Acquiring A Victorian Diary

[erobitha]

I don't think there is any credible evidence that Lyons even worked that day and it's probable that he's just the victim of malicious rumors.

Except his own testimony that he was there that day.

[rjpalmer]

I don't think there is any credible evidence that Lyons even worked that day and it's probable that he's just the victim of malicious rumors.

[Scott Nelson]

It could be that Lyons didn't steal anything, he just went into the Saddle with a story he just heard.

[rjpalmer]

We are told that Paul Dodd recalls a conversation with Rigby who was worried that he might be implicated in theft and volunteered information that Bowling and Lyons knew something about it.

But where is this recorded? Where do we find out where Paul Dodd has said this?

How do we know it's not someone on this forum misremembering something?

Where is the evidence?

Rhetorical question.

Is Paul Feldman's account in The Final Chapter even credible?

I have my doubts.

Years ago, I heard from people who had met Feldman (Stewart Evans & Martin Fido) that he was infamous for jumping to conclusions. Even Feldman's own book seemingly confirms this. His brain was going a hundred miles an hour while the actual evidence was limping along at fifty metres an hour.

So how do I know that Feldman is accurately quoting Lyons from memory when Lyons supposedly said, "What is my confession worth?"

The only source for this is Feldman, and he's not the most reliable person who ever lived.

Could Feldman have misconstrued what Lyons actually meant or said?

Feldman's account on pages 148-150 doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense. It was his FIRST contact --the bloke who called his home phone number--who had been acting as a sort of amateur detective and who claimed he had information for Feldman. He didn't want his name used. However, he was willing to go on video tape--as long as his name wasn't used----which is odd. Wouldn't the other electricians have known him by sight when the video tape eventually aired? He then worries Feldman by going on & on about how much money he will receive for this interview. This is the bloke who (to me) seems like he was in it for the money.

It wasn't until several weeks later that Feldman calls up the second electrician--the one being accused (obviously Eddie Lyons)--- who doesn't actually admit to anything. He then (according to Feldman) said "What is my confession worth?"

That's all we hear about his conversation. And Feldman is the only source.

Feldman then jumps to the conclusion that the two men were in cahoots, but is this likely?

It's a fairly bizarre suggestion, isn't it?

Why would someone agree to be anonymously accused of theft and also agree to confess to theft? Why would anyone think such a plan would work--and that he would receive money instead of a visit from the police?

It's far-fetched as hell and it's coming from the same guy who believed that Mike & Anne weren't Mike & Anne but were connected to MI5. So, my apologies if I'm skeptical.

In short, I now have doubts about the accuracy of Feldman's original account. Paul Dodd also believed an electrician tried to shakedown Feldman, but he could only have gotten this belief from Feldman himself. And the money grubber appears to have been the FIRST electrician---not the second one.

Meanwhile, Chris Jones describes a friendly and a cooperative Eddie Lyons. He even allowed his picture to be included in his book. He found Lyons denials plausible and believable.

That's strange behavior and incompatible (in my view) with what is being implied about him.

I can't "square" this cooperative behavior with Lyons stealing The Diary of Jack the Ripper. I can't even square it with an attempt to shake-down Paul Feldman. If he had been up to nefarious deeds 30 years ago, why wouldn't he just tell today's diary researchers to take a hike?

He's cooperative--Anne Graham isn't.

That should be worth something.

So, in conclusion, how do I know that Lyons wasn't being wrongly accused by a coworker who wouldn't even give his name, and Feldman jumped to the wrong conclusion that the two men were in cahoots?

That makes more sense to me than Feldman's conspiracy theory.

RP

[rjpalmer]

Old Message from Keith Skinner:

Passing this on from KS :-


TO DAVID ORSAM

Thank you for your initial thoughts and observations David which raise the same questions that have occurred to me.

On the memo of March 10th 1992, I’m not sure what FAMOUS CRIMES publication Mike is referring to? THE MURDERERS’ WHO’S WHO is Gaute and Odell which contains an entry on Jack The Ripper along with entries on maybe a couple of hundred other cases. You say these are three relevant books for Doreen to read, (I think Doreen is suggesting Shirley reads them!) and certainly the Wilson and Odell book is relevant for a comparatively in depth study and overview of the Ripper case. The other two, (FAMOUS CRIMES as of yet unidentified) and THE MURDERERS’ WHO’S WHO would both (presumably) give, background reading about Jack The Ripper. Definitely the MURDERER’S WHO’S WHO does. What is an unknown, however, is whether Mike Barrett gave the name of ‘James Maybrick’ to Doreen Montgomery on either March 9th/March 10th 1992?

