Acquiring A Victorian Diary

[David Orsam]

I see from today's posts that the Great Misunderstander is back misunderstanding.

I'm not here to argue that Mike Barrett is "telling the truth". My point is a very simple one. This is that there is actual hard evidence that Mike Barrett (the person who first produced the Jack the Ripper Diary to the world) attempted to acquire a Victorian diary with a minimum of 20 blank pages (at a time when no-one else is known to have seen the JTR Diary). This strongly points to him being involved in an attempt to forge a Victorian diary which in turn suggests that he was probably involved in forging the JTR diary. It's that simple.

For that reason the 1891 diary itself is not relevant. It's the attempt to get hold of such a diary which is important.

It's a hard fact which does not depend on Mike telling the truth (or telling a lie). And it's one of the very few hard facts in this case.

Anything else I've said on the matter is by way of explanation (in the face of extreme scepticism) as to how it was possible that the Diary could have been forged after Mike failed to obtain a suitable Victorian diary through Martin Earl. The story in Mike's affidavit provides just one possible explanation (and one that has not been disproved).

If anyone wants to counter the claim that Mike was involved in forging the Diary and that, instead, it was actually found under the floorboards of Battlecrease then by all means go ahead and provide some hard evidence. All we have had so far is a single coincidence of a date revealed by a single timesheet. I don’t regard that as sufficient.

[John Wheat]

I see from today's posts that the Great Misunderstander is back misunderstanding.

I'm not here to argue that Mike Barrett is "telling the truth". My point is a very simple one. This is that there is actual hard evidence that Mike Barrett (the person who first produced the Jack the Ripper Diary to the world) attempted to acquire a Victorian diary with a minimum of 20 blank pages (at a time when no-one else is known to have seen the JTR Diary). This strongly points to him being involved in an attempt to forge a Victorian diary which in turn suggests that he was probably involved in forging the JTR diary. It's that simple.

For that reason the 1891 diary itself is not relevant. It's the attempt to get hold of such a diary which is important.

It's a hard fact which does not depend on Mike telling the truth (or telling a lie). And it's one of the very few hard facts in this case.

Anything else I've said on the matter is by way of explanation (in the face of extreme scepticism) as to how it was possible that the Diary could have been forged after Mike failed to obtain a suitable Victorian diary through Martin Earl. The story in Mike's affidavit provides just one possible explanation (and one that has not been disproved).

If anyone wants to counter the claim that Mike was involved in forging the Diary and that, instead, it was actually found under the floorboards of Battlecrease then by all means go ahead and provide some hard evidence. All we have had so far is a single coincidence of a date revealed by a single timesheet. I don’t regard that as sufficient.

Yes there is a complete lack of evidence from anyone who doesn't believe Mike or someone close to Mike was involved in forging the diary. If you ask me it's time for these posters to put there money where there mouth is or shut up.

[David Orsam]

Let's recap on the Paul Dodd point.

It was stated (#234): "We know Rigby later went to see Paul Dodd, worried he might be implicated in theft, and volunteered the information that it was Bowling and Lyons who knew something about it."

My comment (#322) was: "I don't know anything of the sort".

The response to this (#327) was: "No, but Paul Dodd does - unless he was just making it up."

So I ask for the source of all this and it turns out to be from Robert Smith, page 19, as follows:

"I had also heard from another source that a very worried Rigby came to Paul Dodd's flat to deny any involvement in the removal of the diary, again trotting out exactly the same story that he had told Feldman, and implicating Bowling and Lyons as being culprits."

So the comment "No, but Paul Dodd does - unless he was just making it up" is the usual nonsense because Smith does not say in his book that his source was Paul Dodd.

But more important than this is the complete irrelevance of the story. By the time he spoke to Dodd (if Smith's source is correct) Rigby had already spoken to Feldman and told him exactly the same story. A story which he has already basically admitted was reconstruction in hindsight in trying to help Feldman solve his puzzle (i.e. as Feldman recalls, Rigby said to him: "I remember something being thrown out of a window of the room where we were working at Mr Dodd's house. It was put in a skip. With everything that I've heard since about the diary and considering the trip to Liverpool University, I think I've solved your problem."

