Too Sensible & Competent

[rjpalmer]

"I miss Edwin. I have received but one letter from him since his arrival in the whores country." [sic: whore's].

Isn’t that an example? There may be others, caz; I'm too bored to look.

Meanwhile, I really do need to stop reading the Diary debate while having my morning coffee. So much blather. I honestly can't understand why any sensible person wouldn't have Anne Elizabeth at the top of their suspect list. She practically has a flashing neon light over her head, but it is “bonkers” to even notice.

[DirectorDave]

Even Dear Boss managed the one and only apostrophe required.

[David Orsam]

The issue now under discussion is whether Anne tended to omit apostrophes (although not always) in her written work, just like the author of the Diary. And, by pure coincidence, the evidence suggests that she does!

We all know that the posited scenario is that Mike was dictating the Diary text to Anne so the fact that the Diary contains "that is" rather than "thats" is neither here nor there because if that's what was dictated that is what would have been written. The fact that the Diary does not contain "don't" or "won't" is of no relevance save that it means we don't know if the Diary author would or would not have used an apostrophe on such occasions. Not that this would have meant very much either way because on one occasion Anne correctly types "wouldn't" whereas on another occasion she incorrectly writes "wouldnt".

A few other points:

1. If it is seriously being suggested (as opposed to childishly repeated) that I don't know the difference between "its" and "it's", this is demonstrably false as can be seen from my posts in this forum.

2 I can only do one thing at a time. It may be noticed that I have been posting quote a lot of original and previously unseen material recently. I will be getting round to the issue of Anne's handwriting in due course, and, don't worry, will be posting examples. For the moment, it is sufficient to say that, to my eye, Anne's handwriting in her letters to Mike is quite different to the sample of her handwriting provided to Shirley Harrison and Keith Skinner in January 1995 (which was presumably the writing tested by Sue Iremonger) in which, incidentally, Anne spells the word "rendezvous" incorrectly.

3. The image I posted of Nick Warren's handwriting in another thread was not "a copy of a photo" let alone a "terrible quality" copy of a photo. It was an original photograph which was, however, cropped and reduced in size in order to fit comfortably onto this forum without breaking the thread. The technical specs are: original photo: 5152 x 3864 pixels; when cropped down to size: 2702 x 1314 pixels; when reduced to fit onto the forum: 689 x 335 pixels. But I think that what I was attempting to demonstrate from the photograph was perfectly clear which is why a certain person has had a hissy fit over it. She seems to complain when I do post images and then complain when I don't. Consequently the only thing I can do is ignore such complaints.

[caz]

...I can only do one thing at a time. It may be noticed that I have been posting quote a lot of original and previously unseen material recently.

Freudian slip there, David?

You've been quoting from some correspondence, but it's a worry, for instance, that Voller's letters to Nick Warren dated 8th and 13th February 1996 were not quoted in full for some reason, because we have seen how your paraphrasing, in at least one instance, has altered the words originally written, and therefore potentially misrepresented Voller's position at the time of writing. If you didn't want me or anyone else to spot the difference, and didn't want to spend time and effort having to explain why you did it, if you truly believed that: 'a similar effect [to that produced by an accelerated fading apparatus] could have been produced with a cheap [how cheap?] UV sunlamp' was identical in meaning to: '"at least some of the effects of an accelerated fading apparatus could be duplicated" by the use of "no more than an ordinary sunlamp"', it might have been better to do yourself a favour and stick to quoting Voller's exact words on the subject, so nobody would have wondered why you had changed them.

It's hard enough for people to discuss objectively any letters which have parts missing, parts quoted and parts paraphrased, but we do know Voller told Shirley in the context of this same accelerated fading apparatus that:

'any exposure to U.V. radiation that was harsh enough to simulate a century's worth of natural fading would also have a savage bleaching effect on the paper'.

The image I posted of Nick Warren's handwriting in another thread was not "a copy of a photo" let alone a "terrible quality" copy of a photo. It was an original photograph which was, however, cropped and reduced in size in order to fit comfortably onto this forum without breaking the thread. The technical specs are: original photo: 5152 x 3864 pixels; when cropped down to size: 2702 x 1314 pixels; when reduced to fit onto the forum: 689 x 335 pixels.

