What was a confession worth to Eddie?
Well either he had some kind of agreement with Mike Barrett to split the proceeds of what Mike made from the Diary or he didn't.
If he had an agreement to split the proceeds, as we have been told he did, then surely a confession was worth a great deal if it would increase Mike's income.
If he didn't but had simply sold the Diary to Mike in March 1992 then it leads to all kinds of questions, such as why he was still talking about the Diary to Brian Rawes in July.
Either way, Feldman tells us that Eddie was prepared to make the confession in 1993 so we don't need to worry too much about his motive. My point was simply that if Paul Dodd wasn't going to prosecute then Anne had no way of knowing whether Eddie would spill the beans or not and was thus taking a risk in saying the Diary had been in her family for years.
Acquiring A Victorian Diary
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As I said some time ago, but for some reason have to repeat, if Albert or Robbie Johnson was paying Mr Murphy, or offering him some other inducement, to make a false statement about the scratches, that would make sense of Murphy doing it. Under normal circumstances I would have dismissed such a notion out of hand but, as we are told that Murphy was a dishonest person, it can't not be considered.
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I wonder if it was ever determined who paid Robbie Johnson £15,000 for his "share" of the watch? (So much for there being no profit motive). Was it Paul Feldman? And if this was a watch for Albert Johnson's little Daisy, how did Robbie end up with a "share" in the first place? There is something lurking under all of this and it aint pretty.
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Originally posted by caz View PostI can't see the relevance, rj
It's the exchange between you and Ally Ryder that interest me the most.
Ally: "Were any of Albert Johnson's colleagues every questioned about the fortuitous discovery of the scratches? I mean it just happened they were having a conversation about watches, Albert just happened to bring his in, Albert just happened to open up the back casing when demonstrating how it worked (uh tell me why on that one again please)...So anyway, were they ever questioned about how all these fortuitous coincidences all happened to line up?"
Caz: According to the testimony of Albert, and his workmates, interviewed separately, they were all discussing BBC TV’s Antiques Roadshow prog, which included an item on an antique gold watch, and there was some sort of dispute about the gold content of watches of a certain age. Albert mentioned that he owned an 18 carat gold pocket watch dating back to 1846, and promised to bring it in and show them. He did so, and showed them how to open the back and front. Albert claims the light from the window allowed him, as well as his witnesses, to see the scratches for the first time. No one present reported any suspicions that Albert had set up the whole thing, or had seen the scratches before.
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Ally: As tempted as I am to just accept what you say without any further evidence, I am afraid the bare little bits that you have provided don't fully satisfy. Who asked the questions? Is there a transcript? What was asked? Did they ask, "Hey did Albert do anything suspicious that made you think something was off?", which would be an exceedingly stupid question. Did they ask who had brought up the conversation of watches? Did they ask who had watched the show? Did they ask what night the show had been played on? And finally, how do we know that they weren't all in it together?
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Caz: I agree, and this suggests that it would be rather a waste of time my searching through piles and piles of documentation, and possibly making further enquiries, to flesh out my 'bare little bits' for you, because if they were 'all in it together', none of the information you ask for will prove otherwise. They simply had to agree to make the Antiques Roadshow programme (presumably doing them all a great favour by going to air within days of the scratches being made) their catalyst for the whole 'discovery' scam. Perhaps the BBC website could help you ascertain whether or not an episode of the programme was shown between late April and late May 1993, containing an item on an antique gold watch.
Ally: I am looking for an episode guide for antiques roadshow, but as yet have not found one. If you could trouble yourself to answer my questions, I would appreciate it. The questions were:
Who interviewed the colleagues. What questions were asked? Is there a transcript available?
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And on it goes until Ally uses the phrase "great ole load of..."
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But what we now know from what David Orsam has posted, and which I rechecked, no such episode aired (as you put it) "within days of the scratches being made" (or discovered). Which is worrisome, no?
But I am giving Albert's tale the benefit of the doubt and am broadening the search. Perhaps the episode aired a few months before May 1993. Those program guides that Ally was looking for back in 2005 do indeed exist, but I am finding no mention of an episode discussing a gold watch. The closest I've come is to this "irrelevant" episode of the "manky" watch collection in Orkney that aired a full year and two months before May or June 1993. But that segment lasted a mere 90 seconds, and, as you point out, did not mention 18 carat gold, and seems highly unlikely to have triggered the alleged conversation that in turn triggered the alleged accidental discovery.
Thus, I cannot yet dismiss the possibility that this reference to the Antiques Roadshow, so integral to Albert's story, wasn't a great load of horse sh*t.
Regards.
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Originally posted by MrBarnett View PostDavid,
Just how many secretaries have you known who didn't know the difference between 'your' and you're'? No doubt you interrogated a vast number of them rigorously to make sure they wouldn't have inadvertently misspelt the word. 'Huge' suggests, maybe, hundreds ... thousands... millions...?
