Is the diary necessary for James to be Jack?

[Stephen Leece]

Consider this the idea of recurring themes within the suspect list of Jack the Ripper:

Poison:
Neill Cream
Severin Klosowski

Liverpool link:
Frederick Deeming
Francis Tumblety

USA link:
Francis Tumblety
Neill Cream
Severin Klosowski

Two or more alleged crimes:
Neill Cream (imprisoned in USA for murder, hanged in England for murder and Jack the Ripper)
Frederick Deeming (involved in two separate killings and Jack the Ripper)
Francis Tumblety (responsible for one death and Jack the Ripper)
William Bury (wife killer and Jack the Ripper)
Severin Klosowski (killed his wives and Jack the Ripper)

James Maybrick was allegedly poisoned, he has the Liverpool connection obviously and his wife’s trial counts as a second crime, assuming he was the Ripper.

Joseph Sickert’s story in it’s most basic form is a love story about a woman who is falsely imprisoned against her will, cut off from her children for the misdemeanours of her ‘husband.’
The Maybrick case is a love story. Florence was imprisoned under very dubious circumstances and her main grievance was being cut off from her children. Her husband James may have been Jack the Ripper and she may have known this- it would be a motive for murder.

Joseph Sickert in more detail told us that John Netley drowned, after being chased by an angry mob. M.J. Druitt drowned after being very quickly dismissed from his teaching post under very mysterious circumstances. Is it possible Sickert was confused. Perhaps he, or Walter Sickert, were given clues from several sources as to the Ripper’s identity and misinterpreted the clues.

Consider this:
The Florence Bravo murder case. The real hero of that case was Sir. William Gull urging Charles Bravo to state he had not been poisoned lest suspicion falsely fall on anyone. Charles Bravo didn’t and a whispering campaign against Mrs. Florence Bravo was begun stating she poisoned her husband. Mrs. Bravo was having an affair with Dr. Gully the family doctor at the time of her husband’s death. Sounds like Florence Maybrick doesn’t it?

So the hypothesis is, that Walter Sickert heard the Ripper’s identity lay in a love story, involving poisoning, a famous trial, and children were involved. His source means to direct him towards James Maybrick but he opts for Florence Bravo instead.
As the Bravo case occurred before the Ripper he interpreted the killer to be Sir. William Gull.
But he hears the Druitt theory- the theory that the Ripper drowned in the Thames. So John Netley is introduced.
This piece is merely artful speculation: when Joseph Sickert describes John Netley, as a social climbing homosexual, that description could possibly apply to M.J. Druitt also.
How does Robert Lees enter the equation? I believe Robert Lees was confused for Matthew Packer. Both were self-publicists claiming to have seen the Ripper. The Lees legend claims he saw him on a Shepherd’s Bus omnibus. Lees’ doctor is often equated with Sir. William Gull. Packer claimed he saw the Ripper on a tram on Commercial Street.

Florence Maybricks judge was Sir. James Stephen, JK Stephen’s father (another suspect, tutor to Prince Albert Victor, and possible acquaintance of MJ Druitt).

So how do Cream and Klosowski fit?
The originators of those theories were only dropped a hint that there was a poison connection and another sensational trial.
Deeming could have fitted the frame because the rumour was a Liverpool connection and a sensational trial.
All this suggests a common source for legends surrounding the identity of Jack the Ripper. That common source could be the Maybrick household or someone very closely connected to them.

I would appreciate any comments on this thought experiment.

[Caroline Morris]

Hi Stephen,

Fascinating stuff.

For starters you should enter the weekly caption contest - you'd win the 'most ingenious caption' trophy hands down. :)

Love,

Caz
X

[WRITEFX]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts and theory.

Some aspects of it reminded me of a pet interest of mine which
is an alternative method of profiling relating to names.

[robingoodfellow]

Consider this the idea of recurring themes within the suspect list of Jack the Ripper:

Poison:
Neill Cream
Severin Klosowski

Liverpool link:
Frederick Deeming
Francis Tumblety

USA link:
Francis Tumblety
Neill Cream
Severin Klosowski

Two or more alleged crimes:
Neill Cream (imprisoned in USA for murder, hanged in England for murder and Jack the Ripper)
Frederick Deeming (involved in two separate killings and Jack the Ripper)
Francis Tumblety (responsible for one death and Jack the Ripper)
William Bury (wife killer and Jack the Ripper)
Severin Klosowski (killed his wives and Jack the Ripper)

James Maybrick was allegedly poisoned, he has the Liverpool connection obviously and his wife’s trial counts as a second crime, assuming he was the Ripper.

