Lord Orsam Says...

When Lord Orsam was a fresh-faced schoolboy - for, yes, there was such a time, long ago - one of his friends participated in a debate during English class at secondary school to advocate on behalf of the proposition that electronic instruments were killing music, or something similar, and needed to be banned. This was during the early 1980s (probably 1981) when songs which used synthesizers were starting to dominate the pop charts. His friend played the piano, liked the group Madness and, presumably, wasn't keen on the new groups like Depeche Mode, Duran Duran and, indeed, Spandau Ballet. Lord Orsam (who wasn't a particular fan of Spandau Ballet until he heard a live performance of 'Gold' in 1983) didn't have any particular opinion about synthesizers at the time and he certainly wasn't against them. He had very little interest in the debate. But when it had concluded, the teacher asked everyone to put their hands up if they supported or opposed the motion. Sitting at the front of the class on the right hand side, Lord Orsam felt he should support his friend so raised his hand to agree with the motion about synthesizers being a bad thing which should be stopped forthwith. To his astonishment, and dismay, on looking round he realized that his was the only hand raised in the entire class! The English teacher asked him why he agreed with the proposition and, not having any genuine belief in it whatsoever, or even any fully formed thoughts, stammered some sort of highly unconvincing answer. From that day onwards, Lord Orsam has not agreed with anything simply because it was said by someone with whom he is friendly.

To a certain extent, that is the theme which runs through this revived edition of the old-favourite "Lord Orsam Says..."

So that's enough from me, Lord Orsam's assistant, and I had you over to Lord Orsam himself.

Let's start with Roger.

ROGER (part 1)

It was extremely disappointing that Roger Palmer, who has commented numerous times on this site, decided, like others before him, to respond to my article "The Magical Thinking of Jonathan Hainsworth" over on JTR Forums where he knows I cannot reply.

Hence, it needs a new blog post to deal with his response which could have been sorted out in the comments section of this website.

This was his response:

"It's rather disappointing to see "Lord Orsam" misstate my words:

"Well an explanation has been offered by R.J. Palmer on the Casebook Forum that, within the context of Druitt having been named as a suspect for the Whitechapel murders of 1888, it seems unlikely to be a coincidence that, "a streetwalker who had her throat cut in 1887 alluded to a barrister". To my mind, this is a circular argument which depends on Druitt actually being Jack the Ripper."

In truth, I never said it was "unlikely to be a coincidence" those are Orsam's words, not mine.

What I actually wrote was:

"If you think it is a worthless coincidence that a streetwalker who had her throat cut in 1887 alluded to a barrister (and the north end of Blackfriar's bridge would place her not overly far from the Inns of Court and Kings Bench Walk) that's certainly your prerogative. I find it rather interesting, even though Druitt is not one of my two preferred suspects. "

I also think Lord Orsam's logic has gone astray. There is nothing whatsoever 'circular' in my statement.

Circular arguments are self-referencing and Orsam himself argues the two events are unrelated, so how can wondering about a connection be circular?

And his statement that the coincidence depends on Druitt "actually being Jack the Ripper" is entirely untrue. It would be same coincidence if Druitt wasn't Jack the Ripper.

It would only be circular if Druitt hadn't been named as a suspect in a string of 1888 street murders. But he was. That is the coincidence--his actual guilt is beside the point.

If the attack happened in Bow and the woman referred to an unnamed sawdust merchant or if it happened in Whitechapel and the victim referred to a schizophrenic who ate from the gutters would the coincidence by any different? Those two descriptions are consistent with recognizable suspects in the 1888 murders.

Orsam can argue that there were plenty of barristers at the Inns of Court in 1887, or more specifically at the Old Bailey, which is true. How many of those men were accused of stabbing or cutting prostitutes' throats in a string of murders occurring the following year?

When Cameron was found she was deeply dazed and she initially didn't know if she had been struck a blow by a knife or by a blunt object. At this time, she claimed she had been struck by a truncheon, but this was inconsistent with her injuries, and she very quickly retracted it. Later reports state that her throat was cut and made no mention of a head wound. The 'blow' had been from a knife, not a truncheon. There was some bad analysis on this point over on Casebook.

When it was clear she could not have been struck by a policeman, she then stated she had been attacded by "a friend and a barrister" but she wouldn't give the man up.

By "friend" I interpret it to only mean a regular client. The obvious implication is that she decided to protect her client's identity or possibly feared reprisals.

I've known about this incident for a number of years and was disappointed to see it being misstated and exaggerated and morphed into something else, because it's quite interesting on its own."

Roger's post started off badly and went downhill from there.

I did not, of course, misstate Roger's words. It's interesting that he started off his post like this, with fury that he had been misrepresented. As we can see, he fumed:

"I never said it was "unlikely to be a coincidence" those are Orsam's words, not mine."

But I never once claimed that he did use those words. I said that his explanation was that:

"it seems unlikely to be a coincidence that, "a streetwalker who had her throat cut in 1887 alluded to a barrister". "

The quotation marks in the part highlighted in bold clearly show what Roger had said and what he had not said. The part that this was unlikely to be a coincidence was my understanding of Roger's post, in summary form.

What is striking is that although Roger huffs and puffs that he did not use the precise words, "unlikely to be a coincidence", what he does not do in his JTR Forums post is explain why that wasn't an accurate summary of his position. Worse, he literally goes on in his post to explain why he doesn't think it was likely a coincidence!

What Roger also did was reproduce a single paragraph from one of his Casebook posts, without explanation, apparently in the belief that because he didn't use the exact words "unlikely to be a coincidence" it was unfair of me to attribute that view to him. But, as I read Roger's Casebook posts (plural), that seemed to me to be precisely what he was saying and he hasn't explained why I'm wrong.

Furthermore, Roger didn't even quote all the relevant parts of his Casebook posts. He had first addressed the subject a post dated 28th October 2025, in response to a post by Fiver, when he said (my bold):

"Meanwhile, here we have an unnamed barrister who--lo and behold--is mentioned in a knife attack on a prostitute the previous year, 1887. The 'coincidence' strikes me as rather interesting."

He added:

"No, there is no definite evidence that this was Druitt--that I know of---but what other barristers were being sought as Jack the Ripper within the next 13 or 14 months?

Can you name one?

When I came across this attack, I did indeed think of MJD because it would neatly explain why the police may have taken him seriously as a suspect a year later if his name had come up in this earlier investigation."

Pausing there; as a factual matter, there is no hard evidence that Druitt was being sought as Jack the Ripper within 13 or 14 months of the assault on Minnie Cameron nor that the police had taken his name seriously as a suspect "a year later". I already dealt with this in my blog post. Macnaghten said that the facts which pointed towards Druitt's guilt were unknown to the police until some years after 1889. We only have the word of Sims, who tells a story about suspicion being passed on to the police by the Druitt family and Druitt's photograph being circulated in late 1888. Sims evidently had good police contacts but that story may or may not be true. Other than this, there's no good reason to think that Druitt's name was known to the police in 1888 or 1889. However, it's hard to see what difference it makes when suspicion was cast on Druitt, whether 1888, 1891 or 1961, if that suspicion was misplaced, nor why the police would have needed him to have been responsible for the Minnie Cameron attack for them to take him seriously as a suspect a year later. That part just doesn't make sense.

Roger then returned to the subject on 29th October 2025 in response to Fiver's reply to his post of the previous day. We can see that Roger missed out an entire paragraph, plus part of another paragraph, in his JTR Forums post.

"Far more curious is her allegation that she had been attacked by a barrister and a friend. That is strangely specific and barristers aren't known for going around cutting women's throats in the night so it would make for a very unusual lie. And it is not usually normal for street prostitutes to know the occupation of their clients unless they are a 'regular.' I take 'friend' to mean the same as a 'date' or a 'client' in the modern jargon of streetwalkers.

If you think it is a worthless coincidence that a streetwalker who had her throat cut in 1887 alluded to a barrister (and the north end of Blackfriar's bridge would place her not overly far from the Inns of Court and Kings Bench Walk) that's certainly your prerogative. I find it rather interesting, even though Druitt is not one of my two preferred suspects. I would feel remiss if I simply shooed it away as quickly as possible when it could, in fact, be valuable. I'd feel the same way if she had accused an unnamed Pickford's carman or a Polish hairdresser particularly if the attack took place not overly far from their stomping grounds."

It's notable that Roger said to Fiver: "If you think it is a worthless coincidence..." considering that Fiver had said nothing about any coincidence let alone a worthless one. It was only Roger who had introduced the concept of a coincidence. So was Roger misstating Fiver's words? Well not really, he was summarizing Fiver's position in his own words, as he was entitled to do, just as I was doing about Roger's position.

