The Book of Tom

Following the bombshell news that Tom Mitchell is writing a book about the diary (first partially and exclusively revealed by him in the comments section of this website), I naturally have some thoughts.

One particular episode of the 1970s TV drama Colditz, called "Tweedledum", has always stuck in my mind.

In that episode, an RAF officer confined as a prisoner-of-war in the famous German castle devises a plan to feign madness in the expectation that it will get him sent back home. The plan is approved by the Escape Committee and it works. The officer was accepted by the Nazis to be mentally ill and returned to England. The twist is that the officer turns out to have played the part so well that he genuinely has gone mad and, once back in England, is confined to a lunatic asylum. The Escape Committee determine never to use that particular ruse again.

Michael Bryant as Wing Commander George Marsh pretending to be mad to secure repatriation in Colditz

Something similar appears to have happened with Tom Mitchell. Back in June 2009, posting under the alias of "Soothsayer", Mitchell claimed that his defence of the diary was "tongue-in-cheek". Perhaps it was. Perhaps he was just having a bit of fun. Sadly, however, over the years, Mitchell seems to have played the "tongue-in-cheek" role of a diary defender far too well and has now turned into one, genuinely convincing himself that James Maybrick wrote the diary, with all the madness this entails.

THE ONLINE HISTORY OF TOM MITCHELL

Before his obsession with "the Dark Lord" of Orsam, Tom was equally as obsessed with someone called John Omlor - a fierce opponent of both himself and Caroline Morris - who, as at June 2009, hadn't posted on Casebook for about six months. Unfortunately, because Tom couldn't stop commenting about Omlor under his then alternate Casebook name of "Soothsayer" - saying nutty things in his 'Incontrovertible" thread like that he was at a party in John Omlor's house with other Casebook members playing the song "Dancing Queen" during what he referred to as "Mr Omlor's Abba party" - Caroline Morris, despite her famous self-proclaimed ability to see words in colours, managed to convince herself that Soothsayer (i.e. Tom Mitchell) was, in fact, John Omlor posting under a fake name.

She made her big but stupidly wrong reveal on 18th June 2009 in a thread called "If you eliminate the impossible", quoting some of Soothsayer's apparently implicating posts, in which he had madly mentioned Omlor, from the 'Incontrovertible' thread. The message was clear: Soothsayer was really John Omlor in disguise.

Mitchell was most taken aback and, indeed, upset, telling her in no uncertain terms to: "Save your hostility for the guy who caused you the initial distress" adding, "I didn't deserve your comments, and I don't deserve your comments."

Dear reader, do not fear. The two of them would later kiss and make up and, indeed, become bestest of friends or, rather, leader and follower.

But if we go back to 24 June 2009, six days after Caz's big but misguided exposure of Soothsayer as John Omlor, we find Tom (Soothsayer) posting this hostile missive directed at Caroline Morris:

As can be seen, amidst the hostility he said:

"If you don't welcome my tongue-in-cheek defence of the journal, you could easily avoid the one thread on Casebook where you will find it."

There we have, in black and white ladies and gentlemen, the startling admission that Tom Mitchell was defending the diary with his tongue in his cheek.

Caroline Morris certainly did not miss it. She posted the next day, referring to a poster who "openly admits to taking a 'tongue-in-cheek' debating position that nobody here holds for real.'

Oh dear.

TOM AND OMLOR

If you are wondering why Tom was so utterly obsessed with Omlor that he couldn't stop posting daft things about him under his alternate name of "Soothsayer", it goes back to a couple of incidents in August and September 2008 when Tom was seriously worsted and humiliated by the man.

On 31st August 2008, in a thread Tom had started only the previous day in his own name in order to grandstand his performance schtick of demanding a single incontrovertible, unequivocal and undeniable fact to disprove the diary, John Omlor made a solid point, which probably isn't repeated as much as it ought to be these days, that the forger had clearly been looking at the recently discovered police report of the deceased Catherine Eddowes' possessions as published in Martin Fido's 1987 book because, as Omlor said, the diarist, "takes three separate objects from the list which all appear adjacent to one another on the page in the official document and places those very same three specific objects right next to one another in its own text, and manages to cite one of the lines verbatim complete with odd syntax and all."