You're eager public awaits clarification.
Tina from the tiping poole
I suspect David knows the wrong type of secretary.
I don't know about anyone else, but if I had to constantly correct the typing of a secretary working for me, I think I'd soon be looking for a new one.
Obviously no secretary is perfect, or their boss would sign off everything without bothering to check it first.
But what's truly hilarious is the idea that there wasn't much to choose between Anne and Mike, or that she didn't need to have considerably better literacy skills than him in order to work as a secretary. So the question for David would be what he imagines would have happened if Anne or her boss had been unwise enough to allow Mike to stand in for her one afternoon while she had her hair done, went shopping or had a late lunch with her girlfriends.
Love,
Caz
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Originally posted by Sam Flynn View PostI never intended it to be anything other than my own private notes on what transpired to be a truly atrociously-written piece of text, Caz (I was surprised at how bad it was, in fact). Howard asked me if he could upload my "Annotated Diary" on his site, and I was pleased to let him do so, but it was never intended to be a structured critique in the form of, say, a dissertation.
Rough as they are, however, I think my notes are still useful in highlighting just how many clunkers there are in the diary... for whatever reason. I'd still maintain that the most likely explanation is that the hoaxer(s) wasn't/weren't particularly well-educated.
We still don't really know what literacy/language skills the real JM managed to acquire before leaving school in the early 1850s, and what kind of 'clunkers' we might have seen in his personal diary. Nor do we know if the 'clunkers' were all entirely unintentional and accidental, or put there by the hoaxer deliberately, as part of a plan to pull the Maybricks down. If just one of them could have been included by design, as with the Lusk letter, any argument about the writer's supposed education is going to remain subjective at best.
The difficulty here is maintaining any sense of objectivity once you have decided that a Barrett was most likely involved in the creative process, and was trying to do their best with limited 'tools' for the job of passing their own work off as that of JM. Are the 'clunkers' being used to support the Barrett forgery theory, or are the Barretts being used to support a theory about what the 'clunkers' are doing there?
Love,
Caz
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Originally posted by rjpalmer View PostRegard the writing skills of a secretary.
The argument seems to be that Anne Graham was too skilled as a secretary to have written the Maybrick Diary.
But back in 2005, I raised the issue of whether the rather shoddy typescript of the Diary, delivered to the literary agents by Mike Barrett in 1992, was consistent with the work of a professional secretary, as claimed by the Diary Camp. You see, Harrison, Morris, Skinner, and Co. have always insisted that this typescript was created by Mike and Anne as part of the publishing agreement. I questioned this. The shoddy effort seemed more like a draft of the Diary taken off Barrett's word processor than the work of someone who types for a living. To which Caz Morris then responded:
"I don't know why you think that because Anne worked as a secretary and managed to get a book published she would not have made the kind of mistakes you have identified. The legal secretaries where I work are certainly capable of the most elementary blunders on occasion. Recently one of them kept typing 'visible' for 'feasible' and couldn't see why it was wrong even when it was pointed out to her! I have had quite lengthy conversations with Anne and Mike, and have read enough of their correspondence to have a good idea of their individual language usage and skills. Anne may be streets ahead of Mike, but she ain't all that. And don't forget, she had Carol Emmas to help write the book for her."
Your argument was that the 'rather shoddy typescript' of the diary seemed more like a draft taken off the word processor than the work of a professional secretary. But what does that mean in practice? That you think Mike created the shoddy draft on the word processor and Anne meekly went along with his effort and had no input - not even doing her usual 'tidying up' on this most important of occasions? I apologise if I have misunderstood what you are saying here.
The 'shoddy' typescript delivered to Doreen in 1992 had to reflect what was handwritten into the guardbook, regardless of which came first. My own opinion, of course, is that Anne merely typed up what was already in the diary, shoddy or otherwise, in which case she could have done sod all about the quality of the writing. If this had been Mike's original draft, which he finally dictated to her to write into the guardbook, as soon as he acquired it from the O&L auction, I dare say it would have looked an absolute shambles from start to finish, and would have involved a complete redraft by Anne herself, long before dipping pen into ink and putting ink to scrapbook quality paper.
Love,
Caz
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Originally posted by rjpalmer View PostHi David. Regarding Albert Johnson's dubious and suspicious claim about "accidently" finding the faint "Maybrick" scratches in front of a live audience (sounds like a "staged" performance)... I did find one 1992 Antique Roadshow episode that mentions watches: March 8, 1992, filmed in Orkney, where some old gentleman was showing off a collection of antique watches. Now and then I like to throw the Diary Defenders a bone, knowing it will lead to another 15 years of idle speculation. Just think! March 8, 1992! It aired the night before Eddie Lyons may or may not have called in sick at the height of the Liverpool cold/flu season! (Which explains his mysteriously missing timesheet). And also the night Barrett decided to seek out a literary agent, bright and early, first thing in the morning! The mind boggles.
