Acquiring A Victorian Diary

[rjpalmer]

I can't see the relevance, rj

Hi Caz. The relevance? O, I'm just intrigued by David Orsam's observation that no such episode of the Antiques Roadshow actually aired on British television in the weeks leading up to Albert's remarkable if "accidental" discovery of Jack the Ripper's secret scratches. It reminds me of a conversation that took place clear back in 2005, that left several interesting questions unanswered.

https://casebook.org/forum/messages/4922/15210.html

https://casebook.org/forum/messages/4922/15932.html

It's the exchange between you and Ally Ryder that interest me the most.

Ally: "Were any of Albert Johnson's colleagues every questioned about the fortuitous discovery of the scratches? I mean it just happened they were having a conversation about watches, Albert just happened to bring his in, Albert just happened to open up the back casing when demonstrating how it worked (uh tell me why on that one again please)...So anyway, were they ever questioned about how all these fortuitous coincidences all happened to line up?"

Caz: According to the testimony of Albert, and his workmates, interviewed separately, they were all discussing BBC TV’s Antiques Roadshow prog, which included an item on an antique gold watch, and there was some sort of dispute about the gold content of watches of a certain age. Albert mentioned that he owned an 18 carat gold pocket watch dating back to 1846, and promised to bring it in and show them. He did so, and showed them how to open the back and front. Albert claims the light from the window allowed him, as well as his witnesses, to see the scratches for the first time. No one present reported any suspicions that Albert had set up the whole thing, or had seen the scratches before.
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Ally: As tempted as I am to just accept what you say without any further evidence, I am afraid the bare little bits that you have provided don't fully satisfy. Who asked the questions? Is there a transcript? What was asked? Did they ask, "Hey did Albert do anything suspicious that made you think something was off?", which would be an exceedingly stupid question. Did they ask who had brought up the conversation of watches? Did they ask who had watched the show? Did they ask what night the show had been played on? And finally, how do we know that they weren't all in it together?
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Caz: I agree, and this suggests that it would be rather a waste of time my searching through piles and piles of documentation, and possibly making further enquiries, to flesh out my 'bare little bits' for you, because if they were 'all in it together', none of the information you ask for will prove otherwise. They simply had to agree to make the Antiques Roadshow programme (presumably doing them all a great favour by going to air within days of the scratches being made) their catalyst for the whole 'discovery' scam. Perhaps the BBC website could help you ascertain whether or not an episode of the programme was shown between late April and late May 1993, containing an item on an antique gold watch.


Ally: I am looking for an episode guide for antiques roadshow, but as yet have not found one. If you could trouble yourself to answer my questions, I would appreciate it. The questions were:

Who interviewed the colleagues. What questions were asked? Is there a transcript available?
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And on it goes until Ally uses the phrase "great ole load of..."

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But what we now know from what David Orsam has posted, and which I rechecked, no such episode aired (as you put it) "within days of the scratches being made" (or discovered). Which is worrisome, no?

But I am giving Albert's tale the benefit of the doubt and am broadening the search. Perhaps the episode aired a few months before May 1993. Those program guides that Ally was looking for back in 2005 do indeed exist, but I am finding no mention of an episode discussing a gold watch. The closest I've come is to this "irrelevant" episode of the "manky" watch collection in Orkney that aired a full year and two months before May or June 1993. But that segment lasted a mere 90 seconds, and, as you point out, did not mention 18 carat gold, and seems highly unlikely to have triggered the alleged conversation that in turn triggered the alleged accidental discovery.

Thus, I cannot yet dismiss the possibility that this reference to the Antiques Roadshow, so integral to Albert's story, wasn't a great load of horse sh*t.

Regards.

[rjpalmer]

I wonder if it was ever determined who paid Robbie Johnson £15,000 for his "share" of the watch? (So much for there being no profit motive). Was it Paul Feldman? And if this was a watch for Albert Johnson's little Daisy, how did Robbie end up with a "share" in the first place? There is something lurking under all of this and it aint pretty.