We can see that Roger said in his first post on the subject that the coincidence of a barrister being mentioned in connection with a knife attack in 1887 struck him as a "rather interesting" one. In his second post he started by saying that Cameron's allegation that she had been attacked by a barrister and friends was "curious" and "strangely specific". Assuming that the barrister was a client (which Cameron did not claim, so Roger is now putting his words into her mouth) he says that it isn't normal for street prostitutes to know the occupation of their clients which one would have thought might suggest that the man wasn't a client - but anyway, as we see, Roger then continues:

"If you think it is a worthless coincidence that a streetwalker who had her throat cut in 1887 alluded to a barrister (and the north end of Blackfriar's bridge would place her not overly far from the Inns of Court and Kings Bench Walk) that's certainly your prerogative".

What does one take from this?

The first thing must be that Roger does not think it is a worthless coincidence that a streetwalker who had her throat cut alluded to a barrister. Surely that is what he means by: "that's certainly your prerogative". Roger is making clear that he does not share that view. Roger's opinion, therefore, must be that it is the opposite of a "worthless coincidence" which, I suppose, is a "valuable coincidence" or, in other words, not likely to be a coincidence at all.

Although Roger uses the words, "I find it rather interesting...." , what he's basically saying, surely, is that he does not think it's likely to be a coincidence that Cameron identified her attacker as a barrister in circumstances where a barrister was later accused of being Jack the Ripper. There cannot possibly be any other reading of his post. This is supported by his addition of the words:  "I would feel remiss if I simply shooed it away as quickly as possible". It's curious, he says, it's interesting, he says, it's certainly not a worthless coincidence, he says, and it is, he says, worthy of consideration. Read as a whole, once we invert it from the negative of what it is not - i.e. not a worthless coincidence - we are left with Roger's point being that it's not likely to have been a coincidence "that a streetwalker who had her throat cut in 1887 alluded to a barrister".

Exactly as I said.

I strongly insist that this is a fair and reasonable interpretation and summary of Roger's post. Nothing else makes sense. This is surely why Roger, in his JTR Forums post, simply said, " What I actually wrote was..", then quoted two sentences out of context from his two posts on the subject but failed to explain why he wasn't saying it was unlikely to be a coincidence.

What is also worthy of note is Roger's claim that:

"I'd feel the same way if she had accused an unnamed Pickford's carman or a Polish hairdresser particularly if the attack took place not overly far from their stomping grounds."

Look at the loading of the dice here. He doesn't say an unnamed carman or an unnamed hairdresser which would, at least, be the equivalent of an unnamed barrister but an unnamed Pickfords carman and unnamed Polish hairdresser. This is, no doubt, because it would be ludicrous to think that if Cameron had accused a carman of assaulting her, we should assume that this was likely to have been Charles Cross out of all the carmen in London at the time or, to use Roger's word, that there was anything really "interesting" about it. Hells bells, when it comes to the Pickfords carman, Charles Cross, who gave evidence at the 1876 inquest of Walter Williams, we're not even 100% sure it's the same man as the Pickfords Carman, Charles Cross, who gave evidence at the 1888 inquest of Polly Nichols. We know of at least one other carman working in London at the time called Charles Cross who wasn't Charles Lechmere. So even if Cameron had accused an unnamed Pickfords carman of attacking her, it would still be a massive stretch to connect this with the Nichols witness Charles Cross considering the number of carmen employed by Pickfords at the time. As for a Polish hairdresser, I can't help wondering: would that have led us to thinking Cameron's attacker was the Polish hairdresser Aaron Kosminski or the Polish hairdresser George Chapman?

Roger bristles at my claim that he is guilty of making a circular argument and denies it is circular. But of course it is circular, as I explained in my blog post because to have any validity it depends on Druitt being Jack the Ripper. Roger denies the circularity of his argument but clearly misunderstands because he then goes on to deny that his argument depends on Druitt being Jack the Ripper as if this is a separate issue that I raised whereas it is part of the circularity. Let me remind Roger what I wrote. It was this:

"To my mind, this is a circular argument which depends on Druitt actually being Jack the Ripper. For, if he wasn't Jack the Ripper, there's no reason to think he attacked this woman in 1887. "

It is, in other words, the exact same point. I understood perfectly what Roger was saying in his Casebook posts but, what I was saying in response, was that the argument, as he expressed it, had no validity and that, expressed properly, it is a circular argument.

The circularity of the argument is, in essence, that it involves saying that if Druitt was a man who violently attacked women with a knife then he was likely a man who violently attacked a woman with a knife. Or to bring it down to the essence of its circularity: if he was a violent homicidal maniac, he was likely a violent homicidal maniac. Because that is essentially the argument Roger is making (albeit expressed using the word "interesting").

Now, Roger denies this, saying:

"It would be [the] same coincidence if Druitt wasn't Jack the Ripper....his actual guilt is beside the point."

Or in other words, what he is saying, in essence, is that his argument is that, as Druitt was a man who was accused of violently attacking women with a knife, he was likely a man who earlier violently attacked a woman with a knife. Or, to reduce it to it's essence: Because he was accused of being a violent homicidal maniac, he was likely a violent homicidal maniac. I don't think it makes the argument any less circular but, in that particular argument, it's not the circularity that's the problem, it's the fact that he might not be a homicidal maniac at all, so that the conclusion cannot be said to follow from the premise.

But it's the type of thinking that led Roger to ask Fiver if he could identify any other barrister who was accused of being Jack the Ripper.

Roger's thought processes have clearly failed him here.

Just think about it. What he's here saying is that if Druitt was falsely suspected by his family of being Jack the Ripper, and was thus entirely innocent of the Whitechapel crimes in 1888, the very fact of this false suspicion should lead us to think that poor innocent Druitt may well be the man who attacked Minnie Cameron simply because she alleged that the man who attacked her was a barrister, and Druitt was a barrister.

There can hardly be any more faulty reasoning than this. I barely feel like I need to explain it because it's so obvious and it's kind of like the Not The Nine O'Clock News sketch that I've referred to in an earlier blog post where a man is thought by the police to be behind the theft of a lorry load of eggs because he has an egg in his fridge. A barrister you say, well that's gotta be Druitt! He was a barrister too. You can't possibly draw a conclusion about how much of a coincidence it was for someone merely accused of being Jack the Ripper to have been involved in an earlier assault on the basis that the earlier attacker was said to have the same (common) occupation, in circumstances where there is doubt that the later accusation was correct and we don't understand why the accusation was made.

Indeed, the faulty reasoning can be seen in his own mention of a Pickfords carman. Let's say that Minnie had said she had been attacked by an unnamed Pickfords Carman in 1887 and we're now considering the matter in 1894. By this stage, in 1894, no one had accused Charles Cross of being the Whitechapel murderer. He was merely a witness at the inquest. If Roger is saying that it would not have been a worthless coincidence in 1894 that Minnie Cameron claimed to have been attacked by a Pickfords carman then it's got nothing to do whether an individual has been accused of being Jack the Ripper or not. It would just seem to relate to whether they had anything to do with the case. If he's saying that the interesting nature of the coincidence only kicked in once Cross was accused of the murders in the 21st century that would be bizarre. Surely the fact that modern Ripperologists have accused Charles Cross cannot change the nature of the coincidence. I mean, if Cameron (or any other woman attacked in 1887) had accused an unnamed accountant should we be actively looking for an accountant as a Ripper suspect or does the coincidence only kick in when someone has actually accused an accountant of being Jack the Ripper? Is it only then that we can say it's not a worthless coincidence that Cameron accused an accountant?

Or let's think about what the position would be if Minnie had said that her friend who had attacked her was an artist. Walter Sickert has been accused of being Jack the Ripper so would that mean we should make a connection and think that Sickert had attacked her? But let's make it more interesting. Let's say that she had said her "friend" had been a foreign artist. Well no foreign artists were accused of being Jack the Ripper were they? Not, at least, until Dale Lerner brought us Vincent Van Gogh. So, now that we have an accusation by one person in the 21st century that Van Gogh was Jack the Ripper, should we, by the very fact of that accusation, now find it interesting that Van Gogh was a foreign artist who had been accused of being Jack the Ripper? To ask the question is to expose the absurdity of the mere fact of an accusation being a relevant factor. Ah but, Roger may cry, I'm talking about an accusation by a police officer. Well no, you're not, because you just gave us the example of Charles Cross for whom the accusation is a modern one by Ripperologists.

Curiously, Roger admits that his argument would be circular "if Druitt hadn't been named as a suspect in a string of 1888 street murders." I don't know how this makes any sense. If Cameron had said she was attacked by an accountant, and we identified an accountant who might have attacked her, how would an argument that this accountant had attacked Minnie be circular? The strength of the argument would surely depend on what reason we had for thinking this accountant was Minnie's attacker. It wouldn't be circular. At least not necessarily. It would only be circular if the accountant was, rightly or wrongly, suspected of committing other violent crimes against women and we used that fact alone as the basis for thinking the accountant had attacked Minnie. We would then be blinding ourselves into thinking that the occupation is a reason to connect the accountant with a totally separate crime in circumstances where the only reason to think he was responsible was if he had, in fact, committed the other violent crimes. Of course, if the accountant was indeed responsible for the other crimes, maybe there is a possibility he attacked Minnie Cameron but if he was innocent it would be ludicrous to think he attacked Minnie. The mere naming or otherwise of an individual as an accused person in another crime cannot possibly change the equation, or nature of the coincidence, as to whether that individual was involved in the Cameron attack because the naming could be based on false premises or even on nothing.

