Too Sensible & Competent

[David Orsam]

This is what Keith Skinner to me posted back on 17 February 2018:

"I have no problem with the transcript being put up for anyone who is interested in seeing it David – annotations and all. If I had the technical nous I’d put it up this evening immediately after Chelsea go through to the sixth round.

As it is, I’m afraid you’ll have to wait for a few weeks until after I have met with James, (who I hope will scan it on my behalf) and offloaded some more tapes and material on to him – including the original red/maroon/ burgundy/ Victorian diary – a black & white photograph of which can be seen between pp. 152-153 in Inside Story."

It's now 14 weeks since that statement was made which is more than "a few weeks" in my scrapbook. It's actually months. A quarter of a year!! There is no sign of it happening and there has been no sign of either Keith Skinner or James Johnston. Perhaps one of them can kindly post an update or perhaps their official spokesperson can do more than pose a question such as "could it be that they are tied up with more important things to do before they can get round to satisfying David's curiosity?". If that's genuinely the case, perhaps it could be stated positively because otherwise the answer to that question could well be "No".

[David Orsam]

So we are being told that Keith Skinner has made neither a note of his 2004 interview with Colin Rhodes nor prepared a transcript of it?

That doesn't sound to me how Keith Skinner works because I thought he was meticulous in keeping paper records of everything.

Perhaps his official spokesperson will confirm.

Mind you, as we are told that the P&R timesheets don't necessarily reflect reality, and Rhodes doesn't seem to have had a clue about what his electricians were doing on any particular day, I don't see how it was ever possible for him to provide Eddie with an "alibi" for any day of the week.

[caz]

When Nick Warren wrote his sample, an image of which I've already posted on this forum (#4492 of the Incontrovertible thread), he stated explicitly that it was being written with pre-1992 ink. Thus. the sample reads: "I am writing these words in "Diary" ink, i.e. the original Diamine black MS recreated for us by Alec Voller". The sample is dated 26 January 1995 which can only have been shortly after Voller provided him the ink.

Firstly, it's just as well that Warren put the word Diary in quotation marks, because there is no evidence that he was writing in the same ink as was used for the diary.

Secondly, David's image is presumably how Diamine looks after 23 years on the page, if this is a recent photograph of Warren's original sample. So it's impossible for us to know how it looked when it was freshly applied, and when it first began to show signs of bronzing, and at other intervals over the years, and - most importantly - how it compared with the diary ink at every stage of the three and a half years it would have taken to dry out chemically.

Now, really, is it seriously being suggested that Nick Warren, a surgeon and the editor of Ripperana, a totally respectable Ripperologist, was telling a lie, deliberately creating a fake sample in order to falsely try and prove the Diary genuine? I mean, the idea is utterly ridiculous.

I totally agree. The idea that Warren, of all people, was trying to prove the diary genuine, is one of the silliest I have ever heard.

But let's get real. Warren did do his damnedest to try and prove the diary was written with Diamine bought by Mike Barrett, so it shows that even surgeons and magazine editors are not above being outwitted by former scrap metal dealers.

I appreciate we've already had a disgraceful attempt to smear him in this forum because he had a "clammy handshake" (!) and was supposedly thought to be "a twat" but this is really plunging the depths of awfulness.

At least I've never sent anyone an anonymous letter. That really is plunging the depths of awfulness, and it was David who pointed out this twattish behaviour of Warren's in this forum, while criticising me for omitting it, so if that's his way of defending the man, I'd almost feel sorry for him if I could get past the clammy handshake.

As for the claim that Warren's sample should not have been similar but identical to the Diary, the world's leading expert seems to have forgotten that different paper will produce different results. Voller's words on this subject have already been quoted in the thread "Acquiring a 20th Century Word Processor" #74 when he speaks of:

"...the poor opacity and fading and bronzing that are apparent in your copy of Nick Warren's letter. These are aspects that can be drastically influenced by relatively small shifts in the conditions...One factor that can strongly affect both the initial result and the subsequent behavior of the ink , is the choice of paper and it may perhaps be that Nick's choice was not such as to bring out the best in the ink...I agree that the ink of Nick's letter has taken on an appearance similar to that of the Diary, as regards fading and bronzing..."

I now believe, incidentally, that this was written by Voller in a letter to Harris (not Birchwood) dated 19 May 2001.

In the case of the Diary paper it was very different to ordinary paper. As Melvin Harris once stated, Nick Warren's test letter was "written on hard-surfaced paper quite unlike the softish, thick paper" of the Diary. So that would explain why the two documents might not have been identical.