Thanks for the additional information, although it won't make the image any clearer, or help explain what you hoped to achieve by posting it, knowing what Warren was told by Voller in 1996 about the diary having been subjected to unknown sources of UV radiation for an unknown duration if it was a modern forgery. How is any useful comparison possible on that basis?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

"I miss Edwin. I have received but one letter from him since his arrival in the whores country." [sic: whore's].

Isn’t that an example? There may be others, caz; I'm too bored to look.

Hi rj,

Yes, but that is what I was remarking on: the lack of apostrophes, as in whores. David has now posted similar examples from Anne's private letters to Mike, such as:

"I had to get two police officers to stand at my fathers funeral"

What might be a tad more relevant is why Mike was sending 'notes by the dozen' to her Dad's address and why Anne had to have a police presence at her Dad's funeral - and why she got one. I wouldn't call that normal, even for a couple in the throes of a particularly bitter and nasty divorce.

And how stressful must all this have been for Anne? I think I'd have had more on my mind than making sure to remember all my apostrophes when writing to someone who wouldn't have known the difference anyway and was causing me such upset.

To put this in context, Anne's father died on 12th November 1994 and his funeral was held on 19th November. On 7th December 1994, Anne got her divorce from Mike. The following day, 8th December, Melvin Harris was famously quoted in the Evening Standard: 'The identities of the three people involved in the forgery will soon be made known'. Then, at the end of December 1994, according to an email I received from John Omlor, dated 13th February 2002, Robert Smith wrote to Mike, enclosing expense receipts to explain why there were no royalties owing on this occasion. Mike scrawled across one of them: "I don't give a dam [sic]". Five days later, on 5th January 1995, he swore the affidavit, supporting Melvin's uncannily accurate prophesy from exactly 4 weeks previously, by naming 'the three people involved in the forgery' - as himself, the wife who had abandoned him in the January and divorced him just a month ago, and his old mate Tony "dead men don't tell lies" Devereux.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

I honestly can't understand why any sensible person wouldn't have Anne Elizabeth at the top of their suspect list. She practically has a flashing neon light over her head, but it is “bonkers” to even notice.

But this imaginary flashing neon light over Anne's head is only the product of a conviction that the diary has to be a modern Barrett production.

If, as David recently claimed, nobody is arguing these days that Mike was the forger; and if it now goes against the grain to have Citizen Gerard Kane and his 'Special K' down as a cereal offender; and if Tony Devereux can't make it to the top on account of dying several months before the creation, it kind of leaves you with nobody to put up there at the number one spot today but Anne, which is still bonkers, but ever so slightly less so than it was when the others topped the forgery chart. Let's see if she can keep her lofty position when everyone gets to see some of the letters she wrote by hand.

I suppose you or David could also write to Anne on behalf of all the sensible people who think as you do, to let her know she is your prime suspect for having written the diary. I'm sure you could think of all sorts of questions to put to her, and best of all David could deliver his coup de grace by explaining how she and Mike slipped up with Little Red Diary and the One off Instance, proving the diary could not have been in her family since the 1940s because it was written over 11 days in April 1992. Then if Anne doesn't own up and say it's a fair cop, you can post her denial here so we can all pick the bones out of it, basic errors in English and all.

Have a terrific weekend.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

On second thoughts, David might want to change the words 'coup de grace', in case Anne thinks he is offering to mow her lawn.

Love,

Caz
X

[David Orsam]

Wow, the Nonsense dial has been turned up to 11 today I see.

It's not a "worry" that Voller's letters to Nick Warren from February 1996 have not been quoted in full "for some reason". It would be utter madness if everyone posting in this forum had to transcribe an entire document, including irrelevant material, when they only want to quote a limited bit of it to make a specific point in an internet post.

