In December 1994, Nick Warren, a practising surgeon and editor of Ripperologist, wrote an article for the journal Criminologist. He suggested that Maybrick was not a victim of arsenic poisoning at all. His theory is that the ‘irritant poison’ which killed him was potassium. ‘All James Maybrick’s terminal symptoms can be attributed to the excessive ingestion of potassium. Administered by the oral route, this poison causes asthesia (weakness), mental confusion, hypotension (tingling in the extremities), dyspepsia, diarrhoea and vomiting with ultimate cardiac arrest. The features which would be manifest in a post-mortem examination were all present in this case — redness, haemorrhage or frank ulceration of the upper gastro-intestinal tract from the gullet to the small bowel.’
Mr Warren recalled that Maybrick had indeed taken a very large dose of potassium salts by mouth. He took hydrate of potash on a regular basis (probably potassium bicarbonate). He had also drunk a bottle of anaphrodisiac potassium bromide in half the time prescribed and in his last few days was also prescribed the favourite Victorian remedy, Fowler’s Solution — a mixture of arsenic and potassium carbonate.
It was Florie’s innocent compliance with doctors’ orders that may well, says Mr Warren, have provided the coup de grâce. ‘It is quite clear that the correct verdict at the inquest into James Maybrick’s death should have been one of “Misadventure”.’
21
SIR JIM WILL GIVE NOTHING AWAY, NOTHING
THE INK
The forensic testing of the Diary ink was originally conducted by Dr Nicholas Eastaugh. The uproar that followed the initial publication necessitated a great deal more work and further testing to attempt to establish if the Diary is a modern forgery and, if not, when it was written.
Dr Eastaugh prefaced his report with a warning.
In the now famous Hitler Diaries debacle it was the materials of the documents — the paper and the ink — which ultimately exposed the hoax. When something as potentially important as the Jack the Ripper Diary suddenly appears there should naturally enough be great caution and it is only prudent to examine the physical composition of the document with forensic-style tests with the aim of assessing the age.
There is as yet no single test which will clearly, precisely and unambiguously determine the age of written documents like the Diary. The only widely known dating technique which might conceivably be used — radiocarbon dating of the paper — is not applicable because of its accuracy and certain technical problems with materials more recent than about AD 1500. Some relative assessments of ink age are possible, but these are for testing writing within a document (such as to see whether pages have been added or swapped) and are therefore of little use here.
Moreover, if we could effectively determine the age of the ink and the paper, this would be insufficient to ‘authenticate’ the document since we would still not know when the ink and paper were combined and the Diary actually written.
In fact it is just such a document as the Diary which highlights the fact that scientists and historians lack any way of directly assessing the absolute chronological age of such items.’ [my underlining]
How I wish, with hindsight, that I had realised the importance of those words. I wonder, looking back, whether I would have had the courage to act on them and so save the weeks of time and enormous expense that I later incurred in my anxiety to be thorough and, as far as finances permitted, to leave no avenues of research unexplored!
As Dr. Eastaugh explained:
We can only infer when the document was created by looking at the composition of the component parts, when these constituents were available and the frequency of their use. We can also draw some general inferences about the apparent age from the appearance (for example, we might be suspicious if the writing passed over obviously recent damage to the paper). The situation is not uncommon and historic document examination just happens to be a relatively understudied, newly emergent field.
To ‘date’ the ink and paper we have to compare what they are made of with what we know of ink and paper composition over the past 100 years.
For example, various coloured dyes used in inks have only been invented since the time of Jack the Ripper, and if the ink were to contain any of these then it must be a later forgery.
In practice (and simplifying) this means that we must apply a series of increasingly detailed tests looking for faults: the more tests the document ‘passes’ the more likely it is that we are dealing with a very sophisticated forgery or the genuine article. So what are we looking for?
Historically a major change took place in inks during the 19th century because of the introduction of mass-produced steel pen nibs. Around the beginning of the 1830s a number of factors combined to make possible the large scale manufacture of such nibs. However it was soon discovered that the traditional acidic inks based on iron-gall rapidly corroded them and in consequence new inks had to be developed. Hence we find companies such as Stephens setting up new factories around this time (1834) to produce inks based on dyes and a carefully controlled iron gall-ink recipe that were non-corrosive to the steel. Innovation was not to stop there however; specific needs of fountain pens and the appearance of synthetic dyes during the second half of the century led to the development of what we may call fountain-pen type inks which have remained largely unchanged to the present.
Fortunately, we know when various dyes and other compounds used in inks were discovered, so that it is potentially possible to determine a date after which an ink must have been produced. Before the discovery of synthetic dyes various natural dyes such as indigo madder and logwood were used; in the later 19th century synthetic dyes such as nigrosine (patented in 1867 in patent number 50415) became widely used. More recently, other synthetic dyestuffs have been substituted into formulations depending on availability, cost and suitability. We might also note that ball-point and felt-tip pens, so familiar today, are 20th century inventions which again required new inks to make them possible. Their ink and marks are easy to distinguish from fountain-pen writing and it is reassuring to know that the Diary is undoubtedly in a traditional pen-type ink.