There is even more faulty reasoning involved because Roger added another factor to the equation: the geographical location. Thus, he wrote (with my bold changing the emphasis):

"I'd feel the same way if she had accused an unnamed Pickford's carman or a Polish hairdresser particularly if the attack took place not overly far from their stomping grounds."

But what "stomping grounds" are we dealing with in the case of Montague Druitt? As I said in my blog post, virtually every single barrister in London had chambers within walking distance of Blackfriars bridge. They were all clustered within the same small area around the Royal Courts of Justice where they operated. They had to be, in order to walk back and forth between the court building and their chambers every day. There can't possibly be any significance in respect of Druitt that the attack took place at or near that location. Had it been in Blackheath, one could maybe have referred to a "stomping ground" of Druitt but the attack on Cameron was nowhere near Blackheath. Further, if we take "stomping grounds" into consideration, does that not make it less likely that Cameron was attacked by Jack the Ripper whose "stomping grounds" were famously in the East End of London?

The fact that Roger had to add in both an added descriptor (i.e. the name of employer or nationality) and a location to demonstrate what he means, only goes to negate his argument, because Minnie only mentioned a barrister (after, of course, having mentioned a police officer before saying that it wasn't a barrister at all).

Roger also pretty much ignored my point that Cameron had been drinking in the Old Bailey where she might have met multiple criminal barristers who were working in the Central Criminal Court. What he does say is this:

"Orsam can argue that there were plenty of barristers at the Inns of Court in 1887, or more specifically at the Old Bailey, which is true. How many of those men were accused of stabbing or cutting prostitutes' throats in a string of murders occurring the following year?"

The first response to this is that Roger has missed an important point. One of the things I was saying was that the fact that Minnie had been drinking at the Old Bailey may well be why she mentioned (or rather invented) a barrister as her attacker in the first place. I said that because Roger thought it unlikely for her to have falsely mentioned a barrister at all which suggested to him that she was telling the truth about the involvement of a barrister in the attack on her. But if she drank with barristers, or had plenty of barristers as her clients, or friends, it might easily explain that. There's no need for her mention of a barrister as her attacker, in those circumstances, to be considered so unusual that it must be true. And if her claim that she was attacked by a barrister isn't even true then there's far less reason to think it was Druitt (although, of course, if her attacker was Jack the Ripper, she could have been lying through her teeth about the man who attacked her having been a barrister yet it could still have been Druitt, if Druitt was Jack the Ripper!).

Additionally, Roger is focused an an accusation without considering what the effect of his argument is if the accusation is untrue. It surely MUST depend on that accusation having been correct otherwise it's worthless.

Further, Roger simply ignores the fact that a different barrister, Léon Loin, was actually arrested and charged with an assault on a woman in Westminster, only a few weeks after the Minnie Cameron incident, in December 1887. He has nothing to say about this. Why did Minnie's attacker have to have gone on to cut prostitutes throats (and mutilate their bodies) in a string of murders in a different part of London in 1888? After all, Minnie's throat wasn't cut, nor was she murdered. With Léon Loin, we are talking about a supposed barrister who allegedly attacked a woman only a few weeks after the attack on Minnie, yet Roger doesn't even seem to consider him a suspect in the Cameron case. He doesn't even seem to find it "interesting" to use his word. Why not?

One of the fallacies in Roger's argument is the assumption that the man who attacked Cameron (if he was indeed a barrister) must also have gone on to attack other women in his life and, indeed, must have been Jack the Ripper. But the fact of the matter is that some barristers presumably associated with prostitutes in 1887. They can't all have been whiter than white. Some of them may have carried knives, or other weapons, for their protection when out late at night. Some of them may have had bad tempers. Some of them may have beaten their wives or been violent to females in some way. The attack in September 1887 might have been an isolated incident that related in some way to the barrister's relationship with Minnie, whether as a friend or a client. There was likely more to the incident than Minnie revealed but who knows what that might be? That she was even attacked by a barrister must be in some doubt, even though Roger doesn't seem to have any.

I have to repeat the point that I made in the original article. If Druitt was Jack the Ripper then it's not impossible that he was the man who attacked Minnie Cameron in 1887 although, if he was Jack the Ripper, exactly the same would be true even if Minnie hadn't (at one point) alleged that her attacker was a barrister. Mind you, I wouldn't necessarily say it's particularly likely, even if he was Jack the Ripper, that he attacked Minnie in 1887 (even if Minnie was telling the truth about her barrister having been her attacker) because there were so many barristers in London and there's nothing that really connects Minnie's attack with the Ripper murders of 1888. But if Druitt was Jack the Ripper it wouldn't matter very much because we would have solved the Ripper mystery and the attack on Minnie would be very much a footnote to that. If he wasn't Jack the Ripper then I think we can safely say that he almost certainly was not the man who attacked Minnie and that it's somewhat ludicrous to say that, even though innocent of the Whitechapel murders, we should, nevertheless, keep him in the frame for the Blackfriars attack when there is literally no reason to suspect him - no description, no name, no known association with Minnie - with the only thing being that she accused a barrister (at one point in her story) and Montie was a barrister. Absurd reasoning.

In his JTR Forums post, Roger introduces new factors, not mentioned in his Casebook post saying:

"If the attack happened in Bow and the woman referred to an unnamed sawdust merchant or if it happened in Whitechapel and the victim referred to a schizophrenic who ate from the gutters would the coincidence by any different? Those two descriptions are consistent with recognizable suspects in the 1888 murders."

I mean honestly, connecting the general occupation of barrister - which applied to thousands of men in 1887 - to "a schizophrenic who ate in the gutter" of which there could have been very few, and adding the location of Whitechapel, is only highlighting the absurdity of Roger's argument with respect to Druitt. The fact that Roger has to place an attack involving a sawdust merchant in Bow also highlights his failure to take into account that nothing about the location of the attack on Minnie Cameron points towards Druitt if EVERY SINGLE BARRISTER IN LONDON had their chambers located near Blackfriars. There is nothing specific to Druitt about the location of the attack as compared to any other barrister. That seems to be a mistake made by both Roger and Jonathan Hainsworth.

Overall it's a terrible, terrible argument and that's only if Minnie Cameron really was attacked by a barrister about which there is some considerable doubt for the reasons I explained in some detail in my blog post.

Roger also ignores the point I made that Druitt could also have been reasonably described as a schoolteacher. He could also have been described as a cricketer. According to Hainsworth, he could also have been described as a doctor (as he was by Macnaghten) or a medical student. With any of these descriptions, Roger would presumably have linked Minnie Cameron's alleged attacker to Druitt. I mean, if she'd said her attacker had been a schoolteacher he could have said what other schoolteachers were accused of stabbing women in 1888? It may seem on the face of it like a good question, but it isn't. There were so many schoolteachers in London that just because a schoolteacher might have attacked a woman in 1887 doesn't make it likely to have been Druitt, regardless of the fact that he would later be accused of being Jack the Ripper. Roger doesn't take this into account but the fact that Druitt had (or was described has having) more than one occupation is surely something that needs to be factored in when assessing a coincidence as "worthless" or otherwise.

As a final point, I'm somewhat confused by Roger's last paragraph of his JTR Forums post which says:

"I've known about this incident for a number of years and was disappointed to see it being misstated and exaggerated and morphed into something else, because it's quite interesting on its own."

Who is he accusing of misstating, exaggerating and morphing the incident into something else? The casual reader would naturally think it's another attack on me considering I'm the only person mentioned in the post which is a response to my blog post (and Roger uses the same word "misstate" about the incident that he did about me allegedly misstating his words). But I'm pretty certain that I haven't misstated, exaggerated or morphed the incident into something else. He certainly doesn't explain what he means if he is talking about me. The only person who has misstated, exaggerated and morphed the incident is Jonathan Hainsworth, in combination with Mike Hawley, by saying that it led to Druitt's arrest. So why didn't Roger make clear who he was accusing of misstating, exaggerating and morphing the incident and who had so disappointed him? That's a bit of a mystery.

For myself, I find it difficult to see that the incident is particularly interesting simply on the basis of Minnie having accused a barrister. One surely needs something more than this to draw any conclusions about it at all. Sometimes we have tantalizing snippets of information but it doesn't necessarily mean anything. That's life. To try and expand these things into something they are not isn't terribly helpful to anyone.

ROGER (part 2)

In a second JTR Forums post, Roger took issue with one of the points I made against the argument that Druitt had been arrested in 1887 even though, at the very same time, he also said: "I don't think Druitt was arrested for this attack", thus agreeing with me!

It's somewhat odd that he also says: "I disagree with Orsam's thinking" when he only identifies one area of disagreement in respect of one of the points I made out of many as to why we can say that Druitt was not arrested in 1887.

"Lord Orsam:

"if Druitt had been arrested in 1887 for stabbing a prostitute in the neck, Macnaghten would have included this pretty important fact in both his 1894 report for the Home Secretary and his book."