When I posted the quote from Voller's letter I had absolutely no idea whether this correspondence was available to others, such as Keith Skinner and the World's Leading Expert (who already told us she was offered unpublished documents sourced from Melvin Harris but declined to accept them), or other researchers, nor whether it had been posted on this or other forums in the past which I had never seen. It was only from the subsequent moaning and whinging reaction that I realised that the Leading Expert does not have access to a copy of this letter. It's funny, though, that when I asked James Johnston to post the entire transcript of his interview with the Eddie Lyons, that same person defended his failure to do so!!! Keith Skinner didn't quote the entire Doreen Montgomery correspondence, he didn't include the irrelevant parts which is fine. And he knew that this correspondence had never been published before.

As for the phrase "at least some of the effects", it was me who posted it in the first place when quoting from Voller's letter!!! So how is it possible to say that I didn't want anyone to "spot the difference"? Surely it just demonstrates my integrity in quoting accurately and in full without omitting any relevant parts. I even discussed that phrase in a subsequent post.

My interpretation of what Voller was saying is that he was conceding that the use of a UV sunlamp would have fooled him, otherwise what was the point of his comment? He clearly wasn't saying that a UV sunlamp would ONLY produce some of the effects and would therefore not have been able to fool him, he was saying that a UV sunlamp would produce effects similar to an accelerated fading apparatus sufficient that he would have been fooled. In other words, the effects would be similar.

Even taken literally, a reproduction of "at least some of the effects" must mean that similar effects would have been produced, even if not all of the effects would have been reproduced. But we shouldn't be dealing with Voller's correspondence as if it is the Holy Bible, with each word taken 100% literally as if he could never lack clarity in his writing. We have to look at what Voller was CONVEYING and what he was conveying was that a UV sunlamp would produce similar effects to the apparatus he had previously been discussing.

I'll set out the full context of the relevant paragraph from Voller's letter separately but we find confirmation in what I am saying in what Voller told Shirley Harrison. In the context of "an accelerated fading apparatus or even a hand held sun ray lamp", he said, to use the full quote provided by Shirley:

'Besides, any exposure to U.V. radiation that was harsh enough to simulate a century's worth of natural fading would also have a savage bleaching effect on the paper. There was nothing about the appearance of the Diary, as I recall, to suggest this. It's hard to be dogmatic because the rate at which fading occurs is variable but....'. [The dots here are Shirley's]

So he must there have been saying that a UV sunlamp could SIMULATE the effects of an accelerated fading apparatus namely by SIMULATING a century's worth of natural fading.

As a result, he is surely there saying that the UV sunlamp WOULD produce similar results to an accelerated fading apparatus (which he has already admitted, or later admits, in his letter to Warren, could have fooled him) but he is now adding that it would also produce a bleaching effect on the paper (which he doesn't recall seeing but clearly hadn't actually examined the Diary to check for this effect). Well that's as may be but it's different to what he said in writing to Warren which I have quoted elsewhere. Why he is saying different things to Shirley as to Warren? It's a good question. Does it undermine his credibility?

And here's the thing. Shirley only quotes a little bit of what Voller said about the sunlamp. Where is the full quote? He clearly said more because the first word quoted is "Besides". And where is the complaining that Shirley hasn't quoted everything so that we can get a fair picture about what Voller actually said? Why the happiness to rely on only a snippet on this occasion? And on what date did Voller say what he said to Shirley? Was it before or after his letter to Warren? Was it spoken or in writing? There is no complaining, for some reason, about the lack of details provided by Shirley in her book. It's a worry.

[David Orsam]

I'll quote the full paragraph from Voller's letter relating to the sunlamp in a moment but a reminder of what I said about this originally so the purpose for which I was originally quoting from his correspondence, and the full context in which I was doing so, can be seen:

It's a little known fact that Voller qualified his opinion on this subject in a letter to Dr Nick Warren dated 8th February 1996, as follows:

"It was an honest opinion, taking into account all the known facts and making due allowance for the various unknowns and purely on the basis of appearances, I can see no reason to change that opinion. What you may not be aware of however, is that having expressed this opinion, I was asked whether I could think of any way in which such an appearance could be simulated by a forger and the gist of my reply was that I could not think of any method which would not be unmasked by chemical analysis. In the light of your comments about Mike Barrett [that he had once been a freelance writer], I rather regret making that statement because even at the time, I knew it not to be entirely true. There is in fact such a method but I did not think it even worth mentioning because it seemed to me that a complete idiot such as I assumed Mike Barrett to be, could not possibly comprehend the details."

