Acquiring A Victorian Diary

[Sam Flynn]

I'd put the diary on a par with, or perhaps slightly above the capabilities of the average message board poster, in terms of sentence construction, grammar, spelling and punctuation.

I have to disagree with you there, Caz. Judging by the poems alone, the writer(s) couldn't even manage to produce half-decent doggerel.

[caz]

As to the new arsenic supplier, I think it probable that the diary is referring, not to the fact that Maybrick has found a new pharmacist, but that he's found murder to be a good substitute for his drugs: "Have I not found a new source for my medicine. I relish the thoughts that it will bring me. I enjoy thinking of the whores waiting for my nice shining knife". The word "medicine" is being used entirely metaphorically in this context - arsenic gives him a high, and now killing gives him a high.

I don't agree, Gareth. I think you are giving your diarist way too much creative credit for once. I suspect the author knew very well that at this point in the diary "Sir Jim" had indeed found a new source of arsenic, after writing on the previous page: "I am taking more than ever". Bernard Ryan's book, The Poisoned Life of Mrs Maybrick, published in 1977, gives the salient details on page 31. In January 1889, JM met Valentine Blake, who used arsenic in a new fabric process he was developing. JM complained that he found 'a difficulty in getting it here', and a month later Blake gave him 150 grains of arsenic in three separate paper packets. 'Some was white and some, mixed with charcoal, was black'.

Robert Smith's book refers to this in note 105 on page 139, adding that Blake claimed this arsenic was "enough to poison a regiment". Robert's source is J.H. Levy in his 1899 book The Necessity for Criminal Appeal.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

I have to disagree with you there, Caz. Judging by the poems alone, the writer(s) couldn't even manage to produce half-decent doggerel.

But why do you see a need for anything 'half-decent' among the private ramblings of a serial killer of moderate education, who is portrayed as a talentless buffoon? If someone was aiming to write a believable diary of Sam Flynn you'd have a half-decent point.

Love,

Caz
X

[John G]

I have to disagree with you there, Caz. Judging by the poems alone, the writer(s) couldn't even manage to produce half-decent doggerel.

I don't know, Gareth, it's just so easy to get caught out with this subject-I should know, it's happened to me enough times! It just doesn't have the feel of, say, something written by a rank amateur. At the very least, I would say that the author had undertaken quite a lot of research-pre internet, when research was a much more challenging proposition!-and had been interested in the subject for some time.

[caz]

Kaz, thanks for the link.

Reminds me of an observation once made by Peter Birchwood, who suggested that the Diary contains this very phrase.

At one point, Sir Jim makes a comment that Harrison/Smith have transcribed as "I have lost my battle," but, looking directly at the handwritten text, PB cleverly suggested that it actually reads "I have lost my bottle," showing the forgers were not above tossing out the odd modern idiom heard down the boozer.

As you can imagine, this observation didn't go over too well. I'm not sure if Peter was tweaking noses just for jollies, or whether he believed this was the correct transcription. Enjoy your weekend.

I suspect Birchwood was not being serious, rj. Either that or he was being deliberately misleading. I can't quite believe he was actually stupid.

1) How would the complete sentence make any sense if the word was 'bottle', not 'battle'?

'I have lost my bottle and shall go on until I am caught.'

He has lost the battle for his sanity, not his nerve to carry on killing.

2) The same word, written the same way and used in the same context, can be seen on an earlier page: 'I am fighting a battle within me.'

If he was fighting a 'bottle' within him, I hope he felt suitably embarrassed when trying to explain the circumstances to his doctor.

3) It's 'battle' in both cases according to the transcript produced by the Barretts themselves.

4) Would it have been a modern idiom in any case, to have had "Sir Jim" lose his bottle? I'm not so sure.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

"shambolic word-dump"

That. Is. Beautiful. I intend to make that phrase part of the permanent furniture of my mind. Thank you.

I like that one too, Henry. Gareth has a gift. But as I say, in my experience over the years, this delightful phrase might just as well be describing the average message board post.

Seriously, Henry, I have often had cause to wonder how many of our regular contributors would struggle today with the old eleven plus papers.

Love,

Caz
X

[StevenOwl]

Careful, Steven, or you'll be labelled another crackpot.

