How Did We Get Here?

By the summer of 1994 the diary appeared to be dead.

The Sunday Times exposé of September 1993 had revealed that a number of experts, including a forensic document examiner, had concluded that the diary was a twentieth century forgery.  The person who had presented it to a literary agent had confessed that the diary was a forgery.

Why the hell is it still being discussed today?

High on the list of reasons must be the ingenuity of Shirley Harrison whose October 1993 book included the false claim that "one off" to mean unique could be found in a nineteenth century document buried in the archives of what turned out to be a non-existent company, thus closing down the most obvious proof that the diary is fake for more than twenty years

Then we had Anne Graham bringing the diary back to life with her incredibly convenient story of the diary having been secretly in her family's possession for generations.  A parting gift for her husband who could now come back on board with the diary team and defend the diary (in public) without the pressure of having to explain where it had come from.

Then we had Paul Feldman's book, with its collection of jumbled "evidence", including supposed facial similarities between Graham family members and Florence Maybrick, thus supporting Anne's story, which convinced the more impressionable, and gullible readers, including a (relatively) young goggle-eyed Thomas Mitchell, albeit now sadly discarded.

But, above all,1998 saw the emergence of an extraordinary character, a one-woman dynamo, whose mission in life seems to have become to defend the diary until her last breath, after she read Paul Feldman's book (Red Flag Alert!) which she purchased at her natural home, the London Dungeon, before reading the diary itself. Her first thought was that she could see (perhaps in colour?) some connections between the diary and two of the works of Gilbert & Sullivan.

What are these connections?

Well, one of them is the fact that the recently appointed Lord High Executioner in The Mikado says "I never even killed a blue-bottle". Even though the slightly different saying of "to kill a fly" was, and remains, a very common phrase, there is supposedly some meaning in the fact that the diarist wrote that he was a mild man "who it has been said would never hurt a fly". Even leaving aside how common it is for someone to be said to never hurt a fly, there is a huge difference between the two usages because in The Mikado it is said for comic effect in circumstances where the Lord High Executioner (who has, in fact, never executed anybody in his life) is saying that, despite it being his job to execute people, he can't actually kill anyone. Hence he says to a person asking to be executed "I can't kill you - I can't kill anything! I can't kill anybody!" before weeping. By contrast, in the diary, the diarist is saying that it is other people who (wrongly) believe he would never hurt a fly, which is the cover he intends to rely on to throw off suspicion from him while he happily murders prostitutes in London. There's just no similarity here. And, of course, the diarist uses the word "fly" not "bluebottle".

What else? Well the diarist says that June is a pleasant month and that "the flowers are in full bud" while in the Mikado there's a line which refers to "The flowers that bloom in the spring". I mean, does one even need to respond to such rubbish?

Then we have a supposed a connection between the crossed out and incomplete "One whore in heaven" poem in the diary and some of the lyrics of "Three little maids" from The Mikado even though both are very different in style and rhythm.

In 'Three Little Maids" we find:

One little maid is a bride, Yum Yum,

Two little maids in attendance come.

Three little maids is the total sum...

In the diary, after the fourth London prostitute (Eddowes) has been murdered, we have:

One whore in heaven

two whores side by side

three whores all have died

four

Both poems count upwards from one, sure. But the diarist clearly wanted to include a fourth "whore" before the poem was crossed out, uncompleted. This makes no sense if he was imitating "Three little maids". And, come on, if it was supposed to be related to or influenced by Gilbert & Sullivan, surely the diarist would have written "one little whore in heaven/two little whores side by side/three little whores all have died".

I should note that part of the theory includes the fact that because the two "whores" are "side by side" this is somehow supposed to mirror the fact that the two little maids are "in attendance" while the fact that "all" three "whores" have died is supposed to relate to the "total sum" of the three little maids. But this theory, feeble as it is, is ruined by the fact that neither "bride" nor "Yum Yum" is mirrored by the word "heaven" in the first line of the diary poem.

Then, finally, not apparently being able to find any more words in the diary which are also in the Mikado, our theorist turns to Gilbert & Sullivan's Yeoman of the Guard. From her knowledge of that opera, she became suspicious of the word "on" appearing twice in one sentence in the diary line: "I showed no fright and indeed no light". Apparently, the diarist couldn't have written this had he not been aware of the line in Yeoman of the Guard: "He sipped no sup, and he craved no crumb". You see, the word "no" appears twice in both of them. Amazing, ain't it?