Acting dumb, Tom claimed he was unable to see the three items next to each other in the list. At the same time, he accepted it would be "deal breaker" if the diarist had simply copied three consecutive items from a list published in Fido's 1987 book. Omlor patiently explained that the three items were the knife, the cigarette case and the tin matchbox (as a poem in the diary says: "tin match box empty/cigarette case/make haste/my shiny knife/the whores knife") which all appear together on the list in the police report. As Omlor said:

"Out of all the items listed, what three specific items does the diarist have "James" mention one next to the other in his diary entry?

The knife, the cigarette case, and the tin matchbox.

And he has "James" reproduce the line about the matchbox in exactly the same odd syntax as it appears on the list.

Whoever was writing the page in the diary was obviously looking at the list."

Tom responded in a confusing fashion, saying:

"I think the game is up. The diary is dead in the water. This totally nails it."

Thoughts that Tom might have been joking seemed to be dispelled in his next post in which he said:

"the diary is dead in the water."

He added:

"Mr. Omlor has nailed it with his triumverate of adjacent objects in the Eddowes List.

Eventually, even the most fanatical have to listen to reason..."

At this point, to the extent there was any doubt in the matter in Tom's mind, and in response to one of his earlier satirical posts that, "I feel we are finally close to busting the forgery wide apart", Stewart Evans posted the extract of the list from Fido's book, making it crystal clear that the knife, cigarette case and tin matchbox were, indeed, all listed together:

Tom's response certainly seemed genuine to those at the time. Signing off as "Defeated, crestfallen, unlikely to fight another day", he said:

"Hey I'm done here. I have accepted that three-in-a-row is a fatal mistake. The duck is dead in the water. Long live some other duck."

Within a couple of hours of this, however, Mitchell was back to engaging in defending the diary and debating with other posters.

There was no further mention by him of the list of three items being a "fatal mistake" by the forger. He just seemed to put the entire issue out of his mind as if it hadn't happened. He certainly didn't explain what he meant when he said that he was "done".

This certainly wasn't missed by Crazy Ally [Ryder] who posted later that evening:

"As you have already conceded the diary is a fraud, what are you still here arguing for?"

Tom's nonsensical response was:

"I have conceded that the diary is a fraud in exactly the same way as you have agreed with me that I am right about there being no incontrovertible fact proving the diary is a fraud."

What does that even mean?

Ally, despite being as crazy as a box of frogs, is able to tell bullshit when she smells it:

"So you admit the diary is a fraud. Why are you still here arguing when you know it's a fake?"

It was a good question which shows that the forum members at the time had genuinely understood Tom to have conceded that the diary was a fake.

Tom's silly response was to say: "Yes, I'm truly that shallow and fickle" followed by a smiley face emoji.

So he simply carried on regardless, claiming, for example, on 1st September 2008 that the diarist's use of "Sir Jim" was a detail which supported the authenticity of the diary because that's what James Maybrick was known as. In response, John Omlor told him, correctly:

"There is no documented reference anywhere of anyone ever calling James "Sir Jim" or of his ever calling himself that (again, you must stop just saying these things)."

It took a huge number of back and forth posts between the two men for Tom, who was acting as stupid as he ever has been, to get it into his head that "Sir James" is not the same as "Sir Jim".

It was at this point, on 2nd September 2008, that Tom decided to re-register and, in breach of the forum rules, created a second account in the name of "Soothsayer", immediately being called out by John Omlor for doing so.

But Tom had suffered a double humiliation at Omlor's hands. While Omlor soon dropped out of the silly debate, Tom did not and could not forget the crushing blows he had suffered at Omlor's hands, the like of which he would not suffer again until Orsam's appearance on the forum six years later. Hence, the constant non-stop inane jabbering by "Soothsayer" about Omlor which ironically led Caroline Morris to think that "Soothsayer" was, in fact, John Omlor.