So all it shows is that Rigby had built the whole thing up in his mind and become worried that he might get into trouble for having knowledge of the theft of the Diary. Given that we know what he had already said to Feldman, I fail to see how any subsequent conversation about the same thing with Paul Dodd takes the matter any further. Yet in the original telling we had Rigby apparently speaking to Rawes about what Eddie had said about finding the Diary in July 1992 (even though there is no evidence this ever happened) and then "later" speaking to Dodd. No mention was made that that Rigby had spoken to Feldman in the interim.

[David Orsam]

If Colin Rhodes has confirmed that he released in 2017 (or earlier?) all the timesheets showing work done at Battlecrease then it is incomprehensible to me as to why we have had to wait until 11 January 2018 for some form of indirect public confirmation of this very important fact. Of course, we don't know (because we are not told) if Rhodes confirmed this fact yesterday, in response to my questions, or last year or at any other time. Nor do we know the wording he has used because he has not been quoted. For example, has he confirmed that this was everything he could find or does he guarantee it is everything that ever existed? Perhaps in a year's time we will find out.

[David Orsam]

It's utterly irrelevant whether the electricians had the faintest idea who Mike was or when he first told anyone about his diary or knew anything about his telephone call or precisely when the diary was thought to have been found. All they needed to know what that it was suspected that the Diary had been found (under the floorboards) at Battlecrease. Once they had this information in their heads then when they searched their memories in 1993 (or later) about the work they carried out at Battlecrease during 1992 (or earlier) they might have interpreted innocent remarks or actions by others as being connected with this supposed discovery.

It's no doubt why Vinny Dring, who appears to have found some irrelevant books in Battlecrease in 1982, thought that HE might have found the Diary.

I don't think it's a difficult point to understand. And I wasn't making a positive point. I made the point in response to claims that the stories of the electricians somehow validated the timesheet evidence. I'm saying that the coincidence revealed by the timesheet evidence is not enhanced by the pre-existing stories of the electricians.

[David Orsam]

So I say that the line of enquiry into the APS shop conversation will be a waste of time unless it can be positively ruled out that the conversation occurred in 1993 and I am then told that it won't be a waste of time if it can be positively ruled out that the conversation occurred in 1993!!!!!!!!!! (Ten exclamation marks.)

I mean, honestly. This is why my conversation with James was such a contrast. He seems to be able to read and understand English.

[caz]

All I'm saying about the ink used to forge the diary is that it might have been a different ink to Diamine (or, if one prefers, that it definitely WAS a different ink to Diamine). That is all. I don't need to explain who decided to use it or how it was acquired.

Oh, but you do need to explain such things, David, if you wish to convince people not already converted to the faith that your suspicions about Mike Barrett are not plain wrong. Just like you rightly expect hard evidence from anyone who opposes your views, you need to explain how this supposed forgery scheme is meant to have been planned and executed by the firm of Barrett & Co, or you are simply wasting your own and everyone else's time with empty rhetoric. You can make your arguments look clever and powerful on the page, and sound like music to the ears of Barrett's Pilgrims, but what's the point if you will never be able to prove a single one of them?

It might have come from the Bluecoat Chambers art shop or it might from another shop. But one thing I will add is that this constant bleating about how no-one in 1992 would have trusted Mike Barrett to do anything is absolutely ridiculous. Prior to April 1992 (and certainly prior to the time he started drinking)...

Whoa there. How do you when Mike 'started drinking'? When was the first time he ever got drunk? How often did he go to the Saddle prior to 1992, or the British Legion club? Never? Once a week? Five times or more a week? Do you know that he wasn't a regular drinker and never had one over the eight until the diary became a nightmarish monster for him? Do you really believe the impact of the diary could have changed his character and normal habits to that extent?

I have never seen any evidence to suggest that Mike was an incompetent person.

Does that make him a competent one then?

On the contrary, he was a professional freelance journalist who interviewed a number of celebrities...

...but admitted he couldn't write up those interviews in a coherent fashion and needed Anne to do it for him.

Using the drunken, shambolic, Mike from post 1992 and then assuming that he was like that in and before 1992 strikes me as a dreadful failure of imagination.

Well nobody can accuse you of a lack of imagination. Who said he was drunken and shambolic before 1992? A direct quote would be good. But how do you know he wasn't on occasion? If Anne hoped the diary [created with her help or not] would give her husband something constructive to do with his time, might that not suggest a tendency to do the reverse?