Joseph Sickert’s story in it’s most basic form is a love story about a woman who is falsely imprisoned against her will, cut off from her children for the misdemeanours of her ‘husband.’
The Maybrick case is a love story. Florence was imprisoned under very dubious circumstances and her main grievance was being cut off from her children. Her husband James may have been Jack the Ripper and she may have known this- it would be a motive for murder.

Joseph Sickert in more detail told us that John Netley drowned, after being chased by an angry mob. M.J. Druitt drowned after being very quickly dismissed from his teaching post under very mysterious circumstances. Is it possible Sickert was confused. Perhaps he, or Walter Sickert, were given clues from several sources as to the Ripper’s identity and misinterpreted the clues.

Consider this:
The Florence Bravo murder case. The real hero of that case was Sir. William Gull urging Charles Bravo to state he had not been poisoned lest suspicion falsely fall on anyone. Charles Bravo didn’t and a whispering campaign against Mrs. Florence Bravo was begun stating she poisoned her husband. Mrs. Bravo was having an affair with Dr. Gully the family doctor at the time of her husband’s death. Sounds like Florence Maybrick doesn’t it?

So the hypothesis is, that Walter Sickert heard the Ripper’s identity lay in a love story, involving poisoning, a famous trial, and children were involved. His source means to direct him towards James Maybrick but he opts for Florence Bravo instead.
As the Bravo case occurred before the Ripper he interpreted the killer to be Sir. William Gull.
But he hears the Druitt theory- the theory that the Ripper drowned in the Thames. So John Netley is introduced.
This piece is merely artful speculation: when Joseph Sickert describes John Netley, as a social climbing homosexual, that description could possibly apply to M.J. Druitt also.
How does Robert Lees enter the equation? I believe Robert Lees was confused for Matthew Packer. Both were self-publicists claiming to have seen the Ripper. The Lees legend claims he saw him on a Shepherd’s Bus omnibus. Lees’ doctor is often equated with Sir. William Gull. Packer claimed he saw the Ripper on a tram on Commercial Street.

Florence Maybricks judge was Sir. James Stephen, JK Stephen’s father (another suspect, tutor to Prince Albert Victor, and possible acquaintance of MJ Druitt).

So how do Cream and Klosowski fit?
The originators of those theories were only dropped a hint that there was a poison connection and another sensational trial.
Deeming could have fitted the frame because the rumour was a Liverpool connection and a sensational trial.
All this suggests a common source for legends surrounding the identity of Jack the Ripper. That common source could be the Maybrick household or someone very closely connected to them.

I would appreciate any comments on this thought experiment.

You seem to be suggesting that in these various other cases there appears to be a murky shadow of something not quite right in the Maybrick household.

Its certainly an interesting possibility, but a bit like Chinese Whispers.

[Stephen Leece]

Not quite- I'm suggesting that all suspect roads lead to Maybrick if you look at the various versions of the Sickert story, Gull rumours and RJ Lees. I've grossly simplified things in that post- there's far more interesting parallels but to list them all would be tedious and would probably end up spinning off topic. I can do similar scenario using 'K-Ski' stems in their name. Kloswoski was confused for Kosminski etc. What I'm suggesting is there remains a possibility of a very early tradition that James Maybrick was Jack the Ripper and for whatever reason the tradition has been forgotten and that Maybrick has been confused and misinterpreted for Sir. William Gull, Packer has been substitued for Lees, Annie Crook has been substitued for Florence Maybrick, John Netley is Druitt. I think there is a very good case for Mary Kelly being confused for Frances Coles in a lot of these Gull stories.
I'll give you a personal parallel- there's a nasty legend about me that I once threw a chair across a lecture hall at a rude student. In reality another lecturer did that and was fired immediately and I took over his classes until a replacement could be hired. But there's people that swear blind, that they were there and saw me do it and the legend grows with every re-telling. Last time the story was related to me it had the added bonus of hospitilising said student. Now anyone who knows me knows that I've got arms like pipe cleaners and I wouldn't be able to lift the chair let alone throw it. But I've still gone down in local legend as 'Dr. Leece the chair thrower' when it was really Mr. Sharif chair thrower. People have short memories, and the sacked lecturer was only there for 5 minutes so a lot of his personal attributes have been off-loaded onto me. It's such a powerful legend it will probaby appear in my obituary in the in-house magazine.

[Chris G.]