I don't think Druitt was arrested for this attack, but I disagree with Orsam's thinking.

Did Macnaghten (or later Swanson) mention Aaron Kozminski picking up a knife and threatening the life of his sister? Certainly, that was a relevant incident, wasn't it?

So why wasn't it mentioned by any of the police commentators?

The reality is that Macnaghten, Swanson, Anderson, etc. were administrators. In my view, they are only giving us the barest bones of investigations conducted by others.

It's merely an assumption that these stray scraps are all that there was. I doubt that very much."

I disagree with Roger here and in referring to the Kosminski incident he's comparing apples with pears.

Before I deal with that, I don't think it's unreasonable of me to complain that I was misquoted by Roger. What I actually said was:

"...and, surely, if Druitt had been arrested in 1887 for stabbing a prostitute in the neck, Macnaghten would have included this pretty important fact in both his 1894 report for the Home Secretary and his book."

Missing out the word "surely", and starting the quote with the word "if", is unfair to me because it changes the nature of the statement from a pleading to a categorical one. Anyway, apples and pears....

As far as we know, and our knowledge is almost certainly right, Kosminski wasn't arrested for threatening the life of his sister. It never became a police matter. We only know of it because it's mentioned in an 1891 entry of the admission book of the Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum (the information having come from Jacob Cohen) so it may never even have come to the attention of the police. Further, to the extent it was only a threat involving scissors - as opposed to an actual attack with a knife - which occurred 3 years after the period of the Whitechapel murders of 1888, it would, I think, have undermined rather than strengthened the argument that Kosminski was a viable suspect for those murders, at least as good as Cutbush, which is what Macnaghten was trying to say to the Home Secretary

If, on the other hand, Druitt had been arrested for the attack on Minnie Cameron, the arrest would have been by the Metropolitan Police so that Scotland Yard would have held a documentary record of the arrest. The attack was a serious one involving an apparent stabbing of a woman and occurred prior to the period of the Whitechapel murders, thus potentially reflecting an escalation of violence leading up to those murders rather than a de-escalation.

In addition, the paragraph on Kosminski in Macnaghten's memorandum says of Kosminski:

"He had a great hatred of women, specially of the prostitute class, & had strong homicidal tendencies."

To the extent that the police were even aware of him threatening his sister, that sentence would have covered it, meaning that there was no need for any details (and, surely, there must be more incidents relating to Kosminski involving prostitutes). But when it comes to Druitt there is nothing like this in the memorandum. All we are told by Macnaghten is that he was sexually insane (which, if the example of Oscar Wilde's petition is anything to go by, meant homosexual) but nothing to indicate that he was a violent man or had ever been arrested for an attack on a woman, which would surely have been highly relevant.

I might add that Roger has ignored the fact that I also said in my blog post that Macnaghten would have included the important information about the arrest in his book. In that book he never mentioned Kosminski at all so the argument being made by Roger about the absence of any mention of the scissors attack doesn't explain the omission of any mention of the arrest in the book, in which Macnaghten only spoke of the unnamed Druitt as the suspect. It's difficult to see why he wouldn't have included the fact of an arrest of his suspect in his book.

We might also note that George Sims was clearly getting information about Druitt from someone and he had good police contacts. Why would he not have known and thus mentioned in at least one of his articles that the man suspected of being Jack the Ripper had been arrested in 1887 for an assault on a woman?

So I think my point is a reasonable one but it did come within the context of other arguments, in particular that the barrister was apparently never named or identified in any way by Minnie Cameron, that none of the newspapers reported any arrest and that, in any event, there is no way that the police would have arrested anyone merely on the word of a woman in hospital who had first accused a police officer of attacking her. Further that if they had arrested anyone they would have had to have presented him in public before a magistrate in short order which would have been reported. The very idea of an arrest is nonsensical and in conflict with the reporting of the very story which is being used to support it. It should be perfectly clear that no arrest was made of anyone, least of all Druitt, and that to say that an arrest was or likely was made is purely a result of Hainsworth's magical thinking.

But let's go back to Roger's admission that he doesn't think Druitt was arrested for this attack. Why doesn't he think so? As far as I'm aware - even though it's been a live issue on the boards - he hasn't explained his thinking.

It is true that, to his credit, Roger made clear that the newspaper reports about the Minnie Cameron incident do not say that Druitt had been arrested. Thus, after Hainsworth posted his astonishing claim that Druitt "was arrested in 1887", Roger said:

"John is playing it fast & loose in claiming the barrister was arrested, and that Cameron was an "East End sex worker." That's overstating the facts as I know them."

Nevertheless, there was no response by him when Hainsworth, after admitting his mistake about the East End replied:

"But I stand by Druitt either being arrested and questioned over this incident, or during late 1888 a detective found this victim again and asked for the name of the barrister."

Whereas, Roger was happy to go after Fiver for his comments on the subject, Roger simply let this statement go unchallenged.

To this day, as I say, although Roger tells us that he doesn't think that Druitt was arrested, he hasn't explained why he thinks he wasn't arrested. Does he agree with everything I said on the topic other than the point about Macnaghten's memorandum and book? If so, I'm happy to take that. But one does wonder why he felt it important enough to write a JTR Forums post about this relatively minor issue, which had nothing to do with him, in contrast to the "coincidence" point, while ignoring every single barmy post made by Hainsworth and Hawley (other than the one about the newspaper report) which he could have responded to very easily at the time on Casebook. Fiver alone seemed to aggravate him.

ROGER (part 3)

A shame Roger had nothing to say about my discovery in respect of "gone abroad".

There is an amusing story about that.

I was sure I'd found an example of the use of a person having been said to have "gone abroad" to mean missing or at large in a High Court judgment from October 1897 in the divorce (desertion) case of Wynne v Wynne (Judgment citation: [1898] P.18].

In that judgment, Sir Francis Henry Jeune, the President of the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division of the High Court, stated that the absent defendant in the case, Llewellyn Malcolm Wynne, had lost a large sum of money on the Stock Exchange, gone bankrupt and that:

"It having been said that he had gone abroad, and could not be traced, the official receiver issued a warrant for his arrest".

This seemed promising because there was no evidence that Wynne had left the country. His wife testified she last saw him on 2 March 1895 at the Charing Cross Hotel when he told her that he was ruined, could not face the scandal and was "going away for a few months". An actress, Florence Paget, with whom Wynne had committed adultery, told the court: "I do not know where he is now". The only other information as to his whereabouts came from two letters Wynne had written in July 1896 which had both been posted "in England". In one of the letters, he had written, "I am in England". None of the witnesses said he had left the country so it seemed for all the world that the judge had been using "gone abroad" euphemistically.

I was on the brink of including this judgment in my post, feeling it was pretty watertight, when I hit a fly in the ointment. A report of the same judgment by a barrister, L.D. Powles, in the Law Journal Reports 1898, worded it somewhat differently. The headnotes to that report read:

"A husband, a member of a firm of solicitors that was about to become bankrupt for over £300,000 left England, and could not be traced, in consequence of which a warrant was issued for his arrest."

The summary goes on to describe how Wynne told his wife he was going away for a few months and that she never saw him again but that, a year later, he wrote asking for money and adds:

"Beyond this he neither then nor at any other time gave her any clue as to his whereabouts of which she was entirely ignorant."

In the light of that, it is somewhat puzzling that the report continues:

"Having discovered before he left England he had been carrying on an adulterous intrigue with an actress, she petitioned for a dissolution of her marriage on the grounds of her husband's adultery coupled with desertion after he had been away from her for the full statutory period of two years."

The report then appears to quote Sir Francis Jeune as saying in his judgment:

"No doubt at first sight there is this difficulty. The respondent left England owing to financial embarrassment, and in fear of the consequences of acts of which he had been guilty".

However, in the official judgment, what Sir Francis Jeune actually wrote was:

"No doubt there is at first sight a difficulty. The respondent absconded owing to financial embarrassment."

Similarly, the report also appears to quote Sir Francis Jeune as saying in his judgment:

"In the present case, before the respondent left England he had been carrying on an adulterous intrigue with another woman."

But, in the official judgment, what Sir Francis Jeune wrote was:

"Before he absconded he had formed an adulterous connection with another woman."

From this it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the reporting barrister had himself changed the judge's word of "absconded" and replaced it with "left England". And I can't help but wonder if he did this because judge had said, vaguely, that Wynne had "gone abroad" (or, rather, was said to have gone abroad) which he took to mean "left England" even though that may not have been what the judge intended.

Or did the reporting barrister have reason to know that Wynne had left the country? Well it's hard to see how that is possible. The clear evidence set out in the judgment was that no one, including his wife, his mistress and his brother, knew where Wynne was. At the very least, though, it does seem to show that the expression "gone abroad" was interpreted in its literal sense by the reporting barrister, which would support Roger's argument.

There is one additional bit of information, reported in the press reports of the divorce hearing (e.g. London Daily Chronicle of 28 October 1897), that the letters Wynne wrote in July 1897 had been posted from Southampton. As this was a common port city used to board a ship, it might explain why he was believed to have left the country (and perhaps he did).