No, seriously, this is what made her think the diary was authored in the nineteenth century by a literary genius hoaxer who was also very familiar with Gilbert & Sullivan's Mikado (which, she notes, was performed at the Savoy Theatre during the summer of 1888) and with Yeoman of the Guard (performed from 3 October 1888 at the Savoy Theatre). With baffling logic she told us (in a post dated 18 December 2013):

"I have little doubt that the real James would have gone to the Savoy with his brother Michael to see the G&S operas during his frequent visits to London. So whoever wrote the diary would have done well to include the odd reflection of their work in Sir Jim's doggerel".

So she thinks that James Maybrick would have gone to see both Gilbert & Sullivan operas at the Savoy in 1888. In fact, she has "little doubt" that he would have seen both of them (with his brother for some reason) despite the absence of any evidence or indication that he even enjoyed the theatre let alone liked Gilbert & Sullivan let alone went to those particular operas in London. Anyway, let's indulge her and say that James Maybrick want to see both operas. So James Maybrick must have been the author of the diary, right?

Oh no, it's not that simple!

Because, by including the few lines in the diary which she thinks were inspired by Gilbert & Sullivan, the diary author, who was not, in fact, James Maybrick, but some kind of weird hoaxer, was in some way connecting these lines with James Maybrick in the diary because he (the weird hoaxer) knew Maybrick had been to see the plays in London in 1888.

It's kind of odd, though, because the Yeoman of Guard's first performance at the Savoy was on 3 October 1888, three days after the 'double event". So why didn't the author of the diary say that he'd been to see that play in the diary? It would have been a perfect way for the hoaxer to link the diary to James Maybrick's actual movements (at least as imagined in the head of the Chief Diary Defender) so that all his friends and relatives, as they gathered round to read this humorous diary of James as a brutal mutilating serial killer, would have been able to say "oooooh, yes, how uncannily accurate, James did go to the Savoy to watch that G&S play didn't he?"

The whole thing is just so batty but the best part of it is that, having convinced herself, if no one else on this entire planet, that the diarist was including lines inspired by Gilbert & Sullivan, and that James Maybrick was a fan of Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas, she trumpets that, on this basis:

"if nothing else rules out Mike Barrett's hand in the diary, that surely would."

Amazing ain't it? Having invented this pure and unadulterated nonsense about Gilbert & Sullivan, the inventor of the nonsense has managed to single-handedly rule out Michael Barrett's role in creating the diary.

Bravo!

Oh, and we should not forget that the she also believes that the diary author was influenced by A Diary of a Nobody which details the daily life of a fictional office clerk, Charles Pooter, and was first serialised in Punch in 1888, replicating its style for his own little diary, with the addition of deliberate spelling mistakes and poor grammar as some kind of inside joke for those who knew how poor a speller and writer James Maybrick was because, you see, the hoaxer was intimately familiar with not only the personal life but also the writing style of James Maybrick. 

More than this she thinks that both Diary of A Nobody and the Maybrick diary are connected in that, according to the author of A History of Punch (1957), Diary of a Nobody was introduced with an editorial note, "showing its aim was to burlesque memoirs by nonentities" about which she says that when she read it she was astonished, "because that neatly and concisely sums up precisely how I saw the Maybrick diary almost from day one." Continuing she says:

"It always seemed to me that its author was aiming for an unfunny kind of funny, while smirking to himself as he wrote those funny little unfunny rhymes for Sir James, the lesser of two jumped-up nobody brothers, who only became something of a somebody after his death."

For myself, having read Diary of a Nobody, I truly cannot see any connection with the Ripper diary at all. As we've been offered no proper analysis as to why we should think they are related in any way, it's hard to counter a non-existing argument but one obvious difference between the two works is that people laugh at Charles Pooter behind his back and indeed to his face, although he doesn't think he's doing anything funny, and doesn't realize he is a figure of fun, but there is nothing of the sort in the Jack the Ripper diary. In fact, the whole comedic point of the Pooter diary is that the author totally lacks self-awareness, thinking he is more important than he really is, a feature entirely absent from the Ripper diary.

