Acquiring A Victorian Diary

[caz]

Hi caz. One last post. Here's one I don't think you and I have ever discussed. Mike again, January 5, 1995.

"When this Diary arrived in the post I decided it was of no use, it was very small. My wife is now in possession of this Diary in fact she asked for it specifically recently when I saw her at her home address XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX."

Yes, it's Mike, and must be accepted with utmost caution, but Keith did, in fact, retrieve the worthless diary from Anne's house a short time later. So, if Barrett isn't lying, why is Anne asking him for it before his January 5th confession?

I was wondering about this myself, rj, and I have no answer for you. The fact that Anne willingly handed it over to Keith, with enough information for him to trace its purchase, and eventually the advert put in on Mike's behalf, would suggest she wasn't trying to conceal or tamper with any evidence. As David concedes, she could hardly have been still in the dark about its original purpose, if she knew Mike had been looking for something to house their forgery around the time it would have plopped through their letter box.

Assuming she was aware [via Feldman, Doreen or Shirley] that Mike had been heavily into his campaign to 'expose the fraud' throughout the second half of 1994, by claiming inside knowledge of it [his discovery of the Crashaw quote being the most obvious example], is it possible she wanted to keep the red diary safe from tampering by Mike, aware that he may still have it and knowing he might use anything he could lay his hands on to help him do so? It seems to have backfired because Mike very shortly afterwards introduced the red diary for the first time into his forgery claims. Was this just one more of those odd little coincidences, or was it Anne's recent request for it, which reminded him of its existence and gave him the idea to use it in a 'light bulb' moment? If he was already preparing to do so, when Anne decided to ask for it, why on earth would he have parted with it? Has the obvious been staring us in the face here? Did the usefulness of this little red herring only dawn on him after he'd handed it over to Anne?

And even stranger, if she asked for it, and ultimately came to possess it, why on earth did Mike hand it over, if this could be a worthwhile exhibit in his "desperate" attempt to prove the diary was a forgery?

Exactly, rj, which is why I wonder if this only occurred to him when he had already handed it over and started thinking about it again, for the first time since Anne had thrown that cheque at him in May 1992.

May I ask what your answer is?

Love,

Caz
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[caz]

Only just noticed this when RJ posted the above extract from Mike's affidavit. Yet another diaryism.

E.g.

"They will suffer just as I"

"It is I that should question him"

"they deserve that at least from I"

"it is the whoring bitch to blame not I"

Hi David,

All from the same post by rj;

I made reference on Tape that the hatred between Ann Barrett and I must stop.

much to my regret but at the time I did not know what to do.

The letter from Gray quoted in Shirley's book (Blake) clearly eludes to a confession-for-profit scheme, so if Barrett decided to stop drip feeding his confession to Gray, it hardly surprises me, since Gray couldn't offer him anything like what he could have made off the Diary.

The misuse of 'I' is jarring, but fits with "Sir Jim's" massive ego and minuscule awareness of proper English.

The word 'regret' also features a lot in the diary, but which came first - the diary or Mike's turns of phrase as documented after its emergence?

I seem to recall you have argued more than once that comparing any of Mike's literary efforts from after 1992 with the diary [such as Professor Canter's experiment, inviting Mike to write something in the style of the diary], was a useless exercise, and that we need examples of his use of English from before 1992, before we can say with any authority [as Melvin Harris did] that he didn't have 'the capacity'. Does that not also apply to Mike's many documented 'diaryisms', which might reasonably have been the result of his claustrophobic relationship with the diary after March 1992, living and breathing it day and night if only to meet his contractual obligations to Shirley to help with her research for the book? Would he not inevitably have picked up some of the more repetitive words and phrases and used them in everyday conversation?

When Mike taunted Alan Gray in 1998 with: "Ha ha ha, I give my name to history, what love can do to a gentleman born" [sic], which impressed Gray so much he finally said he was "going now before I kick the **** out of you", was this evidence of Mike's voice in the diary, or the diary's malign influence on Mike?

What do you make of rj's use of 'eludes' to mean 'alludes', while the diarist makes the opposite blunder towards the end, when the courage to take his life 'alludes' him?