Hello Stephen

I am not sure where you are headed with this. I don't quite see the connections that you see. In an early issue of Ripper Notes, August 1999, when I was an editor, we published an article by Andy and Sue Parlour, "Bravo for Maybrick," so this connection between the Maybrick Case and the Bravo Case has been made before. It does seem to me that Ripperology is especially susceptible to this type of "this coincidence must mean something significant"-type mentality and it would appear to me that it is a limitation of the field rather than the advancing of knowledge that should be preferred. Sorry.

Chris

[Stephen Leece]

I'm not sure where I'm heading with it either- it's something that I've been chewing over for years and wanted opinions/ suggestions over.

[Chris G.]

Hi Stephen

On the other hand I do think that Maybrick could have been the Ripper without the Diary. Except that we don't so far have any evidence apart from the diary and watch to show that he did the murders. At the moment he is a candidate but not necessarily a good one, a gent who might have slummed in Whitechapel. I don't think the Diary necessarily helps his case.

Chris

[Stephen Leece]

I have a really odd attitude towards the diary. Sometimes I look at it I think it's great. Other days I look at it and I think it's absolute tosh. I really can't make my mind up about it and stick with it.

[Chris G.]

I have a really odd attitude towards the diary. Sometimes I look at it I think it's great. Other days I look at it and I think it's absolute tosh. I really can't make my mind up about it and stick with it.

I think your mixed feelings about the Diary are understandable. My initial reaction to the Diary in 1993 when I first heard about it and before I read it was that it was too good to be true. I still think so. I think the narrative is engaging to an extent, even spellbinding in passages, but that the whole is rather sloppily put together when looked at objectively, and the hoaxer very lucky not to have been exposed by now.

Chris

[Mike Covell]

Hi all,

Here's a coincidence for you,
Sickert, Sadler, Stephenson, Deeming, Queen Vic, Prince Eddy, Prince Albert, Lewis Carroll all had links to Hull.

And Maybrick met Florrie on a boat With a Hull!!

In all seriousness, I was the same way with the diary, some days I think it's great and other days I think it's rubbish.

I keep having doubts over the watch too!!

And just yesterday, some crazed nutter rung me up because he had seen an article i had written on a hull based website.

He told me Maybrick did it!!:mad:

[Paul Butler]

Come on Mike. Its more obvious than that! Sir Jim left us some very good clues. "In front for all eyes to see".

It was the Liver he was after really and he left his victims in pools of blood.

Case closed and goodnight!

Ah the watch. The diary's poor relation. Far more convincingly old than the diary in my view. I think I'll go and bump it back into the limelight when I've got a minute.

regards.

Paul

[Caroline Morris]

Hi Paul, Mike,

Ah yes, the watch. It ticks away, always biding its time, until one of us remembers its 'inconvenient' existence.

The odd thing for me is the Maybrick signature. A subtler touch, and far easier from a hoaxer's point of view, would have been to use the initials JM, or even 'Sir Jim', and let others make the Maybrick connection.

I still think it's striking that whoever scratched the signature managed to achieve at the one attempt more than just a passing resemblance to the signature on the real Jim's marriage licence. (See illustration page between pages 152 and 153 of Ripper Diary, by Keith, Seth and some woman.)

The same people who might argue that all the available Maybrick documents are recognisably in the same hand, without needing to know who wrote them, would no doubt argue that the opposite is the case with the watch and the marriage licence. But to me there is no escaping that someone was trying to reproduce - in a gold surface - the same kind of 'brick' with the oversized 'k' that would have been much easier for anyone to reproduce on paper. If only we had a known example of Jim scratching words inside a gold watch, we could judge how well he could have reproduced his own handwriting in such circumstances.

Love,

Caz
X

[robingoodfellow]

Not quite- I'm suggesting that all suspect roads lead to Maybrick if you look at the various versions of the Sickert story, Gull rumours and RJ Lees. I've grossly simplified things in that post- there's far more interesting parallels but to list them all would be tedious and would probably end up spinning off topic. I can do similar scenario using 'K-Ski' stems in their name. Kloswoski was confused for Kosminski etc. What I'm suggesting is there remains a possibility of a very early tradition that James Maybrick was Jack the Ripper and for whatever reason the tradition has been forgotten and that Maybrick has been confused and misinterpreted for Sir. William Gull, Packer has been substitued for Lees, Annie Crook has been substitued for Florence Maybrick, John Netley is Druitt. I think there is a very good case for Mary Kelly being confused for Frances Coles in a lot of these Gull stories.
I'll give you a personal parallel- there's a nasty legend about me that I once threw a chair across a lecture hall at a rude student. In reality another lecturer did that and was fired immediately and I took over his classes until a replacement could be hired. But there's people that swear blind, that they were there and saw me do it and the legend grows with every re-telling. Last time the story was related to me it had the added bonus of hospitilising said student. Now anyone who knows me knows that I've got arms like pipe cleaners and I wouldn't be able to lift the chair let alone throw it. But I've still gone down in local legend as 'Dr. Leece the chair thrower' when it was really Mr. Sharif chair thrower. People have short memories, and the sacked lecturer was only there for 5 minutes so a lot of his personal attributes have been off-loaded onto me. It's such a powerful legend it will probaby appear in my obituary in the in-house magazine.