The segment starts at 27:06.
Or was it just another opportunity to snipe?
Have yourself a warm and cuddly afternoon.
Love,
Caz
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Originally posted by David Orsam View Post"As for the point that the diary is not in Maybrick's handwriting, I don't recall ever doing any research into this issue or telling anyone anything about it. But, yes, of course the fact that the handwriting is not Maybrick's is important but we have been told that psychopaths or sociopaths or whatever can have multiple styles of handwriting. I don’t have sufficient knowledge of graphology to contradict such a statement and feel I have to accept it as true. That being so, the handwriting can hardly be the clincher that the Diary was not written by Maybrick."
"A forensic document examiner might be able to analyse handwritten text or signatures to see if someone has been attempting to mimic someone else's handwriting (due to hesitancy in pen strokes), although the fact of the matter is that this is very difficult to do and forgeries of signatures cannot always be detected by any means, but to assume that such an examiner is able to tell whether handwriting on a document has been disguised is almost certainly a false assumption."
Love,
Caz
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Originally posted by David Orsam View PostThe answer to almost everything at the moment is "Colin Rhodes said this" and "Colin Rhodes said that". Yet no evidence is ever provided and we have never been told what Colin Rhodes has actually said. Presumably he said something to Keith Skinner on 2 July 2004 but no note or record of any such interview has ever been produced. So Colin Rhodes appears to say whatever a particular Diary Defender wants him to say at any particular time.
Let's have a look at the latest claim about what Colin Rhodes said. We are told that Colin (and his son) observed that "Eddie appeared to have been at a loose end during the break in the Skelmersdale contract from Monday 9th to Thursday 12th March."
This is the first time that we have been told that Colin Rhodes has stated that Eddie Lyons "appeared to have been at a loose end" on 9th March. If he did say that I find it very strange that we were told in #1462 that Eddie Lyons, "could have just gone sick with a heavy cold for all I know."
If Colin Rhodes had confirmed in 2004 that Eddie Lyons was actually "at a loose end" how could it be speculated that he had gone sick with a heavy cold? Either he was possibly off sick or he was definitely at a loose end. Which is it? What did Colin Rhodes actually say?
I can't think why David would consider it a crime to speculate, in the absence of any concrete evidence, that Eddie was too ill to have been lifting the floorboards at No. 7, or watching anyone else doing it, or acting as courier for the diary between Aigburth and Anfield. I'd have thought he'd be jumping for joy. There ain't no pleasing some people.
Further, if Colin Rhodes didn't like his men to be kicking their heels, what was Brian Rawes doing on 9th March 1992? What was Alan Davies doing on that day? What, indeed, was Graham Rhodes doing? What about the other Portus & Rhodes electricians? Were they ALL supposed to have been at Battlecrease? If not, why was only Eddie (and Jim) sent to Battlecrease?
The puzzle concerning Eddie was why he did not appear on the resumed Skelmersdale time sheets, unlike the two other main men, Graham Rhodes and Jim Bowling. Eddie had been on that job full time with Jim Bowling from December 1991 right up until 7th March 1992, and indeed had been taken on by Colin Rhodes at the end of November 1991 for that purpose. Neither Colin nor Graham could shed any light on the reason for his absence towards the end of the contract, which immediately followed the break when the Battlecrease floorboards had been lifted. We are none the wiser now, so it may or may not be of any significance. It's merely a question mark.
Love,
Caz
XLast edited by caz; 04-09-2018, 06:00 AM.
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Originally posted by David Orsam View PostSo, recently, I noted that it had been suggested in another thread that Feldman could have said to Eddie in early 1993: "Look, here's my daily work sheet for March 9th 1992, showing I helped out in Maybrick's old bedroom by lifting the floorboards first thing, and I know for a fact that Mike called an agency that same afternoon about the diary I seen and shown him down the Saddle that lunchtime. Check with the agency if you don't believe me. Now what's my confession worth?"
I commented that:
Even assuming Anne knew that Feldman had tried to broker a deal the previous year between a Battlecrease electrician, Paul Dodd and Mike, on the basis of the diary being found in the house back in 1989, she'd also have known how that had ended, with Mike having none of it and Feldy washing his hands of the electricians. What incentive would she imagine there'd have been by July 1994 for anyone to confess to theft, let alone demonstrate beyond doubt that they'd done this?
Bearing in mind that Paul Dodd was apparently offering an amnesty in 1993 for a 5% cut of proceeds, such an amnesty must also have been a possibility in 1994, which would have meant Eddie had nothing to worry about (if he had stolen the Diary) and could have spilt the beans.