THE ARRIVAL OF THE GLADIATOR

Tom clowned around defending the diary in more and more ridiculous ways for three more years under the name "Soothsayer" until he was taken to the house of asterisks in the sky and suspended from Casebook only to re-invent himself as "Gladiator" in July 2013. It wasn't long before he was caught with his trousers down once more.

On 10 August 2013, having been asked by poster Chris (who must be Chris Phillips) to explain the requirement by Mike Barrett in the 19th March 1992 Bookdealer advertisement for a Victorian diary with at least 20 blank pages, Tom showed his complete ignorance on the subject despite having been posting about the diary for at least five years at that time.

As we can see, Tom was caught wrong-footed, saying pathetically:

"For the record, my recall of events does not include the line "must have at least 20 blank pages". Are you quite sure of your facts here, or have the years simply fine-tuned an urban myth of your deepest desiring?"

Not for the first time, Tom's one-sided memory had let him down.

Even worse, he then started babbling inaccurately that the "receipt" for the 1891 diary was dated after Mike had taken the Maybrick diary to London, commenting "Ouch!" even though the actual receipt would have been dated 26 March 1992 when the diary was sent to Mike in the post (Tom was obviously thinking of the date of Anne's cheque in late payment for the diary).

At this time, Tom still thinks that Chris has got the wording of the advertisement wrong but he is in for a shock when Chris informs him that he'd taken that wording directly from a post by none other than Tom's darling, Caroline Morris (the pair having long since reconciled since that John Omlor misunderstanding).

A desperate Tom Mitchell then cries out for help from Caroline Morris. He can't work out an answer to the question of "Why would Mike have needed such a diary?"

As time goes on, Tom still "can't think why Barrett would want such a diary" other than the obvious reason and he calls again for Caroline Morris to help him out of his predicament.

As we can see from his next post early the next morning, Tom is disconcerted by the information Chris had revealed. Deeply disconcerted.

"Why he would want 20 blank pages is the very disconcerting bit". He calls once more for assistance from his mistress.

His mistress doesn't hear his call but in a panic he's rushed over to JTR Forums where he found Caroline Morris opining about the advertisement. Unable to think for himself, he repeats her rambling and incoherent answer from 2012:

It can be seen that Caroline Morris had no sensible answer (as she still does not to this day) as to why Mike required a Victorian diary with a minimum of 20 pages. Her claim that it only makes sense "in the context of wanting to see if the diary....was typical of others of roughly the same period - or decade" itself makes no sense. He wouldn't need any blank pages if he wanted a diary for that reason. In fact, it only makes sense if he wanted to write something on those blank pages.

Tom clearly can't answer the question himself about the blank pages requirement and focuses in desperation upon the 10 year range in the request which is essentially a totally unsurprising request by a forger of a Ripper diary for a diary from the 1880s. We may note, as has been noted on JTR Forums, that in asking for a diary "from 1880-1890" the word "inclusive" was not used so that it would be reasonable to interpret the request as a diary from 1881 to 1889. Indeed, Mike might well have asked Earl for a diary from the 1880s which Earl translated as 1880-1890 (knowing that there was no requirement for Mike to accept any particular diary that was offered by any supplier). We can see, however, that Mitchell falls into the trap of thinking that one from 1889 would have been suitable but one from 1890 would not, even though it would have been equally unsuitable for an 1889 diary to have been used by the killer to describe events in 1888.....if that 1889 diary had been dated as such, which is the complete answer to Tom's puzzle because it is by no means necessarily the case that a personal diary would have been dated on every page.

Chris replied immediately to say that he'd seen what Caroline Morris had posted before but that, "I can't really see how any of it explains why Barrett should need a Victorian journal with at least 20 blank pages."

Tom, now calling himself "Gladiator the Utterly Bemused" had "no compelling answer for this latest conundrum" and, having spent the entire day thinking about it, was "all out of ideas".

While admitting that Mike's actions made no sense if the diary was authentic, he claimed that "It doesn't make sense if it is a forgery" even though it made perfect sense if it was a forgery.

Caroline Morris did appear two days later to avoid the question about the advertisement, and instead say:

"Only Mike knows why he ordered a diary that would have arrived too late and been unsuitable for the purpose of fooling even a backward earwig into thinking it had been written over a hundred years previously".

