round bit of the K joins to the stalk nearly halfway down. The round bit no where near joins the stalk and the lower k stalk is very straight. In fact this resembles the R above it more than the k on Maybrick.

Funny how the watch scratches are more like the real JM's handwriting than the diary text...!

I could be persuaded to believe that the watch may have originally belonged to James Maybrick, stranger things have happened, I just don't believe he was Jack. I do think the Maybrick is written in a logical place if you owned the watch, whereas the initials are just messy.


I think the coincidence of five different pawnbrokers, with initials the same as the five victims of Jack, having had the watch pass through their hands one at a time might be even bigger than the one that caused the watch to turn up such a short time after the diary emerged.

For me, (please correct me if I am wrong, I only have the photo to go off,) but what I see, is at approx 9:00 the initials C L slightly above that O n, approx 2:00, N R just above the hallmark 18 a L, before Maybrick J n. Obviously if these are right then the initials don't match that of the victims.

Good to see someone still interested in the origins of the watch Tracy. Its been the poor relation to the diary throughout, but might yet be the one to provide a few answers.

Lets hope so....

Thanks for your time

Tj

[Caroline Morris]

Hi Tracy,

Welcome to Maybrick land. Sorry I only just saw your posts - I didn't know we had a new poster among us until now.

Could I ask which photo (from which source) you have been looking at, because you seem to be a bit confused about what and where the Maybrick/Jack markings actually are?

Love,

Caz
X

[Caroline Morris]

By the way, Dr Turgoose from UMIST used a scanning electron microscope to examine the inside of the watch in 1993. He reported that each victim's initials (MN, AC, ES, EC and MK) had been made with a different implement, while 'I am Jack' and 'J Maybrick' appeared to have been made with the same tool. At the base of the 'MK' he found what he believed to be a broken off piece of the implement that had made it, which was corroded with age and suggested to him that it had been in place for many decades.

For what it's worth, the k in 'Maybrick' looks to my amateur eye remarkably similar to the k in Jim's signature on his marriage licence (photos of both can be seen between pages 152 and 153 of Ripper Diary - The Inside Story). I would bet my bottom dollar that the watch markings were not made as recently as the early 1990s, but in any case not by an amateur bandwagon hoaxer who had no idea how Jim might have written 'Maybrick', nor which victims the diary's 'Sir Jim' was claiming. The watch came to light before any such details were published.

Love,

Caz
X

[Caroline Morris]

He reported that each victim's initials (MN, AC, ES, EC and MK) had been made with a different implement...

Sorry Tracy, the fourth set of initials above should of course be CE (and not EC as I typed). The watch has it right.

I didn't mean to add to your confusion! :mmph:

Love,

Caz
X

[Mr. Poster]

Hi ho

Did anything ever come of Keith Skinners revelations last year?

p

[Caroline Morris]

Hi Mr P,

Last year? I didn't think Keith had any watch revelations. But assuming you mean his Battlecrease revelation from 2007, nothing has happened to pour any cold water on it, and I understand that the basis of it will come out when the person who financed the research is good and ready.

I can say no more until that happy day, as I'm a cheapskate who paid for none of it. :thumb:

Love,

Caz
X

[SirRobertAnderson]

Not Watch related, but there has been an active thread on Skinner et al over on the Casebook. Same old, same old, but perhaps a few new nuggets to be gleaned.

http://forum.casebook.org/showthread.php?t=1274&page=78

[Scott Nelson]

Does it still run? If so, what time is it now?

[SirRobertAnderson]

A post of mine from the Casebook that has some Watch stuff in it.

http://forum.casebook.org/showthread.php?p=141381#post141381

Let me state at the outcome that I don't know Keith Skinner, and have never spoken to him or anyone that might know what he believes he can prove. All I have ever done is reverse engineer his statements. I don't want to imply I have "inside" knowledge, because if I did, I'd keep my mouth shut. But since I am speculating, I feel free to roam around.