Sometimes it seems like people here are channeling 'Archangel' Michael and he is so chuffed with all the attention that he tells them exactly what they want to hear.

Love,

Caz
X

Don't worry Caz, I'm quite happy to be in the company of the crackpots. You seem like a far nicer and far less uptight bunch than all the naysayers :-)

[rjpalmer]

Bernard Ryan's book, The Poisoned Life of Mrs Maybrick, published in 1977, gives the salient details on page 31

Indeed it does, Caz. Ryan's book also contains every other salient Maybrickian 'fact' needed to compose the manuscript. Bunny, Hopper, sickly kids, it's all there. Every fact, that is, but one.

But this shouldn't be too surprising, because Mike Barrett mentioned Ryan as a source for the Diary.

"The couple's busy social life continued. James continued to spend frequent evenings 'at the club' and to travel often to London for a day or two 'on business'. --Bernard Ryan.

Do you think Anne could have read that passage, was delighted at the reference to Jim spending "frequent evenings at the club" and composed the clumsy line "Frequented my club"?

It's really that simple.

Meanwhile, all the truly obscure facts about Jim's life --like the fact that he took a long walking tour of Wales during the period covered by the Maybrick Diary-- are nowhere to be found. Why might that be?

[David Orsam]

Hallo David,

I think there are problems with this explanation. For instance, if he had serious concerns about anyone being interested then why go to the trouble of carrying out a considerable amount of research, and producing a draft on his word processor, in the first place?

Moreover, you speculate that he didn't have much money. However, he invested in a word processor in the mid 1980s, which would have been an expensive purchase at the time, at least relative to today, and at least part of the motivation for the investment could have been an intention to forge a diary. In contrast, I would have thought the cost of buying a pen, ink, and a second-hand Victorian diary would have been a relatively modest sum.

"carrying out a considerable amount of research" is one thing but there is no cost associated with it for someone who is unemployed. He can do all the research in the world. The point is that he's not spent any money.

As for the word processor, we are told that the money to acquire this came from Anne's father. There are mysteries surrounding whether it was acquired new or second hand and the date of purchase still requires confirmation but we are told it was acquired in April 1986. Personally, I don't think his motivation for an investment in 1986 had anything to do with the Jack the Ripper diary. Instead, I think it would have been 100% related to his new journalistic career, writing articles for Celebrity magazine.

The cost of buying the second hand Victorian diary might have been "relatively modest" to you but for someone with little or no spare cash (i.e. someone who was skint) it might have been significant. Mike tells us in his affidavit that the £50 needed at the auction for the journal came from his father-in-law, in addition to the £25 from Anne's account for payment to Martin Earl.

So, as far as I'm concerned, it all makes perfect sense for him not to have spent any money until he received confirmation of interest in publication of the diary. And he clearly did receive sufficient interest from Doreen that she wanted to meet him in London and see the diary, at the same time assuring him of the bona fides of her agency.

[John G]

"carrying out a considerable amount of research" is one thing but there is no cost associated with it for someone who is unemployed. He can do all the research in the world. The point is that he's not spent any money.

As for the word processor, we are told that the money to acquire this came from Anne's father. There are mysteries surrounding whether it was acquired new or second hand and the date of purchase still requires confirmation but we are told it was acquired in April 1986. Personally, I don't think his motivation for an investment in 1986 had anything to do with the Jack the Ripper diary. Instead, I think it would have been 100% related to his new journalistic career, writing articles for Celebrity magazine.

The cost of buying the second hand Victorian diary might have been "relatively modest" to you but for someone with little or no spare cash (i.e. someone who was skint) it might have been significant. Mike tells us in his affidavit that the £50 needed at the auction for the journal came from his father-in-law, in addition to the £25 from Anne's account for payment to Martin Earl.

So, as far as I'm concerned, it all makes perfect sense for him not to have spent any money until he received confirmation of interest in publication of the diary. And he clearly did receive sufficient interest from Doreen that she wanted to meet him in London and see the diary, at the same time assuring him of the bona fides of her agency.