Unless Anne was psychic she could not have known whether such a thing would happen or not, Mind you, she would have done had she known that the Diary had been forged in her house during March/April 1993.
Love,
Caz
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Originally posted by David Orsam View PostIt was not until February 1997, four years after they had first been questioned about the watch, that Ron Murphy informed Harrison and Skinner that, when he was cleaning the watch after receiving it back from Dundas (in early 1992), he saw scratches which he then attempted to polish out. He then said "I tried to buff them out with jeweller's rouge". Note that he refers to himself here in the singular - so it wasn't "the Murphys" doing the polishing - although he also said "we tried to clean them" which makes it unclear as to whether he did the cleaning by himself or with his wife (or another person). But he certainly wasn't talking about cleaning which he had done in the 1980s. In fact, no mention was made about any cleaning having been done by Mr Stewart in the 1980s.
It's not even clear how Murphy managed to see the "barely visible" scratches and feel that they needed to be polished out. But is it supposed to be the case that his father-in-law had independently spotted the scratches too and had tried to polish them out in the 1980s?
Another oddity is that, according to Feldman, at the meeting in February 1997, "Mr Murphy also implied that it was the first time he had seen the watch since he sold it to Albert." Why did he imply such a thing bearing in mind that he said in his October 1993 statement that he was seeing the watch for the first time since he had sold it?
In the September, Murphy told Martin Howells that the Johnsons had come back - he thought it was a few weeks previously - to ask several questions about the watch's history. He thought there was something wrong with it because they'd given him a guarantee. He said that at that point he didn't know why Albert wanted more than the basic hallmark information.
If one asks the question: cui bono? Who stood to benefit from a false claim that there were scratches on the watch prior to July 1992? The answer is very simple: Albert and Robbie Johnson.
Love,
Caz
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Originally posted by rjpalmer View PostI did find one 1992 Antique Roadshow episode that mentions watches: March 8, 1992, filmed in Orkney, where some old gentleman was showing off a collection of antique watches
The segment starts at 27:06.
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Regard the writing skills of a secretary.
Originally posted by caz View PostAnne worked as a secretary, so unless she was considerably more literate than Mike was, bless him, I'm not sure how she'd have held down a job like that for long. It would have been pretty much a basic requirement, probably more so than for other lowly clerical posts such as filing clerks and office juniors. Martin Fido was surprised, if Anne helped forge the diary, that she allowed it to go out like that. But if she had written it out herself to Mike's dictation [as secretaries used to do when their boss dictated anything], it would have been down to her alone to make sure the spelling, punctuation and grammar [if not the handwriting!] was - WEREsuitable for the purposes of forging the diary of James Maybrick. Did she not posses - POSSESS - a dictionary, for example? Did she not think to consult one?
But back in 2005, I raised the issue of whether the rather shoddy typescript of the Diary, delivered to the literary agents by Mike Barrett in 1992, was consistent with the work of a professional secretary, as claimed by the Diary Camp. You see, Harrison, Morris, Skinner, and Co. have always insisted that this typescript was created by Mike and Anne as part of the publishing agreement. I questioned this. The shoddy effort seemed more like a draft of the Diary taken off Barrett's word processor than the work of someone who types for a living. To which Caz Morris then responded:
"I don't know why you think that because Anne worked as a secretary and managed to get a book published she would not have made the kind of mistakes you have identified. The legal secretaries where I work are certainly capable of the most elementary blunders on occasion. Recently one of them kept typing 'visible' for 'feasible' and couldn't see why it was wrong even when it was pointed out to her! I have had quite lengthy conversations with Anne and Mike, and have read enough of their correspondence to have a good idea of their individual language usage and skills. Anne may be streets ahead of Mike, but she ain't all that. And don't forget, she had Carol Emmas to help write the book for her."
Caz Morris 31 May, 2005.
So which is it? Was Anne too skilled one moment, and not skilled enough the next? Or do her talents expand and contract depending on what argument Caroline Morris wishes to make at the moment?Last edited by rjpalmer; 04-08-2018, 01:43 PM.
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Hi David. Regarding Albert Johnson's dubious and suspicious claim about "accidently" finding the faint "Maybrick" scratches in front of a live audience (sounds like a "staged" performance)... I did find one 1992 Antique Roadshow episode that mentions watches: March 8, 1992, filmed in Orkney, where some old gentleman was showing off a collection of antique watches. Now and then I like to throw the Diary Defenders a bone, knowing it will lead to another 15 years of idle speculation. Just think! March 8, 1992! It aired the night before Eddie Lyons may or may not have called in sick at the height of the Liverpool cold/flu season! (Which explains his mysteriously missing timesheet). And also the night Barrett decided to seek out a literary agent, bright and early, first thing in the morning! The mind boggles.
The segment starts at 27:06.
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