Due to the uncertainty, I mentioned none of this in my blog post but I think it is, nevertheless, worth noting.

ROGER (part 4)

Only because I'm on the subject of Roger Palmer is it worth me mentioning something diary related. On 28 November 1995, Roger posted on JTR Forums (in #177 of Diary Forgery):

"The only substantial examples I've seen of Anne's handwriting are the same ones that you've seen---the three pages of writing upload by 'David Orsam' on the casebook thread 'Diary Handwriting.'

Looking back, I'm no longer certain about the date or the origins of the second sample. It's in blue ink and it's page 5 of a longer letter. I always assumed this to be a continuation of the first letter dated 13/5/1994. It appears to be the same subject matter, but it is in blue ink while the first page is in black ink or at least the reproduction is in black. I'm not immediately seeing that 'Orsam' identified the date but perhaps I missed it. I think I once knew, or he once told me, but I no longer remember. I'll have to go back and check."

The page 5 of the letter in question is indeed a continuation of the letter dated 13 May 1994. It has partly survived in the original and partly as a black & white photocopy which explains the different colours. But it's the same letter.

There is, in other words, only one known example of Anne's handwriting in correspondence prior to Mike's June 1994 confession.

Roger is correct that I once told him this. Originally, back in 2018, I hadn't worked out that both pages were part of the same letter but then, a few years later, it clicked that was (and I mentioned same to Roger after he asked me a question about the correspondence).

TOM W

My good friend Tom Wescott, who only occasionally posts falsehoods about me on JTR Forums which he doesn't publicly correct, quoted me as saying:

"Don't ask me why Michael Hawley, a proponent of Tumblety's candidature as the Ripper, started batting for Hainsworth in a vomit-inducing unholy alliance, instead of merely acting as a postman when he clearly doesn't think for one second that Druitt was Jack the Ripper."

His suggested answer was:

"Because Mike and Jonathan are both supportive, good-spirited men who can weather fundamental disagreements within a shared hobby and still remain supportive, good-spirited men?"

That doesn't resolve it, I'm afraid. They can be as supportive as they like, and remain as good-spirited as like, but their respective positions are not just in fundamental opposition, they are binary. If Tumblety was Jack the Ripper, Druitt was not. If Druitt was Jack the Ripper, Tumblety was not. If Tumblety was Jack the Ripper, it means all of the Hainsworths' books are, ultimately, wrong. If Druitt was Jack the Ripper, it means all of Hawley's books are, ultimately, wrong.

It's one or the other. If Hawley wants to be the postman for Hainsworth that's fine but I still cannot understand what he is doing promoting the idea of Druitt as Jack the Ripper when he doesn't believe in it. I also don't understand why he is promoting the books of the Hainsworths to members of the general public if he believes (and, presumably, strongly believes) those books are completely and utterly wrong in their conclusions.

What's most striking is that both Hawley and Hainsworth (Jon and Christine) are known to have made the most appalling and factually mistaken arguments and then refused to admit to their mistakes when they are pointed out.

Hainsworth to his credit (and Christine's) have now abandoned their claim that Inspector Andrews, after his visit to Canada in November 1888, wrote a report about Tumblety, which appeared in their first Druitt book, although why that claim was ever made in the first place, in the complete absence of any evidence whatsoever that Andrews ever wrote any such report, remains one of those mysteries of life which, like the identity of Jack the Ripper, will probably never be solved. Perhaps they were just being supportive and good-spirited towards Hawley by inventing a non-existent report for him. But they seem impenetrable to reason on pretty much every other issue on which they've messed up. Their interpretation of the Sims poem relating to Farquharson probably being the most obvious but there are so many others that I've previously detailed.

I assume that Hawley has now stopped talking about the deployment of 12 constables to intercept Tumblety in November 1888, although it's impossible to be certain, and his defence of his inclusion of this claim in one of his books when he spoke to the ineffectual (but certainly supportive) Jonathan Menges, who says he doesn't like to challenge his guests too hard in case they won't agree to go on his podcasts, was shockingly incoherent.

The most interesting thing in Tom's post is his description of the "shared hobby". Now I have no idea how much money Hawley and Hainsworth make from Jack the Ripper - Hawley is seemingly touring throughout the year and god only knows what stories he is telling in his various talks which presumably involve Tumblety pulling out a a bag full of cash from his pocket to pay his bail at Marlborough Street Magistrates Court and then waltz over to Whitechapel to cut up Mary Jane - but with the number of books each of them have published, it looks less like a hobby and more like a way of earning a living. I don't say that in a derogatory fashion. Everyone is perfectly entitled to make a living, even by writing suspect books about Jack the Ripper, and if people want to read their books that is all well and good. Nothing wrong with that at all. The problem I have is with people who include demonstrably false information in their books to support their theories, then post about them online, get angry when they're challenged, and refuse to answer direct questions, which is, regrettably, the common link between Hawley and Hainsworth. More so with Hawley than Hainsworth but they both seem to go into meltdown when challenged publicly. By me at least, but then I seem to have that effect on people. Go figure.

If one had to identify the most serious problem with Ripperology it would surely be the "old boys" nature of the club whereby difficult questions are avoided and no one challenges anyone else too seriously on their theories. Let's not rock the boat. Let's not spoil the fun. Let's continue with our shared hobby because we're not interested in the truth, just in our ability to continue participating.

It is the type of attitude which no doubt led Tom Wescott to once write a glowing review on Amazon of the first edition of Simon Wood's Deconstructing Jack before he'd even finished reading the book.

And that brings me to Mr Wood.

SIMON

After one member referred to my previous blog post as a "tour de force", Simon Wood emerged with the wit for which he is famous, referring to it as a "tour de farce".

God only knows why he said that, considering that my post was directed to flaws in the case against Montague Druitt as Jack the Ripper and, with Wood still bizarrely claiming that Jack the Ripper doesn't even exist, he must surely have agreed with everything I said.

Or was Wood being "supportive" and "good spirited" by being unsupportive and mean spirited with regard to my blog post? Because under the rules of Ripperology I think that is acceptable.

Wood is another one who cannot tolerate his ludicrous views being challenged in public and his many factual errors being pointed out, so it would be no surprise if he wants to praise Hawley and Hainsworth due to their joint "shared hobby", seeing in them kindred spirits, even though he fundamentally disagrees with everything they have ever said.

So what's the "Award-winning author" Simon Wood been up to recently?

A good question Lord Orsam.

Well, on 20th January 2026, he posted an image from the first page of a French newspaper of 17 November 1888 called Rouge et Noir with the following dramatic commentary in capital letters:

"THE VERY FIRST PUBLIC VIEWING OF THE KELLY MURDER SCENE, 17th NOVEMBER 1888.

IT TELLS A DIFFERENT STORY."

This is the front page of the newspaper he posted which accompanied his bold claim that: "IT TELLS A DIFFERENT STORY":

Astonishingly, no one on JTR Forums asked him what he meant by this. In what way does any of this tell a different story? As we can see, the newspaper contains two sketches of the Kelly murder scene within her room in Miller's Court. These sketches are accompanied by four additional sketches which, as was pointed out to him, had nothing to do with the Kelly murder, being copies of sketches from British newspapers which appeared in October 1888.

The sketches of the murder scene show something similar to what we see in the surviving MJK photographs, and certainly reflect the contemporary descriptions of the gruesome scene within 13 Miller's Court, so it's impossible to know what Wood meant when he says that they tell "A DIFFERENT STORY". He simply vanished from the thread.

Whether he was taken by surprise by the fact that four of the sketches were obviously copies from British newspapers, thus undermining the reliability of the other two, it's impossible to say. He was gone, never to return.

Only the lack of curiosity by any other members of JTR Forums can be considered a surprise.

His other main contribution to JTR Forums during the past twelve months has been to reveal his lack of understanding of Swanson's testimony before the Metropolitan Police Remuneration Committee in 1889, seeming to think that Swanson could only possibly have done any investigative work relating to the Ripper murders during the period September to December 1888 simply because he said in his November 1889 testimony that he had been extremely busy working on the case during those months. The obvious error of his ways was pointed out by other members, causing him to go silent.

I also see that back in November 2024 he posted about Lord Orsam:

"He talks a good game, but is certainly not the ace researcher many believe him to be.

Much of the counter-research "[I'm right, so you are wrong"] material he has unearthed is laughably lame and falls at the first hurdle."

Maybe one day Wood will provide a single example of the "laughably lame" material I've unearthed which has fallen at the first hurdle.

I'm not even sure how material can be lame or fall at any hurdle. Surely it's the interpretation of the material that is the important thing. But it wouldn't surprise me if Wood doesn't understand that.

Over on Casebook, Simon gave us a masterclass on how to interpret material, by telling us confidently on 6th November 2025:

"James Monro's eldest grandson, James Ernest Monro was born and died in India 1902, aged zero".

