Acquiring A Victorian Diary

[John Wheat]

There is zero evidence the Diary was written by Maybrick and there is zero evidence he ever owned the watch.

[Lombro2]

Eddie got the equivalent of 40 bucks for the diary.

I’m sure he’d to almost anything for 40 bucks.

[rjpalmer]

Thieves also give their stolen literary material to “literary” agents like Mike who pass them on to other real literary agents.

I can't say that your theory has much going for it, but I suppose it is mildly more plausible than C.A.B.'s theory that someone sold the Confession of Jack the Ripper, found under the floorboards of a Victorian mansion, to a stranger or near stranger for twenty-five pounds.

In your version, Mike was Eddie's "literary agent" and presumably it was Eddie and not Mike who blew through Barrett's royalty cheques.

Thanks. I think I've heard enough.

[Lombro2]

Thieves also give their stolen literary material to “literary” agents like Mike who pass them on to other real literary agents. Or maybe you know something else.

Just like thieves give or sell their stolen watches to people who sell watches.

[Lombro2]

You think they sell to criminals?

[Herlock Sholmes]

Like I said, some people have no concept of the criminal classes.

And some people have their own minds and think for themselves, and have their own approach which other people, with the same premise to begin with, don’t agree with.

So I don’t really engage with Anti-Barrett theorists or Maybrickian interested in thieves and fences.

Might as well talk to Socratic people who one minute say Michael made thousands in profit when he’s a forger but then only made a dollar as a fence.

Or you're using the word "fence" incorrectly. Ever think of that?

[rjpalmer]

Might as well talk to Socratic people who one minute say Michael made thousands in profit when he’s a forger but then only made a dollar as a fence.

Who are you arguing with? Yourself?

You're the one who keeps calling Barrett and the Graham's "fences." Fences sell stolen goods.

I call Barrett and Graham literary forgers. Literary forgers contact literary agents. That's what Barrett did.

Don't you understand the criminal classes?

[Lombro2]

Like I said, some people have no concept of the criminal classes.

And some people have their own minds and think for themselves, and have their own approach which other people, with the same premise to begin with, don’t agree with.

So I don’t really engage with Anti-Barrett theorists or Maybrickian interested in thieves and fences.

Might as well talk to Socratic people who one minute say Michael made thousands in profit when he’s a forger but then only made a dollar as a fence.

[Herlock Sholmes]

The main one being they’re fencing a stolen item.

I don’t know how a simple heist with one suspect gets turned into an Agatha Christie investigation.

After you get Eddie to reconstruct the day of the heist to see if he really is a thief, you can get the fences to reconstruct the provenance of their goods to see if they’re really fences.

So we should disregard everything Eddie Lyons is supposed to have said to James Johnston and Keith Skinner?

If that's the case you should tell Caz, not me, because she's the one relying on it.

[rjpalmer]

The main one being they’re fencing a stolen item.

Who are 'they'?

Are you suggesting that Mike, Anne, and Billy put their money together and bought the Diary of Jack the Ripper from Eddie Lyons for twenty-five pounds?

And then Barrett sold the same diary to Robert Smith for one pound---a loss of twenty-four pounds on his investment?

This is your nest of master fencers?

[Lombro2]

The main one being they’re fencing a stolen item.

I don’t know how a simple heist with one suspect gets turned into an Agatha Christie investigation.

After you get Eddie to reconstruct the day of the heist to see if he really is a thief, you can get the fences to reconstruct the provenance of their goods to see if they’re really fences.

[rjpalmer]

The other thing that remains unclear to me is whether the timesheets accurately reflect who was working at Battlecrease on any particular day. According to Shirley Harrison, Brian Rawes was able to confirm the date of his brief conversation with Eddie at Battlecrease as having occurred in June 1992 which he did "by reference to an old daily memo book" (p.292 of The American Connection). Yet, as Caz tells us, the timesheets don't show Eddie as having been there in June 1992, while, according to Robert Smith's book, Brian Rawes isn't shown on any timesheets as having been there in June 1992 either. Has anyone ever seen Brian Rawes' daily memo book?

Thanks, Herlock. Very relevant indeed.

I'll wait for C.A.B.'s response.

She 'corrected' me to insist there is no evidence that Eddie Lyons was at Dodd's house in June 1992 (the same lack of evidence in March doesn't seem to faze her) and even stated:

and I don't think anyone recalled him helping out on that occasion.

which appears to be incorrect; Rawes not only recalled Eddie having been there in June but (according to Shirley) was able to confirm it with documentation.