Is rj too influenced by the diary's eccentric use of English, or did he have a hand in it?

Love,

Caz
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[caz]

A number of explanations for Mike's confessions have been given, none of them particularly credible...

1. One early explanation is that Mike was simply drunk...

2. Anne Graham's explanation. Anne's explanation for Barrett's original confession in July, 1994 was that Mike was trying to get 'at her,' for leaving him. Okay. Jealousy is a motive, it might be worth a look. But it still seems a bit iffy. Why get 'at her' by cutting his own throat?

Hi rj,

It is sadly all too common for husbands who have been dumped to lash out in irrational ways which include self destruction. At least in the case of Mike, Anne and Caroline, the harm done was mainly to the diary and to Mike himself.

3. Mike hated Feldman...

...But again, Mike is going against his own self-interest. Wasn't there some other way to get at Feldman besides derailing the diary and his own potential earnings? The old tried-and-true method of punching him in the nose or keying his car?

But how would that have helped, if Mike had got it into his befuddled head, as he seems to have done, that Feldman and his ex wife were now working together towards making a film which aimed to prove that his daughter was a direct descendant of Jack the Ripper?

1. Mike Barrett affidavit #1. 5 January 1995. "There is little doubt in my mind that I have been hoodwinked or if you like conned myself. My inexperience in the Publishing game has been my downfall, whilst all around me are making money, it seems that I am left out of matters, and my Solicitors are now engaged in litigation. I have even had bills to cover expenses incurred by the author of the book, Shirley Harrison."

It seems to me that the problem here was Mike's inability to understand his own contractual obligations to share with Shirley both the research for the book and all the expenses along the way, which ended up including hefty legal costs incurred in its tortuous journey to publication. When he received the royalty statements, and compared the gross amount with what he actually received after all those deductions, he assumed he was being mightily stuffed by Smith and Harrison, who he imagined were laughing all the way to the bank. Add that to the stuffing he had received from Anne and Feldman combined and you have a recipe for revenge against everyone concerned. He may well have thought by that point that he could kiss any fat future royalty cheques goodbye if he was being conned by all those holding the purse strings. If he didn't have a great grasp of the financial considerations, he'd have felt out of his depth and helpless in addition to his domestic misery.

Does this make any sense to you, rj? That if he believed he was being conned out of his rightful share of diary money, and was being shafted by Feldman and Anne over the diary itself, he might just as well bow to the big guns who were shouting "Fake!" and "Fraud!" and walk away with something - a big two fingers up to 'em all for having conned those who were now conning him, with a diary he had written himself - with Anne's help of course, just to rub salt in their collective wounds.

Love,

Caz
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[rjpalmer]

What do you make of rj's use of 'eludes' to mean 'alludes', while the diarist makes the opposite blunder towards the end, when the courage to take his life 'alludes' him?

You might as well get it straight from the donkey's mouth, caz. As I've said before, I wasn't born with the spelling gene (more of a numbers bloke) and when I'm lazy, mad, or have had a pint, I tend to 'go phonetic.' If what I've heard in the Alan Gray tapes is correct, the beer cans were flying, so it is entirely possible that laziness, anger, and/or intoxication may have all come into play during the creation of the diary's text. Pretty simple. By the way, I have a special present for you the day you correct the odd grammatical/spelling/typographical/logical errors of the "diary" friendly folk. I can't help but notice that these sly observations are solely reserved for the skeptics among us. I'll have to start examining your posts with a more critical eye. Have a good day again.

[rjpalmer]

