Jack the Ripper's Dear Diary
by M.P. Pellicer | Noir Notebook
For over 120 years, the identity and motive of Jack the Ripper have filled books and inspired movies—some accurate; others, everything but. However, in 2017, a discovery was made that shocked everyone.
Those suspected of killing prostitutes in Whitechapel, London, at the end of the 19th century have ranged from the well-born to the guttersnipe; even women have been considered. The only common denominator among them was a twisted psyche, accompanied by intelligence and arrogance.
Then, in 1992, a 9,000-word memoir by James Maybrick, a cotton merchant, stunned those who had picked over any evidence tied to Jack the Ripper. In the Victorian diary, he confessed to brutally murdering five women in London’s East End and another in Manchester.
He signed off the diary: “I give my name that all know of me, so history do tell, what love can do to a gentleman born. Yours Truly, Jack The Ripper.”
It was not unexpected when many questioned whether it was authentic or not.
Mike Barrett, a Liverpool scrap metal dealer, said he had come into possession of the diary through Tony Devereux, a friend. But Devereux died soon after the diary was published, so he could not explain how he came to discover it.
But not all wanted to believe it was a forgery. One of them was a researcher named Bruce Robinson, who went over the story and believed he found evidence of the story’s authenticity.
The diary was found in Maybrick’s former Liverpool home.
Robert Smith, who published the book in 1993, believes this information was withheld by Barrett because he feared being prosecuted. Smith said: “When the diary first emerged, Mike Barrett refused to give any satisfactory explanation for where it had come from, but after painstaking research, chiefly by Bruce Robinson, we can now show a trail that leads us directly to Maybrick’s home.”
Maybrick lived in a mansion known as Battlecrease House, located in the Merseyside suburb of Aigburth. He was a wealthy merchant who died in 1889, a year after the killings in Whitechapel.
Soon after his death, his wife, Florence, was arrested and charged with murdering him by poisoning him with arsenic.
In 1992, the property was being renovated. Electrical contractors working on the site were local men named Arthur Rigby, James Coufopoulos, and Eddie Lyons. They all frequented the same pub as Mike Barrett, a colorful character who boasted about being an author. When they found the diary in March, 1992, they brought it to him, hoping he could find a publisher who would be interested in it.
On March 9, Barrett called Doreen Montgomery, a literary agent, and asked, “I’ve got Jack the Ripper’s diary, would you be interested in seeing it?” The answer was yes, and the book was published in 1993.
In truth, Barrett was not very literate, and many doubted he could produce such a sophisticated forgery.
Some said only the killer could have written the diary, others said it provided information already published in the newspapers, and offered no new information.
In 1995, Mr. Barrett swore out an affidavit saying he made the whole thing up. Later, he retracted it.
Rigby, Coufopoulos, and Lyons, the electricians working at the Maybrick property, denied being involved in the discovery of the memoir, even though each had slightly different versions of what actually happened.
Robert Smith, the publisher, has never wavered from the authenticity of the document. He explained:
“I have never been in any doubt that the diary is a genuine document written in 1888 and 1889.
The new and indisputable evidence, that on 9th March 1992, the diary was removed from under the floorboards of the room that had been James Maybrick’s bedroom in 1889, and offered later on the very same day to a London literary agent, overrides any other considerations regarding its authenticity.
It follows that James Maybrick is its most likely author. Was he Jack the Ripper? He now has to be a prime suspect, but the disputes over the Ripper’s identity may well rage for another century at least.”
In a totally different version of events, Anne Barrett, who was married to Michael Barrett at the time the book was offered to a publisher, said it had been in her family “for as long as she could remember”, and it was she who gave it to Mr. Deveraux. She did not give the book directly to her husband because she did not want him to question her estranged father about it. She didn’t expect him to claim he wrote it himself by dictating it to her. Later, he recanted on that story.
In 1999, after her divorce, Anne authored her own book using her maiden surname of Graham, titled The Last Victim: The Extraordinary Life of Florence Maybrick, the Wife of Jack the Ripper. Her research led her to believe she was related to Florence Maybrick. Allegedly, Florence gave birth to an illegitimate child when she was 15 years old, by a man named Henry Flynn.
According to her book, when Florence Maybrick was released in 1904, she started using the surname Graham. Her son by Flynn was named William Graham, who was Anne’s father.
The link was Edith Formby, who, according to the Graham family, had attended Florence’s trial each day with the nurses in charge of caring for Florence. Her daughter, Elizabeth, would go on to marry William “Billy” Graham.
