Acquiring A Victorian Diary

[caz]

They don't have to be Caz, its just that this entire site is preoccupied with "him/they/her." This is really a general discussion topic on those grounds.

Anyway, Happy New Years Ms Caz.:

Hi Michael,

Happy New Year to you too.

This site is not entirely preoccupied with whoever may have committed the Whitechapel murders, as you can see from the popularity of other cases discussed here, such as the A6 murder and the murder of Julia Wallace, to name but two.

The diary undoubtedly concerns itself with the ripper murders, but I'd have been equally interested in its origins had it been a disputed confession to the A6 murder, or the murder of Julia Wallace, to name but two.

Love,

Caz
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[caz]

then why on gods green earth would he take out a sworn affidavit that he wrote it?

Hi Abby,

But the same question would apply if he did write it, surely. Why on God's green earth would anyone have freely admitted to it, if there was nothing to gain and much to lose from the royalties drying up? Nobody was holding a gun to his head.

You might just as well ask why Mike would have sworn an affidavit in 1993 that he was given the diary by Tony Devereux if that wasn't true.

Why do you accept the 1995 version of events and reject the earlier 1993 one?

I believe neither story without evidence that one reflects the truth.

Love,

Caz
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[Abby Normal]

Hi Abby,

But the same question would apply if he did write it, surely. Why on God's green earth would anyone have freely admitted to it, if there was nothing to gain and much to lose from the royalties drying up? Nobody was holding a gun to his head.

You might just as well ask why Mike would have sworn an affidavit in 1993 that he was given the diary by Tony Devereux if that wasn't true.

Why do you accept the 1995 version of events and reject the earlier 1993 one?

I believe neither story without evidence that one reflects the truth.

Love,

Caz
X

Hi Caz
in 1993 hes lying to bolster the fact that its genuine

in 1995 hes coming clean (and or hes such a desperate attention whore hes trying to do anything to get attention-maybe hes hoping for a reality show. lol.)

and the evidence is it was found out that he took out an ad trying to acquire a Victorian document with blank pages.

[caz]

Hello, Caz, I hope your holidays are going well (I have been sitting at home recovering from surgery I had a few weeks ago, so ours have been very quiet indeed).

Hi Pat,

It all went far too quickly as usual, but thanks, I had a lovely Christmas and New Year. I do hope your recovery will be swift.

This thing about hoaxing a diary to pin the most notorious crimes of Victoria's reign on a particular person is far-fetched enough...

Except that it seems to have been the case, regardless of who did it or when.

...but perhaps barely plausible if we suppose an employee or servant at Battlecrease penned the thing as act of private revenge, then panicked and hid it in a biscuit tin under the floorboards (in the master's bedroom, no less-- there goes that shred of plausibility).

Not sure I recall that scenario being proposed before, Pat, but I agree it has major plausibility issues.

BUT to say the Diary was hoaxed by a member of the family, be it as primary author or only as a collaborator-- no, I don't see that at all. The Maybrick name had already taken enough blows, and there were children involved, too.

Totally agree.

As if the reality wasn't bad enough, with Florie vilified as the Worst Wife in the World and the Mother of all Whores, and the Maybricks at the centre of a variety of scandalous tales, our diarist set out to turn her hapless hubby into "Sir Jim", the Monster of all Monsters, using his untimely death in May 1889, just months after the Autumn of Terror, to good effect.

Someone saw the potential to make a whole lot more out of this Victorian melodrama, but who?

Love,

Caz
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[caz]

Hi Caz
in 1993 hes lying to bolster the fact that its genuine

in 1995 hes coming clean (and or hes such a desperate attention whore hes trying to do anything to get attention-maybe hes hoping for a reality show. lol.

and the evidence is it was found out that he took out an ad trying to acquire a Victorian document with blank pages.

I think you could have written the diary with one hand tied behind your back, Abby. Where were you in March 1992?

Love,

Caz
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[Abby Normal]

I think you could have written the diary with one hand tied behind your back, Abby. Where were you in March 1992?

Love,

Caz
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working in Battlecrease house

[John Wheat]

The mystery, John, is why anyone still believes that to have been the case, when there is no evidence that Mike would have been capable, and no evidence that anyone close to him would have been capable and willing.

Love,

Caz
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But the evidence all points to it being written by Mike Barrett or someone close to him unless you believe the **** and bull story Mike originally told. With this all in mind surely it's up to those who believe Mike or someone close to Mike didn't write the diary to come up with some alternative with evidence to back it up. Which to my mind has not happened.

Cheers John

[caz]

But the evidence all points to it being written by Mike Barrett or someone close to him unless you believe the **** and bull story Mike originally told. With this all in mind surely it's up to those who believe Mike or someone close to Mike didn't write the diary to come up with some alternative with evidence to back it up. Which to my mind has not happened.