[David Orsam]

As I said some time ago, but for some reason have to repeat, if Albert or Robbie Johnson was paying Mr Murphy, or offering him some other inducement, to make a false statement about the scratches, that would make sense of Murphy doing it. Under normal circumstances I would have dismissed such a notion out of hand but, as we are told that Murphy was a dishonest person, it can't not be considered.

[David Orsam]

What was a confession worth to Eddie?

Well either he had some kind of agreement with Mike Barrett to split the proceeds of what Mike made from the Diary or he didn't.

If he had an agreement to split the proceeds, as we have been told he did, then surely a confession was worth a great deal if it would increase Mike's income.

If he didn't but had simply sold the Diary to Mike in March 1992 then it leads to all kinds of questions, such as why he was still talking about the Diary to Brian Rawes in July.

Either way, Feldman tells us that Eddie was prepared to make the confession in 1993 so we don't need to worry too much about his motive. My point was simply that if Paul Dodd wasn't going to prosecute then Anne had no way of knowing whether Eddie would spill the beans or not and was thus taking a risk in saying the Diary had been in her family for years.

[David Orsam]

Still no evidence that Colin Rhodes ever said or suggested that Eddie Lyons appeared to be "at a loose end" on 9th March 1992. Not a jot. All we know is that there is no record of what Eddie was doing that day, just as there is no record of what the majority of Portus & Rhodes electricians were doing on that day.

[David Orsam]

But back in 2005, I raised the issue of whether the rather shoddy typescript of the Diary, delivered to the literary agents by Mike Barrett in 1992, was consistent with the work of a professional secretary, as claimed by the Diary Camp. You see, Harrison, Morris, Skinner, and Co. have always insisted that this typescript was created by Mike and Anne as part of the publishing agreement. I questioned this. The shoddy effort seemed more like a draft of the Diary taken off Barrett's word processor than the work of someone who types for a living. To which Caz Morris then responded:

"I don't know why you think that because Anne worked as a secretary and managed to get a book published she would not have made the kind of mistakes you have identified. The legal secretaries where I work are certainly capable of the most elementary blunders on occasion. Recently one of them kept typing 'visible' for 'feasible' and couldn't see why it was wrong even when it was pointed out to her! I have had quite lengthy conversations with Anne and Mike, and have read enough of their correspondence to have a good idea of their individual language usage and skills. Anne may be streets ahead of Mike, but she ain't all that. And don't forget, she had Carol Emmas to help write the book for her."

Caz Morris 31 May, 2005.

Ha ha! Absolutely bang to rights.

[David Orsam]

Just Fancy That!

"The legal secretaries where I work are certainly capable of the most elementary blunders on occasion. Recently one of them kept typing 'visible' for 'feasible' and couldn't see why it was wrong even when it was pointed out to her!"

31 May 2005

"I don't know about anyone else, but if I had to constantly correct the typing of a secretary working for me, I think I'd soon be looking for a new one."

9 April 2018

[David Orsam]

As far as I can see, the vast majority of words in the Diary are spelt correctly. I can't see anything in the few spelling errors which rules out authorship by someone working as a secretary.

I think Gareth's central criticism of the Diary was in the dreadful sentence construction. Secretaries do not normally create documents, in the sense of drafting them, so that's not something that rules out a secretary in any way.

[David Orsam]

Caz: I agree, and this suggests that it would be rather a waste of time my searching through piles and piles of documentation, and possibly making further enquiries, to flesh out my 'bare little bits' for you, because if they were 'all in it together', none of the information you ask for will prove otherwise. They simply had to agree to make the Antiques Roadshow programme (presumably doing them all a great favour by going to air within days of the scratches being made) their catalyst for the whole 'discovery' scam. Perhaps the BBC website could help you ascertain whether or not an episode of the programme was shown between late April and late May 1993, containing an item on an antique gold watch.