By the way, caz. Your comments in post #1383 are entirely irrelevant. It makes no difference whatsoever if Barrett understood his contract. It makes no difference if he was justified or not in feeling screwed by the publishers. It only matters--and this is undeniable--that Mike BELIEVED that he was being screwed. It was two and a half years since he had brought the diary to London and he is being told that the royalty cheques are "in the mail." If he's a good boy they may even arrive by the summer of 1995. All that matters is that Barrett is as mad as a hornet, feels "hoodwinked," and this gives him a motive for "going off message" and dropping hints about the true origins of the diary. The other key point is that he is CONFLICTED. The myth that he was desperately helping Gray to prove the Diary a fake does not take into consideration that he was playing both sides for himself. There is still a chance for a jolly pay day if the film is made. Mike admits in his affidavit of 25 January 1995 that he is willing to play nice again if the money rolls in! What more evidence do you need to realize that his whole motivation is financial? He confesses, he retracts, he tests the waters, he drops hints. It's undeniable. As for Graham, she remains your biggest headache. Her sudden 'in the family for years' story in 1994 makes no sense in relation to the diary being stolen out of Battlecrease, but not for the reasons you think. If Barrett bought it off Eddy (and he didn't, it's a post 1991 hoax) she could have simply denied knowing anything about it, or merely said 'yup, my ex hubby stole it, but that has nothing to do with me. Go talk to him.' Instead--SHE DIGS HERSELF DEEPER-by claiming 'ownership' of the thing for herself. 'I've had it since the 1960s.' Now tell me, caz, why would she do that? Strange behavior unless Barrett's confession was a little too close to the truth for comfort.

[Hunter]

Good luck with that last question, Roger.

[rjpalmer]

No, Hunter, I don't suppose I will receive an answer. But I still have hopes that David might receive an answer about Eddie's missing time sheet.

I was wondering about this myself, rj, and I have no answer for you.

Maybe this will help, caz?

"It was about 1st week in December 1994 that my wife Anne Barrett visited me, she asked me to keep my mouth shut and that if I did so I could receive a payment of L20,000 before the end of the month. She was all over me and we even made love, it was all very odd because just as quickley (sic) as she made love to me she threatened me and returned to her old self. She insisted Mr Feldman was a very nice Jewish man who was only trying to help her. My wife was clearly under the influence of this man Feldman..."

Heaven forbid that I should suggest such a thing, but it sounds like Feldman is sending Graham over to influence Mike, and, as such, perhaps it might also be a rather convenient time to ask Mike if she might not retrieve her maroon diary? He then drops it off a day or two later.

This 'influencing session' was allegedly the '1st week,' of December. We know that the promised cheque for £20,000 doesn't arrive by month's end, because Mike is still raving about his royalty cheques. Five days later, Jan 5th, Mike fires his first volley over the bow of Feldman's boat by signing his first confessional affidavit. In that same affidavit he claims that Graham had recently re-acquired the maroon diary. Read between the lines. Funny how the chronology seems to work. Had I been part of Feldman's team, I wouldn't be too confident that Feldy was always playing it straight.

[David Orsam]

I wasn't aware of having "conceded" anything about Anne's knowledge of the red diary. What I have said was that there was no chance that she knew about the advertisement. Why would she? It was a tool used by Martin Earl to obtain rare and specialist books on behalf of clients. So she would never had had a clue that anything she said to anyone about the red diary would enable the advertisement to be traced. What we do know is that she gave an explanation about why Mike obtained the diary which we now know to be false.

[David Orsam]

I'm quite certain that I've never said anything about Professor Canter's supposed "experiment" because I know nothing about it. Inside Story tells us that Canter assigned one of his linguistic students to make a linguistic comparison between Barrett and the Diary but I don't know if this anything to do with Mike being invited to write something in the style of the Diary. I thought I had read that Mike had produced some pages claiming to have been additional pages from the Diary but as we've never been shown these pages I have never commented on it.

Perhaps Keith Skinner (now that Chelsea have scraped a rare victory against one of the bottom clubs) will come out of hiding and explain what actually happened.

[David Orsam]

The argument that Anne wouldn't possibly have dared made up a story about the provenance of the Diary because she was afraid that Mike might at any time prove that it was a forgery strikes me as double edged for anyone who believes that the Diary came from Battlecrease in March 1992.

For Mike could, at any time, have surely admitted that he received the Diary from Eddie Lyons and Eddie and other electricians could (with the blessing of Paul Dodd) have supported this story with who knows what proof. Perhaps they would have produced the biscuit tin and a gold ring too. Perhaps Eddie had covertly recorded his conversations with Mike. How would Anne ever have known what they had to prove it?