Well, call me cynical if you like, but this all seems very odd to me. For example, Mike's significant delay in producing the document, after making the initial phone call, would surely have seemed highly suspicious. And why was Doreen so enthusiastic in the first place, based upon a phone call from some random individual she'd never met, who then proceeds to make extravagant claims about a document she's never seen? Surely, her first thought would be that was most likely some sort of crank.

[David Orsam]

Response to New Info - Part 1

I've now had a bit of time to digest the new information that James Johnston has posted on this board. Let's look first at what he tells us about what Brian Rawes said to him about his conversation with Eddie Lyons in 1992.

Before this, a reminder of what Brian Rawes is supposed to have told the police in 1993:

"On 17th July 1992, went to Riversdale Road with a man called Arthur to pick van up from premises. On arrival, Arthur left, and Rawes went up a side entrance and called out, and Graham Rhodes and Eddie Lyons came out, took items out, and Graham, Colin's son, went back in house. Rawes got keys to van and Lyons said he had found a diary under the floorboards in the house which he thought was important, and didn't know what to do. I got the impression he recently found it – then drove back to the company."

And here is what he told Robert Smith in 1997:

"At about 11.00am one morning in July 1992…Arthur Rigby and he were in the Portus & Rhodes office in Garston…Their boss, Colin Rhodes, asked them to drive to Dodd's house, so that Rawes could collect the firm's van, pick up some equipment and take it to a roofing job which the two men were working on at Halewood Police Station near Widnes. Rigby drove Rawes to Battlecrease in his own car, then left him to go to Halewood. Lyons was on a rewiring job with Colin Rhodes's son, Graham, on the ground floor of the house. Because he hadn't driven the van before, Rawes asked Lyons to guide him as he reversed back down the drive. When he reached the entrance gate to the property and was about to drive off, Lyons came up to the driver's window and said to Rawes: "I found something under the floorboards, and I don't know what to do about it. It could be important".

There is a curious addition to the above by Shirley Harrison (2003) who recounts being told the same thing as above in 1997 by Alan Davies (who presumably had heard it from Rawes), except that Davies apparently added that "Mr Rawes advised him [Eddie] to tell his boss, Colin Rhodes, about it." If Brian mentioned this to the police in 1993 or to Smith in 1997 it does not feature in the respective summaries of what he told them.

Leaving aside for the moment whether Eddie said it was a diary, a book or "something" that he had found, what is clear from both the 1993 and 1997 is that three things were said by Eddie:

1. He had found an item under the floorboards.

2. He didn't know what to do about it.

3. It thought it was, or could be, important.

Now, here is what Brian told James in the 2016 interviews:

"What it was, it was a Friday afternoon, and Colin Rhodes asked me and Arthur to go to this house, and I didn’t know where the house was. So, Arthur took me down to the house. Arthur shot back off to Colin Rhodes and I went into the house and told them that I needed the van, we have to go [inaudible] for this, and I was reversing out of the driveway of the house, and this Eddie Lyons told me about he found this book under the floorboards and he didn’t know what to do with it, and I said that I’m in a hurry the best thing to do is to tell Colin Rhodes. Because as I say, I never thought too much of it because I knew Colin Rhodes’ son was there, so I thought probably he knew about it as well."

So now we have this new element (which featured in the Davies account) added to the story. Brian actually replies to Eddie to say that he was in a hurry and Eddie should tell his story to Colin Rhodes.

Then another account six days later:

"Yeah, yeah. Arthur went, I didn’t know where the house was, so Arthur took me in his car, and I went there to pick up the van. Then it was as I was reversing down the pathway, Eddie Lyons came down and told me that he’d found something under the floorboards, which was a book, because then I said to him, you better tell Rhodes. I said [inaudible]. No, I think he said it was at home or something."

In this account, Brian has forgotten to mention that Eddie didn't know what to do with this book and that it was important but he repeats that he said that Eddie should tell Colin Rhodes and now he adds a brand new response from Eddie that Eddie said "it was at home or something". This appears to be the first time he has ever mentioned this to anyone.

But there's a problem because, according to James in his essay, Brian, in full speculation mode, also told him this:

"He [Lyons] must have found it before under the floorboards and whatever it was he had read it and took it home and inspected it, and realised what it was…I heard that, the rumour was that it was at home…Eddie Lyons said he didn't want to really know about it and that someone else had decided to take it, or to own it, and it was the chap [Barrett] that went to the publishers in London".

