25 YEARS OF THE DIARY OF JACK THE RIPPER: THE TRUE FACTS by Robert Smith

[Iconoclast]

I think that's called "clamming with faint praise"

I don't get it but it sounds very clever.

[Sam Flynn]

I don't get it but it sounds very clever.

It was a pun on the expression "damning with faint praise". Not particularly clever, really.

[Iconoclast]

It was a pun on the expression "damning with faint praise". Not particularly clever, really.

Please, Sam, I think we all got it!

PS And it was very good, by the way ...

[Henry Flower]

Please, Sam, I think we all got it!

PS And it was very good, by the way ...

Serves you right for talking complete scallops.

[Iconoclast]

Serves you right for talking complete scallops.

Oi! Stirring up trouble again!

[Henry Flower]

Oi! Stirring up trouble again!

No, I stand by my comment: you were talking complete molluscs.

[David Orsam]

More than ever I question why the original notes were not produced. If they were hard to read then a transcript should have been prepared. If they were destroyed then that is destruction of original evidence pure and simple.

I want to repeat and emphasise this point. As far as I can make out, a transcript was NOT prepared.

A transcript by definition is an exact replica of an original. The purpose of transcribing handwritten notes is to make them easier to read. The transcript must not have words added to it that were not in the original or words removed.

If, when being "tidied up", the "re-typed" version of the notes were altered in any way, to make them more coherent or for any other reason, then this version is not a transcript.

What should have happened is a transcript was first prepared THEN a coherent version of the notes produced, if that was felt necessary.

But if the typed version contains elements from both Mike and Anne then we have lost Mike's research notes. There is no way of knowing what Mike wrote contemporaneously and what was added by Anne later.

Given that there is a suggestion that these notes might have been faked to make it appear that the research was carried out over a longer period of time than it actually was, the importance of seeing the full version of these notes cannot be overstated.

[David Orsam]

Prior to the publication of her 2003 book, Shirley Harrison referred to Mike Barrett's research notes in a response to Melvin Harris' 1997 "Fact File for the Perplexed" (as reproduced in her book). She said:

"I have Michael Barrett's 'research notes' in my possession. They were typed and collated for him by Anne, his then wife, while he was trying to make sense of the Diary, before he brought it us. Where he can't find what he wants, he writes 'nothing to date.' Or 'not known'..."

And she says:

"This is not the strategic, forward-looking plan of a forger embarking on research! It reflects the uncertainties of a man struggling to understand material that has already been written."

She goes on in the next sentence to comment:

"Had Mr Harris spent more time with his 'nest of forgers', he would realise just how unlikely his theory is!"

So Mike's research notes are right up there as Exhibit A in the case for the Diary being old and authentic.

A few things strike me about Shirley's comments in her response to Harris.

1. She says that Anne "collated" Mike's notes. Is this supposed to be the same as "tidied up"? For me they convey different impressions. Collated gives the impression of the notes merely being organised whereas "tided up" suggests that they have been changed and improved.

2. She says the notes were "typed", not "re-typed". Why did she use the word "re-typed" in her 2003 book? Just a mistake or is there some significance to it?

3. She says (as she says in her book) that the notes were created before Mike brought the Diary to London. If it is now being said that the notes were probably created AFTER he brought the Diary to London how did she get it so badly wrong both in her response to Harris and in her book which appear to have been written about six years apart?

4 There is no mention in her response (as in her book) that she had any input into the research notes and, indeed, she expressly refers to them as "Mike Barrett's 'research notes'". If she was given them by Mike and/or Anne how is it possible for Shirley's information or input to be in them? If she's marked up the notes in manuscript, so one can see her comments, that's fine but it surely can't be possible for Shirley Harrison's input to be in notes that were typed by Anne before the Mike and the Diary had even come to London, can it? And I repeat my comment from earlier in respect of the book that "I can't see anywhere in the book where Shirley says that she provided some information and input into Mike's research notes but perhaps she wasn't telling the full story, I have no idea." I really do have no idea.

What is essential, if we are shortly to be told that the Diary came from Battlecrease on 9 March 1992, is that the full version of Mike's research notes MUST be produced in full so that everyone can examine them. This is especially true if the notes in any way contradict the notion that Mike received the Diary on 9 March 1992. They cannot any longer reasonably be withheld.

[Abby Normal]

Thank you, Abby - once again I am humbled by the kindness of my fellow posters. Not one to blow my own trumpet, it's always nice to receive a compliment from time to time and your clam remark touched me deeply.

Not sure about the witty bit though - these are serious thoughts I've got squeezed between my ears, and I share them for the learning of all. OMG, I feel a LOL coming on!

Anyway, shocked by the gender confusion raging elsewhere on this thread, I trust that you at least are Abby Normal in every way possible???

Ike (still a bloke)

I'm a dude. But I do have great ass, so I'm often confused for a hot chick.

[Henry Flower]

I'm a dude. But I do have great ass, so I'm often confused for a hot chick.

I might be a Henrietta. It's been a while since I checked.

[David Orsam]

I've been taking a look at "Ripper Diary: The Inside Story" by Linder, Morris and Skinner (2003).

In that book we are told that Barrett's original story (before he confessed to forging it) was that he received the Diary in May or June 1991 and that he started research work in August 1991.

Thus:

"From August 1991, working on an Amstrad computer…Barrett began to compile notes on the Ripper and the background to the Whitechapel murders gleaned from these books, notes that he would later hand over to Harrison."

So what do we have here? Barrett was apparently making his notes on a computer! That would explain why they were "re-typed" by Anne.

Or does it? If Mike already typed his notes why did Anne need to re-type them? And didn't someone mention earlier in this thread that Anne might have had to type the notes because of legibility issues? But if Mike was typing onto his computer what possible problem could there have been with legibility? Why were the notes as typed by Mike not preserved?