The fact of the matter is that every single criminal in the world and every single liar in the world takes RISKS. There is always a risk they will get caught or found out. The concept of risk seems alien to some as if no-one would ever forge a document or tell a lie if there was a risk of discovery but experience tells us that this is not how the world works.

[caz]

Hi Caz, I don't want to debate the accuracy of this statement, because I don't know enough about it. But the whole 'time sheet' thing strikes me as very odd, but perhaps I missed something. Because I don't get it. Here in the US we have something known as the 'Wage and Hour Board,' that insures that employers follow the labor laws, and the Board also arbitrates if there are any disputes over wages due to an employee. In the firm where I was employed for many years, I used to fill out the time sheets for 8 or 9 employees that worked under me, and it was very important to insure accuracy. Believe me, if any supervisor made a mistake, they heard about it from the head of Payroll. These records need to be precise. Further, I have a good friend who is in charge of payroll with another firm, and she constantly complains about having to correct the work of supervisors. It is a task of major importance to her and her boss to make sure everything is neat and clean. If, months or years later, there is a dispute about who worked what, the company needs to be able to demonstrate to the Wage and Hour Board that their records are accurate and can be trusted. Yet here, it seems as though Mr. Rhodes is "winging it." How would Eddie be correctly paid if his hours are not listed? And why does his job location even matter? Each employee has a time sheet and it lists the hours they worked and their pay rate. It's the only sane way of doing it. So what the heck is going on here? Were these sheets you are referring to made out for the benefit of billing Dodd for the labor costs on this particular project? Certainly Rhodes, or Rhodes's payroll secretary, could have produced a timesheet showing EXACTLY what hours Eddie worked on 9 March, 1992? If not, why not? It's all very mysterious.

Hi rj,

The time sheets Keith obtained were related to the job's location and description, and would appear to have been raised for the purpose of billing Paul Dodd for the hours worked [labour] and materials used. I will check the finer details when I get a chance, but IIRC Colin Rhodes, when speaking to Keith in 2004, explained there would originally have been daily working sheets for each employee too, which would have shown whether they had been allocated to a specific job, or were 'kicking their heels' in the office. In either case, Colin Rhodes would have been paying them a basic hourly rate, so he would sometimes ask them to help out on other jobs for an hour or two here or there, so he wouldn't be paying them for doing nothing, even though he wouldn't be billing the customer either for the extra labour.

I think James Johnston has these daily sheets down on his extensive 'to do' list, in case any may have survived. One thing that became apparent, when Colin handed over the Battlecrease and Skelmersdale time sheets to Keith, was that Eddie's final time sheet entry for the Skelmersdale contract was for Saturday, March 7th 1992, yet the contract had resumed on Friday, March 13th [following the scheduled Battlecrease job sandwiched in between, which had been allocated to Arthur Rigby and Jimmy Coufopoulos], with no further sign of Eddie. Colin was left scratching his head, because Eddie had only begun working for him in November 1991 and had been put on that job full time with Jim Bowling when it began in early December. They had worked solidly together there, right up to and including Saturday, March 7th, while others only worked on certain days or part days. It was a mystery to Colin why Eddie had suddenly gone AWOL before the job was finished, leaving Graham Rhodes with Jim Bowling to complete the work [with Alan Davies and Brian Rawes doing two hours each on Tuesday, March 17th].

What emerged was that nobody was on the Skelmersdale job between Monday, March 9th and Thursday, March 12th, so the two main players, Eddie and Jim Bowling, would have been 'kicking their heels' from the Monday, waiting for it to resume on the Friday, if only Arthur and Jimmy were down for Paul Dodd's underfloor wiring job.

None of this should have worked at all if Eddie didn't have the first idea who Mike Barrett was, let alone when he first mentioned the diary to anyone, and was simply trying to cash in on Feldman's baseless speculation that it might have been found in the house when work was being done there.

Love,

Caz
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[caz]

You might as well get it straight from the donkey's mouth, caz. As I've said before, I wasn't born with the spelling gene (more of a numbers bloke) and when I'm lazy, mad, or have had a pint, I tend to 'go phonetic.' If what I've heard in the Alan Gray tapes is correct, the beer cans were flying, so it is entirely possible that laziness, anger, and/or intoxication may have all come into play during the creation of the diary's text. Pretty simple. By the way, I have a special present for you the day you correct the odd grammatical/spelling/typographical/logical errors of the "diary" friendly folk. I can't help but notice that these sly observations are solely reserved for the skeptics among us. I'll have to start examining your posts with a more critical eye. Have a good day again.

