James Maybrick

[ChrisGeorge]

I used to visit Mrs Roberts who lived there, and even house-sat there when she visited her son in Australia.
It was built in the 18th century before the other houses in the district.
She told me that Nicholas Montsarret lived there for a while.
I took quite a few photos - none of the interior, unfortunately.
I'll root some out.

Great, many thanks, Philip. Maybe start a new thread on it or put it in the animal heads thread. I didn't know the Nicholas Monsarrat connection. That's cool.

Chris

[TonyMay]

Hi Everyone,

Thanks so much to all of you for your invaluable help in suggesting suitable accomodation for me to stay in when I travel up to the 'Trial Of James Maybrick' in May. In the end I have booked into the Innkeepers Lodge... I just couldn't resist it when Jericho suggested that 'Maybrick's Ghost walks the grounds!' HA HA HA.
I have got me ticket and booked a place on the Friday bus trip and I CAN'T WAIT for it all to start. By the way if any of you lot are thinking of going in for the music quiz on the Sat evening you could do worse than get me on your team. My only claim to fame in life is the fact that I once took on a whole Pub doing a music quiz on my own and beat the lot of them single handed! In truth, the questions were pretty easy and a lot of people could have 'whipped their asses' but I still laughed my head off that night as I walked out the door!
I think it is going to be a facinating weekend but I think it most likely that a NOT GUILTY verdict will be returned by the jury. Despite what you all might think, this is how I would vote if I had to vote NOW, TODAY, without any further evidence. Why? Because I have always believed in our (now defunkt grrrr) criminal justice system. A person used to be INNOCENT until PROVEN guilty BEYOND ANY REASONABLE DOUBT. Even a staunch 'Maybrickite' like myself dosen't think at present that there is anywhere enough actual evidence to prove James's guilt to meet the BRD requirement. All I feel that I can say is that, for me, James Maybrick is the most likely person to have been Jack The Ripper. Any thoughts?

[ChrisGeorge]

Hi Everyone,

Thanks so much to all of you for your invaluable help in suggesting suitable accomodation for me to stay in when I travel up to the 'Trial Of James Maybrick' in May. In the end I have booked into the Innkeepers Lodge... I just couldn't resist it when Jericho suggested that 'Maybrick's Ghost walks the grounds!' HA HA HA.
I have got me ticket and booked a place on the Friday bus trip and I CAN'T WAIT for it all to start. By the way if any of you lot are thinking of going in for the music quiz on the Sat evening you could do worse than get me on your team. My only claim to fame in life is the fact that I once took on a whole Pub doing a music quiz on my own and beat the lot of them single handed! In truth, the questions were pretty easy and a lot of people could have 'whipped their asses' but I still laughed my head off that night as I walked out the door!
I think it is going to be a facinating weekend but I think it most likely that a NOT GUILTY verdict will be returned by the jury. Despite what you all might think, this is how I would vote if I had to vote NOW, TODAY, without any further evidence. Why? Because I have always believed in our (now defunkt grrrr) criminal justice system. A person used to be INNOCENT until PROVEN guilty BEYOND ANY REASONABLE DOUBT. Even a staunch 'Maybrickite' like myself dosen't think at present that there is anywhere enough actual evidence to prove James's guilt to meet the BRD requirement. All I feel that I can say is that, for me, James Maybrick is the most likely person to have been Jack The Ripper. Any thoughts?

Hi Tony

James Maybrick may have been Jack the Ripper in his own mind. There were apparently quite a few people like that at the time judging by all the undoubtedly hoax letters: hundreds of people signing communications as "Jack the Ripper" trying to con the authorities, for their few minutes of fame. Maybrick might have been one of those nutters, Diary or no Diary. Who knows?

As Jericho indicates, it appears the Innkeepers Lodge stands on the site of the old Aigburth Hotel. This is where the inquest on Maybrick was opened and closed by coroner Samuel Brighouse at the end of May 1889 only to resume later at the Garston Reading Room. It is also opposite one of the chemists where Florie bought the flypapers.

Chris

[SteH]

Here's a photo of 60 Huskisson St, home of Florence's lover Alfred Brierley.

[taffy]

Right I had forgotten the Grange Hotel. Thanks for the tip, Philip. How do you like that house across the road with the dog's heads on the corners and the deer's head on the front of the facade? Formely a lodge for one of the neighborhood mansions. I had forgotten about it when we were doing the thread about animals' heads around the city. I photographed it years ago but maybe you or someone could photograph it as it is now.

