Hi Tony
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I don't find the writing examples you have provided to be so extraordinarily different that they could not have been made by the same individual. Variations in writing style might be due to illness or age and infirmity, for example. A handwriting expert recently looked at the writing of Detective Superintendent Donald Swanson annotating the memoirs of his superior, Sir Robert Anderson, deputy commissioner of the Yard at the time of the Ripper murders, and the expert could not be entirely sure whether the notations, made years apart, were by the same person. Certainly in the samples you show, the signatures in two of the samples are fairly similar -- the top one and the bottom one -- while the one in the middle is different because the writer uses block letters instead of cursive style for the initials, and the signature just looks more formal than the scrawl used to write the other two signatures.
Tony, you talked about something being "too good to be true", and that is just how I feel about the Maybrick candidacy, that when I first heard about Maybrick being touted as the Ripper, I could not believe it. Knowing previously about the Maybrick case, and having read Trevor Christie's book before the Diary surfaced, I was just astounded that Maybrick might have been the Ripper, and it just seemed unlikely to me.
Now, of course it would be foolish to close the door on him having done the murders. Conceivably he could have been the Whitechapel murderer and the Diary still be a hoax. As you probably know, it has been suggested that possibly allies of Florence Maybrick might have written the Diary to help with her case, to get her out of jail. I suppose that is not unimpossible (there's a double negative for you!) that she might have had some suspicion he could have been the murderer and someone took that suspicion and manufactured the Diary. One of the things that intrigues me is to find out who wrote the Diary and why.
Best regards
Chris
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