Acquiring A Victorian Diary

[Kaz]

That docket proves that £120 was paid to Barrett by a magazine for contributing several puzzles, but not who actually wrote them. The hand-written scrawl however, proves that if Mike did ever write a sick note it would probably contain several errors of spelling and grammar.

Agreed, but no one is suggesting mike undertook the diary task on his own.

I left school with one GCSE, even now i struggle to write a grammatically correct sentence... but i made my first million at 35 and retired at 40.

Mike had more about him than he showed...that much is surely evident thanks to lordies detective work?

[Sam Flynn]

Why do people appear to think that local accents, mannerisms, etc., evolved only recently?

That's not what's being suggested, Graham. Rather that these are verbal tics that appeared in Barratt's speech and in the diary. He uses "regards" in formal interviews, evidently thinking that this constitutes "proper" English, and the writer of the diary evidently has the same idea in mind. That's not a matter of accent, but a putting on of hairs and graces (like my deliberate insertion of a "posh", but incorrect, "h" in front of "airs" just now).

[Graham]

Steven Owl,

I quite agree with you. One of the Diary books, I can't recall which one, included a snippet from a story written by Barrett called "Danny The Dolphin Boy". It may have been good enough for kids, but not I feel any proof whatsoever that Barrett could write English in the manner and style of the Diary.

I'm qualified in English Literature, speak and write reasonably good English, have written articles on my interests for magazines and internet forums, and have a lifelong love of Shakespeare. But could I sit and and compose a 'new' Shakespeare play that could fool the 'experts'? Of course I couldn't.

And I'm also put in mind of an inclusion Shirley Harrison made in The Diary Of Jack The Ripper, page 325, Blake edition. She re-printed an editorial from the Liverpool Citizen of August 1889, as follows:

My own observation - and it is purely personal - is that experts are not particularly large-minded men. They appear to grow so absorbed in their own experiments that broader outside considerations - considerations which influence journalists, lawyers and statesmen - do not greatly affect these gentlemen. They seem to be like experts in handwriting, only in a more scientific and elevated degree, but there is a good deal of the same kind of conjecture and uncertainty in their conclusions.

Graham

[StevenOwl]

Hi, Graham

What is your view on this thread?

https://forum.casebook.org/forum/rip...his-is-factual


Particularly the invoice, which surely proves mike indeed 'could write a sick note'

That docket proves that £120 was paid to Barrett by a magazine for contributing several puzzles, but not who actually wrote them. The hand-written scrawl however, proves that if Mike did ever write a sick note it would probably contain several errors of spelling and grammar.

[Graham]

Kaz, it proves nothing whatsoever. I simply cannot accept that Mike could skip from poor, mis-spelled English to the, admittedly somewhat laboured, prose of the Diary. I remain totally unconvinced. (I also note that Lord Orsam has corrected Mike's spelling).

Graham

[Kaz]

Ike, StevenOwl is quite correct - check Ripper Diary pages 10 - 11. Barrett muct have thought all his Christmases had come at once on that train journey. If anything shows him in his true light, it's this episode. It's almost I can do that. Gissa job, gissa job. A pantomime scouser, if ever there was one. The Barretts never had anything whatsoever to do with the conception and the writing of the Diary.

Graham

Hi, Graham

What is your view on this thread?

https://forum.casebook.org/forum/ripper-discussions/suspects/maybrick-james/11202-and-this-is-factual

Particularly the invoice, which surely proves mike indeed 'could write a sick note'

[Graham]

"I seen"... "within", inter alia. I'm not so sure.

Sam, "I seen" is as Scouse as you can get, probably always was, and if you can show any reason why it was not in general usage in 1889, I'd be happy to see it. Maybrick was, after all, a Scouser himself, and I'd say there is a very high possibility that he spoke English with a Scouse accent. Or even perhaps tinged with American, as he spent a long time in the USA.

Why do people appear to think that local accents, mannerisms, etc., evolved only recently? The Scouse accent didn't suddenly appear overnight with The Beatles.....however, it became de rigeur in the early 1960's to use Scouse slang. Why "within" is seen as a modernism, I can't honestly fathom.

Graham

[Iconoclast]

People from Liverpool - even a hundred years apart - are not unlikely to use the same colloquialisms. "That guy in 1992 uses some of the same expressions that that guy from 1889 from (the same part) of Liverpool used. That's very suspicious" is not an argument I'd want to put my name to.

[Sam Flynn]

The Barretts never had anything whatsoever to do with the conception and the writing of the Diary.

"I seen"... "within", inter alia. I'm not so sure.

[Iconoclast]

Ike, StevenOwl is quite correct - check Ripper Diary pages 10 - 11. Barrett muct have thought all his Christmases had come at once on that train journey. If anything shows him in his true light, it's this episode. It's almost I can do that. Gissa job, gissa job. A pantomime scouser, if ever there was one. The Barretts never had anything whatsoever to do with the conception and the writing of the Diary.