All my best

Chris

Dear Chris,

This hotel has closed and has been converted into "luxury apartments". Liverpool no longer uses the word flats and of course all apartments are of the "luxury" variety. Not quite sure what "luxury" means, perhaps running hot and cold water !!

Taffy

[ChrisGeorge]

Hi Steve & Taffy

Thank you both for the information and the great pics.

Chris

[Jericho]

5 minutes walk from the cricket ground is Grassendale Park. One of the good things about Grassendale Park, including the dinky little railway station at Cressington, (no longer called Cressington & Grassendale) is that it would be completely recognisable to Maybrick if he were to come back today. Nearly all the large houses are intact. Although just further up Aigburth/St Mary's Road in the made up 'Cressington Heath' it looks as though luxury apartments are about to make an appearance along with, wait for it, executive homes!)

[ChrisGeorge]

5 minutes walk from the cricket ground is Grassendale Park. One of the good things about Grassendale Park, including the dinky little railway station at Cressington, (no longer called Cressington & Grassendale) is that it would be completely recognisable to Maybrick if he were to come back today. Nearly all the large houses are intact. Although just further up Aigburth/St Mary's Road in the made up 'Cressington Heath' it looks as though luxury apartments are about to make an appearance along with, wait for it, executive homes!)

Hi Jericho

I agree as to Grassendale Park being well worth seeing for its Victorian mansions. James and Florie Maybrick lived at Beechville, 7 South Road in Grassendale Park before moving to Battlecrease House. Jericho, is it true that Steven Gerrard lives in Grassendale as I think I read? Also I have never been clear on this.... what's the difference between Cressington and Grassendale or are they actually the same place?

Chris

[Jericho]

Not really. They were two private adjacent residential parks rather like Fulwood Park in L17. Grassendale is slightly more upmarket in terms of the quality of the housing. They are now part of a combined conservation area where everything is tightly regulated, even the station (officially in Cressington) looks as though it would be at home in the nineteenth century. Cressington Park is closest to Aigburth Road. Some of the best houses are to be found in North Road and South Road (Grassendale). Grassendale and Cressington Esplanades are both very attractive and well worth a visit, too.

[TonyMay]

Hi Chris, Jericho and everyone.

Wow! I am gobsmacked to think that the innkeepers Lodge where I will be staying in May is actually built on the site of the place where the inquest into Maybricks death took place at the time. No wonder Jericho suggested that James's ghost haunts the grounds.. Funny thing is I don't think I would be scared if I ran into his ghost now. I think I'm so interested in his life and the diary that, even if he had his 'shiny knife' with him I'd probably invite him in for a chat and a cup of tea! HA HA HA HA HA HA
Many thanks to Steve and Taffy for the interesting photo's. Alfred Brierley is actually buried not all that far from Hastings at a small place in the country called Newick (near Lewes). I have never visited his grave as I don't drive and it's virtually unreachable by public transport from here. The fact that Brierley chose to live out the latter years of his life somewhere right 'away from it all' is perhaps significant in itself.
Thanks once again Chris for the link to the William D Rubenstein article. I have now read it and enjoyed it immensely. Predictably I agree with a lot of what Rubenstein says and think it a distinct posibility that Alice Yapp could well have stolen the diary from the house at the time (seeing as it was Yapp that opened Florries letter to Brierley when little Gladys 'dropped it in the mud'). 'I leave this now in a place where it shall be found' I think James say's in the diary. This certainly suggests that James could have left it in such a place where anyone searching the house could have found it.
We do know also that around the time James died that Michael Maybrick DID initiate searches of the house. I also find the evidence about Florence Aunspaugh's reference to James being known as 'Sir James' quite interesting too. Maybrick was known by all to be a gentle and essentially placid man but he was also known to have had a ferocious temper if roused. As I have said here before, I find James's inclination to 'grossly inflate his own ego' in this kind of way perfectly consistent with that of a frustrated and powerless individual suffering with depression and or mental illness. The 'Diego letter' is also very interesting. I feel it quite possible that it could indeed have been sent by Maybrick. I must say however that the connection that Rubenstein makes to the Laurenz signature rhyming with Florence is rather tenuous! The ill James Maybrick was I believe a man that enjoyed taunting the authorities and the fact that he perpetually got away with doing so would serve only to heighten his own feeling of importance and invincibility. In real life of course James could see his life falling apart around him, he was losing not only his wife but his sexual prowess and quite possibly also his business...
Along with the 'Diego letter' there is the 'Liverpool businessman' letter written on the front part of a newspaper, the Goulston Street Graffitto (James instead of Juwes) another letter (which I cannot recall the Ripperologists title for now) that gave the rippers current adress in Liverpool (it turned out to be adjacent to St James's St) AND even the fact that Mitre Square in 1888 led directly into ST JAMES PLACE that all add weight if you accept James Maybrick as the Ripper to his love of leaving 'clues' for the police.
Well I'm off to play a few of my own 'funny little games' (don't worry, only on my Playstation!) What say you!!!

