Provenance

[Addy]

Hi Caz,

I agree with you there. If everything was indeed a fabrication she wouldn't do it.

Greetings,

Addy

[Kaz]

Hi Caz,

I agree with you there. If everything was indeed a fabrication she wouldn't do it.

Greetings,

Addy

Why did she tell the tale in the first place?

was someone pointing a gun at her head?

[Addy]

Hi Kaz,

Well, that depends on which "side" you're on:
If you think the diary genuine, because that is how it happened.
If you think the diary a forgery: because she wanted to get the cash.

Greetings,

Addy

[caz]

Hi Addy,

I wouldn't go giving Kaz ideas, those are not the only two 'because' options - not by a long chalk.

While I do not go along with the first, the second one also makes little sense in light of the facts. If Anne wanted cash, she'd have been a whole lot better off telling her "in the family" story right from the start. Also, she would not have told Doreen Montgomery, the Barretts' literary agent, that she didn't want any money. It was Doreen who advised her to take her share, as Mike's estranged spouse, if only for their daughter's sake.

Not trying to make excuses for anyone, just telling it like it is.

Love,

Caz
X

[Kaz]

Hi Kaz,

Well, that depends on which "side" you're on:
If you think the diary genuine, because that is how it happened.
If you think the diary a forgery: because she wanted to get the cash.

Greetings,

Addy

Its being suggested anne has lied.
Lied in Paul Feldmans book, lied in Shirley harrisons book and lied in her 'OWN' book.

All these lies. Who do you believe???

[Addy]

It is difficult to know who to believe. If the diary is genuine, or an old forgery, it could have happened how Anne said.

And something to remember: it is always easy to call someone a liar if their story doesn't tie in with your own ideas. I don't want to suggest everybody who says there is something wrong with her story is doing just that! But it has happened before and will surely happen again.

I can imagine it is difficult to know who to believe. Everybody tells their own story and most sound convincing. In time, you'll get your own idea of what is true and what is not.

Caz, my answer was the (too) short version of the statements surrounding Anne and the diary. I don't want to put ideas in peoples heads, I think people are capable of thinking for themselves.

Greetings,

Addy

[Kaz]

It is difficult to know who to believe. If the diary is genuine, or an old forgery, it could have happened how Anne said.

And something to remember: it is always easy to call someone a liar if their story doesn't tie in with your own ideas. I don't want to suggest everybody who says there is something wrong with her story is doing just that! But it has happened before and will surely happen again.

I can imagine it is difficult to know who to believe. Everybody tells their own story and most sound convincing. In time, you'll get your own idea of what is true and what is not.

Caz, my answer was the (too) short version of the statements surrounding Anne and the diary. I don't want to put ideas in peoples heads, I think people are capable of thinking for themselves.

Greetings,

Addy

Guess we'll have to keep reading...

[Soothsayer]

Its being suggested anne has lied.
Lied in Paul Feldmans book, lied in Shirley harrisons book and lied in her 'OWN' book.

All these lies. Who do you believe???

It's just how the logic works, Kaz: if you need someone to be discredited, then everything they represent needs to be discredited because - if it's not - we people in our dull little worlds (well, mine is) may be swayed by even the slightest sense that someone may not be entirely the villain they have been portrayed as.

An evil man, pampered in his prison cell, once wrote that you should never tell a small lie because people will believe that you could tell a small lie and therefore potentially disbelieve you. His logic was that you should only tell a HUGE lie because people will not believe that you could tell such a lie, and therefore they'd be far more likely to believe you.

On this website, Anne is religiously villified because we need to be constantly fed the view that she is untrustworthy. Why? Because her testimony is the most problematic for anti-diarists to account for. If what Anne says is true, then the journal has to be an old forgery if it is not authentic. There are supporters of this view, though I suspect they are so because they can't otherwise account for Anne's story because they have met her and they know her to be of solid character. Those who insist that the journal is post-1987 have the problem of Anne's provenance to explain away. In the main part, this is achieved by attempting to dismantle her credibility with a steady stream of invective - sometimes masked, sometimes cruel and barely short of psychotic - designed solely to compromise someone whose sole infidelity was to withhold the source of the journal so that her husband could maintain his sense of ownership of it.

Believe the Mighty Insight of the Great Soothsayer - the worst thing that ever happened to the Maybrick journal was not that it fell into Anne's hands, but simply that it fell into Mike's ...

[caz]

Ah, but if you believe Anne, Soothy, the diary didn't fall into Mike's hands; it was put there by Anne herself - dishonestly. She claimed that she myth-led - sorry, misled her own husband by letting him think it was a gift from a generous drinking pal.

So whichever way you want the cookie to crumble, Mike tells lies as easily as falling off a log and Anne is capable of deceiving, whether it was her own husband (by her own account and for good motives) or the diary investigators.

Imagine if Mike had bought a vase at a car boot sale and brought it home, and it was later thought to be decades old and possibly by a very good maker. If Mike then claimed that he had made the vase himself, on the family potter's wheel, he'd be lying and we'd all have a good giggle about it. If Anne then suddenly claimed it had been in her family for years, she'd be lying too. But how much difference would it make to who made the vase and when? Not the slightest difference.

In short, Anne could have lied her head off about the diary and it still wouldn't help us to ascertain who created it or when. If she doesn't know the answer to either question any more than we do, it could still have been created at any time from the LVP onwards.

Love,

Caz
X

[Soothsayer]

Ah, but if you believe Anne, Soothy ...

Does this mean we're friends again?

PS Obviously, your subscription to the Ripperettes lapsed some time ago - some disagreement about fees, I think - so if you could just stick a tenner in a brown envelope and send it to Mr. S. Soothsayer, Cleverness Entrepreneur, c/o Warden Smith, Broadmoor Hospital, Somewhere in England Though Probably Not Where They Tell Us It Is, that would keep the soothsaying pipe in baccy - and thus Extraordinary Insight - for a few more weeks yet ...

[caz]

The tenner is going in the brown envelope as I type, Soothy.

Compared with Powell's wicked, self-important ramblings about people faking their own deaths over this daft document, even Sooty would be welcome to whisper sweet diary nothings in my ear.

Love,

Caz
X

[Soothsayer]

... even Sooty would be welcome to whisper sweet diary nothings in my ear.

Did I ever mention that my father - old Serendipity Soothsayer himself - was dyslexic?

Made a mockery of his All-Seeing Eye as he wrote a newspaper column long before the universal cure of the F7 key, I can tell you. Damn near broke the family. Fortunately, I inherited his Insight, but not his afflictions (other than the bottle, and an occasional spot of eczema, obviously).

Anyway, point of telling you this is that the Great Master of Cleverness (me, if you're not quite keeping up), very very nearly didn't go by the name of Soothy at all. Fortunately, the Registrar of Names had a greater eye for detail than he did for irony, and he bailed me out at the very last.

There but for the grace of Mr. Horatio Bookkeeper (I kid ye not), would have gone the loss of the greatest supporter of the Journal of Much Interest and Malcontent.

And I know I'd have been missed ...

[pinkmoon]

Hi Kaz,

I have no idea why Anne made the claims she did. She'd have been far better off sticking to her pre-Feldman "I know nothing" position.

And that's the truth.

Love,

Caz
X

By having a story involving Tony who was dead and her father who was soon to die any chance of been arrested by the police ends.It would have been impossible to bring any charges against anyone with two central figures dead.