Too Sensible & Competent

[David Orsam]

A few things need to be clarified:

The fact that the Diary could have been aged artificially means that it cannot certainly be said to have been 80-90 years old based on Voller's examination. The factual issue of whether the Barretts had access to a sunlamp and had been told how to artificially age documents is neither here nor there bearing in mind that both things are possible and thus cannot be ruled out. As I (and others) have had cause to say before, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Unfortunately Voller did not write a report but in the transcript of his meeting which we have finally been told today (and no, we were not told before today) occurred on 20th October 1995, he said the fading in the diary was "characteristic of some considerable age" but he also said that the bronzing that he saw "tells me it is genuinely old".

Although we are told (yes, told!) by the Chief Diary Defender that "Voller was talking about the fading in the diary, in connection with the sunlamp" this is not something that Voller himself says in his letter to Nick Warren of 8 February 1996, which I have already quoted from at length. In that letter he says that his opinion that the Diary was written 80-90 years earlier was "on the basis of appearances" (i.e. not specifically fading). He said he was asked if "such an appearance" could be simulated by a forger and he said that it could be done by an accelerated fading apparatus. He says that such an apparatus will "simulate the effects of five years exposure to sunlight in a matter of weeks". The only specific mention of fading is in respect of uneven fading when he says that used by an amateur it could produce "exactly the sort of uneven fading that is characteristic of old documents".

Now, as I'm sure the Chief Diary Defender knows, some formulas of iron gall inks result in writings that can turn brown quite rapidly through exposure to sunlight. In other words, sunlight can mimic the effect of oxidization of ink. So, while I can't say what Voller was thinking, I have to take into account the possibility that he was saying that the appearance of the Diary which caused him to think it was 80-90 years old included both the fading and the bronzing and that both effects could be produced by an artificial fading apparatus or UV sunlamp.

Either way it doesn't really matter because from viewing a colour photocopy of Nick Warren's 1995 test sample (and I believe it was a high quality colour photocopy obtained by Harris, not just off an ordinary machine), Voller said this in 2001:

“…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 behaviour 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…”

What I understand Voller was shown was a colour photocopy of Nick Warren's 1995 test sample which was made in 1998, i.e. three years after the sample was written, i.e. exactly the same number of years after 1992 when Voller examined the Diary in 1995. This colour photocopy (i.e. from 1998) is what I have already reproduced in this forum.

Both the fading and bronzing, therefore, appear to occur naturally in Diamine ink after only a few years and would have fooled Voller.

Yes it was a colour photocopy not the original but we're not doing a precise scientific experiment here. We are simply trying to get to the truth and the colour photocopy is good enough for our purposes. Voller certainly had no objection to it and felt able to express an opinion in writing based on viewing it.

The Diary Defender tries to play dumb about the fact that the nature of the ink can vary according to the type of paper used as if that helps her cause. The simple point is that Voller could easily have been fooled and his conclusion that the Diary was written 80-90 years earlier than his examination now has no value. Moreover, and crucially, it would seem that the Diary could have been written with Diamine ink because it exhibits similar characteristics to Nick Warren's test sample.

[David Orsam]

The embarrassingly desperate attempts by the Chief Diary Defender to suggest that Nick Warren created some kind of forged test sample can be ignored but what about the claim that I pointed out some "twattish behaviour" of Warren?

What actually happened is that Robert Smith claimed in his book that an anonymous letter sent to him in (he says) 1995 was written by Nick Warren (using a sample of Diamine ink). The Chief Diary Defender simply accepted this and referred to it as a sample sent to Smith by Warren. But not a jot of evidence has been provided to support the claim that it was Warren who wrote and sent the letter and Smith did not think to reproduce it in his book.

I had to point out that, as the letter is anonymous, it cannot be linked to an individual without evidence.

The point could be cleared up very simply by a copy of the letter being produced so that we can all see (a) whether it is in Nick Warren's handwriting and (b) whether it exhibits the same bluish undertones as Smith's own 2012 test sample.

No such copy has been produced despite Robert Smith being a "close friend" of the Chief Diary Defender.

What conclusions can we draw from that?

[caz]

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.

There's something very wrong with you.

[caz]

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.

So why did you even mention the 'size' of those payments, if that had nothing to do with it? You may fool your fans, but you don't fool me or my cat, or anyone else who is paying attention to your choice of words.

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.

Because the information is not mine to post, and I can completely understand it if Keith and James have decided it's not worth the time or the effort to feed the troll.

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.

See above.

[caz]

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.

Ooh, I wonder why that was?? Couldn't be because Melvin's sad old arse was likely to be sued, could it? Couldn't be because he knew he didn't have the evidence to make his sad little suspicions stick, could it?

