A Very Inky Question

[erobitha]

** bump **

For the benefit of Jay Hartley: "no ink is going to fade in the pages of a closed book" -- Alec Voller, ink chemist.

So how did this fading occur in the Mudbrick Diary if it was under Dodd's floorboards for 103 years?

Wasn't this your explanation for the diary's ink miraculously remaining soluble for all those years?

Something to think about. Have a nice day.

"Unfortunately, ink, like most things in life, is not permanent. The inks used in print production will all fade over time. The main cause is exposure to light (especially UV), which causes the ink/paper system to oxidize. When ink is oxidized it fades. Fading is much more complicated than is usually realized as it depends on environmental factors (light, heat, humidity,), the particular pigments being used, and the substrate the ink was applied to.

Ink manufacturers use fadeometers, along with known ink pigment characteristics, to test fade resistance by exposing the print to light radiation produced from a carbon arc or xenon tube. The arc emits an intense actinic light which in a matter of hours approximates the destructive effect of a much longer period of ordinary daylight. Although it does not exactly duplicate the effect of prolonged exposure to natural light, it is still an effective indicator of the degree of light stability and of the comparative resistance to fading. The results are interpreted with the aid of a chart that correlates the number of hours a printed sample lasts in the fadeometer to the equivalent exposure to direct sunlight taking into account the amount of UV light that different regions receive based on their latitude.

If resistance to fading is an important criteria for a print project, the best source of information is the vendor supplying the inks. They will know the characteristics of the pigments in their ink formulations and can suggest alternatives that may provide better fade resistance - though often at the expense of some other attribute like rub resistance, color vibrancy, or cost."

I don't believe we ever fully understood the chemical make up of the ink did we? Best start there old chap.

[Iconoclast]

I don't believe we ever fully understood the chemical make up of the ink did we?

Hi ero b,

I think it is fair to say that - with the benefit of retrospect - Baxendale's 'freely-soluble' claims needed to be tested as a matter of urgency to check that:

1) On this second occasion that he had reported to Robert Smith on the scrapbook (as opposed to the 'first' such analysis which was laughable) that he had actually tested the scrapbook and not some rogue fragment of another document in error (I'm struggling to believe that Michael Barrett had left it with him to do with as he pleased and for as long as he pleased - did Baxendale even have the right to test for solubility given that it would damage the scrapbook?) - this would have provided immediate verification or contradiction of his 'freely-soluble' claims.

2) At that point, if further tests also showed free-solubility, then experts should have been engaged to comment on what that would mean for a document which may have been hidden from light and oxygen for over a hundred years.

Based upon those two processes and conclusions, we would be in a far stronger position to argue that the scrapbook ink - and therefore the entire tale - was just months old when Baxendale did his tests. Instead, we are left with far more questions than answers, sadly.

It is interesting that almost no-one pursued the Baxendale free-solubility issue until fairly recently. I'd have to check, but I wonder what Melvin Harris made of this ticking time bomb (if anything)?

The reason why Robert Smith shoved Baxendale's second report in a drawer is presumably because the first 'report' was patently superficial and based solely on prima facie 'evidence', and that the second - suddenly more in-depth - contained such inexpert inaccuracies that Baxendale requested that his report be excluded from Harrison's book. With a background like that, it is significantly more difficult than it ought to have been to invest much faith in Baxendale's one-off instance of free-solubility so we ought to discard it in much the same careless way that Rod McNeil's ever-so-inconvenient ion migration dating of 1921 (plus or minus 12 years) never reached the ears of the Time Warner executives whose deeply-flawed Rendall report cost their company a payday like no other in the long history of Jack-related media.

Finally:

3) In an ideal world, ink experts would have been engaged to comment on the likelihood of freely-soluble ink in mid-1992 becoming entirely non-soluble in late 1994 (Leeds Report). Was this likely? How fast should ink bond firmly to its paper?

I don't think we can blame the protagonists of the investigation back in the early 1990s - they had far too much to research into and not enough resources to pay for it all. Looking back, we can see questions we dearly wish were asked. But - projecting forward - we will look back one day and wonder why we didn't ask certain other questions today than the ones we are asking. It's not a perfect world, but - equally - science proceeds by replicating results in order to confirm them and the absence of replication in an appropriate timeframe and with a specific agenda to do so leaves us - as ever, it seems - with those pesky questions and without those elusive answers.

