A Very Inky Question

[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
X

[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
X

[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]

"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.

[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]

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]

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.

[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.

[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?

[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]

...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.

[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]

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.

[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]

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
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