Cheers John

Hi John,

I don't believe any of the cockandbull stories Mike told, which leaves open the very real possibility that he went to his grave without admitting how he really acquired the diary and from whom.

I'm afraid the traditional way is for anyone who wants to claim that Mike or someone close to him forged that diary [whether that was Mike when he was alive, or today's armchair commentators] to come up with the evidence that proves it beyond reasonable doubt.

The same would apply to anyone claiming that James Maybrick, Michael Maybrick, George or Weedon Grossmith, or any other named individual wrote it. The onus is not on others to disprove any of the theories proposed.

It's no different just because Mike once claimed he did it - then claimed it was Anne - before returning to his original story.

Unstable people confess to things they didn't do all the time. They'd all be banged up if the police didn't do their job properly but merely took their word for it, even when they were shown to be compulsive liars, as Mike clearly was.

Love,

Caz
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[Kaz]

But the evidence all points to it being written by Mike Barrett or someone close to him unless you believe the **** and bull story Mike originally told. With this all in mind surely it's up to those who believe Mike or someone close to Mike didn't write the diary to come up with some alternative with evidence to back it up. Which to my mind has not happened.

Cheers John

Fine, if Mike's lame, drink fuelled admission is good enough for you...then what more is there to say apart from.....


GOODBYE !

[rjpalmer]

no evidence that anyone close to him would have been capable and willing.

Anne Graham's "willingness" is a thorny question. A very thorny question, indeed. In the whole bloody saga of the "Diary," no one's behavior has been more enigmatic, strange, convoluted, secretive, and contradictory than Anne Graham's. And that's saying a lot.

[rjpalmer]

Robert Smith would testify to the fact that the 'very slight', 'barely visible' bronzing in 'one or two places', as observed by Voller in 1995, was already there when he first examined it in 1992 and had not increased by 1995, or increased since then...

Unfortunately, Caz, he doesn't appear to have documented this fact (?) in 1992, nor alerted anyone to it, until years later---after Shirley's discussions with Voller in 1995, so, unfortunately, it carries very little weight among us "skeptics." No more weight, perhaps, than Steve Powell recalling that Anne Graham had discussed the Diary in Australia in the late 1960s. Also undocumented at the time, and so, I imagine, rejected by your own good self.

What a long strange trip it's been.

[John Wheat]

Fine, if Mike's lame, drink fuelled admission is good enough for you...then what more is there to say apart from.....


GOODBYE !

Who actually cares who wrote the diary? It's a forgery. And most likely a modern forgery. The onus is on those who believe the highly unlikely story that it's an old forgery to prove it.

[caz]

Hi John,

Who cares? I care. Others care. In fact, the only people who claim not to care who actually wrote the diary seem to be those who have convinced themselves it can only be a modern fake created by Mike Barrett or someone close to him.

It's the standard get-out when asked to provide evidence for their convictions.

Have you even considered just how remarkable the coincidence would be if the Portus & Rhodes electricians made up their stories from whole cloth, in the Spring of 1993, about the diary being found in Battlecrease, on the back of Feldman's speculations? Without the faintest idea who Mike Barrett was, or that he had called Doreen about the diary a year previously, on the same day - the only day - floorboards were in fact lifted in Maybrick's old bedroom?

Feldman didn't know about those two events coinciding on March 9th 1992 when he was trying to do a deal a year later. So he couldn't have planted the seed in the mind of any of the electricians to use a genuine coincidence of timing to falsely claim they had found Mike's diary in the house. They could not possibly have foreseen in the Spring of 1993 that one day the story would find support in this way - unless the story was true and one of their number really did find it and knew that what Mike did next was no coincidence.

Good weekend all, sceptics included.

Love,

Caz
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[Henry Flower]

Anne Graham's "willingness" is a thorny question. A very thorny question, indeed. In the whole bloody saga of the "Diary," no one's behavior has been more enigmatic, strange, convoluted, secretive, and contradictory than Anne Graham's. And that's saying a lot.

What about Caz? Talk about enigmatic, secretive, allusive, reserved.......

Does anyone know what Caz actually thinks? All we know is that Caz knows why others are wrong, and that we're to believe Caz knows more than she is letting on.

Which is not a criticism.

I find it kind of sexy actually.

[caz]

Hi Henry,

I'm flattered - I think.

Caz can be whoever you want her to be. I'm not sure she could be described as 'reserved' though. She does tend to speak her mind on the boards and to speak as she finds.

Then there's Caroline. I'm a different animal. Reserved to a fault in life outside these walls, with a tendency to try and please everyone.

I wouldn't really claim to know that much more than I'm 'letting on' these days. I'm still putting pieces together from every single bit of diary-related material I've seen and heard since my interest began and constantly adding to my understanding of the personalities who became involved, or involved themselves, and what's possible or impossible, likely or unlikely.

Love,

Caz
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