Ike

[caz]

This was poorly phrased. What I meant was that Barrett's abilities have been largely judged by the scribblings the diary supports obtained during his bout with alcoholic psychosis in 1994-1995. He certainly wasn't in 'post alcoholism' at the time. It was after his descent into the abyss.

Not so, RJ. Mike's 'scribblings' continued in the same illiterate vein long after 1994-1995 - right up to his newly sober period in the 21st century, when he tried to interest Robert Smith in another literary venture - several pages of utter mince, posing as the start of a novel - which once again demonstrated the futility of clinging to the idea that he wrote any part of the diary, with or without Anne's input. Mike only needed the ability to spot an opportunity when he saw one, and he was exactly the kind of person to have conned someone out of the diary, with some old chat about having the right contacts to look it over and offer a fair price with no questions asked. I suspect that would have been the last Eddie Lyons saw of the "old book" until he read about it in Mike and Shirley's shiny new best seller, and saw it again in facsimile form. At least Mike had kept Eddie's name out of it and used the late Tony Devereux's instead, but Eddie had been robbed of his share in Mike's good fortune.

I'm trying to understand why Caz and Ike are suddenly concerned with Maggie's "Enterprise Allowance." Is there any evidence that Barrett received money from the scheme, and if so, what is the supposed relevance?

No particular relevance as far as I'm concerned, but you went hunting for details about the scheme when it was mentioned very briefly by Ike, so I assumed - wrongly it seems - that you were using the information you found to make some kind of point or argument. I have no idea if Mike made a formal application, or was ever accepted onto the scheme, but you needed a thousand pounds up front to join, and I'm not sure how easily Mike could have raised such a sum in 1986, on top of the cost of the word processor, which was presumably paid for by Anne or her father, possibly more in the hope of keeping him out of the pub than in any real expectation that he could ever earn his own living that way.

Maurice Chittenden reported early on that Barrett was on some sort of forty pound-a-week disability allowance, due to Barrett's confirmed health problems and bad back.

Is the suggestion being made that this was a lie, and that Barrett was actually receiving money from the Enterprise Allowance scheme?

You come out with these sort of madcap suggestions like pulling rabbits out of a hat - a quite extraordinary talent if only you were right occasionally.

I don't know the ins and outs of what Mike was claiming in the 1980s, and whether he was entitled to it, and I don't know how far he got if he did apply to join the Enterprise Allowance Scheme.

If so, and there is evidence for this, wouldn't this be further indication that Barrett was hiding his writing career in the 1980s from his collaborator (Shirley Harrison) and his agent (Doreen Montgomery) as well from the early diary researchers? Why was Barrett hiding and downplaying this career?

Mike tended to speak before engaging his brain, as we all know, so my guess is that he lied to Doreen and Shirley very early on about buying the word processor to transcribe the diary, to show his commitment to it, and to the writing project being proposed. At this point the diary was fully occupying his mind 24/7. He did later talk about his previous writing 'career', so he wasn't doing his best to hide it or play it down. How else would Shirley have found out about it and been able to make enquiries?

Anyway, I'll return to the theme of this thread--the ink--in a day or two. I'm in the middle or a painting project and have merely stopped by during a coffee break. Cheers.

I once fancied trying my hand at a painting project, but I was rubbish at it. It looked nothing like a real Monet by the time I had finished.

Unfortunately, my partner at the time was not the kind of sad sap who would have paid for an old canvas, and agreed to paint 95% of my second attempt for me, so I gave up and taught myself to knit instead. Moral of the story: know your limitations.

[caz]

Articles were posted in Celebrity magazine under Michael Barrett (8) then Mike Barrett (5) followed by Michael Barrett (3) - sixteen in total. I'm guessing that these were the two Michael Barretts Caz was referring to. I'm sure she probably agrees with me that they were almost certainly the same person but - as there were also articles under the name of Tom Barrett (81), I suppose it is possible that there were three Barrett contributors. I don't imagine we'll ever know.

Cheers, Ike.

This was what I must have had in the back of my mind. Without being able to compare writing styles between the Michael Barrett and Mike Barrett articles, I'm happy to assume they were all up to 95% Anne Barrett productions. Mike evidently didn't think it important as a professional writer to keep to one form of his name, even in the same publication.