The only diary Mike could be said to have ordered (although it was actually offered to him and he accepted it) was the 1891 diary which did not arrive "too late"; it arrived more than a fortnight before Mike went to London (and that meeting of 13th April 1992, which probably hadn't yet been arranged as at 28th March 1992, could have been postponed if necessary). Mike wouldn't have known it was unsuitable for the purpose of a forgery until he received it.

The only other thing Morris could say was:

"...it might have made sense to him to see how easy it would be to obtain a similar item and/or create a substitute"

But he wasn't attempting to obtain a "similar item" to the large black leather bound photograph album nor would 20 blank pages have allowed him to create a "substitute" for a diary containing 63 pages of writing (nor would there have been any need for the substitute to be in a diary from the period 1880 to 1890 as opposed to one manufactured in any other period in history including the 1990s, assuming it to be undated on its face).

She wasn't talking any sense.

Even though the question hadn't been answered, Tom kept his head down, changed the subject, and babbled on inanely about other diary topics for which he was on much happier ground.

Years literally passed and the whole embarrassing problem about the wording of the advertisement was happily and quietly forgotten.

Until....

Until Lord Orsam (then plain "David Orsam" prior to his ennoblement) made his appearance on the scene in August 2016.

By this time, Gladiator had been suspended and Tom's new secret identity was "Iconoclast".

The first problem caused by Lord Orsam for Tom was to ask him if anyone had ever seen the example of "one off" from 1860 which Shirley Harrison had claimed solved the "one off instance" problem. Tom was forced to admit on 28th August 2016 that it was "not satisfactory" that Harrison hadn't seen the supposed 1860 example herself. He added, "it if it were to transpire that the term had never been used prior to the 20th century then the journal is badly wounded indeed, so that is certainly an avenue to pursue".

In a further post, Tom accepted that if the "one off instance" problem could not be resolved it is "a massive problem for the journal".

Dear reader, the "one off instance" problem has not been resolved today, ten years later, other than that it has been established beyond doubt that it is a 20th century expression.

But this wasn't the only problem for Tom. During further discussions, he thought he'd managed to find the evidence which proved that Mike purchased the 1891 diary in May 1992, long after he'd brought the Maybrick Diary down to London in April.

As we can see, so confident was he in his discovery that he told me: "Not sure why you didn't look this up for yourself..."

Except.....I told him that the diary was sent to Barrett on 26 March 1992:

Tom didn't think this could be right:

But they do say you learn something new every day and so it was for Tom on 19th September 2016:

Tom was not entirely to blame. His source, the book by Linder, Skinner and Morris, had dealt with the topic of the red diary in two different places - the date of the book being supplied to Mike on one page and the date of Anne's cheque on another - making it difficult for the general reader to work out what was going on but Tom should have been more than a general reader.

A humbled Tom was forced to admit he'd messed up:

Tom was then confronted with his worst nightmare. What came to be known as "The Orsam Theory" based on that blasted advertisement which Tom preferred to ignore:

At this stage, I hadn't appreciated that Mike had stated in April 1999 that this was the precise sequence of events which had happened. It took me three years (when Keith Skinner finally released the recording of the 10th April 1999 Cloak & Dagger event) to realize that what I had worked out in 2016 must have been the correct chronology was supported by Mike's own account.

Tom's response was to ask, in desperation, what Mike was planning to do with an 1890 or 1891 diary which question I answered immediately:

"How about remove all traces that it belonged to 1890 or 1891 (if possible) in order to ensure that the diary was written on paper that belonged to the correct period".

It was at this point that it emerged that Tom didn't have a clue as to what a Victorian personal diary looked like, as he replied:

"

Do most diaries not have evidence of the year on every major page? Isn't that kind of the point of a diary?"

It wasn't even me who first told him he was wrong. It was Dusty Miller, with the single word "No" and an example:

Dusty subsequently clarified: "Modern diaries, yes, Victorian diaries, not usually" although the fact is that even modern personal diaries don't need to be written into a manufactured "diary", bearing the date, and can be written into any form of exercise or note book.