I don't know the answers, but I suspect you don't either.

Love,

Caz
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[Henry Flower]

Oh, but you do need to explain such things, David, if you wish to convince people not already converted to the faith that your suspicions about Mike Barrett are not plain wrong. Just like you rightly expect hard evidence from anyone who opposes your views, you need to explain how this supposed forgery scheme is meant to have been planned and executed by the firm of Barrett & Co, or you are simply wasting your own and everyone else's time with empty rhetoric. You can make your arguments look clever and powerful on the page, and sound like music to the ears of Barrett's Pilgrims, but what's the point if you will never be able to prove a single one of them?

Prove? Proof might never be possible, Caz, not by the standards of a criminal court anyway, but if I were on the jury in a civil court I'd be pretty satisfied. I wouldn't demand that David or anyone else prove what the ink was, where exactly it was purchased or produced, and which hand Mike or his wife used to write the damn thing, or how many sittings it took. I'd be satisfied that the preponderance of the evidence points to Mike Barrett playing a role in a recent forgery.

Does that make him a competent one then?

Come on Caz, you can do better than that. It doesn't make him anything, there is either evidence that he was too incompetent to play a role in this forgery or there isn't. If you have some, that would be more persuasive than this rather plaintive rhetorical question.

If Anne hoped the diary [created with her help or not] would give her husband something constructive to do with his time, might that not suggest a tendency to do the reverse?

Absolutely, it might. Plenty of us go through periods of what appears to the outside world to be unproductiveness, lethargy, drift. Some snap out of it, some don't. Some find a project that energizes them, some don't. None of which is evidence that MB was too stupid or too indolent to play a role in the creation of the Diary. And so what if he was a regular heavy drinker before 92? I have a friend who spends half his life drunk, heavily drunk. When not at work he is in the pub or asleep. He's charming, intelligent, thoughtful, and, as it happens, a fantastic freelance writer in his spare time, and a professional journalist for a motoring magazine Mon-Fri.

[Abby Normal]

Prove? Proof might never be possible, Caz, not by the standards of a criminal court anyway, but if I were on the jury in a civil court I'd be pretty satisfied. I wouldn't demand that David or anyone else prove what the ink was, where exactly it was purchased or produced, and which hand Mike or his wife used to write the damn thing, or how many sittings it took. I'd be satisfied that the preponderance of the evidence points to Mike Barrett playing a role in a recent forgery.



Come on Caz, you can do better than that. It doesn't make him anything, there is either evidence that he was too incompetent to play a role in this forgery or there isn't. If you have some, that would be more persuasive than this rather plaintive rhetorical question.



Absolutely, it might. Plenty of us go through periods of what appears to the outside world to be unproductiveness, lethargy, drift. Some snap out of it, some don't. Some find a project that energizes them, some don't. None of which is evidence that MB was too stupid or too indolent to play a role in the creation of the Diary. And so what if he was a regular heavy drinker before 92? I have a friend who spends half his life drunk, heavily drunk. When not at work he is in the pub or asleep. He's charming, intelligent, thoughtful, and, as it happens, a fantastic freelance writer in his spare time, and a professional journalist for a motoring magazine Mon-Fri.

exactly. a lot of artists, writers poets painters etc. have all kinds of personal issues-depression, alcohol and drugs or just plain bat **** crazy. and the diary isn't even that good or convincing. The he was too effed up, stupid whatever argument for saying he couldn't have written it is really one of the weakest arguments ive seen on casebook, especially since it seems the main reason for it being argued by the diary defenders that its not a modern forgery.

[caz]

Hi, Caz. I already answered this in post #363.

I suppose I will have to spell it out. Anne wrote a novella about Maybrick-as-Jack. Nothing either or illegal or strange about her "helping" Mike. In fact, she encouraged "his" literary efforts, and did 99% of the actual work. No mystery whatsoever, and nothing illegal or untoward.

Hi rj,

I recognised at once that you were not making a statement of fact here, but merely outlining what you believe to be a possible scenario. But you might have to spell that out for anyone whose comprehension skills are even more woefully underdeveloped than my own, because I was accused fairly recently of doing exactly what you do here, and not making it clear enough that I was not actually claiming it as "the God's honest truth and what have you" [as our friend Mike might have put it].

