Let's Discuss the Irregular Farce of Battlecrease Harse, or Die Laughing

[Jay Hartley]

And



The new book by Jones and Dolgin has largely and somewhat unexpectedly exorcised any desire I have to further debate the Maybrick Hoax, but I do want to comment on the above.

I thought it would be fairly obvious that any analysis of the Maybrick Hoax and its source materials would require limiting oneself to what can be strictly and objectively proven to exist in the text, otherwise it would be a pointless exercise.

Can anyone point to a line in the diary that proves that the hoaxer was aware that the Maybricks had just moved into Battlecrease and signed the lease?

Something along the lines of "The bitch misses Beechville" or "Sonny is settling in nicely"?

There is a line about an evil shadow over the house, but that atmospheric detail, so characteristic of melodrama, could apply to a house that someone has lived in for decades.

Yes, the action of the hoax begins at some indeterminate time before June 1888, but since it is a relatively brief narrative about Maybrick deciding to kill women and commit a series of murders in Whitechapel, London, and those murders began in August 1888, that is hardly surprising. It is entirely natural that the hoaxer would have chosen to do so. Why waste time and what might be Edwardian paper on the year 1887? After all, according to Barrett, his own mortgage was due.

As is so often the case, the hoaxer is being given credit for having more knowledge than they truly demonstrate. The reader invents some interpretation of his or her own, or learns of some obscure fact that is not 'reflected' in the text, and then demands to know how the hoaxer was aware of it, be it John Baillie Knight, a manslaughter case in Horwich, etc.

I suppose the skeptics will next be asked how the hoaxer knew that Maybrick owned a Humber bicycle, since he was obviously straddling one when Mrs. Hammersmith strolled up the drive.

But don’t mind me. Carry on, carry on.

Imagination is obviously more compelling and satisfying than empiricism. I get it.

That’s because RJ, like Chris, you are looking through too narrow of a lens. I’m going to take a punt and guess you are an academic. What is empirical cannot lie? Actually, often it does but that’s a debate for another day.

Your argument, and is Chris’s, is there is a cumulative lack of specific empirical data connecting anything written in the diary. That’s fair. By why should there be?

It’s not a diary though. It’s the ramblings and thoughts of someone portraying that of a murderer battling with his darkest and inner most thoughts. It was not written to satisfy academics like you or Chris. It’s purpose wasn’t to prove itself with verifiable dates and facts. It’s a human psychology piece more than anything. If it is genuine.

I actually don’t think it is all that clever, even if it is a hoax. To avoid putting in such extra erroneous details does not scream to me brilliant thinking but rather a safe mindset. Write what you know is what they say. If it’s genuine then it is exactly what it purports to be - a journal of a man on a dark journey.

Posts like mine here somehow get marked as ‘scrambled thinking’ and lacks ‘reasonable discourse’. Apologies for that, but I am looking at this from a psychological and humanity mindset. Mine makes more allowances for human nuance.

A human wrote this book and therefore there has to be a motivation one way or another. Mike Barrett’s get rich quick scheme to pay his mortgage does not cut it. I need to know who actually did write it and why.

[Chris Phillips]

Please note that the new policy excludes discussion of who wrote the Diary, when it was written and whether Maybrick was the murderer.

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