Acquiring A Victorian Diary

[David Orsam]

It's a shame you feel that way David. I haven't made any conclusions as to whether the Diary is genuinely the work of Maybrick or not - nor will I even begin to explore that possiblity until the provenance has been proven beyond reasonable doubt.

Just to clarify. When I use the expression "Diary Defender" I don't mean someone who thinks that Maybrick wrote the diary. In fact, there hardly seem to be any of those people around (rather surprising considering the number of people who seem to think the Diary has been lying under the Battlcrease floorboards since the late nineteenth century). I mean people who think the Diary is a genuinely old document (if a forgery can be described as "genuine"). I agree that "Diary Defender" is not a great description but there does seem to be a group of people, almost acting in concert, who need a collective name - let me know if you have a better one!

[David Orsam]

In any case, thanks again for taking the time to pontificate on these boards.

Lol! Very good James.

[Sam Flynn]

people who think the Diary is a genuinely old document need a collective name - let me know if you have a better one!

Frantiquarians?

[caz]

Overall, the arrogance of someone who thinks that their own instincts or thoughts about a person to whom they have spoken cannot possibly be wrong is truly breathtaking.

It would be, David, if anyone had claimed any such thing. Perhaps you would like to use a direct quote to demonstrate where anyone has done so?

What I find truly breathtaking is the idea that one can judge when a known liar is telling the truth, without the necessary evidence to back it up. In this case, I am thinking of the circumstances surrounding Mike's telephone enquiry for a Victorian diary, made around the same time the floorboards were lifted in Maybrick's bedroom. You seem to be judging Mike's truthfulness by what you personally find most likely to be true: that he was in the final stages of creating his Maybrick diary and decided to call a literary agent, and make that other enquiry when he did, and the floorboards had nothing whatever to do with his timing.

You have a useless, tiny diary for the year 1891, sent to Mike Barrett [his real name] in late March 1992. That's it. That's your evidence that he was telling the truth and involved with others in a grand scheme to create the personal memoir of a murderer, from 1888 to his death in 1889.

Was it a double bluff, to make people think he was an idiot who couldn't have faked a sick note?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

We are told that Paul Dodd recalls a conversation with Rigby who was worried that he might be implicated in theft and volunteered information that Bowling and Lyons knew something about it.

But where is this recorded? Where do we find out where Paul Dodd has said this?

How do we know it's not someone on this forum misremembering something?

Where is the evidence?

See Robert Smith's book, page 19. I can add that Paul Dodd himself put the date around August 1993.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

I see that it is nonsensically stated that if Colin Rhodes were to confirm in writing that he has produced all the timesheets I might say that Colin's signature was faked.

This is utterly ludicrous.

I have never made any such point about any of the evidence. At no time have I accused anyone of faking evidence.

Ha ha ha ha ha

Is this an attempt to deflect from the embarrassing fact that Colin Rhodes has never confirmed that he has produced all the timesheets showing work at Battlecrease?

No. It was an attempt to deflect from the simple fact that the interviews Keith recorded with Colin, which confirm this, are not my property. If you think I'm lying or mistaken and want access to this material I suggest you contact Keith.

Love,

Caz
X

[Kaz]

In any case, thanks again for taking the time to pontificate on these boards.

Agreed!

I'll send David some pile cream and a plastic gold medal from pound land.

[caz]

And, sometimes, when you've said your piece, you've said your piece. You put a thought out there for people to ignore, learn from, think about and perhaps build on, agree with or disagree with . Some of us see absolutely no need for the incessant carrying on others appear to require. Sometimes it descends into pure bullying.

There are probably as many different personalities on this board as there are individual people. I suggest we allow others the freedom to be themselves.

curious

Nicely put, curious.

I'll try and learn from that.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

It goes without saying that there were no "ill mannered" comments by me towards James. I was perfectly polite to him throughout his brief time posting in this thread and said more than once how refreshing it was to be discussing this subject with a rational person...

I can't guess who David is having a dig at here. Can you, dear readers?

At this rate Michael Palin is in no danger of losing his "nicest man in the world" status to the ever charming David Orsam.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

So the 9th March is not the only date of significance and I must repeat that the 1993 story of the electricians of a discovery under the floorboards is not validated by any knowledge we have today that the floorboards were lifted on 9 March 1992 in circumstances when everyone knew in 1993 that the floorboards had been lifted at some point prior to Mike's telephone call to London.

Don't you mean at some point prior to 1993? If nobody appeared to know [or at least nobody was telling] when the floorboards had actually come up, how would 'everyone' have known it was prior to Mike's call to London? All Shirley says in her book is that Mike came to London with the diary on a Spring day in 1992. No date is given for that first phone call. For all anyone appeared to know in 1993, the floorboards could have come up at any time in 1992 after March 9th, or after April 13th. Had that proved to be the case we wouldn't be here now.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

The point is that Feldman connected the lifting of the floorboards with the discovery of the diary without knowing about the work carried out in Battlecrease on 9 March 1992. That's the whole point!