He then sets out a possible method of forgery which might have fooled him, involving the use of a modern ink chemically identical or near chemically identical to a genuine Victorian ink, an accelerated fading apparatus (which could either be a big carbon arc lamp within a metal drum, a xenon arc lamp or a mercury-tungsten fluorescent lamp) and an exposure of the text to the radiation from one of these lamps a few weeks after it was written. He says he does not know how long it would take to produce an 80-90 year old fading effect because no experiment had ever been conducted.

He goes on:

"I also have to say (ruefully) that as a method of forgery, the above technique would probably produce more convincing results in amateurish rather than professional hands because a person unused to the finer points of the operation of the equipment would probably obtain willy-nilly, exactly the sort of uneven fading that is characteristic of old documents."

Voller was sufficiently uncertain about the age of the Diary to say to Dr Warren in a subsequent letter dated 13 February 1996 that, "your remarks about the text actually having been written by some nameless confederate (I have always thought that Anne Barrett was the favourite suspect) have given me food for thought."

Perhaps most importantly he concedes in this letter that, "at least some of the effects of an accelerated fading apparatus could be duplicated" by the use of "no more than an ordinary sunlamp".

Now here is the full unexpurgated paragraph from Voller's letter of 13 Feb 1996 subject to one line at the bottom of the first page of the letter which is virtually cut off in the photocopy I have seen:

"I suppose that it is going too far to speculate that Barrett [here is cut off but he probably says something like: had access to an] accelerated fading apparatus (which is designed to produce an emission spectrum similar to that of the sun), but your remarks about the text having been actually written by some nameless confederate (I always thought that Anne Barrett was the favourite suspect) have given me food for thought. I wonder if he might have done more than just set pen to paper? I wonder if someone knew enough to realise that at least some of the effects of an accelerated fading apparatus could be duplicated by using no more than an ordinary sunlamp? There would presumably be no problem of access there."

There is nothing else in the letter relevant to this issue. There are three paragraphs in the letter. The previous paragraph discusses the possibility of fading being caused by the Diary having been photographed and/or photocopied. The subsequent, and final, paragraph discusses a point of naval history with Warren.

I submit that Voller is CLEARLY saying in the above-quoted paragraph that the effects of an ordinary sunlamp could have been similar to the effects of an accelerated fading apparatus, otherwise the entire paragraph is both pointless and meaningless. What would even be the point of him referring to "no problem of access"? If the effects of a UV sunlamp were not sufficiently similar to create the fading, which he expressly admitted in a previous letter would have fooled him, what would have been the point of the entire paragraph? Because surely he would just said, "yes, Barrett's confederate might have had access to a sunlamp but that wouldn't have helped him because the effects of a sunlamp wouldn't have been similar to those of an accelerated fading apparatus and thus wouldn't have been able to fool me."

Unless that point is specifically addressed and answered we can certainly take it that Voller was saying that the effects of a sunlamp were similar to those of an accelerated fading apparatus, which he has already admitted to Warren in express terms could have simulated the appearance of the Diary. My interpretation and summary of Voller was therefore entirely reasonable, proper and appropriate while the use of the word "Naughty" to describe it was wholly illegitimate.

[David Orsam]

The Hypocrisy dial is also turned up to the max today. Look at this from the person who claims that Voller's exact words need to be used when summarising his position:

"knowing what Warren was told by Voller in 1996 about the diary having been subjected to unknown sources of UV radiation for an unknown duration if it was a modern forgery."

But Voller didn’t tell Warren anything about the diary "having been subjected to unknown sources of UV radiation for an unknown duration if it was a modern forgery". He said that such a technique could have simulated the effects of natural sunlight and that the appearance of the Diary as he had viewed it could have been produced by such a technique. But what we now know is that he subsequently said that the test sample written in Diamine ink by Warren in January 1995 bears certain similarities to the Diary text, suggesting that, to the extent that Voller was suggesting that a modern forger would have needed to have used an accelerated fading apparatus to recreate the look of the Diary text, he was wrong. Warren did it just by writing out some words in Diamine manscript ink!!!!!