As far as I can tell, the only 'Famous Crimes' book that Mike could have meant was Famous Crimes by the well-known crime writer William Roughead (Faber & Faber, 1931)

I've recently acquired a copy of the book and have it in front of me.

The book covers ten murder cases, mostly from the Victorian era.

Four of these, which taken together make up nearly half the book, are famous British poisoning cases (Dr. Pritchard; the Charles Bravo case; the Adelaide Bartlett case; Christina Gilmour, another arsenic case where she is said to have killed her husband with arsenic).

"Marry in haste, repent with arsenic."

Four times Roughead briefly discusses the Maybrick case, comparing it to the Bartlett case on p. 202-203, and again on p. 235. On pg. 52 he mentions the Maybrick case reference to Justice Stephen.

There is only one very brief mention of Jack the Ripper (circa 1889), easily missed, and which I will give now in its entirety. This is on pg. 245, in a chapter dedicated to the Arran murder of 1889, which if you recall, involved a man named Laurie.

Roughead writes:


"It is difficult to see what induced Laurie to write these letters. He seems to have lost his head at finding himself the subject of such much popular attention which, that August, was divided between himself, Mrs. Maybrick, and 'Jack the Ripper,' whose mysterious crimes were horrifying humanity."


This is the book's only reference to the Whitechapel murders, and as you see, it is also in reference to Florence Maybrick.

In conclusion, it seems to me that in recommending Roughead's book to Doreen Montgomery, which seems to be the case, Barrett was pointing out is relevance to Florence Maybrick; that is, the similarity of her alleged crime to four other famous British poisoning cases, including cases that involved or allegedly involved, arsenic.

By contrast, I can't see where any of the cases discussed are relevant to Jack the Ripper or the crimes of 1888, which, at any rate, would have been covered extensively by Wilson and Odell's book.

I would submit that Mike's recommendation shows that he was aware that Maybrick was the alleged author of the diary.

Further, though this is entirely my own speculation, recommending this book it would allow Mike to offer some relevant background reading without tipping-off that he was also aware of the books by Ryan, Moreland, Christie, etc., if indeed he was.

Maybe it's not too late to ask Shirley Harrison if she was aware of Roughead's book. She does mention the Adelaide Bartlett case in The Diary of Jack the Ripper, but Roughead is not listed as a source in her bibliography.

Yours truly,

RP

[Abby Normal]

Hello again, Ike,

If my last post was cruelly blunt, I apologize, but the hour is late; the grains are nearly gone from the hourglass; the spring has lost its tension; the wick has grown short; the oil is gone from the bowl, and the flame is sputtering. It is time we are candid with each other. The earth itself is giving up the ghost. The polar icecaps are melting, the last of the elephants and giraffes are dying, the soil is eroding, mankind has overbred and over evolved and the tribalism that is now on the rise will only intensify as impoverished people continue to flood into Europe and North America. This is endgame. It’s been fun, but our mutual hobby doesn’t really matter one iota in the grand scheme of things and the future is not going to be a pleasant place. History is over. It is dead.

The few people scattered around the globe who still believe in the authenticity of the Maybrick Diary are not stupid. To the contrary, they are highly intelligent. Alas, intelligence often doesn’t help us and may even betray us. If you don’t believe me, read the following article when you have a slack moment.

https://www.newyorker.com/tech/frontal-cortex/why-smart-people-are-stupid

Quite probably there was no more intellectually gifted student of the Whitechapel Murders case than Colin Wilson, yet Wilson believed in some of the most incredibly barmy notions, including Krafft-Ebing and the authenticity of the Maybrick Diary. I have come to suspect that the urge to believe is largely genetic, just as ‘skepticism’ is largely genetic. They both served an evolutionary purpose, and both have their downside. In short, we think we are rational, but we aren’t. From your point of view, the disbelievers of the Maybrick Diary are intelligent people with blinders on, who think they are far cleverer than they are; from the point of view of the skeptics, the roles are reversed. The sad part is that neither of us has much capacity of knowing who is right or wrong, as per Dr. Kahneman in the article above.

My advice? Take Anne Graham out, feed her a good dinner, buy her a pint, and ask her very nicely and politely and sympathetically to tell, for the first time, what actually happened. Quite probably she won’t tell you, because the answer is too embarrassing, but it’s worth a shot.