For the record, the editorial note referred to in A History of Punch actually said nothing about memoirs by nonentities. What it actually said when introducing the series in its edition of 3 May 1888 was:

'As everybody who is anybody is publishing Reminiscences, Diaries, Notes, Autobiographies, and Recollections, we are sincerely grateful to "A Nobody" for permitting us to add to the historic collection - Ed".

The Pooter diary itself contains normal dated entries commencing "April 3" and moving on to "April 4" and so on, unlike the Jack the Ripper diary, so the forger of the diary ignored that convention. There are, unsurprisingly, no spelling or errors of grammar in Diary of a Nobody and the writing style is not replicated in the Ripper diary. It's completely different. But then again I don't see words in colours so what do I know?

Mind you, she's missed one obvious indication that the diary was written after 1940 which is that in the introduction to the 1940 edition of The Diary of a Nobody, it is stated by J.C. Squire that 'Mr Pooter does not beat his wife' and that "Fifteen months pass without a murder..." So obviously the Jack the Ripper diary forger, having read this, ensured that Maybrick did beat his wife and murdered prostitutes. Not! Just a coincidence, obviously. But I think it does highlight something important, namely that the Diary of a Nobody is about a true nobody who lives a normal and unremarkable life in which nothing out of the ordinary happens whereas the dairy of Jack the Ripper is about a serial killer. See the difference?

Eager to defend the diary and desirous of impressing researcher and diary defender Keith Skinner, our heroine made early contact with Skinner who, in May 2000, overwhelmed by her Mikado theory, called her "the Gilbert & Sullivan lady" (one step up from being a bag lady, I suppose).  From that moment, on her lifelong career as a diary defender began. 

Having joined the newly created Casebook online, she set out to defend the diary with a vengeance, especially against Keith Skinner's arch enemy Melvin Harris.

Skinner was so impressed with Morris' batty determination in devising ingenious arguments to defend the diary which would never have occurred to him that she was invited to join the team of authors who produced the leading propaganda work to defend the diary called Inside Story.

A year after publication of the book, Morris dramatically shifted from thinking the diary to be a nineteenth century fake written by someone close to James Maybrick to thinking that it was genuine, although she was reluctant to fully express this opinion, being someone who is obviously worried about what people think about her.  She didn't want people to think she was nuts, like Tom Mitchell, after all.  But the fact of the matter is that in 2004, with her secret knowledge of the recently discovered Portus & Rhodes "timesheet", which suggested to her that the diary must have been found under the floorboards of Battlecrease by a Portus & Rhodes electrician on 9 March 1992, she did temporarily resile from her position that the diary must be a fake due to the handwriting not matching that of Maybrick.  Suddenly she was saying that, well, handwriting isn't conclusive.

She then continued to defend the diary with all her might on the online forums with her speciality being in countering every single point made by those who were saying that the diary was an obvious fake due to the historical and language the mistakes made by the author.   A mention by the diarist of the non-existent "Poste House"?  No bother, maybe it did exist you see, either in Liverpool or perhaps in London. After all, who knows, eh?  No way of disproving a negative.  "Spreads mayhem" at a time when "mayhem" meant mutilation, not chaos.  Easy.  The killer was spreading mutilation across the land.  "Top myself"?  Well, he could theoretically have written this.  And so on.  Every single point against the diary countered by some serious mental gymnastics.

Since the revelation that "one off instance" is undoubtedly a twentieth century expression, Morris-Brown, while flirting with certain batshit crazy theories to explain it away, has accepted that the diary could be a twentieth century forgery (planted for unknown reasons under the Battlecrease floorboards) as long as the Barretts didn't forge it.  Why is she so implacably opposed to the idea that the Barretts might have been behind it?  Well this is a bit of a mystery.   We can only assume she formed an impression of Barrett being too stupid, with his wife being too honest, at an early stage and is unable to modify her view of them according to the evidence.  It matters not to her that Mike was a professional freelance journalist and aspiring novelist nor that Anne has evidently lied through her teeth about the diary's origins.  She just can't even accept the possibility of their involvement.  When I asked her why this was, she just came back with incomprehensible word salad.  No coherent answer whatsoever and I've never seen one from her.

Without the existence of Morris-Brown's convoluted defence of the diary, would Tom Mitchell even exist online? It seems unlikely. She is the propagandist of the movement without whom the loons would not have anyone to cling on to. She is the person who has single-handedly taken us all for a ride on the road to Insanity. That's how we've ended up here in 2024.

LORD ORSAM 16 May 2024