Acquiring A Victorian Diary

[Herlock Sholmes]

You’ve convinced yourself the Diary wasn’t in a cubby hole for 103 years. It should be easy to prove it and convince other people.

You even have another fairly valuable artifact in its own right you can use.

It’s been over 30 years now. What exactly are you waiting for?

It is pretty easy to prove, actually. We know the diary wasn’t written before 1945 due to the inclusion of the modern expression “one off instance”. Q.E.D. it couldn’t have been in a cubby hole for 103 years prior to 1992. End of story.

But the location of the diary wasn’t what Caz was talking in her most recent posts. Her only point was that Eddie Lyons was working in Battlecrease on 9^th March 1992. She hasn’t provided any evidence to support this claim but, even if it’s true, it’s still a million miles from Eddie Lyons finding (and stealing) anything in the house that day, let alone the diary of Jack the Ripper.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Well this is a bit embarrassing.

According to Robert Smith in the 2019 version of his book, at a 2018 meeting with James Johnston and Keith Skinner:

“Lyons had admitted on film that he had indeed been working at Battlecrease on 9^thMarch 1992…”

Now Caz tells us for the first time, six years after Smith’s published claim about Eddie having admitted being at Battlecrease on 9^th March 1992, that:

“having revisited Eddie's fascinating account from 2018, I can confirm that no actual dates were mentioned by him”

She then asks a strange question “how could they be?”, as if the idea of Eddie having mentioned that he was in Battlecrease on 9^th March 1992 was an obvious impossibility, despite it being the very thing we’d been assured had happened!

And still, incomprehensibly, no transcript is provided of what Eddie Lyons said in February 2018 let alone the video recording of the event. We have to rely on Caz’s own interpretation of what Eddie supposedly said. For some reason, we are not allowed to see for ourselves what he said and she doesn’t quote a single word spoken by him.

Unsubstantiated, unsupported claims are utterly worthless I’m afraid, as Smith’s unsubstantiated and unsupported 2019 claim proves.

[Lombro2]

You can call me Sophie Shole!

[Observer]

To prove the artifacts weren’t in a hole for 103 years.

The only "hole", around here it seems is the one you keep digging for yourself

[Lombro2]

To prove the artifacts weren’t in a hole for 103 years.

[rjpalmer]

You can’t prove two objects—one made of gold—were in circulation for any part of 103 years.

Why would I want to prove the diary was in circulation for 'any part of 103 years' when I think it was created in 1992?

[Lombro2]

Long posts are a dead giveaway. Even more so than short repetitive ones.

The long or short of it is:

You can’t prove two objects—one made of gold—were in circulation for any part of 103 years.

But I, of course, have to prove they weren’t.

[John Wheat]

When you give your instructions to the jury, Justice F., you might want to leave out "you can't prove it didn't happen!"

I'm wondering why you bother Rj? You make long posts and others who for some unknown reason believe the Diary to be genuine sweep your posts under the carpet.

[rjpalmer]

When you give your instructions to the jury, Justice F., you might want to leave out "you can't prove it didn't happen!"

[Lombro2]

That’s convenient since you can’t prove it’s not true when it should be easy.

[rjpalmer]

You’ve convinced yourself the Diary wasn’t in a cubby hole for 103 years. It should be easy to prove it and convince other people.

No one needs to disprove Caroline Brown's theory.

"What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence." --Hitchens' Razor.

[Lombro2]

You’ve convinced yourself the Diary wasn’t in a cubby hole for 103 years. It should be easy to prove it and convince other people.

You even have another fairly valuable artifact in its own right you can use.

It’s been over 30 years now. What exactly are you waiting for?

[rjpalmer]

I'm afraid Eddie doesn't appear on any of the P&R timesheets for June 1992, so I don't know where Palmer got this information from.

I had it from Tom Mitchell that Eddie's name was on the timecards that summer---at least for July 1992:

That is not in debate. It was July 17, 1992. We know this because this time he [Eddy] is on the timesheet written up by Colin Rhodes (and Jim Bowling reported a conversation with Lyons around that time - I think he got it out by about a month).

Whether it was June or July doesn't concern me. We keep hearing about work done in June/July 1992. What concerns me is that the public is never given access to Eddie's "admission" that he was also at Dodd's house in March----we only hear speculation that he was---often from the same people who assured us that Anne Graham's account of seeing the diary in the 1960s was credible and consistent. Later, it turned out that she was anything but consistent and her various statements were riddled with contradiction and implausibility.