So.....to reiterate: I said earlier that Keith's jury remark might imply the Diary was stolen from Battlecrease. We have the document popping up in Barrett's claws, and we know that at one point he was a scrap metal dealer. So I put two and two together and think I can see a scenario where he winds up with the Diary. IF Anne knows the truth about how he came by the Diary, she might have felt Mike was opening them up to legal trouble by trying to sell it as it was stolen property. So perhaps she indeed threatened to destroy it. Perhaps she said to Mike copy it if you can and see what you can do with that but whip the original out and we might have some 'plaining to do to the coppers.

Maybe I'm right, maybe I'm wrong. Just a guess but one that at least explains people's actions in a semi-sane way.

And speaking of sanity....If you are a modern day forger, how foolish do you have to be to allow the Watch and the Diary to be separated and pop up in public at different times ? Talk about undermining your credibility. (Yeah yeah yeah I know - the forgers were idiots and it's all quite obvious even to a child so the question is stupidity personified. You can cram that where the sun don't shine.)

So if the Diary was stolen, was the Watch stolen as well ? And if so, why didn't it wind up with Barrett as well ?

Just asking.



Absolutely. Couldn't agree more. Although I must admit that Albert Johnson's actions and behavior over the years did lend a great deal of credibility in my eyes to his story of how he acquired the Watch.

[SirRobertAnderson]

And one more for good measure:

http://forum.casebook.org/showthread.php?p=141435#post141435

I don't think Keith said the Watch came out of Battlecrease in addition to the Diary. Or could it have?

He hasn't opined one way or the other to my knowledge.

Sure. I am leaning towards thinking it did. Why not consider that ?

As I have said many times before, if you wish to believe these are forgeries, either modern or old, you have to assume they were pretty dumb forgers to not cook 'em up at the same time. Now, the majority of Diary World posters indeed think we are dealing with dolts, dolts for forgers as well as us for dolts for believing the items might be old.

Well, they've outsmarted us so far in the lab and in the field, so who's really the dummies ?

I have no easy explanation for why the writing in the Diary does not look like the handwriting samples we believe to be Maybrick's. But the sig on the Watch eerily does IMHO. So we're left with one item traced to Battlecrease and (I suspect) the other not far behind.

Who BTW is to say how long that Watch was really in that shop IF it was of dubious ownership shall we say ? Has anyone ever looked into seeing if the jewelry store in question had ever had questions from the police about fencing stolen goods ? I AM NOT trying to besmirch their reputation; just asking the IMHO logical questions that need to be asked.

I'm serious about that last part; I'm not trying to drag some innocent jewelry store through the mud on an idle question. But some stores ask less questions about items brought in for sale than others. If the Diary WAS stolen, there is a good shot in my mind that the Watch was purloined as well. And remember that the co-owner of the Watch said she had gotten it from her father. Convenient. Had it for ages, decided to clean it and repair it one day, and then bang it sells.

http://books.google.com.my/books?id=l9Ku1QSvFg0C&pg=PA271&lpg=PA271&dq=store+maybrick+watch+purchased&source=bl&ots=0IjCl8ynP2&sig=D5hQtYJZYFtOEAMiuDaQpDQA55s&hl=en&ei=l9lJTPTKFcu6caD9_NkM&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CCYQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q&f=false

[Paul Butler]

Hi Sir Bob.

As we all know, the watch probably had at least three owners prior to Albert getting his hands on it. Somebody had it new in the 1850s when it was manufactured, James Maybrick was its alleged owner possibly some 20 years later, and then the mysterious J.O..... Or was J.O the original owner?

Would the real James have happily owned a watch with someone elses initials engraved on the outer case? Probably not.

It doesn't seem to me beyond the realms of possibility that this really was James Maybrick's watch, and that is why the "signature" scratched inside the inner part of the case could plausibly be really his. In fact the more I've thought about this, the more likely it seems to me. We know the "signature" was there first, before the other ripper scratchings, and before the neat repairers marks, which themselves are almost certainly decades old.

