Acquiring A Victorian Diary

[David Orsam]

The person recalling that Eddie told Robert Smith at a meeting in June 1993 that he found a book under the floorboards of Battlecrease has, no doubt accidentally, omitted an important part of the story, namely that Eddie also told Robert Smith at this meeting that this book had been "thrown into a skip".

Electricians and builders no doubt find loads of old rubbish in old houses and I have no doubt that old houses might contain plenty of tatty old books. Vinny Dring says he found two old books himself in Battlecrease! A Diary or Journal (especially one in a biscuit tin with a gold ring) is unlikely to have been described as "a book". If Eddie did find a book under the floorboards and threw it into a skip, so what? It's not the Diary! And if he did find something it would surely have been during July 1992 when records show him working in Battlecrease, consistent with what he is supposed to have said to Brian Rawes in that month.

[David Orsam]

So the answer as to why one of Eddie or Mike told Feldman about their private meeting is because they were "loose lipped". Really? If the Diary Defenders are right, Mike managed to keep the secret of his receipt of the Diary from Eddie his entire life, until the very day he died! And despite more than one interview by James Johnston, Eddie stubbornly refuses to admit to having found the diary and of having given it to Mike, someone who, he says, he didn’t even know in March 1992.

[David Orsam]

I can offer a very simple reason for Mike going round to Fat Eddie AND then telling Feldman about it.

At this stage, in early 1993, Mike was pretending that the Diary had been given to him by Tony Devereux in which case, had that story been true, he could not have known its origin prior to 1990 (and Feldman was saying that the Diary had been found in Battlecrease in 1989). So in order to KEEP UP THE PRETENCE, but knowing the Diary was a recent forgery, Mike might have felt the need to put on a performance for Feldman's benefit of going round to see the electrician to check out his story, just as he would have done had he really not known where Tony had got it from.

This explanation would be consistent with both the Diary having been forged by Mike (and Anne) and with a discovery in Battlecrease in March 1992, save that with the forgery explanation it would mean that Mike MIGHT WELL have accused Eddie of lying (which is what is supposed to have happened) whereas this would make no sense with the Battlecrease provenance story in which case Mike would have been asking Eddie why he was telling the truth!!!

[David Orsam]

In the most recent telling of the story of Mike's meeting with Eddie in Eddie's house, the solicitors are absent (surprise surprise) although we are being told that Mike threatened some complete stranger, something else for which no evidence has been provided. The account by Feldman is that he accused him of lying and said he would never do a deal. That's it. No threatening of anyone involved in that account.

If Eddie really did find the Diary in Battlecrease, why did Mike go round to his house and accuse him of lying about finding the Diary in Battlecrease? Because surely what Eddie would have said in reply was: "I'm not lying, I did find the Diary in Battlecrease as you well know because I fvcking gave it to you". So surely, for a Diary Defender, the question to ask is why was Mike LYING to Feldman about what happened in his conversation with Eddie? Because, if the Battlecrease provenance is true, he clearly didn't go round to accuse him of lying, regardless of whether the Diary was supposed to have been found in 1989 or 1992. He went round to ask him why he was telling the truth!

[David Orsam]

We are told (again) that Mike threatened Eddie with solicitors although no evidence has ever been produced of this. Perhaps the world’s leading expert on the subject was in Eddie’s house at the time. What Feldman said about the meeting was this: “Within twenty-four hours Mike Barrett had knocked on the door of the said electrician; he accused him of lying and told him he would never do a deal.” That’s it. Where do the solicitors come from?

I asked the above question and was not given an answer to it. If I am asked where I personally think "solicitors" have come from, I would say they have come from the overactive imagination of a member of this forum. And I'm sure I will continue to say that until shown any evidence to the contrary.

[David Orsam]

There is an obvious answer, incidentally, as to how Mike located Eddie. Although we are told that "there's no evidence that Feldman knew the address", James Johnston told me earlier in this thread that: "Colin Rhodes faxed Feldman the contact details for the electricians in April 1993." There was some uncertainty about the date of the fax, for which James was supposed to be going to check (although like virtually everything he told me was going to happen, it hasn't happened), but this was presumably how Feldman made contact with Eddie in the first place. So if Feldman knew how to contact Eddie he could easily have passed this information to Mike. This possibility alone renders any discussion about how Mike contacted Eddie completely redundant. What we do know is that, in his book, Feldman expressed no surprise whatsoever that Mike went to Eddie's house so that alone makes it likely that he was the source.

However, if, on the contrary, all Mike was told that the electrician who drank in the Saddle was called Eddie that would probably have been enough for Mike to make enquiries in the Saddle and if he knew his surname even better and if he knew his nickname ditto. Given that Eddie only lived as short distance from the Saddle it hardly needed Sherlock Holmes on the case. But if it was more complicated than that then, if Eddie Lyons was in the telephone directory (as to which no evidence has been provided that he was not), a quick call to that number would have quite likely established where Eddie was then living in Fountains Road even if that telephone number was not for the Fountains Road address

There is really no mystery here other than one built up by over-excitable members of an internet forum many years later.