In response, Keith Skinner posted (via Jon Menges), later that same day, to say that his first contact with the Monro family was in 1986 when he corresponded with Commissioner Monro's grandson, James E. Monro, who was living in Scotland. James E. Monro told him in a letter that he remembered his grandfather saying that Jack the Ripper should have been caught.

Wood didn't believe a word of it, asking on 8th November 2025:

"I would be interested to learn how James Monro's eldest grandson, James Ernest Monro, was living in Edinburgh in 1986, when he was born and died in India, in 1902."

The thing about Simon Wood is that, before posting this crazy question, he didn't seem to first stop and ask himself: is it really likely that James Ernest Monro was writing to Keith Skinner in 1986 when he had died in 1902? Or to put it another way, was the man writing to Keith Skinner and calling himself James Ernest Monro really likely to have been an imposter? Is that in any way plausible? Or did he think that Keith Skinner had simply invented the correspondence?

Well the unsurprising answer is that Wood was wrong to say that James Ernest Monro had died in India in 1902, as a baby. As was quickly pointed out to him by Herlock Sholmes, James Ernest Monro actually died in Scotland in 1992, aged 89.

Wood's feeble response to this news was:

"Most family details concur with my findings.

I shall trawl through my stuff to discover how we managed to part company."

Translation: People on Ancestry, FindMyPast, FamilySearch etc. had identified the wrong James Ernest Monro, or had got confused, and Wood had accepted what they said without any basic checking. I don't think we need to wait for him to trawl through his stuff to work out how he'd failed once again to check his facts properly before posting more conspiracy nonsense on Casebook.

Then, earlier this year, some more nonsense on Casebook created a Just Fancy That! moment.

For on 16th February 2026 he posted:

"Nobody broke down the door to Room 13. The locked door, broken window and missing key were all to support the illusion of a locked room murder."

Okay, so you have that in mind, right? The missing key was a ruse to support the illusion of a locked room murder.

But then, when we look back in the archives, we find that nearly ten years earlier, on 2 September 2016, in #1677 of the "Incontrovertible" thread, Simon had said to Tom Mitchell:

"Hi Iconoclast,

The key went missing soon after the window got broken on 30th October, and so on 9th November the door cold not have been locked with the key.

And as the key had gone missing soon after the window had got broken on 30th October, Jack the Diarist could not have had the key, and with it he did flee."

Hmmnnn, so for Wood, in 2016, the key went missing, but for Wood, in 2026, there was no missing key!

Just Fancy That!

What has happened in the interim period to make Wood change his mind?

Who knows but, as Wood is keen to tell us by way of advertisement, he published a new edition of his book in 2023 which he called Secret History and, he hints, the only way you're going to find out about the missing or not missing key is to buy it. Hence:

"Check out my second Ripper book, Secret History"

As someone with the misfortune to own a copy of that massive brick of a book with its 725 pages (which is not, in fact, Wood's "second Ripper book", it's nothing more than the fourth edition of his first book Deconstructing Jack) I've had a look to see what Wood says about this key. The answer is basically nothing. He gets confused because he claims on page 585 that on Monday 12th November 1888, the Star newspaper, "was able to report a development not disclosed at the inquest". That development, he claims, was that the key had been found. The Star was an evening newspaper so Wood gives the impression that after Abberline had testified at the inquest the key was discovered to be missing, which was duly reported by the Star. The problem is that the Star was merely repeating what had already been reported earlier in the morning of that same day by the Standard (a morning newspaper) which would have been based on something learnt at some time on the previous day (11th November). Whether that report was accurate is anyone's guess but one would assume not, otherwise Abberline would have known about it. Either way, the report about the key having been found was in the public domain prior to the commencement of the inquest.

Curiously, in his book, Wood twice quotes the line from the diary: "I had a key/And with it I did flee". Heaven only knows why he is so preoccupied with what the fake diary says. As if contradicting the diary exposes the entire conspiracy! In respect of an explanation as to why Room 13 of Millers Court was never locked, I'm not finding it in Wood's book. He just says without any explanation that, "There was no good reason to break down the door", but, in fact, there was a very good reason which was explained by Joseph Barnett to Arthur Warren of the Boston Herald. As reported by Warren:

"...Barnett tells me what the police do not seem to know, that while he lived with the Kelly woman the door key had been lost, and so, as the door closed with a spring lock, it was their habit to go to the window, reach through the broken glass and push back the spring bolt on the door. This was, indeed, their only mode of entrance. It has been assumed that the murderer locked the door and took the key away with him, but this, in the light of what Barnett tells me, was not the case, and he should know. The murderer had merely to close the door after him. It "locked" itself."

That is a perfectly clear and understandable explanation by a first hand witness as to why the door was locked. It locked itself when it closed. If you didn't know about the window trick, as the police would not have known at the time, you would have thought that the only way to enter the room was to break down the door.

While we're on the subject of Simon Wood, it's worth pointing out that even though he (obviously) thinks the diary of Jack the Ripper is a fake, as do I, I don't agree with everything he says about the diary. In fact, I think his few contributions to the diary discussion have been generally unhelpful because his opposition seems to be based on his irrational belief that Jack the Ripper didn't exist rather than on the facts of the case as they relate to the diary. On one rare occasion, however, he did provide a reason for saying that the diary is fake. In February 2018, in the 'Acquiring' thread on Casebook (#980), he posted:

"So Maybrick signed the diary, got up from his sick bed, fetched a claw hammer, tore nails out of a floorboard, prised it up, secreted the diary [biscuit tin optional], hammered the floorboard back into place without attracting any attention, and then returned to his sick bed to die?"

Have I got this scenario vaguely correct?

But Wood had not got the scenario vaguely correct. Maybrick would not have had to "get up from his sick bed" on 3 May 1889 because he wasn't in his sick bed during that day. He got dressed, left his house and went to the office on 3 May 1889. So, as I said in response on 19 March 2018 (#1457): "he would have been perfectly capable of lifting a floorboard or two that day had he wanted to."

Wood's response (#1458) was: "As a Maybrick Diary denier you surely do run with the fox and hunt with the hounds."

I told him (#1473): "No Simon, it's just that I don't ignore evidence that is inconvenient which would lead to me to present a blatantly fictional account of historical events."

But how typical of someone like Wood to say that correcting him when he got something wrong about the diary was an example of me running with the fox and hunting with the hounds. He doesn't seem to care about facts and accuracy, just about being on a certain side, like it's supporting a football team.

More recently, on 28 February 2026, Wood posted (#16 of thread "Whitechapel street cleaning"):

"The four Metropolitan Police reports — Warren, Arnold, Long and Swanson — relating to the 30th September discovery of the Goulston Street graffiti were not written until 6th November 1888, five weeks after the event."

About this, he commented:

"Nicely timed for the "Kelly murder.""

The thing is, as Wood knows very well because I told him twice on Casebook, once on on 13th June 2016 (#841 of thread "An Experiment") and then again 14th September 2016 (#32 of thread "Pc Long and the piece of rag"), the reason the police reports relating to the 30th September 1888 discovery of the Goulston Street graffiti were not written until 6th November 1888 was because the Permanent Under Secretary at the Home Office only instructed the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police on 5th November 1888 to urgently provide the Home Secretary with a full report of all the circumstances surrounding the erasure of the writing on the wall in advance of the return, from its long summer recess, of Parliament on 6th November 1888, in case, as seemed likely, due to sensational press reporting, the Home Secretary was asked about it in the House of Commons. There is nothing in the slightest bit suspicious about this, and it had nothing whatsoever to do with the murder of Mary Jane Kelly three days after that which, obviously, no one (probably even including the murderer) knew was going happen.

One really has to ask oneself - and that means every single reader of this blog post - why Wood keeps repeating this conspiracy nonsense on a public forum when he knows very well the reason why the police reports about the Goulston Street graffiti were not written until five weeks after the event.

At the start of March 2026, we then had the saddest ever post from Wood, asking other people to help him to discover "what the Autumn of Terror was really about".

As someone who spent a small fortune on purchasing all of four editions of Wood's book, I feel I have a right to wonder why Wood hasn't yet worked out what the Autumn of Terror was really all about. Indeed, I thought the purpose of his book was to explain to us what the Autumn of Terror was really all about. It seems a bit late for him to now start gathering his crack team of "researchers" to try and piece it all together.

While I don't claim to be psychic, I do have one prediction to make. Wood will never manage to work out what the Autumn of Terror was all about.

THE THIRD MAN

Roger Palmer and Michael Banks are the two most prominent posters currently arguing online in favour of a Barrett diary creation but there has long been a third man working in the shadows.

His identity may come as a surprise to some but he recently outed himself so I can finally reveal the truth.

While not everyone might have spotted the initial mistake, his paymasters will not have failed to understand the significance of his misguided post.

On 6th March 2026, Tom Mitchell revealed that he has had "private exchanges" with my assistant, David Barrat.

