A Very Inky Question

[rjpalmer]

How would you explain away Mike's change of heart on the Radio Merseyside interview eight months later, in September/October 1995?

Why would I feel the need to 'explain it away'? It's an established fact that Barrett was in a repetitive cycle of confession followed by retraction. He did this over a period of some years.

We've discussed this dozens of times over the years, and I see no crying need to discuss it again--it won't lead us anywhere we need to go. If you're curious about my views on these matters, look in the archive--we've certain gone over it enough times.

Further, we have seen evidence of Barrett's solicitor warning him behind the scenes to 'stop strangling the golden goose' and we have also seen Barrett alleging that his estranged wife told him (at the end of 1994) to "keep [your] mouth shut and that if [you do] you could receive a payment of L20,000 before the end of the month," so it is hardly surprising that Barrett's motives would be conflicted, and his behavior erratic and contradictory, depending on what was going on behind or before the scenes.

The ironic thing, if one cares to call it ironic, is that I agree with Keith Skinner that Barrett's self-destructive confession was connected to his estrangement from his wife and daughter, as well as his anger at Smith and Feldman. We've always agreed about this. Where we disagree is whether or not this tells us anything about the truth of Mike's January 1995 affidavit, or anything about Mike's involvement in the hoax independent of his various confessions and retractions.

Something you and Keith might ask yourselves is that if the January 5, 1995 sworn affidavit was motivated by a desire to make a false confession, then why did Mike not distribute that confession? What good would it do locked in a safe? Why did Mike not send it to the newspapers or otherwise advertise it if that was his plan? Or why not send it to Smith or Feldman or those working towards a film adaptation?

One can understand why Gray and Harris wanted Barrett to talk--they wanted to learn what Mike knew about the diary's origins, by why would Barrett himself agree to the creation of this document, only to keep it safely tucked away under attorney/client privilege?

As far as we know, the affidavit was distributed to exactly one person: Anne Graham, which is thoroughly bizarre if this was a false confession, for she was perhaps the only person in the entire world in a position to know the truth or falseness of Mike's claims. You don't find that strange?

Graham apparently leaked it to Harrison, but she alerted no one else that we know of. That's certainly strange behavior from an erratic man who was supposedly swearing to a false confession in order to fool the world that he had something to do with the creation of the Maybrick diary.

[caz]

Why would I feel the need to 'explain it away'? It's an established fact that Barrett was in a repetitive cycle of confession followed by retraction. He did this over a period of some years.

We've discussed this dozens of times over the years, and I see no crying need to discuss it again--it won't lead us anywhere we need to go. If you're curious about my views on these matters, look in the archive--we've certain gone over it enough times.

Further, we have seen evidence of Barrett's solicitor warning him behind the scenes to 'stop strangling the golden goose' and we have also seen Barrett alleging that his estranged wife told him (at the end of 1994) to "keep [your] mouth shut and that if [you do] you could receive a payment of L20,000 before the end of the month," so it is hardly surprising that Barrett's motives would be conflicted, and his behavior erratic and contradictory, depending on what was going on behind or before the scenes.

The ironic thing, if one cares to call it ironic, is that I agree with Keith Skinner that Barrett's self-destructive confession was connected to his estrangement from his wife and daughter, as well as his anger at Smith and Feldman. We've always agreed about this. Where we disagree is whether or not this tells us anything about the truth of Mike's January 1995 affidavit, or anything about Mike's involvement in the hoax independent of his various confessions and retractions.

Something you and Keith might ask yourselves is that if the January 5, 1995 sworn affidavit was motivated by a desire to make a false confession, then why did Mike not distribute that confession? What good would it do locked in a safe? Why did Mike not send it to the newspapers or otherwise advertise it if that was his plan? Or why not send it to Smith or Feldman or those working towards a film adaptation?

One can understand why Gray and Harris wanted Barrett to talk--they wanted to learn what Mike knew about the diary's origins, by why would Barrett himself agree to the creation of this document, only to keep it safely tucked away under attorney/client privilege?

As far as we know, the affidavit was distributed to exactly one person: Anne Graham, which is thoroughly bizarre if this was a false confession, for she was perhaps the only person in the entire world in a position to know the truth or falseness of Mike's claims. You don't find that strange?

Graham apparently leaked it to Harrison, but she alerted no one else that we know of. That's certainly strange behavior from an erratic man who was supposedly swearing to a false confession in order to fool the world that he had something to do with the creation of the Maybrick diary.

I missed this when it was first posted, so apologies for the long delay in responding.

RJ writes:

'Further, we have seen evidence of Barrett's solicitor warning him behind the scenes to 'stop strangling the golden goose' and we have also seen Barrett alleging that his estranged wife told him (at the end of 1994) to "keep [your] mouth shut and that if [you do] you could receive a payment of L20,000 before the end of the month," so it is hardly surprising that Barrett's motives would be conflicted, and his behavior erratic and contradictory, depending on what was going on behind or before the scenes.'

This is all very well, but how does it help with the crucial question of whether Mike was strangling the golden goose [which he undoubtedly was] with a true confession of sorts, or with a pile of unadulterated garbage? Within days of his affidavit dated 5th January 1995, he was claiming to have made up the stuff about forging the diary and watch, just to "kick up the shi*" [which is how Mike himself elegantly described his reasons].