So we have here Brian saying that he had heard a rumour that whatever it was Eddie had found was "at home". It's odd that he puts it like this because in one of his 2016 accounts quoted above he says he was directly told by Eddie that the item was "at home" or something. And it's very worrying to me that Brian is speculating that Eddie must have found the item under the floorboards and taken it home and inspected it before realising what it was. How does he arrive at this conclusion?

It seems very clear that Brian has been discussing Eddie's discovery with others and on the basis of those discussions has formed his conclusions about what happened. And when he claims that "Eddie Lyons said" is he passing on a rumour or mentioning something that Eddie told him directly? To me it looks like some kind of rumour. And it looks like the response he remembers from Eddie that "it was at home or something" might well have been influenced by what he was subsequently told. Did he really suddenly remember this remark in 2016 having not apparently mentioned it to the police in 1993 or Robert Smith in 1997?

But now let's consider what Eddie said to him about the item in question. The first thing he said was that he didn't know what to do about it. This simply doesn't make any sense if the item had been discovered in March and had been transferred to Mike Barrett by 13 April and was now in London the subject of legal agreements and testing by experts. For, in that case, Eddie had already decided what he was going to do about it and that was to give it to Mike Barrett. There was nothing further he had to decide or to consider.

Approaching someone while they are in a car, about to drive off, to tell them that you've found something under the floorboards indicates a recent discovery. It does not in any way indicate a reference to something that had been found FOUR MONTHS earlier and disposed of. It would be bizarre and inexplicable if Eddie was talking about an item he had found in March. And, as Brian himself told the police, he believed it to be a recent discovery. Furthermore he said in 2016 that he knew Colin Rhodes' son was working at Battlecrease that day "so I thought probably he knew about it as well" which suggests he thought the item had been discovered while Rhodes was working there.

Additionally, Eddie is supposed to tell Brian that he thinks that what he has found could be important. Really? Well he must, by 17th July, have known it was the diary of Jack the Ripper (if that is what he had found). Something which he had given to Mike Barrett. Now either Eddie knew at this time that the diary was subject to legal agreements and was being examined by experts, in which case he knew full well that it was regarded as important, or he knew nothing about any of that, after having given it to Mike, in which case it's bizarre that he was apparently only now, four months later, thinking the discovery was important.

But what exactly did he discover? James insists that Brian recalls Eddie mentioning a book. But a book is not how a person would describe the handwritten JTR Diary is it? One would surely either say a "diary" or a "journal". Calling it "a book" strikes me as very odd indeed. We all know what a book is. Unless it was published prior to the invention of the Caxton printing press it is going to contain printed text. Not handwritten pages. So a book is quite the wrong word for the diary. It's absolutely the wrong time period for Eddie to be talking about something he is supposed to have discovered in March and, if it was the diary, it's impossible to conceive of why Eddie is saying anything to Brian Rawes about it while Brian was sat in his car. If he was seeking advice, what could Brian POSSIBLY have told him that would be helpful about a diary that was in London under not only the control of Mike Barrett but it seems that it was legally regarded as being owned by Mike Barrett AND his wife. Was Brian a lawyer? If not, how could Eddie possibly have been expecting Brian to help him? And why wait four months to get the advice anyway?

So what might actually have happened on 17th July 1992? Is it possible that Eddie genuinely found a book under the floorboards on that day? That would certainly make far more sense of everything. In this respect, we have Eddie himself telling Robert Smith that he found a book and threw it into a skip. But let's say Eddie found a book in Battlecrease on 17th July. Well then he might well have been uncertain about what to do with it. Perhaps he didn't want to mention it to the boss's son. So when another electrician (Brian) suddenly appears at the house, he rushes over to ask him for advice as to what he should do. But Brian is in a hurry and just tells him to report it to Colin Rhodes, which Eddie doesn't want to do. Suddenly the entire conversation makes sense. And it ONLY makes sense about a discovery made that day, or at the very least in that week. It makes absolutely no sense in the context of a discovery in March about an item already disposed of and in London.