He believed that the floorboards were lifted in 1989, a full three years before Mike had taken the diary to Doreen in April 1992, yet he connected the two events. The floorboards, in other words, were already in play as a factor long before anyone knew or suspected that the floorboards might have been taken up on 9th March 1992.

That's why it is false argument to say that because some electricians mentioned a discovery under the floorboards then this is remarkable in view of the production of the 9th March 1992 timesheet. It's not, for the reasons I've already given at length.

Except that, as I indicated in my last post, if none of the electricians had the faintest idea who Mike was, or when he first told anyone about his diary, when they began talking to Feldman in April 1993, they wouldn't have known if this was before or after the floorboards had come up. If they read Shirley's book later that year, they'd have got the impression that he already had the diary in his grubby paws by the summer of 1991.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

There you go again, Caz. Why 'happily'? Why is that a prerequisite? Last week you used the word "willing[ly]."

Do you forget the solution I gave you 10 or 12 years ago?

In other words, you are assuming that Anne Graham's cooperation had to be happy and willing.

Hi rj,

Yes, in the specific scenario whereby Anne takes an active part in either the composition or the writing out of the diary. I'd have told Mike to take a running jump. He'd have been on his own. In fact, I'd probably have phoned Doreen myself and said: "Don't believe him. He might sound plausible but he's just a very naughty boy - and a compulsive liar to boot".

Not so. I don't see it.

Indeed, the picture I see of Anne Graham portrayed by Feldman, Harrison, Skinner, etc., is of a very unwilling woman who, at one point, even wrestles with Mike on the kitchen floor. I believe that wrestling match occurred when she first learned that he was taking the artifact to London.

If it happened that way, doesn't it rather suggest that Anne wouldn't have helped Mike create it in the first place? According to David, the handwriting would only just have been completed, if it wasn't still being done, when Anne learned it was due in London on 13th April. She may not have been able to wrestle the book from Mike's hands, but she could have stopped him passing it off as a genuine Victorian diary, with a quiet word in Doreen's ear, in the unlikely event that she hadn't realised he was planning to do that when she helped with its creation.

So how might it have 'worked'?

If the pious Ms. Morris will simply flip her hymnal to pg. 316 of the Diary of Jack the Ripper (Blake editon, 1998) she will find the correct solution to the mystery.

Shirley Harrison gives an amazing insight into Barrett’s modus operandi---a nasty little scheme involving readers of LOOT Magazine. Barrett, inadequate in things literary, fools other people into doing his work for him.

This is the key to the puzzle. Put your thinking cap on and work it out. The word 'novella' might be a helpful clue. Have a good week.

Ah, so you follow my own line of thinking, that Mike was only ever a "professional freelance journalist" in the loosest possible sense, and any work he submitted would have been done, or at least heavily tidied up, by his fool of a wife, and then presumably edited again by the magazine people before they accepted it for publication?

But do you think his wife was such a fool that she would happily - or willingly - have gone on to sign the agreement with Doreen and Shirley, knowing that the Barretts' recently completed little 'novella' was being taken seriously as a seriously old document?

I had my thinking cap on already, rj. But if the key to the puzzle is Mike, the inadequate liar, who fools other people into doing his work for him, may I humbly suggest you put your own cap on and ask yourself who are the fools who carry on doing his work from January 1995, when he wanted the world to believe he was the greatest forger ever born.

Also on page 316, just above your LOOT reference, we read that since then Mike claimed to be a member of MI5; to have foiled an IRA attack and been awarded the Queen's medal for gallantry; to be dying (within the next hour); to be remarried and expecting a baby; to be impotent; to have cancer; to be going to live in Russia and America.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Today we are told for the first time ever, as far as I am aware, that Tim Martin-Wright believes he can date the APS shop conversation to December 1992 by use of his diary...

...Unless it can be positively ruled out that the conversation occurred in 1993 this line of enquiry will be a waste of time because if it is possible that it occurred in 1993 then I suggest it probably did.

What you suggest, David, is of no consequence. This 'line of enquiry' is not a waste of time, all the while there remains the possibility of pinning down the date, whether it be to 1992 or to 1993, using actual documents from the time and the independent memories of all three witnesses and what they were doing at that time.

If you concede that any mention of a Jack the Ripper diary, and/or a diary found under the floorboards of Battlecrease, by any of the electricians prior to Feldman becoming involved, and before the first newspaper stories appeared, would, if substantiated, require a sensible explanation, then you must surely appreciate why we won't be dropping such lines of enquiry because you don't happen to believe they will bear fruit. Surely it would be just as much in your interests, if we were able to report back that, actually, the conversation must have happened after April 1993 because of x, y and z.

If we don't bother looking, we'll never know either way. That can't be what you really want, can it?

Love,

Caz
X

[rjpalmer]

Mike claimed to be a member of MI5; to have foiled an IRA attack and been awarded the Queen's medal for gallantry; to be dying (within the next hour); to be remarried and expecting a baby; to be impotent; to have cancer; to be going to live in Russia and America.

Thanks, Caz. It sounds like a good description of someone who might perpetrate a hoax.

[David Orsam]

It sounds like a good description of someone who might perpetrate a hoax.

Exactly!