Devereux and Billy Graham were dead, so no problem there, and Mike had 'confessed' so he had no leg to stand on. Yet Melvin was too shi* scared to go for exposure and have his pants taken down.

Pathetic.

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.

Mike was feeding rubbish to Alan Gray, who was feeding it to Melvin, and the dynamic duo thought it was only a matter of time before they'd get a nice sworn confession statement out of him, naming the culprits and describing the mechanics of an early 1990 forgery.

I don't know when Melvin decided Mike was lying about whose handwriting was in the diary, but he thought it was Gerard Kane's, who was known to Devereux but could never be connected to either Barrett.

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?

Not according to rj, if Billy Graham gave Mike the money for the scrap book, knowing what it would be used for, as claimed in the affidavit.

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

Well someone fvcked up over the names and numbers, didn't they?

Not a straight story in sight from any of 'em.

As I say, pathetic.

[caz]

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 Ł2000 payment to Albert Johnson for use of the hoaxed watch! I doubt that he appreciated the irony.

Hi rj,

Don't you think it occurred to Mike that if only he could come up with a credible confession, he'd be taking the watch and Albert with it?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

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!

How low can you go, David?

Sorry, that was a silly question!

[caz]

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?

No. We are not being told that at all. I just wondered where the word 'note' came from? David made it sound like that was all there was. Poor bloke, he must be getting very frustrated that I'm the only one posting and I do not own any of the interview audio recordings and transcripts in existence.

I wonder how many times he's expecting me to repeat myself before the diary threads go the same way as the Tumblety one.

I now suspect that David doesn't want any of this material to be posted, and has therefore been doing his level best to piss off the only people who could have made it available, by being as nasty as he possibly can. I realise this must take a lot of effort on his part, so maybe I should be more sympathetic.

Or maybe not.

[caz]

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".

Yep, it's just as I suspected. David has been going out of his way to be so unpleasant over the last 'quarter of a year', that nobody with any kind of life would now drop everything to provide more material that he will inevitably reject because it won't support his idee fixe concerning the diary's origins.

I don't believe David is really that thick, so it has to be deliberate. And he will no doubt blame anyone but himself for the lack of any overwhelming desire to satisfy his feigned curiosity.

[caz]

Keith's failure to post the transcript of the Diary prepared by the Barretts has been explained in this very thread by him and/or James being too busy to do so. Or, at least, I have been asked by their official spokesperson to consider this possibility!

How many times is David planning to whine about the continued absence of Keith and James from the boards? Doesn't he know I have them both trussed up in my attic, to make sure they can't give him what he pretends to crave?

[caz]

Unfortunately Voller did not write a report but in the transcript of his meeting which we have finally been told today (and no, we were not told before today) occurred on 20th October 1995, he said the fading in the diary was "characteristic of some considerable age" but he also said that the bronzing that he saw "tells me it is genuinely old".

Although we are told (yes, told!) by the Chief Diary Defender that "Voller was talking about the fading in the diary, in connection with the sunlamp" this is not something that Voller himself says in his letter to Nick Warren of 8 February 1996, which I have already quoted from at length. In that letter he says that his opinion that the Diary was written 80-90 years earlier was "on the basis of appearances" (i.e. not specifically fading). He said he was asked if "such an appearance" could be simulated by a forger and he said that it could be done by an accelerated fading apparatus. He says that such an apparatus will "simulate the effects of five years exposure to sunlight in a matter of weeks". The only specific mention of fading is in respect of uneven fading when he says that used by an amateur it could produce "exactly the sort of uneven fading that is characteristic of old documents".

Does Voller explain whether he means 'a matter of weeks' under the sunlamp for every five years of simulated exposure to sunlight? Or 'a matter of weeks' from the end of the treatment? Either way, how many weeks would it have taken to simulate 'at least 90 years' of exposure [which was the opinion he gave Shirley of the diary's age]? Maybe David would be better off going with Mike's early 1990 date for its creation. After all, the Barretts may have known their stuff concerning this, but they were not psychic and could not have known, in April 1992, who might examine the writing within 'a matter of weeks' and find only five year's worth of apparently natural fading. That would have been a fat lot of good.

And how are we meant to interpret the word fading in 'an accelerated fading apparatus', if this isn't a specific reference to - er - fading?

Now, as I'm sure the Chief Diary Defender knows, some formulas of iron gall inks result in writings that can turn brown quite rapidly through exposure to sunlight. In other words, sunlight can mimic the effect of oxidization of ink. So, while I can't say what Voller was thinking, I have to take into account the possibility that he was saying that the appearance of the Diary which caused him to think it was 80-90 years old included both the fading and the bronzing and that both effects could be produced by an artificial fading apparatus or UV sunlamp.