Did you manage to ascertain who was involved with the Kenneth Williams interview? I also had it in the back of my mind that the article wasn't attributed to Mike, but was it attributed to anyone else by name?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Even Look-in was more for teens than little kids. It sounds like a deliberate attempt (by Anne) to downgrade Barrett's writing career and to mischaracterize it.

Why would she have been doing that?

Yes, let's all boo Anne. Boooo! What a pathetic and transparent attempt to downgrade poor Mike's writing career. She must have had an ulterior motive. RJ knows she always kept a dozen in her handbag.

And how very dare she, after doing so much to boost that career while they were married, by composing up to 95% of the diary text for him, so he could go on to write a best seller with Shirley?

What a stupid woman Anne must have been too, to think nobody might actually look into Look-in etc, and find out the true extent of Mike's published works.

But RJ will no doubt soon return to protesting that Anne was more sinned against than sinning, and was in reality Mike's innocent dupe.

[caz]

People still discuss and write about the Piltdown Hoax and it has been around a lot longer than 30 years. That certainly doesn't mean people should be stupid enough to believe that a Roman scull with the molars of an orangutan could be the real deal, nor that it wasn't debunked years ago.

And the Maybrick Hoax DID fall at the first hurdle. The first three hurdles in fact. 1. Baxendale. 2. The Sunday Times team. 3. The Kenneth Rendell group.

That Smith went on to publish it anyway is not evidence of its sophistication.

Are you one of those people who still discuss and write about the Piltdown Hoax? If not, why not? Why have you chosen to discuss and write about the Maybrick diary [and to a much lesser extent the Maybrick Watch] endlessly for the last twenty years, and will no doubt continue to do so long after Chris Jones has added his own brand of hurdles for the Barretts to fall at?

You might want to ask yourself why Chris is even bothering, if the diary fell at your first three hurdles and only about four people on the planet doubt it. Anne refused to jump at all, going on to claim it had been in her family for years, as if Baxendale, the Sunday Times people and Kenneth Rendell could all go to the devil.

I might be flattered if I thought your ongoing efforts, and Chris's, were all on account of a small handful of us who remain stubbornly resistant to the idea that the diary is a 1992 hoax knocked up by one or both Barretts. But I just don't believe that's why you are still here.

[Iconoclast]

Did you manage to ascertain who was involved with the Kenneth Williams interview? I also had it in the back of my mind that the article wasn't attributed to Mike, but was it attributed to anyone else by name?

Hi Caz,

It's not possible to know for certain as that article was unattributed (Edition 19, Funny Man's Lonely Life, Page 9, Jun 5, 1986 - Jun 11, 1986). Personally, I suspect it would have been written by James Green who appeared to conduct most of Celebrity's London-based interviews, though, confusingly (unless he had quickly forgotten Green’s name), Williams wrote in his diary entry for September 27, 1986, some three months after the Celebrity interview was published, "A man calling himself James Green (Evening News) rang and asked questions for an article he's writing about me in Wednesday's edition”.

What is interesting about Williams' diary entry is the revelation that celebrity interviews were conducted over the 'phone (though this contradicts Celebrity's apparent preference for selecting local interviewers).

Hope this helps.

Ike

[caz]

...confirmation of Barrett's claim that the diary was created in March-April 1992.

I know about Barrat's claim, but when did Mike Barrett claim this, and in what context? Do you have a direct quote, or is it the same old one where he supposedly once said something to the effect that the diary was not even written when he first contacted Doreen?

If you want to use it, go ahead, but it would then make complete mincemeat out of his entire affidavit of 5th January 1995, where he describes the alleged creation process in some considerable, if implausible detail, and then dates it all to while Tony Devereux was still alive - which he very obviously wasn't by March 1992. You can't put that down to a misunderstanding by Alan Gray, unless you want to claim that Mike failed to read the document through before signing it, which would render it equally useless.

I understand why you didn't mention Eastaugh [shortly after Baxendale in 1992] or Voller [October 1995], but they were both invited by Robert Smith and the diary team to inspect the diary closely, and I can't see how their findings could have been brushed aside, ignored or played down, had they echoed any of Baxendale's earlier misgivings. But it's all too easy for armchair amateurs like us to brush aside, ignore and play down the findings that fail to confirm our own thoughts on the diary as a Barrett or non-Barrett creation.