[David Orsam]

Could someone translate this? I slept through my college grammar course and can't quite work out who knocked on Eddie's door and in what tense.

"Still no explanation from David, for why - within 24 hours of Mike's simple but effective reply - he had found out where Eddie lived....and chosen to complicate things himself by going round there...."

Yes, it sounds like it was me who went round to Eddie's house.

I deny it entirely!

[rjpalmer]

In regards to the scratches on the watch:

http://www.casebook.org/forum/messages/4922/10272.html

See especially Chris Phillips' post, March 17, 2004, 6:21 a.m. and those leading up to it.

[rjpalmer]

Still no explanation from David, for why - within 24 hours of Mike's simple but effective reply - he had found out where Eddie lived [and there's no evidence that Feldman knew the address or gave it to Mike - why would he?] and chosen to complicate things himself by going round there to introduce himself as the diary's owner, accuse Eddie of lying and saying he would never do a deal [with Paul Dodd].

Could someone translate this? I slept through my college grammar course and can't quite work out who knocked on Eddie's door and in what tense.

[Sam Flynn]

'tis love that spurned me so,
tis love that does destroy
tis love that I yearn for
tis love that she spurned
tis love that will finish me
tis love that I regret.'

It's not particularly impressive, though. He uses "spurned" twice, thereby exhibiting the same paucity of vocabulary evident elsewhere in the diary. There's a manifestation of the diarist's familiar "superflous did" (or "does" in this case), perhaps caused by a desire to have the syllables match - a desire seemingly abandoned after line 3. This is all the sadder because there wouldn't have been a problem with the syllables if a spurious "so" hadn't been tacked onto the end of line 1 - another of the diarist's tics ("The whore shall suffer more than she has ever done so"; "My hands feel colder than they have ever done so", etc).

Starting each line with the same words is quite effective, but it's a familiar, ancient device (cf. Ecclesiastes, The Beatitudes and, more strikingly, Corinthians), and easy to pull off.

About the only half-decent thing about the verse is the half-rhyme between "yearn" and "spurned". Having said that, its effect is rather diluted by the fact that the line before "spurned" is actually "yearn for" - perhaps written thus so that the syllables in line 3 matched those in lines 1&2. "tis love for which I yearned / tis love that she spurned" would have worked better, if the writer had given up their fetish for matching syllables sooner. Edit: Come to think of it, a slightly spurious "so" would have helped here ("tis love for which I yearned / tis love that she so spurned") but, irony of ironies, the writer missed his chance!

Despite the apparent cleverness of this little rhyme, it's arguably only a notch or two up from the clunky doggerel we see throughout the diary.

[caz]

I'm not sure how that squares with "if Michael can succeed in rhyming verse then I can do better, a great deal better", Caz, but whilst the hoaxer(s) might have had "Sir Jim" wishing that his poems were better, that doesn't indicate any awareness, whether on the part of the hoaxer or Sir Jim, of the poor quality of their prose (grammar and spelling included).

Hi Gareth,

But you do see that it would be significant if the creator of "Sir Jim" was pulling the strings regarding the dodgy doggerel, and having him ponder the question of how to become good at it? None of it makes sense if the author was putting their own best poetical goods in the shop window from start to finish. And if they were doing pretty much the opposite, and endowing poor "Sir Jim" with the rhyming talents of a six year-old, to comic effect, the argument against the poor quality of the prose being similarly employed goes out of the window.

You didn't quote from the beginning anyway, following the second attempt at verse, which resulted in all four lines of it being crossed out. "Sir Jim" goes on to write:

'two farthings,
two pills
the whores M
rings

Think

It shall come, if Michael can succeed in rhyming verse then I can do better, a great deel [sic] better he shall not outdo me. Think you fool, think.'

Later he writes:

'I cannot think of another word to accompany Jim. I like my words to rhyme damn it.'

Then towards the end he damns Michael again 'for being so clever the art of verse is far from simple. I curse him so'.

Finally he comes out with:

'tis love that spurned me so,
tis love that does destroy
tis love that I yearn for
tis love that she spurned
tis love that will finish me
tis love that I regret.'

Hey, how did "Sir Jim" suddenly mature from writing like a six year-old with his previous offering:

'take the eyes,
take the head,
leave them all for dead'

to coming up with something a teenager might have struggled with?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Did we ever get an explanation as to why Anne had the red diary in her possession in 1995? i.e. why did she ask Mike for it?

We normally have some kind of long winded and convoluted explanation offered for everything so I assume this should be no exception.

Only Anne would know that, surely?