Then one unlucky day around February 1992, while she's at work, Mike takes what is basically her manuscript and decides to turn it into the 'real' McCoy...the Maybrick Diary. Why not? Pan Books didn't want it, so, to use Mike's own phrase, it's "Hell or Bust." So he enlists the help of Citizen X from down the boozer. Anne doesn't find out about it until the unpaid bills start showing up from Martin Earl, who naturally wants his £25. She now figures out what Mike's really been up to and goes ballistic. But she also finds out it's already too late---a 'done deal.' Mike's made an appointment with Doreen Montgomery. She fights him tooth and nail--on the floor even---(see Feldman's account) but in the end she puts her head down and goes along with it, knowing full well that she's in it as deep as he is. As with the readers of LOOT Magazine, she's been hoodwinked. All her subsequent actions can be explained as someone trying to make the best of an impossible situation--including her totally irrational and ill-advised 'gig' with Feldman, who she figures might have the money/clout to make it all go away. The rest is history.

I personally see Anne as a rather tragic figure.

And I already answered this, rj. I don't buy the bit about Anne resigning herself to a 'done deal' just because Mike has made an appointment to show this bastardised novella of hers to a literary agent. How is she unwillingly or unhappily 'in it' as deep as he is, when she can simply refuse to have anything to do with the old scrapbook and, if necessary, explain to Doreen what her silly husband has been up to? Instead of doing this, she signs a collaboration agreement, knowing full well she is opening herself up to accusations of passing off her own work as that of James Maybrick/Jack the Ripper - as she is effectively doing if the content is her own work! She is also relying on nobody thinking to check the handwriting, the ink, the scrapbook etc or, if they do, that her silly, impetuous husband - and whoever else may have helped him - hasn't made a thorough pig's ear of any of it, because if Mike falls he takes his wife down with him.

A tragic figure, maybe, but surely far too shrewd to have got herself caught up with something like that when there was absolutely no need. She had every trick in the book when wrapping Feldy round her little finger two years later, so no, she didn't just lie down and take it from Mike in 1992, like a good little girl whose innocent novella he had turned into a shaky fake.

As for Mike "pissing it against the wall," didn't he make some rather unusual £1,000 withdrawals when the royalty cheques starting rolling in?

Indeed he did, and in cash I believe. That's a lot of pissing, isn't it? But by then Anne had left him so she wouldn't have known what he did with any of it. She had her own share by then anyway. The last withdrawal - shortly before he told the papers he had written the diary himself - left his account in the red. One theory is that someone behind the scenes was pushing for their rightful share of the loot in exchange for keeping quiet about their part in Mike's downfall.

Citizen X? Not if that was Tony Devereux. Ghosts don't carry cash. Have a good weekend.

Oh, just before I go, how are you factoring in to your reconstruction of events the documented and verifiable lifting of the floorboards in Maybrick's old bedroom, followed by Mike's call to Doreen later the same day?

Or do you agree with David Orsam's dismissal of these two events as mere serendipity for Frantiquarians [nice one, Gareth ] and less happy coincidence for Barrett's Pilgrims?

Love,

Caz
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[Henry Flower]

Oh, just before I go, how are you factoring in to your reconstruction of events the documented and verifiable lifting of the floorboards in Maybrick's old bedroom, followed by Mike's call to Doreen later the same day?

Or do you agree with David Orsam's dismissal of these two events as mere serendipity for Frantiquarians [nice one, Gareth ] and less happy coincidence for Barrett's Pilgrims?

Love,

Caz
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Granted, you weren't asking me, but my own answer to that question, Caz, is that the coincidence of the date makes things rather uncomfortable and unconvincing for anyone not thinking MB had a hand in creating the forgery. I simply think the phonecall comes too soon for there to be any connection between the floorboards and the diary. If I were writing this as fiction, or if I wanted to believe that the diary was uncovered when the floorboards were lifted, I'd leave a day or two at least before that call gets made.

The great confirmatory coincidence seems to me genuinely to weaken the Battlecrease-provenance case. And I don't say that because I'm biased: I've said it before, if it were to be proven tomorrow that the diary came from Battlecrease, or that JM was JtR, my response would be an interested shrug - "oh, I didn't expect that, how interesting." I don't feel like part of any 'team' here, I'm just waiting for something solid and concrete that dislodges the wannabe-writer, Victorian-diary-procuring, sole demonstrable provenance, forgery-confessing Mike Barrett from prime position as creator or co-creator of the Diary.

