One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[David Orsam]

According to what I personally believe, yes. The man either knew he had been lying through his teeth since March 9th 1992 and couldn't stop or, as Ike suggested, he had a different version of the truth in his head every time he told the story and just couldn't help himself. That is what I believe, David. I am not 'saying' it is so, nor am I claiming to have demonstrated when he was lying and when he may not have been.

According to what you personally believe, no. Mike was telling the truth in his affidavit because he was involved in the diary's creation. And that's fine. Your faith must be a comfort to you.

The only evidence we have (until that which dare not speak its name emerges) is that Mike did not get the guard book in the manner he described.

As I have been continually saying, if you had only wanted to demonstrate that Mike made some factual errors in his affidavit then that would have been a pointless waste of time, especially in circumstances where I was myself saying that he must have made some factual errors.

Let's get real. Your purpose in saying that Mike's affidavit was 'demonstrably untrue' was because you believed you could demonstrate that he was lying. That's the nature of the argument you are, and always have been, making. You were not posting in a vacuum.

Saying that the evidence is that Mike did not get the guard book in the exact manner he described in his affidavit gets us nowhere if he got the guard book in essentially the same manner as he described in his affidavit (and there is no evidence that he didn't, because there is no evidence as to the O&L sales process).

[David Orsam]

Only 'perhaps' now, David? That's the most promising concession I think I have seen you make. I call that an achievement, and I don't care if it was all your own work and I had no part in it.

Previously I thought the affidavit had to contain the truth as far as you were concerned, bearing in mind your belief that Mike can only have obtained the 1891 diary with forgery in mind.

In which case, you haven't been reading my posts with due care and attention.

Have you already forgotten me saying that perhaps Anne wasn't involved in transcribing the diary and it was someone else? Or that perhaps Mike didn't draft the thing but someone else did that bit?

So I don't know whether the affidavit reflects the truth of the story as to the forging of the diary. Everything in it, save for the confirmed facts, such as Anne paying for the 1891 diary by cheque, might be lies but what I am saying is that the story told in the affidavit is consistent with Mike's attempt to acquire a Victorian Diary with blank pages - and this is why we shouldn't be dismissing it out of hand.

At the same time, it should have been obvious to you that when I said 'perhaps he told the truth in his affidavit' I was speaking to YOU and asking YOU to accept that. But from what I can gather you don't even allow for it as a possibility (or worthy of a 'perhaps'). Please correct me if I'm wrong though.

[David Orsam]

Fine - we got there in the end. My original observation that Mike's affidavit was not reliable and contained demonstrable untruths (which, as I demonstrated via that link, could be down to false ideas/beliefs as per the first definition, or deliberate deception as per the second - 'untruth' covers either) seems to have got lost in the mists of time, but I don't recall addressing that post to you, nor posting it in the knowledge that you had 'already addressed' Mike's untruths - as in false ideas/beliefs - and I was therefore just repeating an observation of your own.

Perhaps you have forgotten that when I asked you to demonstrate all those demonstrable untruths I specifically asked you, when doing so, to take into account my points in the two posts to which I drew your attention, namely that the chronology in Mike's affidavit was obviously incorrect and that he might have meant "receipt" when he said "ticket".

So if all you meant was that you could demonstrate that the chronology was incorrect and that the O&L auction process described was not accurate (i.e. that there were some errors in Mike's affidavit) it would have shortened this entire dialogue had your response been (after you read the posts to which I drew your attention) that you could not demonstrate any untruths over and above those that I had already demonstrated.

That was what I was trying to achieve when I asked you to read those posts of mine before attempting the demonstration.

Ultimately, after all the semantics, we arrive at a conclusion whereby the veracity of Mike's affidavit cannot actually be refuted. There is no evidence that what he said was deliberately and knowingly untrue, nor that the Diary could not have been created after his receipt of the red 1891 diary. Thus, I would say that to dismiss his affidavit out of hand, on the basis that it cannot possibly reflect what happened, as I believe you have done, is a mistake.

[David Orsam]

No, I wasn't saying that, David. I have no idea what Anne knew or didn't know concerning how Mike came by the diary. There has never been any suggestion that she followed Mike down to Tony's house and watched through the curtains to witness the diary changing hands.

Well there's a clue in Anne's own words from 13 July 1994 as to what she claims to have known isn't there? For she said:

"I took the parcel [containing the Diary] to Tony Devereux and asked him to give it to Mike and tell him to do something with it. This he faithfully did."