By the way, in case you are wondering who the Ripper was, let me tell you. You won’t believe me, but I will tell you anyway. Nearly all the experts were wrong, and most dismissed him as an utterly ridiculous suspect, even, I think, Lord Orsam, Melvin Harris, Stephen Ryder, Keith Skinner, Paul Begg, Sir Robert Anderson, Donald Swanson, John Douglas, David Radka, Kim Rossmo, Christer Holmgren, Tim Riordan, Phil Sugden, Trevor Marriott, and nearly every other intelligent observer of the case, etc etc ad infinitum. He was a middle-aged Irish conman named Frank Tumilty who had come to the end of his tether. There is no doubt about it whatsoever, but not for the reasons anyone thinks or has suggested in the past. If you want to know why, throw your Ripper books in the garbage, study anthropology and primatology, and start to think clearly and honestly and very very very carefully about why things are the way they are, and why humans act in the way they act, even in their most appalling and delusional moments. It has to do with something we can’t see, because we are all too busy swimming in it. Good Luck.

PS. We are in a bubble. If you’re in, divest.

hi RJ
please expound on why you think Tumilty was the ripper? and why anthropology and primatology?
I for one haven't dismissed him and would really like to know your thoughts on it.

[Scott Nelson]

I didn't see a couple of middle fingers on those two icons, Herlock.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Happy New Year to you Ike and all in Diary Land.

[Iconoclast]

Addendum to the above. Actually, Swanson may have suspected the worse; Kosminski was probably just over-compensation. And my apologies for the misplace apostrophe in Post #1973. I, too, am stupid. Far more stupid than most.

Wow, Roger, you're supposed to be upbeat ahead of the New Year (unless you're a Newcastle United fan of course). I'm worried about you. Polar ice-caps? Global warming? The earth is giving up the ghost? You need a bit more eggnog and a brighter Christmas jumper, mate! Ho ho ho and all that, man.

Anyway, I thought your posts were very entertaining and insightful. I will most certainly Google the Irish fellow of which you speak. Hey you may be right - yes, the ice-caps are melting, the globe is getting warmer, and the earth is probably giving up the ghost. But James Maybrick wasn't Jack the Ripper? That's a step too far …

My most heartfelt good wishes for 2020 for you, Lord Lucifus Orsam, and all of my avid readers. Oh, and the other 99.9% of the Casebook, of course.

Ike

[rjpalmer]

Addendum to the above. Actually, Swanson may have suspected the worse; Kosminski was probably just over-compensation. And my apologies for the misplace apostrophe in Post #1973. I, too, am stupid. Far more stupid than most.

[rjpalmer]

Hello again, Ike,

If my last post was cruelly blunt, I apologize, but the hour is late; the grains are nearly gone from the hourglass; the spring has lost its tension; the wick has grown short; the oil is gone from the bowl, and the flame is sputtering. It is time we are candid with each other. The earth itself is giving up the ghost. The polar icecaps are melting, the last of the elephants and giraffes are dying, the soil is eroding, mankind has overbred and over evolved and the tribalism that is now on the rise will only intensify as impoverished people continue to flood into Europe and North America. This is endgame. It’s been fun, but our mutual hobby doesn’t really matter one iota in the grand scheme of things and the future is not going to be a pleasant place. History is over. It is dead.

The few people scattered around the globe who still believe in the authenticity of the Maybrick Diary are not stupid. To the contrary, they are highly intelligent. Alas, intelligence often doesn’t help us and may even betray us. If you don’t believe me, read the following article when you have a slack moment.

https://www.newyorker.com/tech/frontal-cortex/why-smart-people-are-stupid

Quite probably there was no more intellectually gifted student of the Whitechapel Murders case than Colin Wilson, yet Wilson believed in some of the most incredibly barmy notions, including Krafft-Ebing and the authenticity of the Maybrick Diary. I have come to suspect that the urge to believe is largely genetic, just as ‘skepticism’ is largely genetic. They both served an evolutionary purpose, and both have their downside. In short, we think we are rational, but we aren’t. From your point of view, the disbelievers of the Maybrick Diary are intelligent people with blinders on, who think they are far cleverer than they are; from the point of view of the skeptics, the roles are reversed. The sad part is that neither of us has much capacity of knowing who is right or wrong, as per Dr. Kahneman in the article above.

My advice? Take Anne Graham out, feed her a good dinner, buy her a pint, and ask her very nicely and politely and sympathetically to tell, for the first time, what actually happened. Quite probably she won’t tell you, because the answer is too embarrassing, but it’s worth a shot.