Sorry if I touched a nerve with my observation, rj, but I felt it particularly appropriate, given David's argument about Mike's 'diaryisms'.

If you - and I - and pretty much everyone on the planet can make silly mistakes when writing publicly like this, I have to wonder why the composer of what is meant to reflect the private ramblings of a nobody, whose formal education would have ended in his early teens, was ever expected to see teacher after school for his own lazy or incompetent written work. It seems like a hopelessly flawed argument to me, especially when it comes from equally lazy or incompetent writers [and don't worry, I don't put you in that category].

Have an excellent afternoon.

Love,

Caz
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[caz]

By the way, caz. Your comments in post #1383 are entirely irrelevant. It makes no difference whatsoever if Barrett understood his contract. It makes no difference if he was justified or not in feeling screwed by the publishers. It only matters--and this is undeniable--that Mike BELIEVED that he was being screwed.

Agreed. And if he believed this meant he would be screwed the next time, and the time after that, and had no hope of beating the enemy, he may well have imagined that a confession to forging the diary might kill two birds with one stone: he could screw those who were screwing him by selling his 'story' and earning some of the money he imagined they had screwed out of him.

It was two and a half years since he had brought the diary to London and he is being told that the royalty cheques are "in the mail." If he's a good boy they may even arrive by the summer of 1995. All that matters is that Barrett is as mad as a hornet, feels "hoodwinked," and this gives him a motive for "going off message" and dropping hints about the true origins of the diary.

But if you remember, he had received several thousand pounds in royalty payments in May 1994, the month before his first confession, and he had promptly withdrawn a thousand in cash every other day until he was back in the red. So while he may have been expecting a whole lot more, and considered he was being screwed at that point, it was also very much a case of 'easy come, easy go', by the look of it.

The other key point is that he is CONFLICTED. The myth that he was desperately helping Gray to prove the Diary a fake does not take into consideration that he was playing both sides for himself. There is still a chance for a jolly pay day if the film is made. Mike admits in his affidavit of 25 January 1995 that he is willing to play nice again if the money rolls in! What more evidence do you need to realize that his whole motivation is financial? He confesses, he retracts, he tests the waters, he drops hints. It's undeniable.

How was Mike going to get his hands on any film money? The rights had been sold to Feldman by Robert Smith, very early on. What did Mike have to sell Feldman in 1995? I have no doubt that Mike was peeved over the money situation, but he didn't exactly help himself in that regard, did he? He ran up bills and got into debt all by himself. It doesn't make his forgery claims any more likely to have been based on the truth, as far as I can see.

As for Graham, she remains your biggest headache.

You wish. If the diary, or anyone involved, had the power to give me a headache I'd have taken up knitting again instead. I remain fascinated by the human behaviour on display since 1992 by everyone who has involved themselves - and I do mean everyone.

Her sudden 'in the family for years' story in 1994 makes no sense in relation to the diary being stolen out of Battlecrease, but not for the reasons you think. If Barrett bought it off Eddy (and he didn't, it's a post 1991 hoax) she could have simply denied knowing anything about it, or merely said 'yup, my ex hubby stole it, but that has nothing to do with me. Go talk to him.'

Right, so when Mike told the papers he forged the diary, Anne could have 'simply denied knowing anything about' him buying it from Eddie? How does that work? Assuming you mean she could have said: "He didn't forge it, he nicked it, but that's got nothing to do with me", yes she could. But would she really have wanted that avenue opened up again, months after Feldman had closed it down? She had signed the agreement with Shirley in 1992, on the understanding that Mike had come home with the diary one day in 1991, having got it in good faith from Tony Devereux. If she wanted to maintain this part of the story and her own credibility, while trying to keep everyone happy in the light of Mike's foolish outburst, her options were limited. She could wash her hands of Mike and his behaviour now they were separated, sure. But one of her options was not to wash her hands of any responsibility she had with Rupert Crew over the diary.