Of course, Mike couldn't have lugged his Amstrad down to the Liverpool library so he must have had some original manuscript notes made in the library.

So have I got this right? His original handwritten research notes have been destroyed? His typed up version of these notes have also been destroyed? What we have are a third generation version of the notes re-typed (for some reason) and "tidied up" by Anne, but not for any reasons of legibility?

And then how did Shirley Harrison’s information and input get into those notes? I simply have no idea!

[David Orsam]

It doesn’t end there because, according to the authors of "Inside Story", Barrett told writer/director Martin Howells in 1993 that the purpose of these research notes was to give him a better understanding of the Diary’s subject matter to help him judge its authenticity. "It was, he said, an analysis of what was in the Diary, rather than, as some maintain, the completion of background material to enable him to forge it. "

Further, we are told:

"Piece by piece, Barrett says, he began to assemble biographical information on the five known Ripper victims…It was not until some weeks after this research began, Barrett told Martin Howells, that he took note of the mention early on in the Diary of ‘Whitechapel Liverpool Whitechapel London.’ Then, he says, he started looking for books on Liverpool murders, eventually coming across Tales of Liverpool – Murder, Mayhem and Mystery by the distinguished crime historian Richard Whittington-Egan. Here was a vital clue, a reference to Battlecrease House, home of James and Florence Maybrick. Finally Barrett had a connection. On the second page of the Diary were the following lines: ‘I may return to Battlecrease…’ As he learnt more about the Maybricks, it became clear to Barrett that here was the true author of the Diary."

If, as Robert Smith and the "Diary Team" are going to tell us in this new book, the Diary came from Battlecrease on 9 March 1992, it means that the inept, incompetent and unimaginative Mike Barrett was telling a highly sophisticated lie to Howells here, cleverly hiding from him the fact that he knew from DAY ONE that the Diary was from Battlecrease (although he also couldn't keep a secret!).

And not only does he tell this sophisticated lie, but lo and behold he produces some research notes which show that he has been researching the Diary since August 1991, about seven months before anyone knew it even existed, without a single clue for ages that it had anything to do with Battlecrease and James Maybrick!!

For someone who, we are told, was so stupid and incapable of functioning properly, that’s not bad work. The useless Mike Barrett, who could in no way have been involved in forging the Diary because he was too dumb, seems to have managed to fool quite a lot of people into thinking that he had genuinely been researching the Diary for some seven months earlier than was physically possible and had only slowly managed to work out a connection with Battlecrease.

[David Orsam]

And that’s not all. In 'Inside Story' we learn that as late as circa 2003, in saying he received the Diary from Tony Devereux, "Shirley Harrison and Doreen Montgomery still believe that Barrett was telling them the truth".

And the authors point out that the story Barrett told Howells in 1993 was "substantially the same as the one he gave that day in the offices of Robert Crew, some eighteen months earlier", suggesting that because of the consistency the story must be true.

Not bad for a useless incompetent who couldn’t keep a secret to save his life to tell what was really quite a sophisticated lie in a consistent fashion over such a long period of time.

And you want irony? Surely the irony here is that, for years, the Diary’s detractors have been suggesting that Mike's research notes were fake and that Anne's story, and her father's story, about the Diary being her family for years and her giving it to Tony Devereux is false. Such claims have been vigorously resisted by the 'Diary Team' but now we are presumably to be told, oh well, actually the detractors were right, the research notes are faked and Anne's story is all rubbish. But, hey, it's okay, we've found a timesheet.

[Henry Flower]

Oh David, the true believers won't be budged. They'll latch onto any Battlecrease evidence they can, they'll ignore eveything you've just laid out, and insist that none of that matters now, we have a direct Battlecrease provenance!

And therefore, the multiple lies and shifting stories of the man who produced this too-good-to-be-true document will be dismissed as irrelevant.

Which is dangerous and naive nonsense, of course.

Interested to read Caz's response.

[Hunter]

I'm surprised at you, Cris.

Or were you being sarcastic?
Love,
Caz
X

Hi Caz,
Apologies for the surprise. Perhaps I should explain. Since the great server crash I’ve usually avoided “diary” threads like the plague, as trying to type a response to some of the outlandish posts leaves my hands cold. But noticing who the OP was in this instance, my curiosity was piqued.


I happened to catch in one of Paul Begg’s posts and in relation to early influences, that he mentioned McCormick's book. Then realizing that his sentence structure might imply that he helped write it, he - obviously tongue-in-cheek - clarified that it was the first Ripper book he had read. I replied, in the same spirit, that was too bad as he might have been able to shed some light on the “Eight Little Whores” controversy. And there it lay, as I suspected few people on the boards today would even catch it, until Observer obviously did and fleshed it out enough that I could see there was a familiarity with an old pre crash debate. And thus, I noted that Observer was very observant, which is a fact.


You are correct about Fieldman and once McCormick's research became controversial and the provenance of the little ditty questionable, some back peddling on its correlation with the verses in the “diary” would be necessary. Fieldman never lacked in proposing theories first, then setting out to prove them. He seemed to have a field day (no pun intended) with the lineage of the Maybrick family itself. Of course, regarding the poetry, Shirley Harrison - as of the latest edition of her book - apparently believes there is a correlation, based on the mention of Henage Court in the poem and a policeman named Spicer claiming to have stopped a man near there on the night of the double murder who, according to Harrison, resembled Maybrick - a fine example of confirmation bias I must say.


I believe it was Carl Sagen who said that we humans are very good at deceiving ourselves. And we will find all kinds of reasons to believe something, even if common sense dictates otherwise.