As far as I can tell, C.A.B. treats the timesheets as either conclusive or inconclusive depending on the argument she wishes to make.

If heaters were installed in June and Eddie was there (as confirmed by Rawes) why couldn't he have 'admitted' to the wrong month?

But ultimately it is her theory--or perhaps more appropriately she is one who has brought the Keith Skinner/James Johnston theory to the forums--and she'll have to convince her readers not to worry about these nagging doubts and discrepancies.

The other half of the coin is that she'll also have to explain--if the diary was found by Eddie Lyons and sold to Mike--why Anne Graham and Billy Graham would insist that they had seen it and owned the diary decades earlier.

The explanation I've been given is also problematic--but more on that another time.

Cheers.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Hi Herlock -- on the subject of 'housekeeping'---



I'm surprised Ike didn't challenge this.

I misread the passage, and it was actually James Coufoupoulos who recalled drilling the holes in the joists on 9 March. My bad. Withdrawn.

It's a pity we can't see any of the documentation because there are some significant differences between C.A.B.'s rendition of these events and how they were described by Dolgin & Jones.

“The Portus and Rhodes timesheets show that on this day [9 March] Eddie Lyons and Jim Bowling were working on a sewage farm in Skelmersdale in Lancashire. However, 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.”

This appears to be somewhat misstated, no? The job had been suspended earlier, and there is no timesheet for Lyons. And that he was 'redeployed' appears to have been a later suggestion, not a fact.

“In June 2018 Eddie Lyons admitted to Christopher Jones and three other witnesses that he had been sent to help with the electrical work at Battlecrease on 9 March 1992. What is significant about this is that Lyons could have simply denied being at the house; in the absence of his name appearing on the timesheet it would have been almost impossible to disprove his statement.”

Dolgin & Jones, p. 129

Dolgin & Jones appear to be on the same wavelength as Lombro. If Lyons unnecessarily put himself at the alleged 'crime scene'--something a criminal wouldn't do----then Lombro's observation would be more appropriately posed to Caroline Brown.

RP

Hi Roger,

I was reading the exchange that you mentioned between James Johnston and David Orsam earlier in this thread recently and I saw that David asked James if he was going to show Eddie Lyons the timesheets and ask him whether he could help to reconstruct the days he worked at Battlecrease. James' reply on 10th January 2018 was "Watch this space". I assume that this is what was done when he met Eddie a few weeks later in February 2018 but that he didn't get the answer he was hoping for. He certainly never came back to reveal what Eddie had said, and Caz's post now confirms that Eddie couldn't say what he was doing on 9th March 1992, even with the benefit of seeing the timesheets. Despite this, a myth seems to have arisen that Eddie "admitted" to having been at Battlecrease on that day. What is baffling to me is that James refused to post the transcripts of what Eddie had told him in 2015/6 and now, for some unknown reason, the transcript of what Eddie said in 2018 also remains a top secret. It's a strange way of trying to convince us that the diary was found in Battlecrease.

The other thing that remains unclear to me is whether the timesheets accurately reflect who was working at Battlecrease on any particular day. According to Shirley Harrison, Brian Rawes was able to confirm the date of his brief conversation with Eddie at Battlecrease as having occurred in June 1992 which he did "by reference to an old daily memo book" (p.292 of The American Connection). Yet, as Caz tells us, the timesheets don't show Eddie as having been there in June 1992, while, according to Robert Smith's book, Brian Rawes isn't shown on any timesheets as having been there in June 1992 either. Has anyone ever seen Brian Rawes' daily memo book?

[Lombro2]

From that, you can tell if Eddie’s a thief?

So far you think he was led into a belief that he was there and got all muddled up. That means he didn’t commit a crime because he wouldn’t be led into a “muddled confession” to being there that hardly anyone believes in, whether it’s because he didn’t mention an exact date or because this is all beyond the capacity of a criminal.

[rjpalmer]

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.

It is of course correct that a skilled interviewer should not inadvertently lead the witness with loaded questions.

However, once Lyons gave his account, it would be entirely appropriate to ask follow-up questions to test whether he could have been confused since we know that he HAD BEEN at Dodd's house later that summer, and that 25 years have passed.

Simply asking, 'were you ever at Dodd's house before or later?' would not have been a leading question.

We also have no way of knowing what muddled thoughts Feldman and the rumor mill may have planted in his brain all those years ago. Sometimes if people keep saying or implying that you did something, and your memory is cloudy, you'll come to believe it.

But whatever. I'm resigned to never actually seeing any of the witness statements.