By the way, in case you are wondering who the Ripper was, let me tell you. You won’t believe me, but I will tell you anyway. Nearly all the experts were wrong, and most dismissed him as an utterly ridiculous suspect, even, I think, Lord Orsam, Melvin Harris, Stephen Ryder, Keith Skinner, Paul Begg, Sir Robert Anderson, Donald Swanson, John Douglas, David Radka, Kim Rossmo, Christer Holmgren, Tim Riordan, Phil Sugden, Trevor Marriott, and nearly every other intelligent observer of the case, etc etc ad infinitum. He was a middle-aged Irish conman named Frank Tumilty who had come to the end of his tether. There is no doubt about it whatsoever, but not for the reasons anyone thinks or has suggested in the past. If you want to know why, throw your Ripper books in the garbage, study anthropology and primatology, and start to think clearly and honestly and very very very carefully about why things are the way they are, and why humans act in the way they act, even in their most appalling and delusional moments. It has to do with something we can’t see, because we are all too busy swimming in it. Good Luck.

PS. We are in a bubble. If you’re in, divest.

[rjpalmer]

Hello Icon. Merry Christmas and season's greetings.

The ink was wet. No matter how many times you, Keith Skinner, and Caz Brown take to the boards, it won't counter the fact that Dr. David Baxendale, a document examiner with 20+ years experience, did a simple and foolproof test and found that the Diary's ink failed a solubility test. When he tested the Diary in 1992, the ink was not yet bonded with the paper. When Leeds repeated the test some 3 years later, it now "passed" the test. The only logical and commonsense explanation is that the diary's ink further "dried" over those issuing three years. Coupled with the various textual indications that the Diary is a modern fake, and the Barrett's attempt to purchase Victorian raw materials for a hoax, we have a modern forgery. The only real mystery left is whether Anne Graham was a willing participant in the scheme or whether she was badgered into helping Barrett with the hoax. I wish you a very happy and prosperous 2020. RP

[Iconoclast]

Happy Holidays.

Hi Roger,

I hope you enjoyed the Christmas break and that your Boxing Day inferno damaged no more than that which you had decided had no further value to you.

It is probably just as well that you have chosen (not for the first time this year) to distance yourself from the Maybrick drama as you are a born cynic (I don't mean this to be an insult - it's quacking away at me like a duck and I can't find an alternative, softer tone to convey my mistrust of your deeper intentions) and clearly nothing will ever sway you even slightly towards a positive view of the Victorian scrapbook. Neither a feather nor a hurricane, I venture.

It just doesn't matter how many copies of the scrapbook transcript there were. There could have been a thousand. A useful menu option on the old Amstrads - called 'Print', I think it was - allowed the user to print (hence the name) fresh copies of their documents. Another useful feature was a thing called 'editing' (shame it didn't catch on) which - when coupled with the 'print' option - allowed the user to change what they had originally typed and print out another version. The two versions were different - how it must have confused people back then!

Anyway, you could have a million versions. You could set a whole savanna of monkeys bashing away at a PCW 9512 for eternity and - as long as none of them bashed out a version of the Victorian scrapbook before it was written - it would matter not a statistical jot. Your challenge is not to show that there was a transcript, or even that there were two. Your challenge is to show that the transcript came before the scrapbook, and that neither you nor any other commentator has managed to achieve. Even Lord Orsam couldn't turn that square into a circle.

I like you Rog, old boy. I like your stiff-upper-lip quintessential British, slightly bombastic, certainly not always rational forays into the world of what you imagine to be an imaginary James Maybrick. But liking you is not enough to ignore the quacking of a duck.

I hope you stick around, by the way. You are like Lord O's lieutenant, and he clearly needs one now that he has resigned his commission. Cough cough.

I hope your Hogmanay is a roaring success. Here's an idea - if you haven't already done it - try printing out a thousand versions of this post and burning them on the big night. If Scotland gets cold again in the next couple of days, I might just do the same. By the way, Hogmanay sees Mrs Iconoclast's 27th anniversary of her most splendid marriage to Mr Iconoclast. See that 1992? I just don't seem to get away from it whichever way I turn …

Slainte

Ike

[rjpalmer]

The typescript certainly existed. Letters exchanged at the time among the participants in April/May 1992 make reference to it.

JM

There are few things more pleasant on Christmas Eve than sipping a glass of eggnog while poking at a fire in the grate. This year I used the dying embers to good advantage, burning my 'Maybrick' notes and papers.