I can't see how any of this helps an argument for the diary ink being Diamine. If the results can be 'drastically influenced' by 'relatively small shifts in the conditions', or when different paper is used, and in any case Voller was being asked in 2001 to comment on 'a colour photocopy' of a test letter written in 1995 by Nick Warren [when was this copy made, in 1995? 2001? Sometime in between?] what bloody good is that???

Since nobody was able to compare like with like, on a visual basis, for all the reasons that have cropped up, the only sensible thing for Warren to have done was to send AFI some dots of Diamine ink on paper after a couple of years, and get them to repeat the test they did on the dots of diary ink on paper. Although AFI were not asked to analyse the diary ink, chemical by chemical, they could at least have compared the chloroacetamide levels in the dried ink residue.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Frankly, if this is the type of nonsense we are going to get when I post more information it's not worth the hassle of providing the full context.

That is pretty much how I suspect Keith and James felt when they posted information, only to see David's cynical responses and demands for more. Maybe David needed a taste of his own medicine.

As Voller has confirmed, the supposed ageing of the Diary text which made him think the diary was 80-90 years old could have been done artificially. That's it. The case is made.

But not against the Barretts, because nobody has shown they'd have known the first thing about artificially ageing ink on paper, and David himself has argued that Voller may have got it wrong about the ink being aged artificially in the first place! In fact, I'm not sure what case David thinks has been made for anything related to the age of the writing.

Whether the forgers, whoever they were, made use of a UV sunlamp is another matter but we really don't need to go into endless speculation about that because we now know that Diamine ink bronzes much faster than Voller realised and the bronzing he saw in 1995 could have been created naturally in a Diary written in 1992.

I'm sorry? Where does this come from? Voller was talking about the fading in the diary, in connection with the sunlamp. Where does he mention how fast he thought Diamine ink bronzed, or how this compares with the very slight bronzing in one or two places that he observed in the diary on 20th October 1995?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Furthermore, I have complained time and time again about the 2004 note of Keith Skinner's interview with Colin Rhodes not being posted, despite snippets of information from it having been used in argument, and have heard only silence in response.

Note? What note? It was a recorded interview, and not my property, even if I knew how to get it to David's ears.

Presumably the Diary Defenders have something to hide. They can't possibly give out information that would be helpful to the argument that the Diary is a modern forgery.

Nothing to hide, but David's right that it's not physically possible for anyone to give out information they don't have. I wonder how he thinks Colin Rhodes could possibly have said anything helpful to a modern forgery argument. He was unable to give Eddie an alibi for 9th March 1992.

In addition, we were promised that the transcript of the Diary prepared by the Barretts would be made available but this promise has not been kept.

Has the person who promised this actually said it won't be made available after all? Or could it be that they are tied up with more important things to do before they can get round to satisfying David's curiosity?

I've been constantly providing information for the benefit of everyone. I think that is what the Chief Diary Defender does not like. The grapes appear to be very sour in the mouth.

On the contrary, I'm delighted to see David posting more information, instead of sitting there whingeing about others not doing so. With any luck he may even have something up his sleeve that would be 'helpful to the argument that the Diary is a modern forgery'.

Presumably David now realises that Little Red Diary and the One Off Instance need all the help they can get, because nothing he has posted recently would make much sense otherwise.

Love,

Caz
X

[DirectorDave]

I'm not trying to nit-pick, but the source of this astounding offer could be relevant.

As could any conditions attached to the offer like an independent scientific assessment.

[caz]

Oh, one other thing. I mean this seriously, Caz, it's not a joke. I'm a little concerned about these two knuckle-draggers that somehow ended up with Robbie Johnson's "share" of the watch. Harrison felt they were up to no good, and I suspect she is right. Is it really likely they actually paid Robbie for his share, or, due to his habits (you know what I mean, I won't spell it out) is it far more likely that Robbie promised them his share in exchange for money he owed them? And once they were turned away, how did they react? I can't imagine they would be pleased. Not to put too fine a point on it, was Johnson's subsequent accidental death in Italy competently investigated, or am I just reading too much Ken Bruen and Ian Rankin (and Paul Feldman)? Now, to rejoin the cat.

I'm afraid I can't help you with any of this, rj. I'm as much in the dark as you are.