But she did know Mike was trying to find evidence to 'prove' he wrote the diary, so if she remembered paying for the little red diary by cheque a month or so after the Maybrick diary had been seen in London, and knew nothing about what he had actually asked for or when it had arrived, she may have thought it was harmless as evidence of anything, but safer in her hands than his. Did she know Mike had made his initial enquiry for it around the same time he first called Doreen? Did she know it had arrived towards the end of March, before anyone had seen the guardbook?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Caz Morris's account of Murphy polishing out scratches is actually extremely damning to the legitimacy of the watch. Under microscopic examination Turgoose noted that the superficial scratches on top of the so-called 'Maybrick' scratches show no sign of having been buffed or polished. Ergo, all those strange and unexplained superficial scratches inside the back cover were made in the short time between when Murphy sold the watch to Johnson and Johnson "accidently" discovered the 'Maybrick' scratches in front of a live audience. In other words, it suggests that someone doctored the watch.

I can't help what Murphy said himself about it, rj. But I can't help Dr Wild's findings either, which indicated that the engraving was made before the watch surface was polished, whenever that was. He accepted that it had been polished, which implies that no sign of it doesn't necessarily mean it wasn't done. If, as Murphy claimed, his jeweller's rouge had no effect on the scratch marks, maybe it's not so surprising if it left no effect on the surface either. Was it too gentle to make any difference? It's not my area of expertise, so I hope someone with some real knowledge and objectivity can advise on this point.

Caz--yes. Anne "willingly" turned over the red diary after she was confronted about it.

You know she was 'confronted about it' how? Who brought up the subject first? I don't have the answer to hand so I'd be genuinely interested. Did Keith ask Anne flat out if Mike had given her such an item? Or were they talking about something else when she remembered it and went to fetch it?

Not that it matters either way really. She kept it for some reason, and she knew Mike had it previously and was still heavily into his 'confession' period, so she was presumably prepared for when she would be asked about it, and had her answer ready - whether she knew she was lying or Mike really had told her he was curious to know what a Victorian diary looked like.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

“the whole thing collapses if Feldy couldn't have told Mike where he could find Eddie”. Is this some kind of joke? It was beyond the wit of Mike, was it, to ask someone in the Saddle where “Fat Eddie” lived? And did they not have telephone directories in Liverpool in the 1990s?

How do you know Mike knew Feldy's loose-lipped electrician was called "Fat Eddie"?

How do you know Mike knew Feldy's loose-lipped electrician lived anywhere near the Saddle?

How do you know Feldy's loose-lipped electrician was even a regular there, whose name and address would be known?

How do you know Feldy's loose-lipped electrician could have been found in the telephone directory alongside the Fountains Road address, where his girlfriend was living at the time, even if Mike knew what "Fat Eddie's" surname was? Did he know the girlfriend's surname too?

Here’s where the whole thing really does collapse with one simple question. How is it that anyone knows that Mike went round to speak to Eddie?

Eddie knows. It's one thing he doesn't deny.

Think about it. If the Battlecrease provenance story is true, Mike and Eddie are supposed to have been involved in a conspiracy. They must have met in secret at least once for the Diary to have changed hands and, the way we are told the story, it is must have been a good two or three times more than that. So they were perfectly capable of holding secret meetings. Why on earth would one or both of them have felt the need to tell Feldman or Smith or anyone else that Mike went round to Eddie’s for a confrontation? For that information could only have come from one or both of those two individuals. If they had had a secret deal surely the confrontation would have been in secret. If Mike got the Diary from Eddie it simply makes no sense for us to know about the existence of this meeting.

Because they were both inclined to be loose lipped? Feldman thought Eddie was willing to 'confess' for the right price, so when Mike made it very clear to Eddie what he'd do if he obliged, that would have been Eddie's excuse not to go ahead if Feldman had pressed him. "That Mike's been throwing his weight around so sorry and all that, but the confession's off". Equally, by telling Feldman about the confrontation, Mike would have reinforced the fact that there would be no deal and no confession, not on his watch. Feldman was not a man to be put off easily, once he had a bee in his bonnet, but Mike & The Electricians sorted it between them.

We know they were both happy enough to meet up with Robert Smith in the Saddle towards the end of June 1993, where Eddie was happy enough to tell Robert he had found "a book" under some floorboards at Battlecrease, and Mike was happy enough to let him.

What sense does any of that make, if the electrician rumours were utterly baseless, and therefore didn't need Eddie or Mike or anyone else to try and explain them away to the man who would be publishing Shirley and Mike's book about a diary given to him in 1991 by a Saddle regular who since died?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

We are told (again) that Mike threatened Eddie with solicitors although no evidence has ever been produced of this. Perhaps the world’s leading expert on the subject was in Eddie’s house at the time. What Feldman said about the meeting was this: “Within twenty-four hours Mike Barrett had knocked on the door of the said electrician; he accused him of lying and told him he would never do a deal.” That’s it. Where do the solicitors come from?

Where do you think?

Maybe Mike and Eddie were both lying - for presumably different reasons - and this encounter never took place.

Love,

Caz
X