The fact that there is a plausible J.O. in the Maybrick saga, not a common set of initials it has to be said, just adds weight to the possibility that the watch is "real" in the sense that it could be a genuine Maybrick artifact.

Why would anyone concieve of the idea of scratching fake ripper initials to frame Maybrick in a watch of all places? In the most inaccessible and unlikely place to be noticed on a pocket watch. Now if the watch already had Maybrick's name in it I can see how that idea might have come to mind.

I still think this watch has more to tell us than the diary ever will.

Regards.

Paul

[Caroline Morris]

We know the "signature" was there first, before the other ripper scratchings...

Hi Paul,

I understood that Dr Turgoose observed with his electron microscope that all the Maybrick and ripper related markings (including the signature and 'I am Jack', which he believed were both scratched with the same implement, plus the victims' initials, each set made with a different tool) were there before any of the other visible scratches/repair marks/engravings etc arrived on the same surface.

If this is correct, I don't think he could have ascertained which of the separate Maybrick/ripper related markings was made first. But it does look like the same person must have scratched the sig and 'I am Jack' with the one tool.

If we could believe in "Sir Jim" there would be nothing he would have liked better than to get one over on John Over, and nick his ticker, for whisking one of his female staff members away from Battlecrease to get married. From memory, I think the young nurse in question accompanied James when he spent time away from Aigburth with little Gladys while Bobo was suffering from an infectious illness, so I wouldn't put it past the real James to have tried it on with her. What would "Sir Jim" have thought if she rebuffed him in favour of John Over?

Speculation like this would have got me six months of ear bashing in the bad old days. :lol:

Love,

Caz
X

[String]

More speculation or idle thoughts and I know it's in the wrong thread but if Maybrick wrote the diary and owned the watch has anyone speculated that he was not the ripper but either deluding himself that he was the ripper or he was 'playing' at being the ripper?

[SirRobertAnderson]

has anyone speculated that he was not the ripper but either deluding himself that he was the ripper or he was 'playing' at being the ripper?

On account of him being a drug addled whoremaster and a generally nasty piece of work ?

Yeah.

[String]

On account of him being a drug addled whoremaster and a generally nasty piece of work ?

Yeah.

That would explain a lot.

[Tracy Ianson]

Hi Caz

I apologise for the length of time it has taken to respond.

I basically googled James Maybrick watch on the Image tab and ironically it sent me casebook, the old boards, where someone posted a picture of the watch.

While it is obvious you have a lot more skill/experience on the Diary and watch, I just personally can't see how the letters make out the vics initials, sorry, we will maybe have to agree to disagree.

May O ask have you seen the watch personally, are the markings a lot clearer than by photos, or do the photos do it justice?

Tj

[Caroline Morris]

Hi Tracy,

Yes, I have seen the watch on more than one occasion, but the markings are barely visible to the naked eye. Even under a normal magnifying glass and held towards the light they are rather hard to make out.

But I can assure you that the initials are those of the five main victims and the clearest photos plus the electron microscope don't lie. I'm afraid it isn't a matter of agreeing to disagree - you just can't have seen a good enough quality photo, that's all.

MN, AC, ES, CE and MK.

Them's the facts ma'am, as How might say. :)

Love,

Caz
X

[String]

Are these photo's available online Caroline?

[Tracy Ianson]

Hi Caz


But I can assure you that the initials are those of the five main victims

Since you have seen the watch and I haven't, it would be churlish of me to argue at this point.


So I won't xx

Tj

[Caroline Morris]

I'm not sure if anyone has posted a really clear photo of the watch markings online. The photos I have seen up close are not mine to post.

I know I went to some considerable trouble getting the necessary permissions for the watch reports to be published online, then spent ages transcribing and sending copies to the Casebook admin to put up on the site.

I'm pretty sure Dr Turgoose mentions the initials in his report but you can always check that out for yourselves.

Love,

Caz
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