The 'mystery' wasn't that Eddie was missing from the Battlecrease timesheets that week. Colin Rhodes himself told Keith it was plausible that he had sent him to help out on that job. The suggestion didn't even come from Keith, who was prepared to accept that if Eddie wasn't on the timesheet, he wasn't there. The mystery was why Eddie's name was absent from the Skem timesheets from 13th March when that job resumed and was still absent when it was completed.

Smoke and mirrors, I'm afraid.

Eddie's whereabouts that week might be no mystery to you, since you have convinced yourself otherwise, but I assure you they remain a mystery to anyone who has been paying attention. Talking in circles won't change that.

Eddie's last known whereabouts date to 7 March 1992. He is then off the 'radar' for at least two weeks---he isn't on the job on March 13th or even afterwards. I'm getting all of this from you.

So how in the heck do you know he even worked the week of March 9-14? We are told it is 'plausible' that he worked for a couple of hours at Dodd's house, but not only can't you produce any documentation to show it, you can't even show he was at any other job site that week or the next.

If he worked that week---not just Dodd's house but anywhere--shouldn't there be a record of it?

How is that not a mystery?

As far as the public knows, Eddie was in bed sick with the flu for three weeks or cruising the Mediterranean. Or laid-off.

You might not like hearing it, but when I learn of a person whose job was suspended on March 7th--and his whereabouts aren't known for the next two weeks or more, I'm going to assume he either got laid off or took the opportunity to go on holiday.

When I've asked about this in the past, someone like Jay Hartley usually rushes in to inform us that Eddie admitted to being there on 9 March.

But this only brings me back the original question: what was the context of this admission, and why can't we hear it? If, as Tom Mitchell tells us, Eddie was there on 17 July 1992, couldn't this be what he was remembering and 'admitting' to?

These are not unreasonable questions and that you respond by pretending they are confused and foolish doesn't do you any favors.

You've convinced yourself that the diary came out from under Dodd's floorboards. Which is fine, but if you're going to convince anyone else, you'll need to do better.

[caz]

Hi Ike,

I'm getting somewhere.

A correspondent, Smith's book in hand, has informed me that a night heater (singular) went in on the first floor on Tuesday, 9 June. (Jones & Dolgin mentioned multiple heaters being moved around, but perhaps this means the new one?) That floor is now done.

July was as previously reported.

Several other days were worked in June, but it was all on the ground floor for lighting. The cellar was used for the wiring, so this would seem to be what Eddie was remembering.

Eddie Lyons only appears on the sheets for the week of 15 Jun - 19th.

Ciao.

I'm afraid Eddie doesn't appear on any of the P&R timesheets for June 1992, so I don't know where Palmer got this information from.

The timesheets are all based on the week ending on a Tuesday, and the Battlecrease timesheet for the week ending on Tuesday 9th June has Graham Rhodes working there for eight hours on 9th and Jim Bowling for two hours, to install storage heaters on the first floor, following the wiring job in the March, exactly three months previously. Eddie's name does not appear, and I don't think anyone recalled him helping out on that occasion. The job title is not written very clearly, so it could be read as: INSTALL STORAGE HEATER [singular] 1st FLOOR, but the list of materials on the same sheet includes 1 3kw HEATER, 1 2.44kw HEATER and 1 1.7 kw HEATER, along with their respective prices, so that would appear to explain the slight confusion there.

The only other timesheet for June 1992 is for the week ending Tuesday 16th June, for a rewire in the ground floor flat, and only the names of Graham Rhodes, Jim Bowling and Arthur Rigby appear on that sheet.

That's it for now, folks.

[caz]

It's high time for some housekeeping...

Mr. Jones does exactly what you & Caroline Brown do; he paraphrases Lyons 'admission' of having allegedly been at the house on 9 March but does not give enough of the context of the conversation to resolve my concern--the very real possibility that after the passing of many years, Lyons is confused about the chronology and is admitting to being there on 9 March when he is actually remembering having been there in July. It is obviously a FACT that when quizzed by Feldman all those years earlier, the electricians were referring to events that happened in the summer of 1992 and not in March 1992. The driveway incident, etc. with Lyons on the scene. It would be easy enough to inadvertently repeat this mistake when quizzing Lyons years later.

Nowhere in any account does Lyons admit to being at the house TWICE. Surely you can appreciate the importance of this?

The concern is that once the great coincidence of 9 March 1992 was noticed by Mr. Skinner, it was deemed desirable in some quarters to shoehorn Lyons onto the job site in March when he was actually there in July. I don't mean that in an accusatory way, but it's the best way to describe it.

