Acquiring A Victorian Diary

[David Orsam]

Has Doreen ever been asked what Mike said to her during the first two telephone calls?

Presumably she is the source of the comment in Inside Story that Mike described 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? Or was that information all extracted from the letter of 10th March?

TO KEITH SKINNER

Now that Chelsea have given up on a Top Four finish, and you don't need to think about football again until next season, can I draw your attention to the above questions....

[James_J]

Evening all - just passing this along from KS

TO DAVID ORSAM

Everything continuing to go to plan at Stamford Bridge. Conte, true sportsman to the last, just wanting to give a little bit of edge and excitement to the top of the premier league, (plus a little encouragement and hope to Spurs), by easing back on Chelsea’s position – otherwise it all just becomes too easy and monotonous if they keep on winning game after game. It’s why they didn’t really make a big issue out of Morata’s disallowed goal yesterday when he was clearly onside.

Your question not forgotten about – as with all others. Over the last few days I’ve been slowly trawling through all 1200 posts in this thread, making notes of points which require clarification plus questions asked of me to which I need to respond. Some of them I have been able to immediately reply to because my reference material and relevant files are to hand but I don’t want to spin away from posts like, for example, R.J’s, where he has opened up discussion areas that need drilling into and resolved – otherwise they remain unfinished business.

I have though, I must admit, enjoyed a brief diversion discussing the October 14th 1896 letter on a different thread – and am grateful for it – because it enabled me to note a tiny point which I had overlooked about the original name of the Crime (Black) Museum at New Scotland Yard. (But I don’t want to derail this thread!)

Best, KS

[John G]

I think I'm finally getting the hang of this.

Mike was too stupid to write the diary while Anne was too clever.

She would never have written "Frequented my club" with a straight face because she was too sensible and competent! Mind you, what does being sensible and competent have to do with it?

In her voicemail message of 31 July 1994, we find that Anne said this:

"I think it was in 1968/69 I seen the Diary for the first time."

AND

"I never seen Tony again."

AND

"I seen Paul the other day..."

Not so sensible and competent as to be able to speak English properly, it seems. But perhaps she did not say those words with "a straight face".

Hello David,

Well, I must confess, I don't always use the Queen's English when speaking to people! But seriously, surely she must have had reasonable written skills, otherwise how was she able to hold down a job as a secretary for several years? Not to mention the tidying- up of Mike's articles!

By the way, is there any evidence that Mike actually wrote the Diary, apart from the fact that he said he did? Is there any evidence that he purchased the guardbook, apart from tge fact that he said he did?

[Sam Flynn]

In her voicemail message of 31 July 1994, we find that Anne said this:

"I think it was in 1968/69 I seen the Diary for the first time."

AND

"I never seen Tony again."

AND

"I seen Paul the other day...".

Does not "I seen" crop up in the diary itself?

[Darryl Kenyon]

Didn't David Canter read the diary as if it was genuine ? IE didn't look for 20'th century phrases in a 19'th century document etc. But reviewed it as written by a psychopath who might be capable of murder. I am sure if any enterprising journalist wrote a document about killing fallen women they might be considered a psychopath as well.

[Abby Normal]

Does not "I seen" crop up in the diary itself?

That’s a good question sam.

If it does, that should really put the final nail in the cofffin that this thing was written by MB and his wife.

[caz]

Anyone who thinks going to the lavatory is purely private affair has obviously never used a public convenience, even though they are everywhere. There is usually one in every public house and, for men, there's usually a urinal involved which is one of the least private ways of going to the toilet that exists.

Yeah, I was thinking more about the actual function being private, at least for ladies, rather than the public entering and exiting of the 'smallest room' itself.

Now I'm not aware there is a shred of evidence that Mike ever visited the toilet in the Saddle, for example. No doubt if he did, people in the pub saw him going in and, as he entered, he would have walked past people coming out, he would have stood next to others at the urinal (and at the sink if he washed his hands) and then walked past others coming in as he left. All in public view. It would be ludicrous to argue that Mike never went to the toilet in the Saddle on the basis that there is not a shred of evidence he ever did so.

But as you've just observed, anyone using the Saddle when Mike was there, having his regular lunchtime pint or two on days when his daughter attended the primary school opposite, would no doubt have seen him popping off to the gents and coming back to the bar on numerous occasions. That would be evidence that he frequented the gents at the Saddle. The evidence for what he actually did - or produced - while in there is somewhat immaterial.

It's equally ludicrous to argue that he didn't do any research on the basis that there is not a shred of evidence he visited any libraries or bookshops.