Bang to rights again.

The same sort thing was initially said to me in this thread when I was told that the "BBC people" must have been involved in any scam, which comment could only have been made on the basis that an episode of Antiques Roadshow had featured a discussion on 18 carat gold watches shortly before the discussion about Johnson's watch. The TV programme was supposed to be the "trigger" for that discussion.

But now we seem to have a smoking gun without a trigger.

[David Orsam]

I wonder if it was ever determined who paid Robbie Johnson £15,000 for his "share" of the watch? (So much for there being no profit motive). Was it Paul Feldman? And if this was a watch for Albert Johnson's little Daisy, how did Robbie end up with a "share" in the first place?

Quite. Why was Robbie involved in any way let alone being given a share in little Daisy's watch.

[David Orsam]

Just a quick word on disguised handwriting.

See "Forensic Document Examiners’ Skill in Distinguishing Between Natural and Disguised Handwriting Behaviors" by Carolyne Bird, Bryan Found and Doug Rogers in Journal of Forensic Sciences, September 2010, Vol 55, No. 5:

"Disguised handwriting is problematic for forensic document examiners (FDEs) and attracts higher misleading and inconclusive rates on authorship opinions than does genuine writing."

AND

"...the handwriting providers were able to successfully create a disguised sample that appeared fluently written and different from their natural writing."

[caz]

If we want to know what Sue Iremonger actually said about the handwriting it seems we have to make various assumptions and presumptions. For the world's leading expert on the subject told us this on 30 June 2008:

"According to Keith (for what that’s now worth here in Daft Land) Sue Iremonger was provided quite early on with various handwriting samples that included Anne’s. If she noticed any resemblance at the time she evidently didn’t think it was significant enough to mention or to request further samples."

So far from it being the case that Sue Iremonger is known to have said that she was able to rule out the Diary having been written by Anne Barrett, all we are told is that if she did notice any resemblance she "evidently" did not think it was significant enough to mention it or request further samples. Sounds to me like someone who doesn't really know what Sue Iremonger concluded.

And here we have pretty much the same thing said six years later (on 28 March 2014):

"I understood from my co-author Keith Skinner many years ago that the reputable document examiner Sue Iremonger had been provided with various handwriting samples (including Maybrick's, Mike's and Anne's) very early on, and she determined that the writing in the diary did not match the Maybrick samples. I presume she found no more of a resemblance with the Barrett samples because she did not say otherwise, and nobody has ever suggested the remotest likeness there."

It is presumed that there was no resemblance with Anne's handwriting by someone who doesn't even appear to have seen Sue Iremonger's actual conclusions!

All it seems can be stated as a fact is that Anne Barrett's handwriting does not match the handwriting in the Diary. But if the author of the Diary successfully disguised their handwriting then that tells us nothing.

Where is the conclusion from a single expert who has examined the Diary that it could not have been written in a disguised hand? Where, indeed, is the conclusion from a single expert that it could not have been written in a disguised hand by Anne Barrett?

Given that Mike claimed in his 1995 affidavit that his wife transcribed the Diary I am going to make an assumption of my own which is that if a single expert had concluded that Anne couldn't have written the Diary in a disguised hand we would certainly have been told about it by now.

So Sue Iremonger was provided with the opportunity to compare Anne's handwriting directly with the diary, and David's conclusion is that she either didn't bother to do so, or she simply threw up her hands and said to herself: "Oh well, there is no match here, nor any points of similarity, but as anyone can write in a hand totally unrecognisable as their own, and not betray the least sign of it over 63 pages, Anne can't be ruled out." And of course, she couldn't very well have put that in writing because what would that have done to her verdict that the diary handwriting didn't match the Maybrick samples? "Oh well, there is no match here, nor any points of similarity, but as anyone can write in a hand totally unrecognisable as their own, and not betray the least sign of it over 63 pages, Maybrick can't be ruled out."

Oops.

We could all be handwriting experts on that basis, couldn't we?