'All hands on deck! Prepare for a barrage!!! HA HA HA)

All the best,

Tony.

[PhilipG]

I told Chris that I'd post this pic.
I'll leave it to him to write the caption.

[ChrisGeorge]

I told Chris that I'd post this pic.
I'll leave it to him to write the caption.

Hi PhilipG

Many thanks for posting that photograph of the Poste House pub in Cumberland Street. As Diary afficianados will know, the Diary states at one point that James Maybrick took "refreshment" at a place called the "Poste House." I and other critics have taken this to be a mistake by whomever wrote the Diary--a hoaxer posing as James Maybrick--since this establishment was not known by that name in 1888-9 but was known then as the "Muck Midden."

However, others, such as authors Paul Begg and Caroline Morris, have argued that the diarist could have meant somewhere else that was informally known as the "Poste House."

It has been pointed out, for example, that Dale Street, off which Cumberland Street runs, was the street in Liverpool where the stagecoaches bringing the mail came, and that taverns where the mail was brought were referred to as "post houses." Of course, by 1888-9, the era of stagecoaches transporting the mail was over by some 40 plus years, and the railways had taken over that function.

Ms. Morris has also stated that the Post Office Hotel in School Lane might have been known as the "Poste House." This seems a stretch to me, and as a Liverpudlian I think the Poste House in Cumberland Street was meant and that the hoaxer, knowing the place had that "olde world" spelling, assumed the establishment had that name in 1888-9.

Chris

[SteH]

Chris and Tony - whatever your contrasting thoughts are on the diary and whether or not the Poste House in Cumberland St was in fact mentioned, its a must see pub during your stay for the event, one of the best untouched traditional boozers left in the city centre. Surreally though, the upstairs is now a gay bar so you may enjoy your visit more in the daytime.

[Jericho]

Apart from Battlecrease Mansion, (on the other hand is there anything else in Riversdale Road of any value to Maybrick devotees?) you won't find much of interest in contemporary Riversdale Road - unless you want to spend £150K on a recently built (can't quite put my finger on the style, I think it begins with c) two bedroom apartment, luxury of course. Good view of the water from the car park at the bottom, too. Occasionally a bit of random railing, or a remnant of gatepost denoting another Liverpool.

[ChrisGeorge]

Apart from Battlecrease Mansion, (on the other hand is there anything else in Riversdale Road of any value to Maybrick devotees?) you won't find much of interest in contemporary Riversdale Road - unless you want to spend £150K on a recently built (can't quite put my finger on the style, I think it begins with c) two bedroom apartment, luxury of course. Good view of the water from the car park at the bottom, too. Occasionally a bit of random railing, or a remnant of gatepost denoting another Liverpool.

Hi Jericho and Steve

Jericho, your impression of Riversdale Road is about the same as mine. I would agree that for visitors apart from the Maybrick mansion, the biggest thing is the view of the river from the bottom of the road.

I was able to see the interior of Battlecrease, though only the downstairs, courtesy of the tenant of that part of the house (it now being split up into flats) at the time of the 2003 Jack the Ripper convention at the Adelphi. I saw the study where Maybrick probably answered his business letters and maybe (as if) made jottings in the Diary. My visit was somewhat spoiled by happening to step into some doggy doo which led to me having to wipe my shoes on the lawn!

Steve, I did have a pint in the Poste House on that same visit to Liverpool and was accompanied by Andy Aliffe, a Ripper expert as well as a former BBC comedy producer who has some amusing anecdotes of working with (or trying to work with!) the redoubtable Ken Dodd. I am not sure that either of us knew that upstairs at the Poste House was a gay bar though. Do either of you remember the Magic Clock in Williamson Square which was said to be the gay pub when I went on pub crawls in the Sixties?

Chris