[caz]

Hi Caz,

It's not possible to know for certain as that article was unattributed (Edition 19, Funny Man's Lonely Life, Page 9, Jun 5, 1986 - Jun 11, 1986). Personally, I suspect it would have been written by James Green who appeared to conduct most of Celebrity's London-based interviews, though, confusingly (unless he had quickly forgotten Green’s name), Williams wrote in his diary entry for September 27, 1986, some three months after the Celebrity interview was published, "A man calling himself James Green (Evening News) rang and asked questions for an article he's writing about me in Wednesday's edition”.

What is interesting about Williams' diary entry is the revelation that celebrity interviews were conducted over the 'phone (though this contradicts Celebrity's apparent preference for selecting local interviewers).

Hope this helps.

Ike

Cheers, Ike. So it appears that Mike may have been a little economical with the truth [or was it just wishful thinking?] in claiming to have interviewed the very funny man who gave us: "Infamy, infamy, they've all got it in for me". Maybe he felt able to do so because the article was unattributed.

One of my favourite lines comes from Mark Antony [Sid James], immediately after the narrator has referred to Kenneth's character, Julius Caesar. Having just arrived in typically rainy England, Sid exclaims: "What a country!"

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Another one for RJ to ponder...

If Mike's claim about linseed oil was not just another of his stupid lies, is it not strange that nobody, from Baxendale onwards, wondered what that was all about, when examining the scrapbook? Does it not have a distinctive smell, and can it not combust and burn, even without a spark?

It doesn't bear thinking about, what might have become of the Barretts and their house, had Mike actually tried to do what he claimed in 1995:

'I soaked the whole of the front cover in Linseed Oil, once the oil was absorbed by the front cover, which took about 2 days to dry out. I even used the heat from the gas oven to assist in the drying out.'

RJ can play this one down all he likes, putting it down to Mike's tendency to exaggerate, but if linseed oil [in any quantity] and gas ovens are a match made in hell, how can any of this have had the tiniest spark of truth in it?

[rjpalmer]

If you want to use it, go ahead, but it would then make complete mincemeat out of his entire affidavit of 5th January 1995, where he describes the alleged creation process in some considerable, if implausible detail, and then dates it all to while Tony Devereux was still alive - which he very obviously wasn't by March 1992. You can't put that down to a misunderstanding by Alan Gray, unless you want to claim that Mike failed to read the document through before signing it, which would render it equally useless.

I'm sorry, Caz, but I refuse to believe that comments like this are made in good faith and can only assume that you are willing to lower yourself even to Ike's level of disingenuousness for the sake of argument.

"In 1989 my stepmom Maggie died" says Anne Graham (Harrison, p. 286).

Since Maggie's death certificate shows that she actually died in hospital in January 1988, are we to conclude that Maggie never died? Because Ann Graham got the year wrong?

That's basically what you're trying to argue.

We have seen the bleedin' receipt, showing that the event Mike described in his sworn affidavit really happened--in March 1992. And he doesn't explicitly date when this purchase occurred--many events over a long period are obviously grouped together in a free-flowing account. But be that as it may, Mike really did buy a blank Victorian Diary from Martin Earl in far-off Oxford. You know it; I know it. It has been independently confirmed and David Barrat has even chased down the advertisement that Earl placed in Bookfinder.

Only a very bad detective would try to throw this baby out with the bathwater because Gray, based on his meandering and painful conversations with Barrett, had the date wrong. It's not like Barrett hadn't been recently diagnosed with alcoholic psychosis, or anything like that (!)

You'll no doubt ignore me, but just to explain myself, let me put it this way.

Not long ago, I was listening to a podcast where a homicide detective of many years standing was telling the interviewer that during his long career, he hadn't encountered a single confession by a murderer that didn't contain several inconsistencies or downright lies or other blatant errors. Even in cases where DNA, CCTV footage, or similar evidence proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the murderer was genuinely guilty--and even thought the man in question was willingly confessing--there would be weird and unbelievable elements to his story or obvious lies sprinkled in here and there. It is the nature of the beast. Sometimes the perpetrator would lie to falsely implicate others (shades of William Graham?); sometimes they would lie because they were drunk or zonked-out on drugs at the time and couldn't remember certain details (confabulation); or sometimes they would lie to degrade the victim; and sometimes they would lie for the simply joy of lying. I'm certainly not comparing Bongo Barrett to Ted Bundy, but are we going to conclude that Bundy was innocent of his crimes because his confessions were sprinkled with outright horse-shite (because Ted was a pathological liar) even though the evidence shows that he was guilty?