[caz]

James, great to have you back on the forum, even if only temporarily.

It's a big difference to have someone being helpful and who is able to focus on the point at hand and responds directly to questions without unnecessary speculation.

I'll get round to a proper response to your post in time but, for the moment, I would like to just to pick you up on this statement:

"I'm under no obligation to share all of my hard earned research"

I respectfully disagree with you entirely, at least in respect of your interviews with the electricians. You included snippets of those interviews in your published article and then on this forum. I don't think it's a proper approach to "cherry pick" parts of an interview to support whatever points you want to make. If you refer to one part of a document or a transcript the rest of the document or transcript needs to be made available.

At least if you want to adhere to the highest standards.

I'm not saying you need to publish all your research before you are ready but it's just not right to selectively quote from documents or transcripts to which others don't have access.

David, how do you think any non-fiction essays, dissertations or books would ever get written or published; any documentaries ever made or broadcast, if every sodding word gathered behind the scenes from every source investigated over the years, had to be included to satisfy the reader or viewer, sitting on their arse at home? Or if nothing could ever be published or broadcast all the while there is the chance of more information or evidence turning up?

The recent excellent and hugely important documentary series on Vietnam, for instance, took ten years to put together. Had nothing been left out I dare say it would have taken three times as long and bored many people to tears. Winston Churchill once apologised for the long speech because he hadn't had time to make a short one.

Do you have any idea how much diary documentation has been accumulated since 1992, and what percentage of it has been published to date? If every word was made into a single line it could reach to the moon and back for all we know. And if none of it had been published in book form or online, because it could not all be put out there in one hit, you'd have nothing to discuss but the mystery of why ever not, and the disgraceful behaviour of everyone holding back everything about it.

Love,

Caz
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[Henry Flower]

Winston Churchill once apologised for the long speech because he hadn't had time to make a short one.

Beautiful.

[Kaz]

I'm frankly amazed caz gives you naysayers any info, she's under no obligation to do so.... honestly, the egos flying around this place are off the chart...

[caz]

I see that the latest absurd and nonsensical, Alice in Wonderland, criticism of me ("You could have waited to see what else there is out there before committing yourself") is for actually posting on this subject in this thread simply because some people are withholding information which they should have released!

But I'm sure the rules can't just apply to me. So let's see if I've got this right. If the Diary Defenders deliberately decide to keep information to themselves then no-one is allowed to express any conclusions about the diary until they day those people decide to reveal what they know, which might be long after the rest of us all die!!!

That is madness.

I object most strongly, David. I don't think what you wrote above is a sign of madness. I'm sure you were simply misreading. Using direct quotes would help you enormously because then you might grasp that nobody actually said that expressing one's conclusions based on limited information was not 'allowed'. We're not in the schoolroom and I won't put you in detention over the weekend if you want to carry on concluding to your heart's content.

I very much doubt that any more information is going to emerge to prove the Battlecrease provenance (although the Diary Defenders clearly feel, a la Pierre, that there is just that one more piece of evidence they need to find and the case is proved!) and there is no way I am going to wait for people to get round to posting what they know or think they know before I comment on the evidence that has been revealed.

Great. Enjoy yourself then. If you very much doubt that any more info is going to emerge to ruin the party, I'm not sure why you work yourself up into such a lather about info you don't yet have. What you don't know can't hurt you, can it?

If I post something about the diary in this thread, it does not need to be obsessively responded to within 24 hours if there is new information which should be fully explained in detail. The response could wait until the information is properly presented.

Pot kettle. Except you can swap new information for repeated speculation about your Barrett & Co forgery project, which you never fully explain in detail. Your responses could wait until your speculation is presented with sound evidence [beyond Mike's drunken affidavit and tiny 1891 diary].

Note that I am using 'could wait' in the same way as you use 'could wait', and not in the sense of 'must wait', or 'nobody is allowed' unsupported speculation. They are. And they are also allowed to add information as they see fit, to help clarify, confirm or challenge certain aspects under discussion. What would be the point of questioning anything, if the answers given are greeted with: "Noooo! That's new information! This is a closed shop, for closed people. We'll have no trouble here! By the way, what other precious things are you hiding from us?"

Now that would be madness.

Love,

Caz
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