Well this is exactly the sort of thing I was asking about, and the answer is hardly enlightening, if my cat will excuse the pun. The bronzing Voller saw in the diary was very slight, barely visible and only apparent in one or two places when he held the book up to the window, yet he thought the writing was at least 90 years old. If he was right, how old would it have been when the first signs of bronzing appeared? And I still have no idea how much Diamine bronzes by comparison, or how obvious it would be to the observer of an original sample [not a photo or photocopy!].

What I understand Voller was shown was a colour photocopy of Nick Warren's 1995 test sample which was made in 1998, i.e. three years after the sample was written, i.e. exactly the same number of years after 1992 when Voller examined the Diary in 1995. This colour photocopy (i.e. from 1998) is what I have already reproduced in this forum.

I'll look out for that. So far I can only recall seeing the photo David took of an original test sample from 1995.

Yes it was a colour photocopy not the original but we're not doing a precise scientific experiment here. We are simply trying to get to the truth and the colour photocopy is good enough for our purposes. Voller certainly had no objection to it and felt able to express an opinion in writing based on viewing it.

Ah, so now Voller is elevated almost to Dr status, and his opinion on this colour photocopy amounts to getting to 'the truth'. Wonderful. Or it might have been if this had involved a 'like for like' comparison, visually or chemically, between the original diary and an original test sample in Diamine.
I wonder what Voller would make of pages 34 and 35 of Robert's book and how he would explain the differences.

Moreover, and crucially, it would seem that the Diary could have been written with Diamine ink because it exhibits similar characteristics to Nick Warren's test sample.

Shame about Robert's book then, because it begs to differ.

[caz]

The embarrassingly desperate attempts by the Chief Diary Defender to suggest that Nick Warren created some kind of forged test sample can be ignored but what about the claim that I pointed out some "twattish behaviour" of Warren?

What actually happened is that Robert Smith claimed in his book that an anonymous letter sent to him in (he says) 1995 was written by Nick Warren (using a sample of Diamine ink). The Chief Diary Defender simply accepted this and referred to it as a sample sent to Smith by Warren. But not a jot of evidence has been provided to support the claim that it was Warren who wrote and sent the letter and Smith did not think to reproduce it in his book.

I had to point out that, as the letter is anonymous, it cannot be linked to an individual without evidence.

The point could be cleared up very simply by a copy of the letter being produced so that we can all see (a) whether it is in Nick Warren's handwriting and (b) whether it exhibits the same bluish undertones as Smith's own 2012 test sample.

No such copy has been produced despite Robert Smith being a "close friend" of the Chief Diary Defender.

What conclusions can we draw from that?

That Robert doesn't post here and may not have read the latest posts.

If he decides not to embarrass Warren further by producing his anonymous letter, thereby completely undermining all the recent attempts to flog the life back into the dead Diamine horse, I will be a trifle disappointed but there'd be bugger all I could do about it. David can just carry on blaming others for their failure to respond to his increasingly petulant demands, which he clearly wants to be ignored so he can fill his empty evenings with even more empty complaints about having nobody to play with but the cat's mother.

[David Orsam]

Ah, the hypocrisy is revealed in all its glory.

Why haven't the payments made to the five named individuals been posted on this forum by the person who knows what they are?

The reason we have been given is this

"Because the information is not mine to post"

Well exactly! And that is exactly the same for me. It's why I cropped the payments from the invoice I posted and said that those individuals might not appreciate me posting that information.

And if the possible issue is not the size of the payments then what can it possibly be? Because that is the only additional information revealed by the invoice, i.e. the size of the payments.

So yes, as I said, we have seen here today hypocrisy of the rankest and highest order.

[David Orsam]

I still don't understand the point made about the "prophesy" which is all I asked RJ about, and while someone has had fun trashing Melvin Harris (a person who is elsewhere held up as an authority on ink!) this doesn't help with the issue of what the connection is supposed to be between Harris saying in early December 1994 that he would name three forgers and Mike Barrett identifying three forgers in his affidavit of 5th January 1995. I couldn't care less if Harris got the identity of the forgers wrong or got it right but decided not to say anything on legal advice because he didn’t want to be sued. It's not what I was asking about. I suppose actually focussing on the question I asked and dealing in facts is too difficult for some when there is a dead person they can merrily abuse.

[David Orsam]

So I post a snippet of factual information from Devereux's will and am asked how "low" I can go? It's bizarre. I have seen a theory (not mine) that Devereux was the driving force behind the Diary and was transferring his own feelings about his wife onto the Diary's author. That's a theory and, given what Mike says in his affidavit, it has to be worth considering. I appreciate that some people don't like it when facts are posted and would prefer to engage in full rampant speculation (something I deliberately avoided in my post about Devereux's will) but I prefer to post the facts, not hide them, thank you very much.