One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[David Orsam]

Don't you think it was just a little bit insane to make a confession statement like his, which could easily have resulted in a second police investigation, followed by a conviction for fraud or deception

No, of course I don't think it was "a little bit insane".

People confess to crimes all the time, for various reasons which have nothing to do with insanity.

[pinkmoon]

Anything to do with finding out the rippers indentity short circuits a lot of peoples common sense the diary is a prime example of this.

[David Orsam]

Because Mike's original claim, that he wrote it himself, was not considered credible, so he had to come up with another idea?

Because it's not in Anne's handwriting and there is no evidence that she'd have been able to disguise it well enough and thoroughly enough to fool experts like Sue Iremonger?

Because (whisper whisper) the diary didn't need 'working on', having come out of Battlecrease and found its weary - wary - way to Mike, ready written and raring to go public?

Because had Mike 'worked on the story' himself he'd have had Mary Kelly killed on September 11th (9/11), between Chapman and the double event?

Because he'd have produced something even the most loyal wife would have been too embarrassed to write down?

Let's remind ourselves of the question:

""I worked on the story and then I dictated it to Anne who wrote it down in the Photograph Album and thus we produced the Diary of Jack the Ripper."

Why did that not happen?"

Your first answer - "Because Mike's original claim, that he wrote it himself, was not considered credible, so he had to come up with another idea?" - That is not an answer to my question. Had I asked you why Barrett said that he worked on the story and dictated it to Anne your answer would have been reasonable. But I did not ask that. I asked you why Barrett's account did not happen.

So let's have a look at your other answers:

"Because it's not in Anne's handwriting and there is no evidence that she'd have been able to disguise it well enough and thoroughly enough to fool experts like Sue Iremonger?" - Equally, there is no evidence that Anne could not have disguised her handwriting is there?

"Because (whisper whisper) the diary didn't need 'working on', having come out of Battlecrease and found its weary - wary - way to Mike, ready written and raring to go public?" – There is no known evidence that the diary came out of Battlecrease.

"Because had Mike 'worked on the story' himself he'd have had Mary Kelly killed on September 11th (9/11), between Chapman and the double event?" - Well apart from your statement that Mike thought that MJK was killed on September 11th being a guess (with the most likely explanation is that he believed 9/11 to be 9th of November, which it is in England), Mike's account of how the Diary was written would have ensured that Anne picked up on any such errors before writing them down.

"Because he'd have produced something even the most loyal wife would have been too embarrassed to write down?" – That is unfounded speculation. If his wife would have been too embarrassed to write any parts of it down she could simply have not done so.

[David Orsam]

Ah, so you take it literally as a direct quote, David?

I take it as meaning what it says:

"a one off instance, I said..."

And as I've already explained in great detail, it's not an expression that Maybrick himself would or could have formulated in 1888, let alone have expected to be understood.

[David Orsam]

Now what do you make of 'the whores mole bonnett'? Would Florie have understood such a reference, do you suppose, where we have all been struggling to make sense of it?

What I make of it is that it is a line that appears to have been crossed out in the diary.

[David Orsam]

I'm not sure why you addressed this post to me.

If you hadn't deleted the first four paragraphs from your quotation of my post (which includes a question to you that you haven't answered) it would have been obvious why the post was addressed to you.

[Iconoclast]

Let's remind ourselves of the question:

""I worked on the story and then I dictated it to Anne who wrote it down in the Photograph Album and thus we produced the Diary of Jack the Ripper."

This is rather opportune as I was about to cite it myself, in a slightly different context (as a tangential response to your reasonable question to me about why Barrett would need blank pages in his requested 1880-1891 diary). In the very next paragraph in Ripper Diary, we get "According to Barrett's statement, while he and Anne were writing the diary, Tony Devereux was housebound and very ill: 'In fact after we completed the Diary we left it for a while with Tony Devereux severely ill and in fact he died late May early June 1990'.

Now, Barrett gets Devereux's passing wrong by a mere year and a bit (he died in August 1991) which obviously doesn't add credence to his tale, but could be another example of lapsed recall along the lines of that which you feel could have contributed to Barrett buying the journal in 1992 rather than 1990. But here's the rub. If Devereux dies in August 1991, and the tenor of Barrett's confession is to be believed (as you seem to feel) give or take a little forgetfulness over dates, the journal itself must have been in Barrett's possession before Devereux dies in August 1991 (otherwise Barrett's confession is fundamentally flawed in a way which no-one could reasonably plead away). Either Barrett was making up how the journal was written (pre-August 1991 and Tony Devereux's death) or else he was telling the truth and it was written before 1992 (and therefore before the controversial purchase of an 1880-1891 diary).

If Barrett was making it up in this respect, then all of his 'confession' is immediately undermined (this is not a mere slip of the mind on the recollection of dates - this is the mind saying that the journal was written before my friend Tony died, and that sequence of events cannot have therefore happened after Tony died as the memory is meaningless if Tony was actually deceased by then so that memory is inherently trapped in a pre-August 1991 version of events). If, however, he was telling the truth, why would he need to acquire an 1880-1891 diary in 1992? The request for blank pages - I admit - confuses me, but not as much as why on earth he felt he needed one in the first place. If, however, he received the journal in the way he first said (when married and sober) and in the way which Anne later developed (the same story but with one extra step along the route to Mike's hands), then Mike's purchase of an 1880-1891 diary strongly suggests that he wanted to see how much the journal Tony Devereux had given him reflected the diaries of that time. Why did he need blank pages? I don't know. If he had already created the hoax, he wouldn't need another vehicle for the hoax and he certainly wouldn't need any blank pages. If he had genuinely received the journal from Tony Devereux, he would not need any blank pages at all unless he had some hare-brained scheme to take a 'copy' of the journal to London for safety. We can all agree in retrospect that that would be seriously stupid, but we can't all agree with David that it would be beyond the reasoning of a man out of his depth and holding a hand grenade with the pin out.