Do you think that this statement might be untrue then?

[David Orsam]

Well it clearly would have been a deliberately false impression if she presumed that Tony had given it to Mike at her own request, on a "no questions asked" basis.

As the quote I've reproduced above shows, she clearly did presume that Tony had given it to Mike at her request didn't she?

[David Orsam]

But again, there is no suggestion that she followed Mike to O&L and watched as he acquired the guard book, in which case she could not have known for certain how the thing got into his hands. What she would have known, almost certainly, is when Mike arrived home with it, and whether or not it contained 'the' diary by then. If it did (which is what I personally believe), then all the rest would have been presumption or suspicion on her part, wouldn't it?

And that's all we have been left with concerning what Anne really knew about the diary's origins - presumption and suspicion.

I'm afraid I just don't follow the logic of this at all. Anne says she personally gave the Diary to Tony and, at the same time, personally asked Tony to give it Mike. Lo and behold, the next thing she knows is that Mike has the Diary in his possession.

Are you saying that she might seriously ever have thought that Mike had stolen the Diary from Tony?

[David Orsam]

But you have been assuming that Mike didn't even have the guard book by then, which relies on him not giving a recognisable description of it to Doreen when saying it was in his possession.

Well if there is evidence or reason to think that Mike gave a recognisable description of the Diary to Doreen when telling her it was in his possession where do I find it?

If there is none, the point is theoretical only and not worth considering isn't it?

[David Orsam]

Not undue reliance, David, just more reliance on Whay's knowledge and recognition of his own sales procedures than on Mike's totally unsupported and erroneous description. Since I am satisfied that the thing came out of 'that place', I am not satisfied with any arguments - strained or unstrained - for it coming out of O&L.

That's even worse really. It means you've simply accepted Whay's claim that Barrett didn't acquire the diary at O&L, despite the lack of cogent reasons provided by him for saying this, and the apparent failure to conduct a search of O&L's 1992 sales records, on the basis of untested and secret evidence. If the untested and secret evidence doesn’t prove that the Diary came out of 'that place' then your whole belief system, and indeed, your faith, will rather fall apart won't it?

[David Orsam]

I know for a fact that Keith Skinner gave all Mike's claims - dodgy chronology and all - very deep consideration, before, during and after Anne helped him trace the 1891 diary acquisition to late March 1992. But if you have read Ripper Diary you will know that we made little if any attempt to analyse what may have been going on in the heads of the various diary and watch personalities, or to suggest guilt or innocence, or to draw any personal conclusions from the then available evidence, because our purpose was to tell the story of the first ten years (1992-2002), as it unfolded, using only documented sources of what was said or done.

Yes, but I think I am right in saying that when Inside Story was published in 2003 it was completely unknown to the authors that Mike had originally attempted to acquire a used or unused diary from 1880-1890 with a minimum of 20 pages (and it was not known until circa 2007). Consequently, Anne's explanation for the purchase of the 1891 diary, namely that Mike wanted to see what a Victorian Diary looked like, must have seemed reasonable. So that alone will explain why no-one took the purchase of the red diary seriously as a clue to how the Maybrick Diary came into existence.

[David Orsam]

It still would have left him "barely two weeks". It was up to the reader to work out for themselves if they considered this was "plenty of time" or not. If you managed it, what's your problem?

I think you've lost track of what we were talking about Caz.

I was responding to your point that other people did not see the purchase of the 1891 diary as significant when they learnt of it. Here are your exact words:

"Clearly we would not still be here enjoying ourselves if everyone shared your opinion that Mike's 1891 diary was enough to clobber 'the' diary over the head years ago, when details of it first emerged."

Clearly other people did not think that two weeks was sufficient time so, for that reason, I'm suggesting that they did not regard the 1891 diary as important evidence with which to 'clobber' the Diary over the head. Further, to repeat the point, 'everyone' did not know at the time the details of the acquisition of the 1891 diary first emerged (and for some time after) about the advertisement for a Victorian diary specifically containing blank pages.

In short, for you to place reliance on, or make a point out of, what other people thought or did not think when they learnt of Mike's purchase of the 1891 diary is wholly misguided.

[David Orsam]

Apart from on the last page, which is 'Dated this third day of May 1889', you mean.