I imagine Alan Gray had the same sort of thankless task as the above homicide detective. Not unlike someone who is interviewing a Bundy or an Ian Brady, he was faced with a glob of meandering tales--some true, some not true--of which he was trying to make sense and develop into a coherent narrative. Of course, we would be in a better position to judge how well Gray did if we were given access to the full collection of his recordings. It could very well be that, in Gray's ignorance of the Maybrick and Whitechapel Murder cases, he misunderstood some of what Barrett was telling him, and there is still evidence and/or insights to be gleaned.

Anyway, one reason I think you are fighting a losing battle is that there is evidence against Barrett that is entirely independent of his confessions. The ink being unbonded, for instance. Nor did Barrett ever say squat about his research notes being bogus, but a careful study shows that they were. His early lies about the word processor and his writing career are also suggestive. And Barrett also didn't say diddly about 'tin match box empty' but that tid-bit was published in only two books in 1992-one of them being Paul Harrison's--which by a remarkable "coincidence" Mike used by Mike in the bogus notes!

The way I see it, there is more than enough evidence to show that Barrett was guilty, and I think he would even have stood a very good chance of having been convicted had Robert Smith ever decided to press charges against him for fraud. But why would he have? It was more profitable to forge ahead and give Baxendale the bum's rush. The same Baxendale who thought he was looking at nigrosine--just like Alex Voller did.

But this is getting so silly now that I'm going to give it a rest and see what Mr. Jones and Dr. Dolgin have come up with. But first--as promised--I will upload a more legible version of Michael Barrett's journalism.

[rjpalmer]

This is as good as I could get it; you can read them if you try. Michael Barrett, Celebrity magazine, 1987.

I can only imagine how confusing it must have been to the Diary supporters when they discovered for the first time in 1994 that the man who had marketed himself as an 'ex-scrap metal dealer' had actually been a freelance journalist in the 1980s. Why hadn't Anne Graham alerted them? And even when quizzed, why did she still seem to imply that it had been only for a children's magazine? And the article seems to entail far more than "preset questions" as characterized by Ike.

[caz]

I know about Barrat's claim, but when did Mike Barrett claim this, and in what context? Do you have a direct quote, or is it the same old one where he supposedly once said something to the effect that the diary was not even written when he first contacted Doreen?

If you want to use it, go ahead, but it would then make complete mincemeat out of his entire affidavit of 5th January 1995, where he describes the alleged creation process in some considerable, if implausible detail, and then dates it all to while Tony Devereux was still alive - which he very obviously wasn't by March 1992. You can't put that down to a misunderstanding by Alan Gray, unless you want to claim that Mike failed to read the document through before signing it, which would render it equally useless.

I understand why you didn't mention Eastaugh [shortly after Baxendale in 1992] or Voller [October 1995], but they were both invited by Robert Smith and the diary team to inspect the diary closely, and I can't see how their findings could have been brushed aside, ignored or played down, had they echoed any of Baxendale's earlier misgivings. But it's all too easy for armchair amateurs like us to brush aside, ignore and play down the findings that fail to confirm our own thoughts on the diary as a Barrett or non-Barrett creation.

Sorry folks. When I implied that Eastaugh came 'shortly' after Baxendale in 1992, I should have been clearer: it was in June 1993, not too long after Baxendale in 1992.

That comes from rushing in my excitement to get away for another long DAiry free weekend. Probably see you next Tuesday, if that doesn't sound too rude.

That's all folks!

Love,

Caz
X

PS Mike's affidavit is still complete mincemeat.

[rjpalmer]

it is significantly more difficult than it ought to have been to invest much faith in Baxendale's one-off instance of free-solubility so we ought to discard it in much the same careless way that Rod McNeil's ever-so-inconvenient ion migration dating of 1921 (plus or minus 12 years) never reached the ears of the Time Warner executives whose deeply-flawed Rendall report cost their company a payday like no other in the long history of Jack-related media.

This is a curious accusation.