Graham

Indeed, Graham. The master-forger cum Britain's greatest ever actor just couldn't help bragging about what he'd found on the doorstep that time he visited a confused Tony Devereux. No forger, no way. Barrett as forger is about as plausible as Newcastle winning at Tottenham this afternoon. Oh, now, hold on a second ...

[Iconoclast]

Inside Story definitely has Barrett's exchange with Philip Maddox on the day of the auction. For one, he had Caroline with him when it happened, and on his first visit to Doreen MB went alone. And it was Maddox who then put Harold Brough onto Barrett; although PM didn't get Barrett's name from him, MB gave PM enough personal details for Brough to be able to trace him. And then, of course, Barrett denied all knowledge of the Ripper diary when Brough first made contact with him!!

The more I read about Mike Barrett the more I think of the classic Only Fools & Horses line which, I believe, Del Boy says to Micky Pearce; I know when you're lying... your lips move!!!

Accepted, Steven. Bongo told Maddox that his daughter had played the Last Post at a recent legion event, and that's how the Post tracked him down. Prince Myshkin (as we're doing literature today, it seems)! When I think of Mike Barrett, I think of Rodney Trotter's classic line "If I was reincarnated, knowing my luck I'd come back as me".

[Graham]

Ike, StevenOwl is quite correct - check Ripper Diary pages 10 - 11. Barrett muct have thought all his Christmases had come at once on that train journey. If anything shows him in his true light, it's this episode. It's almost I can do that. Gissa job, gissa job. A pantomime scouser, if ever there was one. The Barretts never had anything whatsoever to do with the conception and the writing of the Diary.

Graham

[StevenOwl]

Couldn't agree more, Steven. For your forger, you need to look elsewhere (certainly not at the Barretts).

But I think your occasion may be wrong? I am reasonably certain that Mike made his ill-timed comments to the journalist from the Liverpool Post on the day he travelled back from London having met Doreen Montgomery and chums for the first time. Not that it matters, of course - it proves Bongo was high on Amateur Hour either way. If I'm wrong, please clarify for me someone.

Inside Story definitely has Barrett's exchange with Philip Maddox on the day of the auction. For one, he had Caroline with him when it happened, and on his first visit to Doreen MB went alone. And it was Maddox who then put Harold Brough onto Barrett; although PM didn't get Barrett's name from him, MB gave PM enough personal details for Brough to be able to trace him. And then, of course, Barrett denied all knowledge of the Ripper diary when Brough first made contact with him!!

The more I read about Mike Barrett the more I think of the classic Only Fools & Horses line which, I believe, Del Boy says to Micky Pearce; I know when you're lying... your lips move!!!

[Iconoclast]

I've just started re-reading Inside Story and within 11 pages have been reminded of another reason I don't believe Barrett had anything to do with the creation of the thing; on June 4th 1992, the day that day Barrett had attended the auction for the publishing rights of the Diary, on the train home to Liverpool he showed the Diary to a stranger on the train and told him about the auction, and how he came to have the Diary in his possession, breaking the confidentiality agreement he'd signed less than 5 weeks earlier. IMO that's not the behaviour of someone who'd recently completed his creation and was about to see a publishing deal signed that would secure him the financial gain he'd hoped to make from it. More the actions of a chancer who simply couldn't believe the situation he'd found himself in and was almost childlike in his excitement at what was happening, to the point that after a few bevvies on the train couldn't contain himself. And wasn't it just Bongo's luck that the person he spilled the beans to was a Liverpool-based journalist - you couldn't make it up!

Couldn't agree more, Steven. For your forger, you need to look elsewhere (certainly not at the Barretts).

But I think your occasion may be wrong? I am reasonably certain that Mike made his ill-timed comments to the journalist from the Liverpool Post on the day he travelled back from London having met Doreen Montgomery and chums for the first time. Not that it matters, of course - it proves Bongo was high on Amateur Hour either way. If I'm wrong, please clarify for me someone.

[Iconoclast]

But this was the first time any one ever mentioned the ending before and boy I let out with one loud laugh. All I could hear was Robert Graves, and I still think the forger is having fun with you all. It's just too dramatic with too obvious a source.

Anthony, just a quick heads-up, the scrapbook claims to have been written by James Maybrick who - it is further claimed - was Jack the Ripper. If you have any knowledge - however slender - about Jack the Ripper, especially the terrible mutilations Jack inflicted on the dead bodies of his victims (in particular Kelly's corpse), you might care to clarify for us which bits you feel are not dramatic.

If you contend - as most of us would contend - that the murders were particularly disgusting and excessive, you might feel less amazed to find a dramatic ending to Maybrick's confession.

He wasn't confessing to not returning his library books, mate. This was reasonably serious stuff for a dying man to be reflecting on. The absence of drama would have seriously concerned me, not the presence of it.