In psychology you would be talking about the unreliability of eyewitness testimony primarily when mentioning your local legend about chair throwing.

I get your point.

[Stephen Leece]

True but the issue here is not eye-witness testimony. It is how legends develop and evolve.

[WRITEFX]

On this subject of legends and how they begin, at the time this event ocurred I had never studied medicine.

However, completely unknown to me a group of doctors believed I was an expert in a certain field and got me to sit in on tricky consultations and share my opinions. I thought it was unusual but came up with a reasonable explanation in my mind. I was even filmed for a video.

So if people in this day and age get things drastically wrong, I can imagine how easily it could have happened back then.

Re the Bravo and Maybrick cases. There is so much that is similar in these two households, not only the points that you mentioned but also the ones you didn't e.g. a house connection. I think it's an interesting line of inquiry.

[SirRobertAnderson]

I think the narrative is engaging to an extent, even spellbinding in passages, but that the whole is rather sloppily put together when looked at objectively, and the hoaxer very lucky not to have been exposed by now.

Chris

I'm thinking we should have a thread just on the literary merits - or lack thereof - of the Diary, as well as the question of whether or not it should matter. I.e. if it was a homespun masterpiece, would we give it more credence ?

[Marco Franzoi]

Thank you, Stephen, for your fascinating insight. Connections are there to be made. I've personally traced Oak Island legends of the flooding money pit and Captain Kidd to Lousiana where the Acadians went and their Cajun folktales of Jacques Lafitte and sinking treasures.
Aren't you glad the case wasn't closed and forgotten with the Diary? We would have missed so much.

[Stephen Leece]

Well I've come across an awful lot of students that wonder why I still follow the case, because in their mind, the diary and watch solves it. I point out to them that there are problems and anomalies on both sides of the diary debate. Furthermore, even if you are a hard core believer in Maybrick as the Ripper, that is no excuse for ceasing research. I would argue it's a spur for doing more work. The point of history is to get as close to the truth as possible- if a historian does less than that they have failed in their duty as a historian.

[Paul Butler]

The pont of history is to get as close to the truth as possible- if a historian does less than that they have failed in their duty as a historian.

As opposed to shrouding it in a fog of internet spam and hoping it will wither and die....?

Good post Stephen.

Incidentally, would anyone care to nip over to the Maybrick watch forum and argue that the scratches are not a century or so old? I'm still waiting!

Regards.

Paul

[Stephen Leece]

Hence my strong views on certain individuals in the Ripper community Paul!

[Shawn-a]

Well I've come across an awful lot of students that wonder why I still follow the case, because in their mind, the diary and watch solves it.
Perhaps your students would be interested in this gem--the parallels between the Ripper saga and the Davinci Code:

A prostitute named Mary
An alleged son
An artist with a code about said prostitute and son
The Freemasons
Roslyn/Rosslyn
Someone named Brown! :)

Three is enough for me. Case closed.

[Stephen Leece]

ha ha ha! You wouldn't believe the struggle I have convincing them that the DaVinci Code is Biblical bollocks!

[Shawn-a]

I actually had a professor of Christian Symbolism named Langan. I actually thought Professor Langdon was based on her.

Oh yes I forgot to mention Davinci Code has Rosslyn Chapel.
The Sickert Code has Roslyn in Whitechapel!

The Davinci Code has fundamentalists who say Mary had no child.
The Sickert Code has fundamentalists who say Mary had no child.

But Howard and I know the truth. We are its keeper.
He is the head of the PriYOry of Balboa and together we protect the secret identity of Mary's progeny and their sacred bloodline from the flagellating albino henchmen of Ripperology.

[Shawn-a]

PriYOry of Balboa

PriYOry of SLYon

[Stephen Leece]

Shawna- you have the makings of a bestseller there! x