The objections to this will be firstly that "the floorboards" were not lifted in July. But while there might not have been a wholesale lift of floorboards how can anyone be sure that an individual floorboard was not lifted by Eddie to complete a particular wiring job? And that of course is if Brian's memory that Eddie mentioned "floorboards" is correct and not coloured by Feldman's investigations. The second objection is that Eddie denied finding a book when he spoke to James. But Eddie was under precisely no obligation to tell James anything. He could lie to him with impunity. Perhaps Eddie didn't throw the book into the skip but sold it at a bookdealers, making him guilty of theft. Why would he want to admit this to James?

One thing that I think we can be certain about is that if Eddie DID find a book in Battlecrease in July 1992 it would explain a lot about why so many electricians appear to be convinced that he found the Diary. Especially with Eddie being known to drink in the same pub that Mike Barrett drank in.

Finally we must not lose sight of the fact that there does not appear to be a single account of Eddie having found the diary in March 1992 and there is no record of Eddie working in Battlecrease in March 1992, whereas he certainly WAS working in that property during July.

This brings me to a separate point which I will deal with in a separate post.

[David Orsam]

Response to New Info - Part 2

Amongst the new information provided by James Johnston is the stunning revelation that Brian is supposed to have mentioned to Arthur Rigby on 13 July 1992 that Eddie had found a book under the floorboards of Battlecrease.

Here is what Brian told James:

"I remember we were working on the roof at Halewood Police Station and I just told Arthur that this Eddie Lyons told me that he found a book under the floorboards,"

Then there is a strange sentence:

"and I was in a hurry to go and pick Arthur up and I said ‘the best thing you could do is to go and tell Colin Rhodes about it."

How could Brian have been in a hurry to go and pick Arthur up if he and Arthur were then working on the roof at Halewood Police Station? And is he recording Arthur telling him that he (Brian) should tell Colin Rhodes about it or did he (Brian) tell Arthur that Arthur should tell Colin Rhodes?

Then this:

"Because, I didn’t know more about it, because I thought Colin Rhodes’ son would probably know about it as well, but apparently, he never said anything to his son about it. Then he said he took this book out and started reading it and he got in touch with someone else about the book"

Now where on earth has all this come from? In respect of the first sentence, how does Brian know what Colin Rhodes said to his son about this whole affair? More importantly, in respect of the second sentence, is Brian saying that Eddie told him that took the book out "and started reading it and got in touch with someone else about the book"? If so, when did this conversation take place? On 13th July or later?

But let's go back to the conversation between Brian and Arthur Rigby: I just told Arthur that this Eddie Lyons told me that he found a book under the floorboards

What's so extraordinary about this is that Arthur Rigby apparently made no mention of this conversation to Feldman, when reporting his suspicion that Eddie was responsible for finding the diary, or to Robert Smith in the subsequent investigations. I have no idea whether he mentioned it to James Johnston because James has withheld the full transcripts of his interviews.

There are two possibilities. Either the conversation with Arthur took place as related by Brian or it didn’t.

If it didn't take place what does that say about Brian's credibility?

If, however, it DID take place this is more interesting because it now provides a clear explanation as to why Arthur Rigby pointed the finger at Eddie when Feldman came calling in 1993. For Arthur had been told in July 1992 of a confession by Eddie that he found a book under the floorboards. So when Feldman is sniffing around trying to discover if an electrician found the JTR diary under the floorboards, Rigby will obviously think this must have been the discovery reported to him by Brian Rawes in July 1992. In fact, one actually wonders if Brian Rawes has forgotten that Eddie told him that the book he found was thrown into a skip and that this was mentioned to Arthur Rigby which is how Rigby had it in his head when he spoke to Feldman. Just add this strange visit to Liverpool University and Arthur has put two and two together to come up with five.

A coincidence that Eddie found a book in Battlecrease in July? Well sure but we have been told that Vinny Dring found a couple of books. We have been told that an electrician found a newspaper. So why couldn't Eddie have found an old book in Battlecrease? He might have thought it was a valuable book hence he described it as "important". A lot of things could be explained by this.