I will only say that a potentially valuable item like the Maybrick watch could have brought out the worst in anyone associated with it or attracted to it, regardless of whether that individual knew anything at all about who put the engravings in it or when. Same with the diary. There is no manual that states bad behaviour alone, or even odd behaviour, can indicate the person who actually created either artefact.

Love,

Caz
X

[David Orsam]

Devereux is an interesting and uncertain piece of the puzzle.

One little snippet of Devereux info is that, in his will dated 22 March 1979, having requested for all his money to be shared equally between three named women, he wrote:

"The only condition I make is that my ex-wife will not get a penny of this money as a gift, present or in any other form from the above named".

So, like Maybrick, who regarded his wife as the "whore", Devereux's relations with his wife during his marriage were evidently not good, although that is not, of course, unique to him!

[rjpalmer]

RJ, sorry to disturb you in your cat like purdah, but do you actually understand the point that was being made about the "prophesy"?

No need to apologize. In fact, sorry for the delay in responding. I was reading the 'Trump' thread and quietly vomiting to the point of dry heaves. I will leave it at that.

As for the "prophesy" remark. No, I don't. I don't understand it. But then, I can't follow very much of what Caz has been trying to argue lately. Some of her metaphysical conceits are so knotty and wayward that we would require an entire team of twenty or thirty Richard Crashaws to unravel them. I suppose the innuendo is that Barrett's affidavit must be a fake because it (slightly) mirrors Melvin's statement, but only slightly. But no, I am with you, I think Barrett's affidavit was probably drafted by Alan Gray based on Mike's rambling interviews, and has nothing whatsoever to do with Melvin. Mike was as mad as a hornet, and he wanted blood. And, anyway, if Keith has his way, we must "accommodate" a fourth conspirator, Billy Graham. So the mystical three is not really so mystical, and I think Melvin was talking about someone else anyway, so I don't think Caz's conceit 'works' on any level.

Devereux is an interesting and uncertain piece of the puzzle. My memory on this point is somewhat cloudy, but I think I recall that Melvin Harris was able to confirm that Mike's personal copy of Livepool Tales (with the small section on Maybrick) was found in the Devereux home. This would at least suggest that Devereux and Barrett discussed James Maybrick on some level. Caz always wants to frame this as a contradiction ("was it 1990 or was it 1992, you lot?") but obviously it isn't. I hardly need to tell you that writers often kick around ideas for months or years before putting pen to paper. Or they half finish a project, throw it in a drawer, and resume it years later. I think it is entirely possible that Devereux and Barrett came up with the idea clear back in 1990 and nothing really came of it until 1992, when the diary was physically created from the scrap album.

[rjpalmer]

I can only imagine Mike's rage when he opened up the envelope, expecting to find a nice fat royalty cheque, and instead found an itemized list from Crew that included a £2000 payment to Albert Johnson for use of the hoaxed watch! I doubt that he appreciated the irony.

[David Orsam]

The other thing I haven't understood RJ - and perhaps you can help me - is the significance of Mike feeling cheated in December 1994 vis à vis his affidavit of 5 January 1995.

I mean, isn't it quite possible that Mike, if he was the forger, felt that he wasn't making any money out of the forgery - that his expected huge fortune had not materialised - so he figured he had nothing to lose (and perhaps money to gain from the newspapers) by telling the truth. A truth that would not only deal a blow to the hated and now distrusted Feldman/Smith alliance but also to Anne who was now claiming that the Diary had been in her family for years, so that (if the Diary was a forgery) he would surely have believed her to be making an unwarranted grab for any future royalties?

[David Orsam]

What happened to William Graham? This must be one of the rare posts that your co-author Keith Skinner doesn't agree with, since the last time he was here he insisted that William Graham must be included among Mike's co-conspirators. Mike, Anne, Tony, and Billy = 4. Sorry, Caz, your strange and pointless premise has been shot in the foot.

RJ, sorry to disturb you in your cat like purdah, but do you actually understand the point that was being made about the "prophesy"?

I mean, I understand that Melvin Harris was quoted as saying in the Evening Standard of 8 December 1994 that "The identities of the three people involved in the forgery will soon be made known" but he wasn't saying that they would be made known by Mike Barrett was he? I think most people assumed that HE was going to make the names known, although, in the event, he could not do so on legal advice.

So what is the purpose of the word "prophesy"? Is it being said that Harris knew that Barrett was going to reveal the names? Or is it being said that Mike, having read the Evening Standard (a London newspaper) decided on that basis to reveal the names of three people as having been involved.