In a bit of a panic, behind the scenes, I asked Tom why he'd done this. Surely his paymasters would now know that we had, through my assistant, been in secret contact? He said it was a slip of the keyboard (durr!). So we then had to go through a convoluted routine of pretending to have a massive bust-up in public (even though, in private, we're best buddies) and I had to spend many hours drafting some long, extremely angry (kind of insane, let's face it) comment posts for him to post on this website. An actor to whom we gave the name "Blackpool Brian" (Tom preferred "Blackpool Bob" but I overruled him) was employed to pretend to be Tom posting under a false name - it all gets a bit complicated.

Unfortunately, during one of the exchanges, Tom made a serious error, which I won't dwell on because it still causes me too much pain after all the hard work we'd done with the cover story, when he copied and pasted into the comments section one of my messages to him which read, "Well done Tom, I think we've bloody well fooled them here", which I had added in my email to him, at the very end of one of the draft comments, not thinking he would copy & paste this into the comment without reading it. I could hardly believe it. We then had to quickly adapt to work out a way to delete all the comments hoping they didn't see the offending one but it subsequently turned out (from another spy I have in the diary defending camp) that Tom's mistake had been spotted and the truth had become all too apparent.

Now that it's out in the open, I can confirm that Tom Mitchell was recruited by my assistant, David Barrat, many years ago and has been secretly working as a double agent for me ever since, luring his diary defending paymasters into the false belief that he is a Maybrick diary creationist loon.

My good friend, Tom, is in no way the idiot that he portrays himself online. It's all an act to create a convincing cover story. His first big mission was to produce the joke essay which we called "Society's Pillar", a joint creation between Tom and myself. We had literally weeks of hilarity trying to think up ever more outrageous and unlikely arguments in favour of the diary's authenticity. The one about Maybrick family names being hidden in the Goulston Street wall writing had us in fits, rolling on the floor trying to catch our breath amidst all the laughter.

The purpose of doing this, of course, was to make his diary defending paymasters think he was the genuine article and would supply him with the top secret material which they have sworn never to reveal to anyone who doubts the Battlecrease provenance story. This paid enormous dividends as he was freely supplied with everything he asked for.

The trick then was for him to "accidentally" post that material online so that we could get it into the public domain. Fortunately, his incompetent persona, which we had taken so much care to cultivate over many years, allowed him to do this as if he didn't realize what he was doing.

There were five key documents which he managed to post for us.

The first was in July 2020 when, under cover of supposedly showing how stupid Mike Barrett was, he posted three additional diary pages written by Mike which had hitherto been kept closely under wraps. And for good reason. The 2003 book Inside Story had falsely claimed that these pages bore no relation to the diary, thus throwing investigators off the scent. But, having finally been made available available for public inspection 17 years later, it is now universally acknowledged that they do capture the diary's style, proving that Mike was capable of writing the diary.

The next big revelation occurred on 2nd September 2024, when, at my direction, Tom "innocently" posted an extract from a previously withheld transcript of Tim Martin-Wright telling Paul Feldman in 1994:

"I’ll go back to the first, the inception of my involvement in the story which is about two years ago, I think. A guy who worked for me said, um, he knows that I collect antiques and am interested in old books etc. He said; “I saw a really interesting book that you would like in the pub the other night”. I said, “Oh yeah”. He said; “It, um, is a copy of Jack the Ripper’s Diary.” I said, “Oh yeah?”

This extract was posted under cover of attempting to convince Roger Palmer that Martin-Wright had been told about Jack the Ripper's diary in late 1992, as opposed to an unspecified diary, but what it actually revealed for the very first time was that Martin-Wright's employee (Alan Dodgson) had supposedly claimed to have seen an actual copy of Jack the Ripper's diary in a pub; a totally different story from the one told by Alan Dodgson himself and also different to the story told by the electrician Alan Davies who was the only person who could possibly have showed Dodgson a copy of Jack the Ripper's diary.

At a stroke, we had managed to ensure that the Battlecrease provenance yarn, which relied almost entirely on Tim Martin-Wright's account, was dead in the water.

We were in a groove and this bombshell was quickly followed by another a few days later, on 23rd September 1994, when, once again at my direction, Tom "innocently" posted a transcript of Anne Graham saying on 18 January 1995:

"You see, I had to be very subtle in my approach in as much that I couldn’t say to him, we don’t get it published, we write a story around it. I just sort of give it to him bit by bit to try and make him understand it’s come from his idea, it was his idea. But I couldn’t do it! I had managed to manipulate him every, years, so many things, I just [inaudible] this one [laughs ruefully]."

In this way, we had got out into the open the fact that Anne Graham believed she knew how to manipulate her husband. Something totally contrary to the meek and mild image of Anne which had previously been portrayed by diary defenders. The clever bit about this was that Tom had posted a shorter extract of the passage the previous day which didn't include the above and which was solely directed to an (obviously false) argument that Anne had casually mentioned Mike's affidavit in conversation with Keith Skinner and Shirley Harrison. The part about Anne manipulating Mike only came to light when Roger claimed that the extract Tom had posted was out of context, thus giving him a pretext to post the entire thing so that him doing so didn't look suspicious to his diary defending paymasters.

One more bit of juicy information that Tom managed to slip out for us on 12 February 2025, under cover of pretending to show that Mike Barrett was unaware of the contents of his 5 January 1995 affidavit, was an extract from a letter written by Alan Gray to Seth Linder on 23 November 2002 in which Gray said that the contents of Barrett's affidavit had been "read to him by solicitors", which clearly meant that Barrett had not himself written the affidavit otherwise a defensive Gray would obviously have said that he had. Finally, we had confirmation that Gray had both drafted and typed Mike's affidavit, which would explain the factual and chronological errors in that document. As a bonus,we learnt for the first time that Mike had said that at the time he signed his affidavit, "he was drunk and unaware of their contents". That Mike was drunk on 5 January 1995 does not seem too unlikely.

When, on 26th February 2025, in a carefully phrased post, Caroline Morris stated on Casebook (#93 of thread "New Ideas and New Research on the Diary") that Barrett, "had already told Scotland Yard about his creative writing ambitions and achievements back in October 1993"

and then, in the teeth of a request by Michael Banks as to what exactly this meant, doubled down (#124) to say that Barrett, "didn't conceal - or try to conceal - this from the boys in blue, and this was way back in October 1993", I already knew this was false because Tom had been supplying me with a constant flow of secret documents. What is noteworthy is that in his reply to her second post, Michael Banks had said (#129):

"If you're saying that he freely told Scotland Yard of his work for Celebrity and Chat, it does raise the question of why he volunteered that information to them yet had never mentioned it to Shirley or any of the researchers. I mean, if it wasn't important enough to tell Shirley, why did he tell Scotland Yard? Doesn't that strike you as strange?"

In her reply (#134), Caroline Morris allowed Banks to believe that Barrett had indeed freely told Scotland Yard of his work for Celebrity and Chat because her answer to Banks' question was that it did not strike her as strange that Barrett had told Scotland Yard about his work for Celebrity and Chat, while not telling Shirley or any of the researchers. Although she had clearly tried to make out that Mike Barrett had candidly and openly told Scotland Yard about his journalistic career (something she coyly referred to in her post as "this aspect of his life in the 1980s") the truth was that Barrett had actually concealed from Scotland Yard the crucial fact that he wrote articles for Celebrity and Chat which were both national magazines for adults. All he had told Scotland Yard in his witness statement of 22 October 1993 was that: "I have been encouraged by writing circles I've attended to submit articles, a number of which having been published in 'Look in' a children's magazine."

The problem was that this witness statement was a closely guarded diary defender secret, and was being ruthlessly and utterly suppressed, so Tom had to be activated again.

On 30th April 2025, I instructed him to post the above extract from Barrett's police statement under cover of pretending to show that Barrett had been candid to Scotland Yard in 1993. He did so (#40 of "The Maybrick Thread (For All Things Maybrick)") immediately.

In doing this, of course, he was (tee hee!) contradicting entirely what Caroline Morris had said and showing just how untrustworthy certain diary defenders can be when they control the documents and give misleading summaries of what is contained in those documents which no independent person is allowed to check or verify. The truth was that Barrett had never said a word in his statement about his articles for Celebrity or Chat. He was evidently concealing the existence of these articles from the police, ensuring that they knew nothing about this aspect of his life.

Things at this stage were getting a bit hot on Casebook and Tom had to pretend to have a meltdown, getting "fake" angry when he was accused by Michael Banks of withholding documents (the very opposite of what was happening!). Tom was extremely reluctant to call Banks a "smug twat" but there was no other option. We had to get him out of Casebook and he needed to get banned for an extended period as the only way to dispel suspicions. So a cheap insult was called for and that's what Tom delivered for us. He felt very bad about it at the time but knew that he had to keep up the role of a mad, angry nutcase.

I might add, incidentally, that Tom understands very well that an 1891 diary could have been used by Mike Barrett to create an 1888 diary. I remember the day I instructed him to pretend not to understand this. He seemed quite anguished about it as if he didn't want to appear quite so stupid to the world that he didn't even know what a personal diary looks like. But, like the professional he is, he stuck to the script and pulled off that "dumb as a brick" character flawlessly.