I didn't argue that he didn't do any, David, prior to March 1992. I don't know that any more than you know he did. I suggested that if he was frequenting libraries and bookshops between, say, 1990 and 1992, for whatever purpose, he'd have been seen entering and exiting and doing whatever he was doing there, and very possibly been spoken to and helped with his enquiries, unless he kept his head down and avoided everyone. That would have been good evidence that he was there, if only someone had remembered seeing or speaking to anyone resembling the man in the 1993 video, for example. Same thing with the O&L auction. If only someone there at the end of March 1992 had remembered a man and a guardbook, looking suspiciously like Mike Barrett and his diary the following year.

Anyone can walk into a public library, it's usually very quiet in there and everyone else is concentrating on what they are writing or reading themselves. Most visitors are, for all intents and purposes, invisible. You just don't get remembered by others. But even if you did, so what? Thousands of people might remember Mike Barrett going into libraries and bookshops, or even speaking to him in there, but it means nothing unless you ask them. And they might not know his name so you'd have to show them a photograph. That's if you can find them first! How would you even know who they are? Librarians might be found but do they remember everyone who has ever been in their libraries? Of course not.

I know all that, David. And while it's perfectly reasonable to argue that Mike could have spent hours, days or even weeks in such places, asking all sorts of related questions and referring to all kinds of related books, with no bugger ever making a connection between him and the diary, which became a best seller and which he would later claim to have faked himself, none of this argues for Mike ever actually having set a blessed foot in a library or bookshop before March 1992, to look up either JtR or the Maybrick case. You have to use pure speculation to put him there.

And Mike might have taken notes but as we know of the ones that certainly did exist, he's destroyed them.

Yes, he blundered there, if he could have used them to support his January 1995 affidavit. Seems he couldn't even remember the sources he must have used for the empty tin match box and the Grand National detail, among others. It's a recurring theme, isn't it, this destruction of any material evidence of his creative involvement with the demon diary, followed by the destruction of his memory through the demon drink. If he had once been so careful to get rid of any incriminating evidence, I bet he thanked his lucky stars when he realised at the beginning of 1995 that he still had the little red diary to fall back on!

I could go on but all this is to state the bleedin' obvious so it's impossible to understand why I'm even wasting time posting it.

If you can't even understand your own reasons for wasting your time on this, I'm not sure how well equipped you are to understand Mike's reasons for doing or saying anything - least of all his reasons for wasting his time on an enquiry for 'a diary' - any size of any diary, singular - for any year from 1880 to 1890, with at least 20 blank pages, when the diary text covers early 1888 to May 1889, has only one dated entry - the last - and would never have fitted into 20 pages of two little red diaries for the right years.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Hi Caz,

I was thinking in advance of the job. However, something else has occurred to me to explain a possible coincidence. Perhaps Mike heard a rumour tgat something had been discovered at Battlecrease, or at least that there was work going on there. Assuming he was responsible for the hoax, he may have been thinking about phoning the agent for some time and this incident focussed his mind and gave him the impetuous to make the call. In these circumstances, there would be no substantive connection between the Battlecrease "discovery" and the call to Doreen.

Mind you, that seems a bit convoluted!

Hi John,

Not to mention the fact that Mike appeared to stagger back in amazement the following Spring, when Paul Dodd was talking about work having been done on the house. Why the reaction, if he knew this already and it had prompted his call to Doreen? And why spend the rest of his life denying any connection with the house?

My hunch is that Mike would never have made the call when he did, if he had known or suspected that the diary had been nicked that very morning, let alone if he'd known where it was nicked from, the history of that house and its undeniable connection with what was inside the old book.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Hallo David,

But surely it's incumbent on the person making the assertion to provide the proof, or at least evidence. Surely to simply argue that Mike carried out the research on the basis that there's no evidence he didn't is, ultimately, reductio ad absurdum.

Wish I'd said that.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Hello John
But it is full of spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. As to factual errors, there are very few facts in the diary to begin with; note even dates. This in itself may be significant, as I believe that a more competent and well-briefed hoaxer would surely have included them.

Personally, I find the diary very poorly written and superficially researched to boot.

Hi Gareth,

But getting the chronology right, for the real James Maybrick and the known murders, would surely have been easier if the entries had been dated in accordance with the various sources of information used. As it is, I don't think our diarist did a bad job of committing "Sir Jim's" personal thoughts to paper without using dates, but still making the chronology work.

It seems that with every post of yours the diary becomes more and more like the work of a barely literate teenager. At this rate it will soon dip below the standard we might have expected if Mike Barrett really had composed any of the text!