When responding to Dusty, Tom let slip that he has always been aware of the existence of diaries without dates on every page:

As we can see, he said: "Actually, there are diaries today without the year on each page.". He was wondering if Dusty had simply posted an example of a (rare) Victorian diary without the year on each page. This means that he was, and always has been, fully aware that both Victorian and modern diaries exist without having the year on each page. That's all that is needed to answer his question as to why Mike might have sought an 1890 or 1891 diary to use for a fake 1888 Ripper diary.

It really is simple. His question "But would Mike Barrett have known that?" doesn't get us anywhere because it only needs Mike Barrett to have been aware of undated Victorian diaries where the date is only known from the handwritten diary entries to explain why he could easily have asked for a diary from 1880 to 1890 (not said to be inclusive!) with a minimum of 20 blank pages for his fake Jack the Ripper diary. As long as the diary had sufficient blank pages it could work.

Dusty's answer to Tom's first question, incidentally, was, "all I can say is, a significant portion of Victorian diaries are not as you described them in your post i was responding too (sic)."

To ensure that Tom could be in no doubt about the matter, on 20th September 2016 I gave him five examples of images of Victorian diaries which would have been perfectly suitable for Mike Barrett's purpose if they had at least 20 blank pages

Tom's ludicrous response on the same day was to say:

"These look like notebooks which have been used as diaries?" thus missing the point that, by virtue of having been used as diaries, they were, in fact, now used diaries which is precisely what Mike had been asking for in his advertisement.

My reply to him at the time was:

"Yes, but what you are missing is that that's what diaries are, or can be, and always have been. They don't need to be printed by Letts & Co, or some similar publishing company, to be a diary. They don't need the 365 days of the year printed inside them. A diary can be any form of book in which it is possible to write."

Tom seemed to have been stunned into silence. From 20th September 2016 until 16th October 2016 there were no posts at all from him in the 'Incontrovertible" thread and it was only the return of Caroline Morris which brought him out of his hiding place when, of course, his ignorance of the nature of a Victorian diary was entirely forgotten. But don't worry, dear reader, Tom put all that nastiness out of his mind so that the entire subject had to be gone over again and again by different posters nearly ten years later until it finally sunk into the Mitchell cranium.

Orsam wasn't finished, however. He was busy at the time researching the origins of the expression "one off instance". The results of the research were posted on Casebook on 15th December 2016. As I stated at the time, the conclusion that the diary was a fake was now "unavoidable, incontrovertible, unequivocal and undeniable".

Tom's response on 17th December 2016 was to admit that it was "a major obstacle to overcome" but that "we shouldn't leap too quickly to a conclusion":

In a subsequent post he asked for more time "to let us chew it all over".

Nearly ten long years later, what has been presented by Tom in response? Nothing! He's made a ridiculous attempt to argue that the diarist wasn't talking of "a one-off instance" but "a one off-instance" even though there is no such thing as an off-instance in the English language nor would that wording of "a one off-instance" be remotely grammatical. The meaning of "a one off instance" in the diary is quite clear, and explained by the diarist who says that he won't hit his wife again.

What do we learn from all this?

We learn that Tom has stubbornly decided that the diary is genuine and nothing is going to change his mind on that point.

Why does Tom think the diary is genuine?

Until 2017 it was, ironically, because he thought that Anne's story about the diary having been passed down through her family was true.

On 6 December 2009, he had posted that "Anne Graham received it in 1989 from her father Billy Graham who formally received it in 1950...from his grandmother Edith Formby who had....received it from a 'skivvy' in the Maybrick household..."

As he told a poster at the time:

"If this provenance is not good enough for you, then little else will be."

It's a shame that, today, this provenance is not good enough for Tom and has been unceremoniously abandoned.

Nevertheless, as late as September 2016, Tom was posting photographs of members of the Graham family to try and demonstrate that the diary was genuine:

The man who is supposedly a master of understanding coincidence, thought at this time that it was too much of a coincidence for there to have been some minor facial resemblance between some old people in the Maybrick and Graham families so that Anne Graham's story must be true. Hence, before posting the images he wrote: "To casually dismiss the journal as a fake is a travesty..." But he's now attracted to a much shinier coincidence and he, himself, now dismisses one of the main reasons he previously put forward for saying the diary was genuine.