Mike's self-destructive confessions were indeed directly connected with his personal circumstances, following his wife and daughter's sudden and permanent departure from his life in January 1994. There is evidence to suggest that he may have taken his only copy of the affidavit to where Anne was living, but had to put it through her letter box because she was away for the weekend. It was Alan Gray who had typed it up, and I find it very hard to believe that he didn't immediately send Melvin Harris a copy, considering Harris had been waiting patiently for Gray to get Mike to come up with the goods since well before Christmas. So the question really ought to be why Harris didn't send a copy to the newspapers, or even to Smith or Feldman? Harris obviously told a select few about its existence at least, if not the finer details, and someone put a form of it up on casebook, and it wasn't Mike or Anne or Shirley or Keith.

RJ continues:

'As far as we know, the affidavit was distributed to exactly one person: Anne Graham, which is thoroughly bizarre if this was a false confession, for she was perhaps the only person in the entire world in a position to know the truth or falseness of Mike's claims. You don't find that strange?'

Not in the least. Anne couldn't have known how many copies existed, or who else may have had one. For all she knew, he could have sent it to the papers already. We don't even know if she actually read it, or tore it up in disgust, like all his other threatening communications. She may only have read up to the first blatant lie. The threat, from Mike's point of view, was to make her think that others would be reading this and would swallow it, warts and all. But it would have been obvious to Anne that many of the claims were laughable. As such, it was an empty threat for her personally, and she'd have known he had no proof if the whole thing was a lie from start to finish. Mike would have been trying to get to her, putting the pressure on her to get a reaction - any reaction was better than none.

I could ask why Mike would have tried to keep it just between himself and Anne if this was a true confession and she knew it. RJ doesn't find that strange, if he was serious about exposing this 'fraud'?

When Mike travelled down to Baker Street in the July, intending to prove once and for all that he had created the diary and Anne had transferred it by hand into the scrapbook, the only documents he brought with him were some loose pages from his April 1993 affidavit, in which he swore that Tony Devereux gave him the diary in 1991. Was he already drunk when he left home that morning, and packed the wrong affidavit by mistake? Or did he no longer have the one from January 1995 to consult? He was left floundering, unable to state clearly who had done what, and even said at one point that Devereux "didn't know the diary existed", before repeating the claim, almost in the next breath, that he had "asked Tony Devereux a thousand bloody questions!".

RJ ends with:

'Graham apparently leaked it to Harrison, but she alerted no one else that we know of. That's certainly strange behavior from an erratic man who was supposedly swearing to a false confession in order to fool the world that he had something to do with the creation of the Maybrick diary.'

We don't have any direct evidence that Anne 'leaked' Mike's affidavit to Shirley, although she may have said something about Mike being up to his stupid tricks again. Anne was hardly in a position to stop the whole world reading the affidavit if Mike or Melvin Harris had chosen to 'publish and be damned', but why would she have helped by 'alerting' people, whether or not there was any truth in it? It was more likely for Mike to have dropped the odd cryptic hint to Shirley about the existence of another of his affidavits but, at any rate, there is nothing to suggest that she was given anything in writing with the details of this one for another two years.

Mike's motivations were strictly personal and had nothing to do with maintaining a professional reputation - unless you count his desire to be recognised as the smartest hoaxer in the world, who tried to bust his own hoax. It was Harris who wanted Mike to swear to a true confession, so the fraud could be exposed to the world. And we know how well that went, don't we? The affidavit was treated instead like a grubby little secret, to be tucked away and quietly shared with a select few, eventually to be 'published' in our tiny corner of the internet universe.

I will return with a bit more on the very inky question, but I'm sure that's enough to be going on with for now.

Love,

Caz
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[caz]

Housekeeping time:

On Friday 2nd October 1992 [six months after RJ believes the ink met the scrapbook], Dr Nicholas Eastaugh reported his preliminary results of the analysis of samples from the diary. This included testing the ink and establishing its chemical composition, as well as commenting upon the previous study by Dr David Baxendale.
A series of other samples of varying date were also supplied for comparison purposes, including a scrapbook with writing dated from 1871 to 1915 and various picture postcards dated 1907, 1910, 1922, 1937 and 1950.
Several samples of diary ink were taken and tested.


On Friday 18th June 1993, in a further report, Eastaugh wrote that, during the tests he had conducted on the diary [in October 1992], 'it was clear that the solubility of the ink was similar to the Victorian reference material and unlike the modern inks dried out for reference'.


On Friday 30th July 1993, an article appeared in The Washington Post, which referred at one point to an interview with Dr Nicholas Eastaugh, who is quoted:
"With the current state of the testing, we can't distinguish between it being a document from 1889 and something much more recent – say, five to 10 years old."


On Saturday 25th September 1993, Robert Smith sent Keith Skinner a written statement, alluding to Dr David Baxendale's 'fundamentally flawed' report, and his offer, when his errors were pointed out to him, to waive his fee entirely, on condition that Robert 'would not use any part' of the report 'for any purposes whatsoever'. Referring to the emphasis placed on Baxendale's ink solubility test, Robert quoted Dr Nicholas Eastaugh advising him that: 'the use of such tests may be subjective and therefore unreliable without a sufficient number of suitably close and well-characterised comparison samples. This is because many factors affect the way in which inks age and change in solubility.'


What seems clear from the above is that the ink solubility issue is about as clear as mud, and not what I would describe as a 'silver bullet'. What's to be done with Nick Eastaugh's observations from October 1992? Chuck them in a skip, because the amateurs on an internet message board will assure us that the diary ink could have behaved like his Victorian reference material after just six months on the paper?

Love,

Caz
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