The 'confession' of Mike Barrett not only changed with every telling, but it also makes the purchase of an 1880-1891 diary in 1992 malevolent only if the 'confession' itself was at least in part factually incorrect around the delay before Tony Devereux's death. And if that were the case, then Mike's prized 'confession' cannot be relied upon in itself (and obviously not in the context of the subsequent retraction, re-confession, changed version of events, and errors around its creation).

It is my understanding that generally in life we can't have it both ways, David. I think this is a case in point.

Ike

[Iconoclast]

You are not seriously suggesting that one can now find a completely blank journal or notebook from the LVP in existence and buy it are you?

I don't think I claimed the journal/notebook would have to be wholly blank, did I? (Maybe I did.) I thought I was asking why he would seek a diary from 1890-1891 (I can accept that Maybrick could have written in an 1880-1889 one and therefore that Mike the Hoaxer might seek one of those). An actual 1890 or 1891 diary would presumably have the year in it - on the front, on the spine, inside the cover, etc., places where a straightforward removal-by-knife was not plausible. Mike must have known this. My question should have prompted the question, why did he not ask for an LVP journal/notebook (written in or otherwise) as clearly one of those was significantly less likely to have a specific (and impossible) year in it requiring expunging before the Great Hoax began?

If you are planning to create a fake diary from the LVP, the obvious thing to try and get hold of is an actual diary from the LVP, as long as it has blank pages. A big advantage of this is that you know for sure that it comes from the LVP and will thus pass any scientific test.

Not an 1890 or 1891 one, though. That's the rate-limiting step in your theory.

I have explained it. You haven't.

If only you had, but you clearly have 'explained' it by resorting to a stretching of the imagination which would have done Mike Barrett himself proud.

[David Orsam]

Can I suggest, Iconoclast, that the entire puzzle is solved if what Mike Barrett was remembering in 1995 was that Devereux was ill while he was drafting the Diary during 1990. In other words, I am suggesting that there was a draft in existence (in typed format) prior to Mike phoning Doreen and acquiring the scrapbook.

When Mike says that there was a pause after Devereux's death, what I suggest he is thinking of is the period between August 1991 and March 1992.

According to Mike, the Diary was written "from my typed notes" and only on occasions "at my dictation".

His memory (through his drunken haze) of Devereux being ill while he was drafting (as opposed to dictating) the Diary may indeed be what has caused him to mess up the chronology in his mind.

[David Orsam]

I don't think I claimed the journal/notebook would have to be wholly blank, did I? (Maybe I did.)

What type of book, then, are you suggesting that Barrett should have tried to acquire in 1992 in order to forge a Victorian Diary?

[David Orsam]

I thought I was asking why he would seek a diary from 1890-1891 (I can accept that Maybrick could have written in an 1880-1889 one and therefore that Mike the Hoaxer might seek one of those). .

I am sure you are not asking me why Barrett would have sought a diary in which to forge a diary.

If you are asking me why he would seek an 1890-91 diary, he wasn't seeking such a diary at all. He was seeking one from around 1888. I have little doubt that he would have preferred an 1888 diary with blank pages but how many of those do you think there are available?

Let's say he places an advert asking for an 1888 diary and gets no responses.

So now he has to place a second advert asking for...what? an 1887 or 1889 diary? But say he still gets no responses.

So now he has to place a third advert for a wider range, 1880 to 1890.

Wouldn't it have been much simpler, and far more sensible, to include the wider date range in the first (and only) advert, thus saving him much time and money and achieving exactly the same result?

[Iconoclast]

What type of book, then, are you suggesting that Barrett should have tried to acquire in 1992 in order to forge a Victorian Diary?

It doesn't matter. I am not Mike Barrett and never have been. Therefore I am unable to explain why he did what he did or thought what he thought.

[David Orsam]

An actual 1890 or 1891 diary would presumably have the year in it - on the front, on the spine, inside the cover, etc., places where a straightforward removal-by-knife was not plausible. Mike must have known this.

That's an assumption that you are making Iconoclast.

I thought it had been accepted a long time ago in this thread that an LVP diary would not necessarily have the year printed on it.

Do I need to post all the images of LVP diaries again?

[David Orsam]

Not an 1890 or 1891 one, though. That's the rate-limiting step in your theory.

An 1890 or 1891 diary is an LVP diary isn't it?

As I've said already, all a forger needs is for the paper to be of the right period.

If he's got blank pages to work with then all he potentially needs to do is remove the pages with writing on them.

Amazingly, as it turns out, some people won't find this in any way suspicious.

[Iconoclast]

Can I suggest, Iconoclast, that the entire puzzle is solved if what Mike Barrett was remembering in 1995 was that Devereux was ill while he was drafting the Diary during 1990. In other words, I am suggesting that there was a draft in existence (in typed format) prior to Mike phoning Doreen and acquiring the scrapbook.

When Mike says that there was a pause after Devereux's death, what I suggest he is thinking of is the period between August 1991 and March 1992.

According to Mike, the Diary was written "from my typed notes" and only on occasions "at my dictation".

His memory (through his drunken haze) of Devereux being ill while he was drafting (as opposed to dictating) the Diary may indeed be what has caused him to mess up the chronology in his mind.

His 'confession' was not in any doubt, David. It is clear in it that the journal itself was the thing that had been purchased and written in before Tony Devereux died in August 1991. You can't have it both ways. You can't believe his 'confession' only in the bits that work for your theory and disregard the elements which inconveniently ruin your 1992-diary-writing theory (whether already typed up or not in 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, or 1991).