There are in fact basically two types of pen ink from the 19th century. One form is based on historical iron-gall compositions (iron gallotannate type) while the other contains primarily dyes (synthetic dye type) dissolved in water. With the iron gallotannate inks the main component is colourless until it oxidises to a permanent black colour on the paper; hence a dye is generally added to provide an immediate colour. These are the blue-black inks and their composition is broadly unchanged though details vary. The synthetic dye type inks are currently the most popular since they have a bright colour and produce attractive writing. However, they tend to fade and are sensitive to water. Recent versions of this type of ink contain modern stable pigments (such as those known as phtalocyanines) to add permanence.
Analysis of the ink in the Diary followed along the lines of a conventional forensic examination, although for various practical reasons we chose to pursue certain forms of analysis rather than others. The ink is a permanent blue-black type such as might (without more detailed knowledge of its composition) have been used from Victorian times to the present day. Naturally we want a more accurate idea of when the ink was produced and to do this we have to look at the more detailed composition of the ink and compare it to reference samples of Victorian and modern inks.
To obtain a fingerprint of the ink we looked at what elements we could detect in it using a scanning electron microscope equipped with energy dispersive X-ray spectrometry (SEM/EDS) and an instrument called a proton microprobe. It is not necessary to understand the operation of either of these instruments to appreciate how we used the results; basically all one needs to know is that both machines are capable of measuring the presence of a wide range of chemical elements: the SEM/EDS system measures down to about half a percent and the proton microprobe down to just a few parts per million of the composition. By assessing what elements are present and in what quantities
with the aid of these instruments we can then determine a characteristic profile for the Diary ink and compare this with the same information for our reference examples. Using a technique essentially similar to this, American researchers looking at the Gutenberg Bible could work out that six crews using at first two and then four presses were employed in the printing!
For our research we looked at a number of ‘permanent blue-black’ modern inks such as Quink, Stephens and Watermans, as well as samples of writing dated to the late 19th century. Profiles from the (less detailed) SEM/EDS analysis showed that there were major similarities and minor differences even between known Victorian and modern inks. This is as we would expect since the basic chemistry of these inks has not changed substantially during this time and only the details give clues as to differences. For example, we found that Quink contains relatively little iron (and, according to the manufacturers, has done so for some years) while the ink of the Diary contains significant amounts. SEM/EDS analysis also suggested that the ink used to write James Maybrick’s will is different from that in the Diary.
Preliminary results from the proton microprobe were also encouraging, fitting in with and potentially extending the SEM results. However a much wider range of samples needs to be looked at with this technique to give us the data for an accurate interpretation.
To complement the elemental analysis of the inks some dye analysis was also carried out to learn more about the colouring agents used. The method we used is known as thin-layer chromatography (TLC). TLC works by the fact that different compounds within the dyes behave in a dissimilar manner chemically. In practice TLC involves separating out the dyes in the form of characteristic patterns on a sort of sophisticated blotting paper with the aid of organic solvents: the resulting patterns can be compared with patterns of known dyes and an identification made. Using the technique we found clear differences between the modern inks examined and the Diary.
Ultimately, however, the reliability of these analyses for distinguishing between a modern and a Victorian ink will depend upon the level of detail and the range of reference samples. As we look at an increasing number of dated samples with a wider range of techniques, the degree of confidence in placing the ink of the Diary as of a particular time will rise. Nonetheless, no component has thus far been detected in the Diary ink which precludes a Victorian date and it has clearly not matched any of the modern inks tested either.
As with ink, so changes have taken place in paper. Paper is made from fibres which are treated so that they split and fray: these can be ‘felted’ into sheets which can be further processed by adding other materials to give different qualities of paper. By looking at the types of fibres used and the composition of the other materials present in a sheet of paper, we may infer dates as we do for ink. For example, the paper used for the ‘Hitler diaries’ contained fibre of Nylon 6 and a particular chemical used to increase the whiteness (a derivative of a compound called stilbene) neither of which should be found in papers manufacturered before the mid-1950s. Analysis of the paper fibres of the Diary has shown only cotton and wood-pulp fibres, both of which were used in late Victorian times. No modern fibres or fluorescent brightening agents like those mentioned before were detected.
To summarise, the results of the various analyses of ink and paper in the Diary performed so far have not given rise to any conflict with the date of 1888/9. If the Diary is a modern forgery then it has ‘passed’ a range of tests which would have shown up many materials now used in ink and paper manufacture. However, we must be aware that we cannot as yet wholly rule out on the evidence as it stands a sophisticated modern forgery: although it is very specialist knowledge, someone just might have been able to synthesise a convincing ink or located a bottle of ink of sufficient age that was still useable (though these seem to be quite rare).
