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

[David Orsam]

The issue with the diary's use of the phrase "one off instance", in the specific way in which it uses it, has been known for quite some time. I myself raised the issue eight or nine years ago, and I know I wasn't the first to do so.

This is all absolutely true and I certainly don't want to take any credit for work done by others but I think it is fair for me to point out that I was, I believe, the first person to identify and explain, with supporting evidence, the evolution of the use of "one off" in the English language and thus to explain why, for that reason alone, the expression "one off instance" could not have realistically been written in 1888/9. I also believe that I was the first person to demonstrate that Shirley Harrison's claim to have found a nineteenth century use of "one off" to mean "unique" was without substance.

[David Orsam]

The details will have changed slightly since I did my original survey, but I would expect the overall findings to be broadly the same. Namely, that if we see the three phrases "one off", "top myself" AND "spreads mayhem" occurring in the same document, the likelihood is that it was written in the latter third of the 20th Century.

There is no question in my mind that this is correct and that it is preposterous to think that Maybrick was the first person to have ever used these three expressions in writing - being the only person in the nineteenth century to have done so - and for them not to have been used again for decades.

[Sam Flynn]

This is all absolutely true and I certainly don't want to take any credit for work done by others

Indeed, David, and I'm sure you haven't. I think it's a consequence of the fact that the use of "one off" to refer to an abstraction (e.g. an instance or an event) really is of comparatively recent origin. The beauty of facts is that they are out there to be independently discovered.

[David Orsam]

How silly of me not to think that when, during a "relentless" cross-examination by Paul Begg and Martin Howells, Caroline Barrett was asked if she remembered her father speaking to Tony, she got confused and thought they were asking if he had been speaking to one of the electricians. Naturally it didn't occur to her that they were asking her about the late Tony Devereux, her father's friend. Why would it?

But Martin Howells had already been told by Mike about his conversation with Tony that Caroline was supposed to have overheard. According to "Inside Story", Mike had said in respect of having received the Diary from Devereux in May or June 1991:

"So I come home that day and when I come home Caroline is in the room with me. And I skipped through the pages and I come to the last page, but it's not the last page, because there's no last page, you know there's "Jack the Ripper," and I thought what the f@cking hell are you playing at? So I phoned him [Devereux] immediately and said "Come on Tony, tell me the truth, what are you playing at?"

In other words, Howells (and no doubt Begg too) was asking Caroline about this specific incident. It would be a remarkable amount of confusion if they managed to mess up the questioning about it so that Caroline didn't know quite what she was being asked to remember.

And how odd it would be for Mike to have conjured up a fabulous cover story about him having been researching the Diary for months, with 'research notes' in support of the cover story, and for him then to have inserted Caroline into the picture (when all she could have remembered was a conversation with an electrician in March 1992) and allowed her to be "cross-examined" about it when none of it was true and without having ensured that she would remain on message.

But of course he probably knew she would be confused and would remember his conversation with the electrician, thinking it was Tony, even though he had been dead for seven months!

I don't think so somehow but the desperate attempt to try and shift Caroline's story into being consistent with the "Battlecrease under the floorboards" story suggests to me that some people are already running scared.

[David Orsam]

The truly wonderful thing about Mike Barrett's typewritten 'research notes' is that there is a THIRD version as to their genesis.

According to "Inside Story", Mike's original notes "were scribbled in his own bad handwriting all over the place". Then we are told:

"He claims to have bought the word processor second-hand to input the notes, Anne showing him how to use the keyboard and correcting his spelling."

Whether Anne's assistance in showing Mike how to use the keyboard and correcting his spelling is the equivalent of her typing, or re-typing or collating or tidying up those notes, as variously told to us by Shirley Harrison, is something that quite obviously needs to be clarified.

And for anyone who is deluded enough to think that Mike's 'research notes' were not destroyed, we find that Barrett told Keith Skinner (according to "Inside Story"):

“He didn’t, he says, keep the hand written notes.”

So they WERE destroyed and it's a mystery why anyone who is supposed to know the facts might have suggested otherwise.

But what is clear is that it is not only highly frustrating that Mike's surviving 'research notes' have not been produced in full to public scrutiny but it is utterly incomprehensible that this has not already been done.

[caz]

Perhaps I haven't made myself clear to everyone. We need to know what the facts about these so called 'research notes' are. If they were typed we need to know it. If they were re-typed we need know it. If Shirley's memory was in a muddle in 1997 and/or 2003 that is one thing but what is the actual answer? What we don't need is uninformed speculation from someone who knows nothing about it.