What is Tom Mitchell's evidence that Time-Warner executives were unaware of McNeil's findings, or is this more baseless accusation by Mitchell? Is he suggesting that Rendell suppressed McNeill's fidnings, or that Robert Smith did?

The suggestion is a characteristically bizarre one, considering that McNeil suggested that the diary was written between 1909 and 1933, which was two to four decades after Maybrick's death!

I could see Smith having a motive for suppressing this damning date range, but why would Rendell, whose initial assumption, as revealed to the Washington Post, was that the diary could have been written in the 1930s?


"Whodunit is still unclear. There's an odd but distinct chance it's an old hoax. An ion migration analysis, used for determining how long the ink was on the paper, showed the document as dating from 1921, plus or minus 12 years.

"It's possible," Rendell said, "it was done in the '30s, and someone set it out to be found at some later date."


Rendell is clearly not suppressing it--he's initially supporting the idea. The same article quotes Larry Kirshbaum, the president of Time-Warner. (Washington Post, 8 September 1993):


"It's not what it purports to be," said Warner President Larry Kirshbaum. "Despite the huge sales potential, our credibility means more."

In recent years, the credibility of American publishers has come frequently under attack. From Kitty Kelley's biography of Nancy Reagan, with its unsupported innuendo about the First Lady and Frank Sinatra, to the recent furor over Joe McGinniss's biography of Teddy Kennedy with its "creation" of thoughts, publishers are being accused of printing anything they think will sell -- regardless of truth.

Kirshbaum said his primary emotion yesterday was disappointment. "We spent hundreds of hours on this book. Everyone in the company was excited. We even had a books-on-tape recording by F. Murray Abraham of the diary, which is supposed to be superb. This was an Oscar-winning performance. I guess it goes into the vaults."

Despite Warner's rejection, the diary's British publisher said yesterday he still believes it is genuine.

* * *

"This was a go/no-go situation," said Kirshbaum. "If Rendell's report had come back ambiguously, we were going to publish it in the front of the book. We would let the reader decide. But there wasn't an ambiguous word in it. That sealed the decision."


--

Tom Mitchell seems to be taking out of his hat.

The whole article:

'DIARY' OF JACK THE RIPPER CANCELED AS HOAX - The Washington Post

[caz]

"In 1989 my stepmom Maggie died" says Anne Graham (Harrison, p. 286).

Since Maggie's death certificate shows that she actually died in hospital in January 1988, are we to conclude that Maggie never died? Because Ann Graham got the year wrong?

That's basically what you're trying to argue.

Don't tell me what I'm 'trying' to argue, RJ. The two situations could not be more different, and that's not an opinion or an argument - it's all there in black and white, as they say. Would Anne have got the order of events wrong, and dated their move to Goldie Street to before her stepmother died, if it was only the fact that her father was then on his own that prompted the move in the first place?

You have still failed to explain how Mike was able to recall, unsolicited and unprompted, just a few days after his affidavit of 5th January 1995, the precise date of his debut in London, accompanied by the diary and his rather crucial "dead pal" story, to explain when and how he got it: Monday 13th April 1992. This date was etched into his otherwise dodgy memory banks from that day forward, like initials engraved in a gold watch. So how does it make any sense that he had claimed in his affidavit that the entire creation process, from conception to execution, had taken place in early 1990, two years prior to that memorable appointment in London, and claimed that his "dead pal" was very much alive throughout? Your theory goes that Tony had been dead for 8 months when Mike finally attended the auction and obtained the scrapbook, and there would have been just days [not two years!] before Doreen's letter arrived to confirm the meeting on 13th. So it's simply not credible to explain away such transparently arrant nonsense, including Mike's 'linseed oil meets gas oven' moment, as a simple mistake over the year, which could have been Alan Gray's as much as it was Mike's.

How would you explain away Mike's change of heart on the Radio Merseyside interview eight months later, in September/October 1995? Mike initiated the interview after hearing the diary dismissed as a hoax on Radio Merseyside, when the authors of The Lodger were promoting their book. Bob Azurdia reminds Mike about this when he complains about how much the diary has intruded into his personal life. Also, Mike completely confuses Bob about the affidavit, claiming he had only ever made one in a solicitor's office - which would have been the one he swore on 23rd April 1993 ['coincidentally' when he learned that Feldy was onto the electricians], to the effect that Tony had given him the diary and told him that nobody else alive knew about it. I seem to recall Clever Trevor maintaining that the first affidavit would have been the one that was legally binding - but he did get into an awful muddle over which affidavit this was, demonstrating that his reading on the subject was at the Janet and John level.