In fact, I've just found David's report: 'Nothing can be ruled in or out. So Anne or Mike or Tony or Billy or Gerard or Maybrick or Monty Brown, Caz's cat - any of these could have written it in a hand totally unrecognisable as their own and I'd be none the bleedin' wiser. That'll be two hundred golden splonders. My payment terms are 14 days from date of invoice.'

Love,

Caz
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[caz]

I don't think I need add much about Caroline. Given that she said nothing to anyone in June 1992 there is nothing to explain. For all I know, had she been asked, she would have said nothing whatsoever. So no, I don’t need to believe that her parents got her "word perfect". As I have said before, the idea that Caroline confused Fat Eddie with the deceased Tony Devereux is nonsense of the highest order. It is a classic example of an argument that does not work.

Methinks David protests too much. He still does not address the inherent flaw in his own argument, that Caroline must have been fully aware, in March 1992, that her Dad's drinking pal Tony, had died the previous summer.

How does that work with the guardbook not arriving home until 31st March 1992, from the O&L auction, and a well rehearsed but totally invented family tale that Mike had immediately questioned Tony, to his face and over the phone, about where the bloody thing had come from?

David doesn't say here, but whether the false 'dead pal' story came in the wake of Mike acquiring the guardbook from Eddie, or at an auction, it boils down to the same situation: Caroline was either fully aware that Tony was well beyond questioning by then, or she was not.

Love,

Caz
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[caz]

All I think I need to do is repeat what Melvin Harris said about Caroline:

"Feldman (p128) tells us that in February 1993 he met Anne together with Mike and their daughter Caroline. At one point Caroline was cross-examined by Paul Begg and Martin Howells. They "were relentless" admits Feldman, and they forced out of her statements that seemed to confirm Mike's story. But did they? Or was the girl going along with a pre-rehearsed family tale? Feldman thinks not: "Caroline told the truth; that is all a kid of eleven can do.” Really? Try telling that yarn to any experienced schoolteacher!"

Melvin Harris was implying that Caroline was knowingly repeating an untruth, wasn't he? 'Going along with' a tale invented from whole cloth and trotted out by her parents. Any teacher will tell you that kids of eleven are as capable as anyone of telling lies. It's just an opinion, not a very nice one, but an opinion just the same.

So I guess David goes along with this and also thinks Caroline is a liar, who knew perfectly well that Tony died in August 1991, months before the guardbook arrived in Goldie Street, but was coached to put the chronology backwards, so she could 'go along with' the tale and conveniently 'recall' the guardbook coming home some time before Tony died, and her Dad immediately questioning him about it. A doddle for a kid of eleven to do.

My own opinion is that Caroline, at eleven, would almost certainly have had other things to occupy her mind than what her Dad was getting up to while she was at school; whose company he kept down the boozer; who his friends and acquaintances were; who might have been housebound or severely ill; who may have kicked the bucket during her summer holidays; how many were still breathing and what have you. If she had genuine memories, in February 1993, of her Dad bringing the guardbook home [which would have been the previous March, wherever he got it from] and asking one of his drinking buddies about it, but was understandably vague about how long ago that was, and her parents had consistently referred to him as "Tony" ever since, I very much doubt she'd have questioned this, let alone been able to contradict it with: "Couldn't have been. The only Tony Dad knows died in August 1991, and you didn't even get the diary until March 1992".

There's a perfectly plausible reason why this kid of eleven 'seemed to confirm' her Dad's story in February 1993, without the need to call her a liar. It's all to do with being a normal child, who doesn't make notes in her diary of all her Dad's conversations and who they are with, and whose memory banks are filling up daily with all sorts of other stuff, like pop music, magazines, clothes, school friends, outings, games and sport, homework, hobbies and what have you.