Have you not sent that email to Keith Skinner yet? I only know what's in the final version because I have my own copy. The same may apply to Keith and Shirley but as you say that would be 'uninformed speculation from someone who knows nothing about' the original notes. What is the bloody point of repeating what 'we need to know' when there is nobody here to provide 'us' with the answers? Goodness me, David, what is the matter with you?

[If you have since been in touch with Keith, and have said so in a subsequent post I have yet to read, fair enough. If not, what is your problem?]

Love,

Caz
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[caz]

If the two individuals who are supposed to have found the Diary in Battlecrease are denying that they found any such thing it is going to be a little bit difficult to establish what they told Mike Barrett when they spoke to him, if they, in fact, ever met the man and gave him anything.

But it is rather hard to believe that that they did not tell him where it came from at the time. Well the whole thing is rather hard to believe. In Shirley's 2003 book we are told that one employee of Portus and Rhodes recalls picking up two employees from Battlecrease "At the end of one day" at which time one of them said "I've found something under the floor boards. I think it could be important". Well if it's the "end of the day" that they emerged from Battlecrease (and perhaps the timesheets will tell us the exact time they finished work), are we expected to believe they met up with Mike Barrett in a pub in Anfield, gave or sold him the diary, without telling him where they got it, and then he was able to get back home in time to look up the telephone number of the Robert Crew Literary Agency, call them and manage to speak to an assistant who was in the office? Was that person working late? And the impression we get from Inside Story is that Barrett rang back later that same day when he spoke to Doreen Montgomery.

'What we don't need is uninformed speculation from someone who knows nothing about it.'

Wait, David. Just wait.

So does this mean he really DID spend time in Liverpool library researching the diary between 9th March and 13th April? It should of course be easy enough to find witness evidence of Mike doing some intense research during this period, er, if you are the police and have plenty of resources to spend time questioning people at the library, because it's in no way twisted logic to suggest that the absence of such evidence means that Barrett wasn't there.

The point is that some research must have been done at some point David, but the fruits of this were not handed over until the July or August. Shirley is the one to ask what Mike had managed to find out for himself by April 13th, assuming he was asked and he gave a straight answer. But if it's not twisted logic to suggest that the absence of evidence of Mike beavering away in the library means he wasn't there, that must apply as much to the 7 months from August 1991 to March 1992, as to the 4 or 5 months from March 1992 to July or August 1992.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Now, why would anyone posting in this thread think that there is a "diary team"? I just can't work it out.

Because Adam posted it? Perhaps he knows what he meant by that, or perhaps he was using Robert's words, in which case you'd need to ask Robert, wouldn't you?

In any case they were not speaking for me and I doubt they were speaking for Keith Skinner either. My guess - uninformed speculation alert - would be that Robert's 'team' might include Shirley, James Johnston and Robert Anderson, but you would need to ask them, wouldn't you?

Tell me, David, when you last went to the doctor, did you find yourself asking the florist next door for a diagnosis, then whining to all her customers about getting uninformed speculation about your haemorrhoids from someone who knows nothing about them?

It might explain your discomfort.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Paul Feldman thoughts on the matter were these

"My worst fear had been realised. My contact, and his fellow electrician would lie for the right price. I was no nearer the truth".

Seems a bit strange that 25 years after this incident took place, there are those who would cite this incident as being "proof" that the Diary came out of Battlecrease House.

That would be strange if anyone were to use this incident as "proof", Observer.

Do you believe Paul Feldman was bang on the money on this one occasion? That would be - interesting.

Same advice to you. Wait. Just wait. You may see, but do you really observe?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

The biggest problem I've got is there have been too many lies told about it, which lie am I meant to believe is the truth?

It's a very fair point, GUT.

The choice is of course your own. You are 'meant' to believe whichever option you find the least problematic.

For example:

A) Did Caroline witness her Dad on the phone pestering Tony Devereux for information about the diary in the May or June of 1991?

B) Did she witness her Dad on the phone pestering someone else for information about the diary in the March or April of 1992?

C) Did she witness her Dad and Mum transferring the diary text into the guardbook between the end of March and April 13th 1992?

D) Is there a D?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

It's all very simple guys.

To understand anything that has been said on this matter, you just need to know that the exact opposite is true.