The other thing which has always seemed to weigh heavily upon Tom's mind is the supposed initials "FM" on the wall, being those of Florence Maybrick (although, as Florence Elizabeth Maybrick, her actual initials were F.E.M.), which seemed to explain, for Tom, the diarist's mention of "an initial here" and "an initial there" even though that would be a very odd way of describing a single pair of initials written together in one place in Kelly's room.

Tom was told back in 2009 by Chris that "these letters are not there in the original [photograph]"

This fact has been confirmed by both Rob Clack (who has seen the original photograph in the files) and myself after I saw a high quality original reproduction of it. The initials "FM" simply aren't there.

But, of course, if they're easily and clearly visible on some published photographs in books, as Tom seems to think, the forger could simply have seen them in a book and incorporated them into his fake diary. Tom was told this as long ago as 2009 by a poster called Christine:

Tom's response was a barmy as ever, saying with impenetrable logic:

"Except, he or she could not possibly have incorporated them into the diary as the amazing coincidence of their being there once he'd started the hoax is beyond reasonable reason. He or she would have had to start with them, but prior to the emergence of the diary, they'd never been formally identified (unless you count Simon Wood's passing comment to a researcher in 1988)".

Tom's argument here is ridiculous. A forger could easily have seen what he or she decided were Florence's initials in a published photograph and incorporated them into an already planned fake diary in which James Maybrick was Jack the Ripper without them having been "formally identified" by anyone else, whatever that is supposed to mean. They certainly didn't need to start with them at all, but even if they did, so what? Perhaps the entire diary was written around the discovery of those initials in the photograph. What would it matter if that were the case? The diary would still be fake.

The fact that Simon Wood couldn't see the letters "FM" on the wall but thought he could see different letters elsewhere on the wall is another serious issue which should have given Tom pause for thought. Sam Flynn pointed out to Tom that the initials "JW" can be seen on the wall if one looks hard enough:

Further, almost everyone agrees that the "F" is not properly shaped as an "F". Martin Fido first thought it could be an E. Tom has posted evidence himself that it could equally be a P:

As we can see, when Tom's sister-in-law was asked to identify the letters on the wall, she thought it was "PM". So "EM", "PM" and "FM" all were, and remain, candidates for being the supposed initials on the wall, in addition to neither of them being initials, which is the actual case.

Tom's notion that the forger had to start with the initials is ridiculous because one would not expect a serial killer, or any other form of killer, to write the initials of his wife at the scene of one of their own murders. Sure, if it was a common thing for murderers to leave clues as to their own wife's name at the scene of a crime, Tom might have a point. But it's the diarist who tells us why Kelly's killer has decided to put an initial here and an initial there of his wife in Kelly's room. Thus, the forger had complete control in coming up with an explanation for the initials and could have provided a different explanation for any different initials which happened to be seen or imagined.

Given that an "F" can also be discerned cut onto Kelly's arm, it's likely that the forger only saw an "M" on the wall and an "F" carved into the arm which probably explains the comments about the initials being here and there. It would be entirely understandable if the forger hadn't seen an "F" on the wall at all. Either way, the vagueness as to what the forger was talking about allows it to mean absolutely anything. If, today, no one had been able to make out a single initial in the room, it would only mean that Jack the Ripper was supposed to have hidden initials of his wife somewhere which wasn't visible on the old camera photographs. It was, in other words, a win-win for the forger whether initials could be seen or not. This is one for the extremely gullible only.

That's a quick guide to the historic Tom Mitchell's online existence. Although we've ended the story at 2016 you can be sure that Mitchell spent the next ten years repeating himself endlessly (with the new addition from 2017 of some electrical work having been done at Battlecrease on 9th March 1992) but avoiding as far as possible the topics of "one off instance" and the reason for the Bookdealer advertisement with its blank pages requirement.