Once we'd managed to allay the suspicions of Tom's diary defending paymasters who, after all those accidental revelations of the top secret information, were starting to get a bit doubtful as to where Tom's true loyalties lay, he was reactivated on JTR Forums where, on 5 March 2026 (the day before he accidentally first outed himself), we finally got into the open the fact that Michael Barrett had claimed in his October 1993 witness statement for Scotland Yard to have met Paul Feldman in June 1993 with Jim Bowling, not Eddie Lyons. I had, of course, known about this for some time, but we couldn't work out how Tom could post yet another snippet online from Barrett's October 1993 police statement without arousing suspicions among his diary defending paymasters. I then came up with the genius idea that Tom thought the statement was already in the public domain. It would have been a ludicrous notion for anyone other than Tom to have held, but, for Tom, it seemed just right, which just shows how all the hard work in building up his incompetent "Major Misunderstanding" persona over the years paid off.

We both chuckled when Tom claimed he hadn't realized that Mike's statement was not in the public domain. We were like, how could anyone possibly believe that? But his dumb paymasters seemed to accept it. Thus we managed to undermine the longstanding diary defender claim that Eddie had lied about not being present at the meeting. It would appear that Robert Smith, reflecting many years later on the meeting, got confused into believing it had been Lyons he'd asked to speak to when it had actually been Bowling.

Now, I appreciate what you're thinking. Have I put Tom Mitchell's life in danger by exposing him as a traitor to the diary defending cause? Do not fear. I asked my assistant to warn him of this blog post well in advance, so Comrade Mitchell will now have moved to a safe house and be well out of harm's way.

I salute Comrade Thomas Mitchell: a true hero of the diary cause and a very intelligent person who fully accepts that the Barretts probably created the fake diary.

UPDATE

I just checked with my assistant to confirm that he'd warned Tom in advance of this post and he looked at me like he didn't know what I was talking about. He claims I never asked him to do this, even though I'm quite sure I did. Or am I thinking about when I asked him to take my suit to the cleaners? Memory sure is a tricky thing. Well I'm afraid that's it for Comrade Tom, then. He'll now have been captured and interrogated before being brutally executed for his "treachery" (heroism). Tom, although you won't be reading this, Lord Orsam thanks you for your bravery and 100% unwavering secret devotion to the anti-diary defending cause.

DISCLAIMER

Hello, this is Lord Orsam's assistant. I am legally obligated to mention that the above is a joke; Thomas Mitchell has not really been working as a spy for Lord Orsam over many years and has (probably) not been executed by his diary defending paymasters who do not operate like the Mafia, ruthlessly withholding evidence and killing people.

CAROLINE

It wouldn't be a "Lord Orsam Says..." without an update about Caroline Morris-Brown's latest online antics.

When she's not going round and round in circles, asking the same questions over and over again ad nauseum, even though they've already been answered, and repeating for the 1000th time the same tired old remarks (such as what a shame there's no receipt for the photograph album), she's refusing to provide evidence to substantiate claims which she, herself, is making.

On 25th February 2026 (in the 'Diary Forgery' thread on JTR Forums), Morris-Brown was, quite reasonably, asked by Michael Banks to substantiate two statements she had made earlier that day (#392).

It wasn't until 17th March that Her Royal High And Mightiness deigned to reply from her lofty heights, refusing to provide any substantiation and saying:

This post sums up the problem for both of us: the boards are not my source of such information; they are largely yours. I know, from my sources, what the documentary evidence does or does not demonstrate, thanks all the same, without my having to guess, or to excuse memories where they have proven to be less than photographic. Yes, memory can and does play tricks on us all, which is precisely why that documentary evidence is essential to piece together what happened and when, before anyone rushes to judgement. That is what puts me at what you might have reasonably called an unfair advantage, and you at a distinct disadvantage, if you hadn't been made fully aware a very long time ago that a lot more material exists, thanks to a small number of dedicated researchers, than has yet reached 'the boards', and that therefore your own guesses, assumptions, arguments, opinions or conclusions are all necessarily based on a far less complete knowledge, and a far more limited understanding, than many others in and beyond Liverpool already possess. In short, they know what they know, while you ought to know by now that you don't know all there is to know. That is not your fault, but it is nobody else's fault if you continue to express strong opinions on that basis.

I realise this may be an unpalatable truth, that you might prefer not to be reminded of, but frankly nobody ever asked you to comment publicly on a subject when you know there are others who are considerably more informed about the finer details. This is not like the ripper case, where everyone may speculate forever based on the same finite facts. This is an active and ongoing investigation, with people still alive whose accounts have found too much support in the documentary evidence to be airily dismissed as lies, fantasy or the product of false memory syndrome. How many decent individuals must have their accounts doubted or ignored at best, and ridiculed at worst, in order to keep one deranged, vengeful liar like Mike Barrett king of the diary castle?

Quite a lot of waffle there, I think you'll agree. and a very long way of saying "I'm not willing or able to substantiate the claims I've made".

One can only assume that Robert Smith is one of the "decent individuals" who "must have their accounts doubted or ignored at best, and ridiculed at worst" because the issue under discussion related to his memory of a meeting with an electrician in 1993. Here's the thing though. Robert Smith might be the most decent individual in the entire world but he could still easily have had a memory lapse when writing in 2017 about a meeting from 24 years earlier. We also know from the shocking mistakes he made in his 2017 book that he is not the most reliable person about diary matters.

Morris-Brown boasts that she is at an "unfair advantage" with more "documentary evidence" available to her than is available to mere mortals, but a careful read will show that she doesn't say that she is in possession of any documentary evidence which will clear up the matter she was being asked about.

There is one other (incredibly pompous) statement of Ms Morris-Brown from her 17th March 2026 JTR Forums post which we cannot let pass without comment. This is that:

"This is an active and ongoing investigation, with people still alive whose accounts have found too much support in the documentary evidence to be airily dismissed as lies, fantasy or the product of false memory syndrome."

An active and ongoing investigation!! Involving "people still alive". No way! I mean, we wouldn't want to compromise an active investigation would we or else it might affect the ability of the police to secure convictions. Er.....no, not that. Well perhaps we are waiting for everyone who is involved to die before they will tell us anything about it. Funny thing though, back in August 2004 she posted:

"You may, or may not, like to take on board the fact that a serious investigation is ongoing in London and Liverpool. The results will not be discussed in a public forum until they have been published with full supporting documentary evidence."

There has been a serious investigation ongoing for 22 years!!!! Crikey, snails move faster than that. Who is conducting this investigation? Is it the sloth from Zootopia?

The odd thing is that she told Michael Banks on JTR Forums on 24th March 2026 that it wasn't practical for any questions to be asked of Mike Barrett in 2004 arising from the discovery of the timesheets (such as: why did he choose 9th March 1992 as the day to call Doreen Montgomery?). Hence:

"Nobody was questioning Mike about anything in 2004. The Ripper Diary authors each had jobs to go to, and asking Mike to recall what had prompted him to call Doreen on the day he did so, was not going to help any of us do that. At best we'd have got yet another claim with no evidence to back it up, based on whatever he wanted people to believe at the time".

Hmmnn, so even though in August 2004 there was "a serious investigation" ongoing in London and Liverpool, it wasn't possible to ask Mike Barrett in Liverpool a single question arising from the discovery of the timesheets. How does that make any sense? Who was conducting this investigation? And what job did Keith Skinner have to go to? I thought he was a professional researcher.

Even more puzzling is the fact that on 15th May 2008 after Roger Palmer had said that, "The thing ought to be resolved while Barrett, Graham and Johnson et. al. are still drawing breath", a furious Caroline Morris posted:

"What the blazes do you think Keith has been doing all along, if not trying to set down on record as much as possible of what those still alive have to say about the diary and watch? He is extremely critical of people who pontificate from their armchairs about people they don't know and have never met, and have no intention of ever confronting with their questions or their suspicions."

That's odd because it's the direct opposite of what she is now saying, i.e. that everyone was too busy to speak to Michael Barrett at any time after the 2004 discovery of the timesheets until his death in 2016, even to ask him a simple question as to what it was which caused him to call Doreen Montgomery on 9th March 1992. Roger Palmer's fear that people connected with the diary would die before even being questioned about certain matters turned out to be fully justified. Despite Keith Skinner's "whole philosophy" supposedly being about the importance of speaking to people while they're still alive, we've lost Barrett and Johnson while Graham isn't speaking to anyone. The only people they seem to want to speak to are electricians in Liverpool.

Going back to Her Royal High And Mightiness' post of 17th March 2026, I must say that I thought it was Tom Mitchell who had dismissed Timothy Martin-Wright's account of his employee having seen a copy of the diary of Jack the Ripper in a pub as false memory syndrome. Ms Morris-Brown herself has remained tight-lipped about this disaster, refusing to comment or even acknowledge that Martin-Wright even said such a thing which she can't explain.

But, hey, the active investigation to frame the almost certainly innocent Eddie Lyons as a petty thief must continue unabated and, if it takes another 22 years to produce no additional evidence, then another 22 years we must wait for nothing further to be revealed. I, for one, am here for it.

LORD ORSAM

16 April 2026