As I peeled the sheets onto the lapping flames, one print-out caught my eye, because it referred to a subject that Keith Skinner, Lord Orsam, and I were discussing before we went our separate ways earlier this year: the mysterious 'typescript' of the Diary, produced by the Barretts--a document often mentioned, but never released for public inspection. The papers I was destroying were several excepts taken from the old message boards, the first by Martin Fido, posted some 18 years ago:

Author: Martin Fido

Thursday, 12 April 2001 - 04:02 pm

"For all those who may not know why Paul refers to '1992': when we started 'advising' we were sent transcripts of the diary first, and only subsequently
photocopies of the pages as they appeared in the album. The transcripts included spelling mistakes which suggested a fair copy from the original, idiosyncratic
misspellings and all, including the normal amount of typist's mistranscription and occasional difficulties in decyphering the writing. I assumed that this was a copy
made professionally at the behest of Doreen Montgomery or Robert Smith. As I understand it, the Anne and Michael story has always been that one of them-Anne I think-made the copy on the machine for Mike's benefit some time before Mike thought of publishing/selling it and the document was shown to Doreen. I never heard that circulating print-outs to interested parties was part of the Barretts' intention. It was supposed to play some part in Mike's research for the book Anne wanted him to write from it, or to be somehow associated with or useful in his supposed attempts to find out who the unnamed husband of Florie and master of Battlecrease were.”

Elsewhere, Martin writes:

“...I have yet to learn for certain that the transcript I have seen is definitely a print-out from the Barretts' Amstrad version...” (!)

I find it startling that 8 years after the Diary first surfaced, one of the original researchers, Martin F., was still uncertain whether this 'typescript' was the same document that was later found on the Barretts' Amstrad, and am even more amazed that 26+ years later, the answer is still unclear. But...whatever; it is a mystery unlikely ever to be answered. I have tried to unravel it, and have failed utterly.

Anyway, it was shortly after Martin's post that Robert Smith, the Diary's owner, made a rare appearance on the boards and gave what may be the only detailed description of this strange and mysterious document, although, sadly, his description was very brief, if tantalizing.


Robert Smith

Tuesday, 08 May 2001 - 06:10 am

“From time to time, I look at the boards and am surprised at the intensity of the debate on the Ripper diary some seven and a half years after publishing it. Usually I don’t think I can add much to the discussion, especially when the sound of axes being ground is often so deafening.

“But for once I would like to offer a few thoughts on some of the bones of contention being picked over.

1. The Transcript.

“A theory has been put forward that the transcript produced by the Barretts may have appeared on Mike’s word processor prior to the diary being written. However, there is plenty of internal evidence, that the producers of the transcript copied from the diary manuscript, rather than the other way around. For instance, many words correctly spelt in the diary are misspelt in the transcript.

“Take the very first line:

“Manuscript: what they have in store for them they would stop this instant.

Typescript: what I have in store for them they would stop this instance.

“There is another early example where "business" in the manuscript becomes "bussiness" in they typescript. In contrast, there are no correct spellings in the transcript, which are misspelt in the diary manuscript. Of course, there are some misspellings in the diary, like "rondaveau" and "poste", but they make it across to the transcript, without further deviation.”

Exit, Mr. Smith.

At the very least, this confirms what Keith wrote elsewhere: there are substantial differences between the Diary manuscript and the typescript. Given that Anne worked as a secretary it is somewhat strange that there would be so many transcription errors (if that is what they are!) in just the first page alone, and one wonders what others might exist within the 29 page document.

I'm also at a loss to understand why Fido and Smith were so certain the chicken came before egg, rather than the egg before the chicken, but I suppose that is another argument that will never be resolved. If it is self-evident that this is a genuine "fair copy," I am also at a loss as to why it has never been released. Yet another enigma is why there appears to have been two different and conflicting 'explanations' for this typescript having made the rounds: one, that it was created at the request of Crew; the second that it was made by Anne for Barrett's benefit, so he didn't need to lug the Diary around during his alleged "research." The explanation as to how a man could be researching a document that was underneath the floorboards of Mr. Dodd's house I will leave in the "capable hands of others."

Anyway, I fetched these burning excerpts from the fire in case they would be of interested to Lord O. Tonight they will cremated in celebration of Boxing Night.

Happy Holidays.

[Abby Normal]

he couldn't have died from the poison, as he was found still clutching the casho.. uh sandwich in his hand.