No, you misunderstand. Mike obviously knew or believed that the diary was written in 1888-89 because he thought it was Jack the Ripper's diary. What I was saying was that, absent the text, there is nothing about the guard book itself that screams out that it was Victorian. So for the purpose of writing extracts into another 'similar' diary for Doreen, Mike didn't need a Victorian diary did he? In fact, as long as it looked similar to the guard book it could have been manufactured in 1991 or early 1992. The diary he was looking for did not need to be Victorian let alone from the narrow period of 1880-1890 did it?

[David Orsam]

Don't forget I am arguing from the perspective of Mike already having the thing in front of him when calling Doreen on March 9th. We don't know how much he knew about it at that point. Our opinions differ by quite a lot on that score.

Not only have I not forgotten this Caz, it is the basis of the entire point I am making (without any apparent success in getting you to understand it)

Yes, according to your version of events, Mike knew exactly what the big black guard book looked like as at 9 March 1992 so if he was after something similar in which to write extracts for Doreen, why wasn't he on the hunt for something that looked like the big black guard book regardless of whether it was Victorian or not? Why didn't he just purchase a modern, and unused, big black writing book which would have been much easier to locate and much cheaper to buy?

[David Orsam]

Don't worry, I won't forget. I have previously observed that he may have based that period on the date at the end of the diary, before trying to work out who Jack the Ripper - 'Sir Jim' - was meant to be, let alone if he died the same month, or even the same year, as the final entry, or when the first entry was supposedly written.

That is not, if I may say so, an answer to my question as to why Barrett wanted a diary from the period 1880-1890.

My actual question to which you were purportedly replying was this: "And don't forget that Barrett wasn't asking for a "Victorian" diary, he was asking for one from the specific period of 1880-1890. Why?". How does your post as quoted above answer it?

I mean, what does Barrett's thinking about who 'Sir Jim' was meant to be have to do with this? He knew he had Jack the Ripper's diary and Jack the Ripper operated in 1888. But what I'm asking is that for the purpose of writing out extracts into a 'similar' diary to the guard book for Doreen, why did it matter that the diary was from 1880-1890 specifically as opposed to 1870-1880 or 1890-1900 or 1900-1950 or, indeed, 1800 to 1990? You can't tell from visually looking at the guard book that it is from 1888 can you? So why did it matter to Mike when attempting to find something to write extracts into for Doreen?

[David Orsam]

Hold on David. I have never pretended to be able to 'tell' you, or anyone else, precisely what Mike was hoping for or why, when he received that 2" x 3" diary for 1891. I know you have convinced yourself he could only have had the one reason for placing that order, and I also know why I am not so convinced. But I can't claim to know what was in Mike's head at the time. I readily admit I am speculating on the possible reasons (and number of reasons, from one upwards) for Mike's advert.

But it's not all about you, David, and what you are 'hearing' for the first time has no doubt been suggested on previous occasions since 1998 too numerous to mention. I realise you are new to all this, and I have been trying to take this into account, but instead of admitting this was the first time you had heard something, it might be a better use of your time (not to mention mine) to educate yourself on what other readers have already heard over the years before you arrived.

That being said, opinion and speculation should always be revisited, tested and modified if necessary, as we learn more and continue to think things over, so I make no apology for any adjustments, additions or subtractions I have made to my own thinking since 1998.

Caz, I asked you to explain for me why Mike would have sought to acquire a Victorian diary with blank pages. Your answer, as I recall it, was that he wanted something 'similar' to the black guard book in which to write extracts from the Maybrick Diary for Doreen. If you thought there were other reasons in addition to this, I would have expected you to tell me them at the time you answered my question. It's got nothing to do with me being 'convinced' that there was only one reason for placing the order or of me not being aware of other explanations that have been put forward.

There is no reason why you can't make 'adjustments' to your original answer but it's nevertheless a little bit difficult for me to assess your answer and to form an opinion about it if you keep changing it or adding to it as we go along.

What would be helpful, now that you have had plenty of time to think about it, is if you could give me your definitive explanation for Mike's actions in March 1992.

[David Orsam]

No, because I don't know what he wanted the thing for. I can only keep speculating in the absence of any proof that he wanted or needed it for the only purpose you can come up with for him. Ever heard of trying to kill two birds with one stone? Who knows if he had more than one thing in mind after speaking with Doreen?

Caz, you can give me as many reasons as you like, and allow Mike to kill as many birds with one stone as you think he was trying to kill, but can you please give me some kind of coherent answer which explains what you think Mike was up to in March 1992?