David could be embracing all this, instead of his endless sniping, because it would work almost as well with the guardbook coming home from the auction as it does with it coming home courtesy of Eddie Lyons. Mike could in theory have been asking diary related questions of anyone but Tony Devereux in late March/early April 1992, from Doreen, concerning the arrangements for their upcoming meeting; to suppliers of Victorian style pens and inks, whose advice could be invaluable; to the chosen penman or original composer of the text, to confirm they were happy to go ahead; and, of course, to the good people of O&L, to ascertain how much they knew of the guardbook's recent history before taking a punt with it. One of these people [Doreen apart] could even have been called Tony, although I'd be pushing it to place them in Fountains Road or the Saddle.

There, I think I've just solved David's problem.

Love,

Caz
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[caz]

'It all stemmed from the Antiques Roadshow... we were talking about gold and Albert said he had this watch; he said it was 18 carat gold and one of our group said they didn't have 18 carat gold in Victorian times. So Albert brought the watch in to show us... We could see the scratches but we couldn't make them out. The light was bad so we said we'd take it over to the Science and Technology block..."

You know what, highlighting a part of a quote doesn't change the meaning of that quote.

What John White was saying was very clear:

'It all stemmed from the Antiques Roadshow...'

Does it help if I put it into bold?

'It all stemmed from the Antiques Roadshow...'

So him subsequently saying "we were talking about gold" means that the topic of gold obviously arose out of a mention of the Antiques Roadshow. So the mention of the Antiques Roadshow came first. Which raises the question of why someone had mentioned an episode of the Antiques Roadshow which had not recently been shown on television.

And of course, without knowing a thing about John White, David can pronounce - with a straight face - that here is a man who is never less than 100% precise with his wording or his facts or the chronology of any event you like to ask him about, while all around him are lying through their teeth, being hoodwinked in the blink of an eye, hopelessly muddled or confused, misremembering everything, or basically just unreliable witnesses.

I'm not going to repeat everything I've said about this.

Thank goodness for small mercies.

Once again, John White said nothing about a group discussion about an episode of the Antiques Roadshow, or when the tv show was mentioned in relation to their discussion about gold. He was talking about cause and effect: in this case what caused Albert to take his watch in, resulting in the discovery of the scratch marks. The effect is the end of a sequence of events, but David makes an elementary mistake by assuming the cause must always be the very first event of the sequence. White could just as easily have said 'it' [meaning the discovery and deciphering of the scratches] all stemmed from us being at a loose end and having five minutes for a chinwag over tea and butties. Or 'it' all stemmed from Albert boasting about his win on the horses and wanting to show off his gold watch. But 'it' didn't have to start from a casual observation about the Antiques Roadshow, never mind a full-on discussion about it; that was merely the trigger - the point in their conversation that day when Albert said to his sceptical colleague: "You know what, la? That tv show got it wrong or you misheard. I'll prove to you Victorians made watches in 18 carat gold".

Anyway, it didn't all stem from the Antiques Roadshow; nor from a discussion about gold, whichever came first. Nor did it all stem from Albert and his work mates snatching an opportunity to chat.

It all stemmed from Albert buying a Victorian watch the year before that was suitable for forgery purposes.

Or did it?

What were we talking about? Oh yes, the ten quid I got for a Victorian newspaper. It all stemmed from feeling peckish and going across the road for a large portion of haddock and chips. We were all sitting round, idly talking about the price of fish, as you do. When I unwrapped my lunch, I discovered to my considerable surprise that the newspaper was dated 1st April 1891, and I got ten quid for it.

David: This is all rather odd and suspicious if you ask me. You say it all stemmed from your pangs of hunger and decision to go for a fish supper, which means that must have preceded any talk of fish prices. Nothing else makes sense. But I don't find it a very likely topic of conversation when you already knew the price of fish and had just been stuffing your face with it.

Caz: But it wasn't the idle conversation that led to the discovery. It was my hunger. The conversation came first. This gave me the munchies, which lured me to the fish shop - Bloaters of Sidford - and my unusual discovery.

David: A likely story.

Love,

Caz
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