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Sorry, "NOT even dates". Predictive text strikes again.

A likely story, Gareth.

Love,

Caz
X

[Sam Flynn]

A likely story, Gareth.

I'm pretty ham fistbump with this phone, Caz!

PS, it really did suggest "fistbump" instead of "fisted" there, so I left it in. I haven't the faintest idea what a fistbump is, and I don't want to know either

[Abby Normal]

I'm pretty ham fistbump with this phone, Caz!

PS, it really did suggest "fistbump" instead of "fisted" there, so I left it in. I haven't the faintest idea what a fistbump is, and I don't want to know either

don't worry sam its nothing salacious. its like a high five, except with closed fist.

[rjpalmer]

Didn't Ryan himself fail to recognise his own book as a likely source for the diary?

Hi Caz. Of course he did. And, if memory serves, Martin Fido also dismissed the possibility that his book could have supplied the necessary police inventory list, and the good folks at L & O quickly dismissed the possibility that their auction house could have supplied Barrett with the scrapbook, and Alec Voller dismissed Diamine as the ink used by the hoaxers. The lesson learned? No one wants to believe their own pride and joy could possibly be associated with a hoax. But that, in itself, doesn't change the facts. Ryan is all Barrett needed, so John G's strange suggestion that MB would have spent hours & hours down at the Liverpool Library with a blinking neon light over his head reading "Hey Everybody! Please take note! I'm researching a future hoax! Remember this if it should ever come up again' remains a rather strange line of investigation.

Barrett mentions his use of 'Ryan' in the Alan Gray tapes. Tape No. 1, to be specific. But Gray was no Ripperologist, and no student of the Maybrick case, so it sailed straight over the top of his head, which is a pity.

But, speaking of Mr. Gray, I am deeply grateful for something Keith has recently posted over on Howard's site.

For years, my dear Caz, you have been stating that Barrett hired Alan Gray "to help him prove he forged the Diary." And I think it is fair to say that Keith has sometimes left this same impression.

But here's Keith's comment on Feb 6, 2018th:

"Mike had intially employed Alan Gray to find the whereabouts of Anne and Caroline after they left him."

Thank you! Thank you, Keith, for confirming the point I've been trying to make for 15 years! Barrett did not hire Gray to help him prove he forged the Diary, he hired him to find the whereabouts of his family, and the rest developed from there. Do you think the distinction might be important?

I want to reprint something I wrote years ago:

"Please refer to Shirley's Blake edition; there you'll find reprinted a letter from [Alan] Gray to Barrett. One can glean from this letter that Gray was attempting to secure a publisher in order to sell Barrett's confession. This puts things in an entirely different light. In other words, Barrett's genuine [complete and full] confession could have been contingent on finding a paying publisher."

[rjpalmer]

Hi Keith, I'm wondering if you could help me with my math. In regards to Gray, you also recently wrote:

"After 4 years of achieving nothing except an unpaid bill for over £3000, Alan Gray concluded that Mike Barrett did not write the diary but that it was probably the joint endeavour of Tony Devereux and Anne Graham. "

Let's tread carefully.

As the political pundits like to say, the first time Barrett "went off message" was in late June, 1994, when he confessed to the Liverpool Daily Post. "How I Faked the Ripper Diary" is published on June 27, 1994. No details are given.

Barrett's subsequent sworn affidavit popularly known as his "confession" was signed on January 5, 1995.

Six months later. During much of those six months Barrett was incapacitated.

So, couldn't we argue that your "four year" time span is a little misleading, and that the Gray's efforts really only amounted to six months, during a time that Barrett was going thru rehab, alcohol treatment, and other personal challenges? 6 months seems like a fairly brief window to unravel the great mystery compared to the 25 years invested by other investigators, so I don't quite follow what you are attempting to imply with this statement.

I've also did a brief look at the current prices of hiring a private investigator in the UK. I'm seeing quotes of £150-£200 an hour. What the 1995 rates were I have no idea, but to make the math easy let's knock it all the way down to £30/hr. That means Barrett's £3000 would have got him 100 hours of investigation. Yes, I heard the tapes, or at least some of them, and I don't think Gray would have gotten too far in 100 hours. He would have needed to make several runs the corner shop for something for his headache. But let's say a gumshoe works 50 hours a week, so, two weeks work in total equals the £3000, does it not?

And whether Gray "achieved nothing" depends on who you ask. That he ended up still believing it was a recent hoax is not exactly a ringing endorsement for your provenance. Best wishes.