Now, Palmer is not entirely to blame for getting so much of the above wrong, so in the spirit of enlightening everyone, may I first say that having revisited Eddie's fascinating account from 2018, I can confirm that no actual dates were mentioned by him - how could they be? It was more than a quarter of a century since he had worked in the house - and no dates were supplied to him, to help jog his memory or to 'shoehorn' him onto the site in March 1992 [we are talking about Keith Skinner, James Johnston and Chris Jones here, not Paul Feldman] and plant false memories. Eddie could not have been remembering the July job, where his name does appear on the relevant timesheet, and he wasn't suffering from false memory syndrome. His memories were of a real event, and it was clearly the March job he was describing, because he said he was sent to the house with his mate Jim Bowling, but that it wasn't his job. They were just "filling in" when the Skelmersdale contract had to be put on hold - which dates it conclusively to the week beginning Monday 9th March without any prompting from anyone.

Eddie and Jim had been taken on together by Colin Rhodes on 26th November 1991, specifically for the "Skem" job, and they had both worked solidly on it, full days every week from Monday to Saturday, without a break except for a few days over Christmas, right up to and including Saturday 7th March. Eddie remembered it was Arthur Rigby's job they were sent to help out with at Battlecrease, and thought there were four of them in the house on that occasion, which corresponds with the young Jimmy C being there with Arthur. [According to the timesheet Jimmy C only worked for two hours while Arthur was there for eight, so it's not clear if the youngster had to catch a bus or was able to cadge a lift at the end of his two hour shift. Only Arthur appears on the timesheet for Tuesday 10th, working four hours.] Eddie thought he recalled only going to the house on one day that week, but said it might have been two.

We know Eddie returned to the house in the July because he is down on the relevant timesheet for seven hours on Thursday 16th; six hours on Friday 17th; six hours again on Monday 20th; and two hours on Tuesday 21st. Colin Rhodes's son Graham was working with him all that time, on a wiring job on the ground floor, and yet Eddie didn't mention this four-day job, or offer any personal memories of it, and he didn't appear to remember Graham Rhodes at all, despite also having worked with him and Jim Bowling on the Skem job. For whatever reason, it was the brief March job that Eddie was recalling, so the question is: what made that earlier occasion memorable, so long after the event, while the longer job in the July with the boss's son didn't even merit a mention? Eddie was made redundant from Portus & Rhodes on Thursday 23rd July, just two days after his second visit to Battlecrease. Maybe this affected his memory of how he spent the final days of that particular employment.

Jones and Dolgin write:

"The Portus and Rhodes show that on this day [9 March] Eddie Lyons and Jim Bowling were working on a sewage farm in Skelmersdale in Lancaster. However, the work on the site was held up as they were waiting for materials to arrive. As was the practice at Portus and Rhodes, the two electricians were redeployed to help with existing jobs."

Hold the phone.

This does NOT truly agree with what is now being claimed by Caroline Brown. There is no timesheet for Lyons for Monday and we are told that the job at Skelmersdale was suspended on the previous Friday, not on Monday the 9th, so claiming Lyons was 'redeployed' on Monday comes across as inadvertently misleading--the result of a muddle of speculation and assumption.

As I have posted many times previously, the timesheets show that the work at Skem carried on until the end of play on Saturday 7th March 1992, and didn't resume until Friday 13th, but for once without Eddie, so I don't know where Chris got the idea that anyone was working at Skem 'on this day [9 March]'. To my knowledge Chris has not seen the unpublished P&R timesheets and if he had, he'd have seen that the only work done on 9th was the job for Paul Dodd.

The fact is no one really has any idea where Lyons was for the entire week of March 9-13th, his name not appearing on any other work order, and the most logical conclusion is that he had been laid off the previous Friday when the job was suspended and what we have is a muddle of bad memories after the period of many years. According to C.A.B., Rhodes admitted that Lyons' whereabouts that week was a mystery. He's AWOL.

The 'mystery' wasn't that Eddie was missing from the Battlecrease timesheets that week. Colin Rhodes himself told Keith it was plausible that he had sent him to help out on that job. The suggestion didn't even come from Keith, who was prepared to accept that if Eddie wasn't on the timesheet, he wasn't there. The mystery was why Eddie's name was absent from the Skem timesheets from 13th March when that job resumed and was still absent when it was completed. His name appears with Jim Bowling's on every previous Skem timesheet, back from 7th March 1992 to December 1991. Colin could think of no plausible explanation for this.

More corrections to come regarding the heater installation in June 1992....