Instead--SHE DIGS HERSELF DEEPER-by claiming 'ownership' of the thing for herself. 'I've had it since the 1960s.' Now tell me, caz, why would she do that? Strange behavior unless Barrett's confession was a little too close to the truth for comfort.

I've tried to give you my answer, an answer, but you are not really asking the right person, are you? It's strange behaviour whichever way you look at it. You have asked yourself, and given yourself an answer, without even considering why Anne would have imagined her 'in the family story' could possibly have shut Mike up, if they really had forged the diary together, and he was now spoiling for a fight to the death to destroy it, taking himself, his estranged wife, Feldman, Harrison and Smith down with it.

Love,

Caz
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[caz]

Maybe this will help, caz?

"It was about 1st week in December 1994 that my wife Anne Barrett visited me, she asked me to keep my mouth shut and that if I did so I could receive a payment of L20,000 before the end of the month. She was all over me and we even made love, it was all very odd because just as quickley (sic) as she made love to me she threatened me and returned to her old self. She insisted Mr Feldman was a very nice Jewish man who was only trying to help her. My wife was clearly under the influence of this man Feldman..."

Heaven forbid that I should suggest such a thing, but it sounds like Feldman is sending Graham over to influence Mike, and, as such, perhaps it might also be a rather convenient time to ask Mike if she might not retrieve her maroon diary? He then drops it off a day or two later.

This 'influencing session' was allegedly the '1st week,' of December. We know that the promised cheque for £20,000 doesn't arrive by month's end, because Mike is still raving about his royalty cheques. Five days later, Jan 5th, Mike fires his first volley over the bow of Feldman's boat by signing his first confessional affidavit. In that same affidavit he claims that Graham had recently re-acquired the maroon diary. Read between the lines. Funny how the chronology seems to work. Had I been part of Feldman's team, I wouldn't be too confident that Feldy was always playing it straight.

But did Mike really imagine that Feldman had anything at all to do with royalty payments from Shirley's book? Or was he so far gone by this point that only his paranoia is showing?

I wonder how the subject of the maroon diary cropped up in the first place. Anne must have remembered it, mustn't she? And this is what Mike claimed:

'My wife is now in possession of this Diary in fact she asked for it specifically recently when I saw her at her home address'. He could only have been lying here or mistaken if she asked for it while visiting him, as you suggest.

I could believe Anne might have called round to tell Mike what a stupid sod he was being, and reminding him that the book would only continue to bring in royalty cheques if he stopped his forgery claims. If Mike believed Feldman was pulling Anne's strings, it's easy to see how he would have interpreted the situation.

Seeing this through Mike's blurry eyes is possibly not a very productive way of getting at the truth, so I hope you'll forgive me for not finding any of this particularly helpful.

Love,

Caz
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[caz]

The fact that I don't know what evidence Mike could have produced to prove he forged the diary is, of course, not problematic for the Barrett hoax theory at all. It is only problematic for those who tell us that Mike should have produced some evidence that he forged the diary. If there wasn't any evidence that he could produce he couldn't physically produce any, could he?

So David, just to clarify your own position, would you say that if there had been any evidence that Mike could have produced, to prove beyond reasonable doubt that he either forged, or helped to forge the diary, he'd have done so?

Or can you think of any reason why he might not have produced it, if he could have done?

And given what you say above, about not knowing what Mike could have produced to prove his involvement, would you concede that, on its own, the acquisition of the little red diary in late March 1992 does not amount to proof?

You see, maybe I am every bit as thick as you think I am, but I'm struggling with the concept of an argument that relies on Mike being guilty of forgery, but being unable to prove himself guilty, because there wasn't any evidence he could have produced. While I can see that this doesn't mean his confessions can be presumed false, it doesn't even begin to demonstrate that they reflect the truth. For that, one does actually require the evidence to prove it, whether or not Mike had any chance of producing it himself.

If one can't use the absence of evidence to argue for Mike's innocence, you most certainly can't use it to argue he was guilty but maybe he just didn't have the means to prove it. But maybe I've misunderstood your position - yet again?

Love,

Caz
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