So when Mike, Anne and their eleven year old daughter all said in unison that Mike got the Diary from Tony, that of course means he didn't get it from Tony.

Does this mean you now believe he did get it from Tony after all and that Caroline did indeed recall Tony being pestered about it in the May or June of 1991? Well bless my tail!

When the first document expert to examine the Diary said it's a fake and modern he meant to say it is genuine and very, very, old.

Just to clarify, the first two document experts to examine the diary visually were: the curator of 19th century manuscripts at the British Museum, Robert A.H. Smith, who said "it looks authentic" and saw 'nothing in it inconsistent with it being of a late nineteenth-century date'; and the owner of Jarndyce, the antiquarian bookshop opposite the museum, Brian Lake, a specialist on 19th century literature, who was 'enthusiastic' and later wrote saying 'there is nothing to indicate that the "Jack the Ripper" diary is not of the 1880s and, in my view, the writing is of the same period".

But of course, you were referring to the first forensic examination, by someone who made two, possibly three, major cockups and, contrary to your eccentric view that the correct practice is to accept the first expert opinion and be done with it, it was considered sensible, if not absolutely essential, to seek as many more opinions as was practicable and cost-effective, over as wide a range of disciplines as possible.

Had your chosen expert given the diary a glowing report, I have no doubt whatsoever that you would have called for the 'Diary Team' to be boiled in oil until their eyes popped if they had stopped there.

When the electricians say that they didn't find the Diary under the floorboards, well, of course, that means they did.

Tricky electricians. They'll say anything but their prayers, eh David? Like your 'Diary Team', joined at the hip and all singing the same tune except for when they're all staying silent.

Love,

Caz
X

[StevenOwl]

Does this mean you now believe he did get it from Tony after all and that Caroline did indeed recall Tony being pestered about it in the May or June of 1991? Well bless my tail!



Just to clarify, the first two document experts to examine the diary visually were: the curator of 19th century manuscripts at the British Museum, Robert A.H. Smith, who said "it looks authentic" and saw 'nothing in it inconsistent with it being of a late nineteenth-century date'; and the owner of Jarndyce, the antiquarian bookshop opposite the museum, Brian Lake, a specialist on 19th century literature, who was 'enthusiastic' and later wrote saying 'there is nothing to indicate that the "Jack the Ripper" diary is not of the 1880s and, in my view, the writing is of the same period".

But of course, you were referring to the first forensic examination, by someone who made two, possibly three, major cockups and, contrary to your eccentric view that the correct practice is to accept the first expert opinion and be done with it, it was considered sensible, if not absolutely essential, to seek as many more opinions as was practicable and cost-effective, over as wide a range of disciplines as possible.

Had your chosen expert given the diary a glowing report, I have no doubt whatsoever that you would have called for the 'Diary Team' to be boiled in oil until their eyes popped if they had stopped there.



Tricky electricians. They'll say anything but their prayers, eh David? Like your 'Diary Team', joined at the hip and all singing the same tune except for when they're all staying silent.

Love,

Caz
X

Love it! You're on fire this week Caz - keep 'em coming...

[caz]

And yet people still want to believe...

...that Mike wasn't telling porkies in his confession statements.

The innocent trust is almost touching.

More touching than all the frantic and wholly predictable efforts to undermine - using all the old arguments from the dawn of diary time dredged up, dusted off and trotted out again - whatever new information may shortly be coming to the surface. If the ship in which the Barrett forgery theorists sail - "The Saucy Sausage" - is as seaworthy as some people claim to believe, I'd have thought they could have sat back with a tot of rum, twiddling their thumbs or hugging themselves in joyous anticipation, in the certain knowledge that it won't rock the boat.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Love it! You're on fire this week Caz - keep 'em coming...

Why thank you kindly, Steven. You're a wise owl for noticing.

To use one of my ex husband's lovely mother-in-law's expressions, I've got "fun up me 'ole" this week.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Indeed, David, and I'm sure you haven't. I think it's a consequence of the fact that the use of "one off" to refer to an abstraction (e.g. an instance or an event) really is of comparatively recent origin. The beauty of facts is that they are out there to be independently discovered.

Hi Gareth,

A very apt observation, considering that several researchers over the years have independently been discovering facts which are relevant to the diary's emergence into our world.

When it was first buried I wouldn't like to say, but is it a 'fact' that Mike Barrett was in any way involved with its creation or burial?

Not a cat in hell's chance, I'd say.

Love,

Caz
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