Will the Book of Tom ever see the light of day? I very much doubt it. He may spend a number enjoyable years writing it only to complete it and realize that, upon reflection, it is a crock of utter shite. He faces the same problem that presumably has knocked out all other projects about the diary (i.e the documentary and the podcast). This is that is such an obvious fake. How is Tom going to even begin to show that it might be authentic? In particular, how is he going to deal with the "one off instance" problem? He can't possibly brush it off with his "off-instance" nonsense. That would render the entire publication a joke. But there isn't an answer to it. He can no longer maintain the fiction that there isn't an incontrovertible fact which shows the diary is a fake. He now has it. If he can't controvert it, which he can't, he's stumped. The book will be a complete waste of everyone's time, not least his.

All the main pillars from Society's Pillar which were supposed to support the authenticity of the diary have been knocked out of the game. Gladys' illness? It doesn't work. The desire of the killer to throw acid in one of his female victim's faces being a Victorian speciality? Nope, such cases are found in the 1980s and early 1990s, not to mention the 1960s. The testing of Catherine Eddowes' body for drugs suggesting the police were looking for arsenic or strychnine? Nah, they were looking for some form of narcotic drug or chloroform. The diary writer talking of his cold hands? But there's no evidence that the real James Maybrick had cold hands although he did complain about his eyes watering and giving him trouble (not mentioned in the diary, surprise surprise). The misspelling of the word "panic" as "panick"? Sorry, it's not a late 19th century spelling. Sir Jim in the diary? But James Maybrick wasn't known as "Sir Jim". The J & M on the envelope found next to Chapman's body? What a shame, it wasn't a "J" it was the number "2". And so on and so forth.

We've already seen that his great hope for the diary, being the supposed initials FM on the wall, is nothing more than a mirage which, to the extent that it looks like "FM", was visible to any and every forger since 1972.

The demolition of Society's Pillar no doubt explains why his long-awaited revised edition which he kept calling SocPil 2.0 has been abandoned. We were first told in September 2019 that it was coming and merely needed a bit of fleshing out.

So in 2019 he "planned to respond where appropriate" to what Roger had called "Lord Orsam's essay". Needless to say, his timeline of events that he set out in that post relating to Glady's illness was completely wrong showing that he hadn't understood what I'd said about it. The next day he admitted he hadn't even yet read my "Pillar of Sand" in detail, even though I'd published it some months earlier.

I well remember him saying in 2020 that he would produce his response to "Pillar of Sand" after the pandemic. Here's the post:

"

I have been rather slow in addressing Lord Orsam's life story response to my short epistle, I agree. Look, don't shoot the messenger, but it might not be until lockdown is over."

Then, in June 2022, long after the lockdown had finished, he assured the members of Casebook forum that it would be coming out in 2025:

And here:

And here:

Tsk Tsk, when you can't trust the great man of integrity, who can you trust these days? His most recent statement made in 2024 was that it would be coming out in "probably" 2026 or 2027:

But that now seems to be superseded by his crazy book plan.

In this book, if it ever sees the light of day, he will no doubt wibble on for a chapter or two about the extraordinary coincidence of electrical work being conducted in an old Liverpool house on the day Mike Barrett called Doreen Montgomery while ignoring the possibility that, even if there is a connection, it only means that Mike could have heard about the work while down the pub and decided to make the call about his fake diary on that day. Will he provide any evidence that the diary was actually discovered at Battlecrease? Don't be silly, of course he won't. He doesn't have any.

Then he's got to deal with Mike's secret search for a Victorian diary from the 1880s with blank pages. Naturally, he'll twitter on endlessly about 1890 and 1891 but the answer to that will be so obvious that his readers will be sufficiently annoyed at the insult to their intelligence that they'll have no option but to throw the book onto the fire.

It doesn't matter how many documents Keith Skinner sends him, Tom's never going to be able to demonstrate what he will be hoping to demonstrate, that the diary is genuine. He says the book is designed to show that James Maybrick was Jack the Ripper but, absent the diary, he hasn't got a hope in hell of doing so.

LORD ORSAM

18 June 2026