[David Orsam]

Response to New Info - Part 3

The other new bit of information revealed by James is the fact that Tim Martin-Wright contacted Paul Feldman as early as 1994 to tell him about his conversation with Dodgson about the JTR diary. I find it astonishing because Shirley Harrison says nothing about this in her 2003 book, giving the impression it was brand new information discovered in 1997, and Robert Smith also says nothing about it in his 2017 book, also giving the impression that it was a new discovery in 1997.

We are now told that Tim Martin-Wright contacted Feldman in June 1994. I find this rather troubling. Feldman's book wasn't published until 1997. So how did Tim Martin-Wright know to contact Feldman? From the 1993 video? Well that would surely have required a bit of detective work to know who to contact about it (with Feldman listed only as Director of Research in the credits). Did Martin-Wright have connections with the electricians who told him that Feldman was the man to speak to? I do think this needs to be resolved.

In any event, in June 1994, when speaking to Feldman, Tim Martin-Wright dated the APS shop conversation to somewhere between June and December 1992. But he told Feldman that he "cannot remember" which month it was.

Feldman doesn't include mention of this in his 1994 book. Surely the reason that Feldman was not interested is that a conversation such as described by Tim in the period June-December 1992 was of no value. It's just too late. By then the diary had already been in Mike Barrett's hands and was in London with Doreen.

The troubling thing is that by 1997, we are told by Shirley, the conversation is being dated by Tim Martin-Wright to late 1991 when he spoke to Robert Smith. Now I really don't know if this was an error by Shirley or Smith or if Tim Martin-Wright had changed his mind about the dating of the document at this stage. But one thing is certain: a late 1991 date was much more in line with the theory that Mike Barrett had subsequently acquired it prior to April 1992. So if it was a mistake it was a happy one for the Battlecrease provenance theory as it then stood.

We are also now told that when Tim Martin-Wright spoke to Keith Skinner in 2004 he referred to his own personal diary for the first time and was now able to date the conversation to December 1992, although how he has done so remains something of a mystery. Something to do with a hat stand apparently.

It really does need to be resolved as to who was the source of the 1997 information, published in 2003, that the APS shop opened in October 1991 and that the conversation between Davies and Dodgson was shortly after this. We might also note that this account was repeated in the 2010 edition of Shirley's "The Diary of Jack the Ripper". It was still being said that the conversation took place in late 1991.

Then we have the curiosity that, in all the published accounts, Dodgson doesn't mention having been told that the diary that Davies was offering him was supposed to be the diary of Jack the Ripper. Smith certainly makes no mention of it. Yet that is surely an essential piece of information. Equally, and most importantly, Davies has never been quoted as having been told by anyone that the leather bound diary he had heard about was the diary of Jack the Ripper. Surely we need a confirmed chain of evidence that Davies was told it was a JTR diary (although by whom seems to be a mystery) and that Dodgson was told this by Davies. Otherwise it's impossible for Martin-Wright to have been told this.

[David Orsam]

Well, call me cynical if you like, but this all seems very odd to me. For example, Mike's significant delay in producing the document, after making the initial phone call, would surely have seemed highly suspicious.

But John there WAS in fact a delay in producing the document. And at this time, on 9 March, neither Doreen or anyone else had seen the diary. So it doesn't matter if it "would surely have seemed suspicious" or not because that is actually exactly what happened!

And why was Doreen so enthusiastic in the first place, based upon a phone call from some random individual she'd never met, who then proceeds to make extravagant claims about a document she's never seen? Surely, her first thought would be that was most likely some sort of crank.

The only thing that's very odd, John, is you asking me this question. You are querying why something actually happened? It's a question for Doreen, not me. But presumably she was taken in by Mike telling her about "the dramatic effect the discovery of the Diary had already had on his life and that of his family, and his growing conviction, after some initial research, that it was the real thing", according to Inside Story, which also tells us that she was "Intrigued by the account but still cautious".

[John G]

Eddie finding some document of significance in Battlecrease, but not the diary, is my preferred option. Could Mike have found out about the discovery, say due to a chance encounter in the Saddle, the same day? Could this have prompted him to move forward with his planned hoax by phoning Doreen the same day? Might he have taken a gamble by suggesting a conspiracy to Eddie, i.e. offering him a share of any royalties in return for Eddie agreeing to say that it was the diary that he actually found?