We have seen the bleedin' receipt, showing that the event Mike described in his sworn affidavit really happened--in March 1992. And he doesn't explicitly date when this purchase occurred--many events over a long period are obviously grouped together in a free-flowing account. But be that as it may, Mike really did buy a blank Victorian Diary from Martin Earl in far-off Oxford. You know it; I know it. It has been independently confirmed and David Barrat has even chased down the advertisement that Earl placed in Bookfinder.

As I have posted elsewhere, it was Keith Skinner who had chased down the advert in Bookdealer by 8th December 2004, but it was not his to disclose at that time. I do wonder if it could ever have been traced if Anne had simply destroyed the 1891 diary, along with her old cheque book and bank statements [which she could have done, regardless] and claimed only to have a vague memory of handing Mike a cheque at some point, that was meant for groceries which never materialised! I'm struggling with how anyone could have proved there was more to it, so are we back to a deliberate deception on Anne's part to shift the blame onto Mike, or the one where she couldn't risk a flat denial of any knowledge, in case the purchase could still be traced by other means? I thought you conceded only recently that she may not have had any knowledge, beyond Mike asking for the cheque, so would you like to reconsider your explanation for Anne being so co-operative?

Of course, the elephant in the room is that this 'bleedin' receipt' [by which I assume you mean the paid-in cheque from May 1992] is not for the Maybrick diary, but for something that in nobody's imagination comes anywhere close to it. So once again for the scratched record, Mike missed his mark by failing to produce a single receipt for any of the actual raw materials that went into making the artefact seen in London on 13th April 1992.

Not long ago, I was listening to a podcast where a homicide detective of many years standing was telling the interviewer that during his long career, he hadn't encountered a single confession by a murderer that didn't contain several inconsistencies or downright lies or other blatant errors. Even in cases where DNA, CCTV footage, or similar evidence proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the murderer was genuinely guilty--and even thought the man in question was willingly confessing--there would be weird and unbelievable elements to his story or obvious lies sprinkled in here and there. It is the nature of the beast. Sometimes the perpetrator would lie to falsely implicate others (shades of William Graham?); sometimes they would lie because they were drunk or zonked-out on drugs at the time and couldn't remember certain details (confabulation); or sometimes they would lie to degrade the victim; and sometimes they would lie for the simply joy of lying. I'm certainly not comparing Bongo Barrett to Ted Bundy...

So you were not talking about James Maybrick confessing to murder in his diary then, and leaving it to be read after his death? You do surprise me, RJ.

...but are we going to conclude that Bundy was innocent of his crimes because his confessions were sprinkled with outright horse-shite...?

Well it seems to be the conclusion with the diary, that it is sprinkled with too much 'outright horse-shite' to represent the kind of confessions that Jack the Ripper, whoever he was, might have come up with. But it's gratifying to read that you too think Bongo Barrett was full of outright horse-shite when confessing to his part in the diary. It's a start, albeit a slow one. You still have to have the evidence that he was not just someone who talked and wrote outright horse-shite much of the time anyway, whether he was confessing to a hoax, or insisting that Maybrick really was the ripper, or trying to write a novel in the noughties without Anne there to help.

I was going to add that you must see why Mike's affidavit was complete mincemeat, if you believe Anne was his unwitting and unwilling dupe, because he threw her under the bus, by implicating her in every step of the process from start to finish. But now I see you accept it was outright horse-shite, but of the kind that hoaxers typically come out with when making a clean breast of it with a detailed confession.

I'd still like to know why you think he wanted - much less needed - to make a clean breast of it, if it was not a personal act of revenge against Anne for leaving him and not letting him see Caroline.

I also wonder what Melvin Harris meant when he told Alan Gray, a month before the affidavit was drawn up, that Mike needn't fear being arrested as a result. Is that why the dates were so screwed up, so all interested parties knew it wouldn't stand an earthly in a court of law? Was the initial plan to give it to the papers, because mud sticks whatever its quality? Mike seems to have had other ideas, and Harris presumably changed his mind when he read the outright horse-shite.