To address these possibilities there are various analyses which we could — and should pursue — notably increasing the range of reference material and the level of detail that we are examining. With more reference data we can aim to place the Diary precisely among other documents, perhaps even identify the manufacturer of the ink or paper. My professional response to the Diary is and must be entirely neutral. I cannot prejudge the document on the basis of what it does or does not purport to be other than in terms of the hypothetical date. Whether it is actually by Jack the Ripper is immaterial to the analysis of the ink and paper. The project does, however, raise a number of important issues and highlights the fact that historical document analysis is a field where much work remains to be done.
Dr Eastaugh also thought it possible that the black dust found in the gutter of the Diary was purified animal charcoal — carbo animalis purificatus — better known in the 19th century as bone black. This was sometimes used as a drying agent but also, we read with some amusement, in Squire’s Companion to the British Pharmacopoeia (1886) ‘has the property of counteracting the poisonous effects of Morphine, Strychnine and Aconite… These poisons may be swallowed with impunity if mixed in due proportion with purified animal charcoal.’
* * *
Over the years since the first publication of this detailed and very thorough report the debate surrounding the accuracy of any attempt to date a document by its inks has become bitter, confused and often personal.
I have been accused of suppressing evidence. Melvin Harris wrote to almost anyone who had dealings with the Diary including New Line Cinema, our consultants and of course the press. To Reed Hayes, the American handwriting analyst, he wrote in 1995: ‘You are being deceived and deceived mightily. You are also being fed deliberate lies… Harrison keeps posing as someone concerned to reach the truth in this matter but she is a practised evader…’
But Mr Harris was not alone in his beliefs. From 1994 onwards the postbag bulged and I felt like the old lady who’d swallowed a fly… being gobbled up by more and more experts. At the heart of it all eventually was the search for a tiny trace of a preservative called chloroacetamide, which seemed to be the magic ingredient which would decide if the Diary was a forgery or not. Chloroacetamide was first cited in the Merck Index in 1857. But according to Melvin Harris it was not used commercially until 1972.
Yet Dr Earl Morris of Dow Chemicals USA, who manufacture chloroacetamide today, told me in Sept 1995 that he had ‘found it in preparations… dated 1857, 1871 and 1885’. Chloroacetamide was used by Diamine Ltd in the preparation of their pre-1992 Victorian manuscript ink.
Melvin Harris decided to test the Diary ink for chloroacetamide himself. In October 1994 he arranged for samples of the Diary ink which had been left in the care of Robert Kuranz in America, to be sent (without our knowledge) to Analysis for Industry, an independent laboratory in Essex.
Melvin Harris, Nick Warren, editor of Ripperana, and the Sunday Times commissioned Analysis for Industry to examine six unused dots of the Diary ink contained in a hard unopened gelatine capsule. In their Report on Analysis No 604011 in October 1994 the laboratory reported that they had found chloroacetamide in the Diary ink.
I then invited the Wolfson Laboratory at Leeds University, to look for the same chemical in ink taken directly from the Diary. Their Department of Colour Chemistry was founded in 1878 and was part-funded by Parker pens. On a first examination they told me they had found a minute amount but that on a re-test the results were negative. Scientists at the University of Manchester department of Science and Technology said all this proved nothing anyway. Even Dr Eastaugh, who was not looking for chloroacetamide when he carried out his tests on the Diary, was taken to task for using the SEM/EDX technique at all. Every issue of Ripperana magazine was full of conflicting arguments. Paul Feldman questioned the authenticity of the samples from America, Leeds University was surprised that they were transported in gelatine ‘which has an astonishing ability to absorb and interact with anything it contacts’.
I will therefore reproduce a layman’s summary of the scientific tests, the results and some of the ensuing correspondence as they happen
ed over the whole period, without describing further the furore that surrounded it all.
BAXENDALE July/August 1992
Technique: Thin Layer Chromatography
Result:
The Diary ink is soluble. The Diary ink contains a synthetic dye of the nigrosine type that was not available in Victorian times. There is no iron.
EASTAUGH October 1992
Technique: Thin Layer Chromatography and SEM/EDS. Also scanning electron microscopy. Dr Eastaugh also used various brand name inks as control.
Result:
Nothing in the Diary ink inconsistent with 1888. There was a clear difference between the modern inks and the Diary. The Diary ink contains iron. The Diary ink contains some sodium. There is no nigrosine.
IN AMERICA. September/November 1993
Technique: Thin Layer Chromotography
Result:
Research ink chemist Robert Kuranz said that there was nothing in the Diary ink inconsistent with the Victorian period. Rod McNeil carried out his ion migration analysis which measures, with a scanning auger microscope, the migration of ions from the ink into the paper. He put the date of the ink-on-paper around 1921 plus or minus 12 years but later added that this could depend on the amount of exposure to light.
The Diary of Jack the Ripper - The Chilling Confessions of James Maybrick Page 32