[David Orsam]

Incidentally, going forward I will be placing some deliberate but random typographical errors into my posts for anyone bonkers enough to want to highlight them in bold as a substitute for the professional therapy which they would so badly need to attempt such a weird pastime. It's obviously mad but harmless so please do have fun with it!

[David Orsam]

Missing Person Alert

Does anyone know what has happened to the person called Dr Alec Voller? He was once mentioned quite a lot on this forum but now seems to have been replaced by someone with no title called "Alec Voller" or sometimes just plain "Voller". How disrespectful. I seem to recall that a member of this forum once came in for strong criticism for referring to this particular doctor as plain "Voller" and I don't recall seeing any admission by the critic that a mistake was made in having assigned a doctorate to him. So I am worried for the welfare of Dr Alec Voller. Please let me know if you see him and let's hope the imposter "Voller" is arrested and thrown into prison.

[David Orsam]

It may be a good idea not to believe everything you read on the internet, even if it happens to be written by someone known as the world's leading expert on the Diary. I'm thinking about this passage:

"Then, at the end of December 1994, according to an email I received from John Omlor, dated 13th February 2002, Robert Smith wrote to Mike, enclosing expense receipts to explain why there were no royalties owing on this occasion. Mike scrawled across one of them: "I don't give a dam [sic]". Five days later, on 5th January 1995, he swore the affidavit, supporting Melvin's uncannily accurate prophesy from exactly 4 weeks previously, by naming 'the three people involved in the forgery' - as himself, the wife who had abandoned him in the January and divorced him just a month ago, and his old mate Tony "dead men don't tell lies" Devereux."

Is there any basis in fact to this purported sequence of events?

Well I suggest it is unlikely that Robert Smith wrote to Mike Barrett at the end of December 1994 enclosing expense receipts to explain why there were no royalties owing. This is for two reasons. Firstly, because such correspondence was normally from Robert Smith to Rupert Crew Ltd/Doreen Montgomery as Mike's agent. Secondly, because Mike did write directly to Robert Smith on 19th December 1994 to complain about not having received £70,000 from New Line Cinema but Smith's response to this letter, addressed directly to Mike, was not written until 13 January 1995.

I am, however, in possession of a copy of an invoice dated 3 November 1993 from Smith Gryphon Publishers addressed to Shirley Harrison and Mike Barrett, care of Rupert Crew Ltd, which was the enclosure to a letter from Robert Smith to Doreen Montgomery dated 5 November 1993 on which Mike Barrett has scrawled "I Dont Give A DAM." (see below).

Before we get any moans of complaint about me only producing an extract from this invoice, I could reproduce the entire document but, as it contains details of payments to the following individuals: Anna Koren, Nick Eastaugh, Sue Iremonger, Keith Skinner and Albert Johnson, some of whom are still alive (one assumes, although not necessarily all showing signs of life), and might not appreciate the size of those payments being posted on the internet, I will refrain from doing so.

Now, the annotation is undated so I don't know when it was written on the invoice (nor when Mike received that invoice in the first place) but 5 November 1994 by my calculation was some 426 days prior to 5 January 1995 so I'm not sure if the chronology as set out above can really be said to be reliable nor whether there can really be said to be any connection between Mike's scrawl and his affidavit. But don't worry folks, if an error has been made, it will all happily turn out to be John Omlor's fault not the fault of the person who reproduced the error in this thread!

[rjpalmer]

And Mike forgot his apostrophe.

[rjpalmer]

Totally off-topic, but just to 'bump' the watch...

If Chris Jones ever rejoins the forum, I'd be curious to know his source for the following statement (p. 168) in his Maybrick A-Z.

"He [Albert Johnson] turned down an offer of $190,000 for the watch, which is hardly the act of a forger."

I've never heard of any offer approaching this amount. The figure $30-40K U.S. was tossed around once or twice, and supposedly Robbie Johnson settled for a quarter share at £15K. If we accept that, than the 'worth' of the watch to whoever came up with that figure would have been around £60K (Robbie received a quarter share). The exchange rate in 1995 was about 1.56 US dollars to the UK pound.

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