Might it not be possible that Harris simply got it right in saying that there were three people involved in the forgery which is why it matches the number in Barrett's statement?

Or is it too much for someone to swallow that Harris might just have got it right?

[David Orsam]

Given the Reign of Terror created on this forum by the Chief Inquisitor, it's hardly surprising that I was cautious before posting details of payments in respect of the Diary to living individuals, so cropped the image of the invoice from November 1993. But, equally, given the Reign of Terror, I naturally had to explain why I cropped the image. Otherwise I would have been accused of hiding something, or hypocrisy, or whatever.

Getting it wrong one way or the other would obviously have resulted in the usual downpour of smears around my head. And indeed those smears have materialised anyway even though I didn't post anything!!

I didn't, of course, say that the size of the payments revealed in the invoice would be "embarrassing" to those individuals (for some reason, the rule about quoting someone's exact words doesn't apply when it's the Chief Diary Defender posting) only that they might not appreciate me posting that information.

But, hey, why doesn't the Diary Defender-in-chief simply go ahead and post the full details of all payments relating to the Diary made to the five individuals I listed? Then I can reproduce the entire image of the invoice, safe in the knowledge that I'm not revealing any information not already in the public domain.

I look forward to seeing that happen. If it doesn't, we will know that we were seeing in her post today hypocrisy of the rankest and highest order.

[David Orsam]

I see the Chief of Typo Police has been out on patrol today, locating the typo I carefully placed for her. It's a funny thing. Most normal people would just note an error in passing (e.g. "I think you meant to say…") but the Chief of Typo Police makes a huge performance out of it, either going on about it at length to avoid the main issue under discussion or even thinking that finding a typo in some way validates a point she is making. Oddly enough, it doesn't. But if everyone started banging on obvious typos in everyone else's emails in the way the Chief of Typo Police does we would literally be here for ever.

Nevertheless I will continue to place random typos in my posts because I do always enjoy the performance.

[David Orsam]

Oh boy, when it comes to hypocrisy we have seen a classic example in this thread today.

Apparently, when Robert Smith claims to have written a sample in pre-1992 Diamine ink, we can safely take his word for it. This is the case even when that bottle of ink has gone missing, only to be found in an attic 16 years later. When Nick Warren writes a contemporaneous sample with Diamiane ink, however, we suddenly "need to know" that it was pre-1992 Diamine ink!!! I mean, honestly, the total hypocrisy is stunning.

When Nick Warren wrote his sample, an image of which I've already posted on this forum (#4492 of the Incontrovertible thread), he stated explicitly that it was being written with pre-1992 ink. Thus. the sample reads: "I am writing these words in "Diary" ink, i.e. the original Diamine black MS recreated for us by Alec Voller". The sample is dated 26 January 1995 which can only have been shortly after Voller provided him the ink.

Now, really, is it seriously being suggested that Nick Warren, a surgeon and the editor of Ripperana, a totally respectable Ripperologist, was telling a lie, deliberately creating a fake sample in order to falsely try and prove the Diary genuine? I mean, the idea is utterly ridiculous. I appreciate we've already had a disgraceful attempt to smear him in this forum because he had a "clammy handshake" (!) and was supposedly thought to be "a twat" but this is really plunging the depths of awfulness.

As for the claim that Warren's sample should not have been similar but identical to the Diary, the world's leading expert seems to have forgotten that different paper will produce different results. Voller's words on this subject have already been quoted in the thread "Acquiring a 20th Century Word Processor" #74 when he speaks of:

"...the poor opacity and fading and bronzing that are apparent in your copy of Nick Warren's letter. These are aspects that can be drastically influenced by relatively small shifts in the conditions...One factor that can strongly affect both the initial result and the subsequent behavior of the ink , is the choice of paper and it may perhaps be that Nick's choice was not such as to bring out the best in the ink...I agree that the ink of Nick's letter has taken on an appearance similar to that of the Diary, as regards fading and bronzing..."

I now believe, incidentally, that this was written by Voller in a letter to Harris (not Birchwood) dated 19 May 2001.

In the case of the Diary paper it was very different to ordinary paper. As Melvin Harris once stated, Nick Warren's test letter was "written on hard-surfaced paper quite unlike the softish, thick paper" of the Diary. So that would explain why the two documents might not have been identical.

The fact of the matter is that Warren's Daimine ink letter sample should not have been similar to the Diary if the Diary wasn't written with Diamine ink, but somehow it was. Just fancy that!