One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[David Orsam]

Clearly not, David, since it flushed out one that was a mere 3" x 2". Did Mike not even have the sense to ask for one that was at least, say, 6" x 6"? The minimum of 20 pages was neither here nor there if he never considered the page size.

Well obviously not. With hindsight it's easy to say "oh well he should have asked for a diary above a certain size" but it's not something that is an obvious thought to have. An unused 3 x 2 diary, or one with 200 blank pages, might even have done the job. And there's a limit to how many permutations could realistically have been included in the advert.

But it's far worse for your case. Given that you think he had the Diary in his hands of a certain exact size then it really is strange that he wasn't asking for something of similar dimensions because there was no hindsight involved at all. With a large black guard book in mind it's baffling that he could have thought he would get any use at all from a small (not black) diary, either for writing extracts in a 'similar' diary to his own or for confirming that his Diary was genuine.

[David Orsam]

Could he not have returned it - unpaid for - because he had specified 1880-1890 and they sent him one for 1891? What's the point of specifying anything if you have to put up with something else because 'beggars can't be choosers'?

But that exact same question can be asked on your case as on mine. He never used the diary for any obvious purpose so, bearing in mind Anne's anger that you tell me she expressed at its purchase, why not just return it?

I've always assumed that HP Bookfinders contacted him before they sent it to him and said "We haven't been able to find anything from 1880 to 1890 but we've located a partly used 1891 diary, would you like us to acquire it for you?" and Mike said yes (on the basis that beggars can't be choosers), thus meaning that he could not return it because the company paid someone for it on his instructions.

If you believe it went down differently to this do please tell.

[David Orsam]

Nor is asking for the pages to be large enough for the purpose.

Well, no, it's not rocket science but it is mathematics isn't it? It's not just a question of the size of the pages but how many of them are available to be written on. Don't forget that the advertisement was asking for a used or unused diary.

What's best, a large used diary with 20 blank pages or a small unused diary with 200 blank pages?

Hey, suddenly it does become a little bit like rocket science.

[David Orsam]

So why did he speak to Doreen and put himself under any time pressure? Your suggestion that he only thought to find out if there would be any interest in his diary at the eleventh hour, then had to keep his fingers crossed that he would find something suitable to write it in while the clock was ticking, doesn't sound remotely plausible to me. He couldn't just 'take whatever he could get', could he, or he would have tried erasing the 1891 and cramming a pared down draft into the tiny blank pages. That's not rocket science either. There was every chance he wouldn't have found anything until the pressure was gone and Doreen's clock was only right twice a day.

The answer is obvious. He has to speak to Doreen first to find out if she's interested in a Diary before spending any money. The alternative is to forge the Diary first but then he will potentially have spent a lot of money and he might end up failing to attract the interest of any literary agents.

When I say he's under 'time pressure' I only mean that he naturally wants to get the Diary finished and available for Doreen to look at as soon as possible. He can stall he for a year or two if he really wants and come up with some kind of excuse for doing so. The pressure only comes from him wanting to make some money from the Diary a.s.a.p.

I don't see this as rocket science in any way, it's just plain obvious.

[David Orsam]

Did Doreen pay for his return rail fare to London? Would Mike have been hoping so when he called her?

I don't understand the purpose of this question. Nor why the answer would be of any relevance. What I'm saying is that once there was a chance of making money out of the Diary, prior to its creation, on the basis of Doreen's positive reaction, Mike spent over £75 on materials and then would have continued to spend money in the hope that Doreen would take it on. What's the rail fare got to do with it? I wasn't saying that Barrett was flat broke (if that is your point).

[David Orsam]

Are you saying Mike had to find a suitable pen and a suitable ink as well as a suitable book between March 10th and April 12th?

I don't recall saying anything about a pen but clearly the forger of diary couldn't write the text without a pen and ink and I don't imagine anyone would have purchased such things prior to having something to write the text of the diary into.

[David Orsam]

Unless he and Anne were in York for part of that time, which I seem to recall is what Anne claimed.

Ah, so she wasn't working full time for that entire period then?

I wonder when the Easter hols were that year.

If it helps, Easter was over the long weekend of 17-20 April in 1992

[caz]

One observation I'd like to add here is that the paragraph in 'Inside Story' dealing with the acquisition of the 1891 diary makes no mention of the crucial advertisement placed on behalf of Mike Barrett in a trade journal of 19 March 1992 which requested a diary from the period 1880-1890 with blank pages.

As a result, one could easily fall for the idea that he merely wanted to see what a Victorian diary looked like.

The absence of any mention of the advertisement on its own could easily explain why the purchase of the 1891 diary was not regarded by "everyone" as a crucial clue. Unless you know that Mike's target was a diary containing blank pages, the purchase of the 1891 diary doesn't quite make sense. But when you know that he wanted blank pages, and you know that the Maybrick Diary had pages removed from it, suddenly it all makes sense.

So what are you insinuating, David? That we deliberately left out the 'crucial advertisement'?

Checking my timeline I see that it was Keith Skinner himself who finally managed to extract this crucial extract from Bookdealer in December 2004.

Our book was published in the summer of 2003, so we'd have needed a time machine to include the wording.

I suggest, if you think Keith was slacking back in 1995, and should have been able to obtain that advert at the time, that you take it up with him.

And while we are at it, I don't recall seeing an admission from you that you were not only wrong about Keith's current position on the Battlecrease evidence, but you implied I was misrepresenting him by making an erroneous assumption about it. It turned out, as you know very well, that you were the one who had been assuming and getting it wrong, when you had every opportunity to check for yourself.

I know I suggested we move on, to spare your blushes, and for once I didn't see any objection from you. But an apology from you via private message would have been good manners, and I can be very forgiving and don't hold a grudge when someone can admit to overstepping the mark.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Ah, so she wasn't working full time for that entire period then?

No idea, David. I only said it was what she 'claimed'. Maybe she lied about them going to York during that period. Or maybe they took their materials to York and worked on the diary there.

If it helps, Easter was over the long weekend of 17-20 April in 1992

Thanks for the info. I expect Doreen wanted to fit Mike in before Easter then.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Why do I sound like Mike? When have I ever said that sugar will make ink "look and behave" like a Victorian one?

I meant your use of the word 'simple' to describe how easy it would have been for Mike to forge the diary. He said the same thing about it being 'simple' to put sugar in the ink. Cheap, I'll give you that.

Whatever Mike thought, he didn't need to put anything in the ink to "make it look and behave like a Victorian one" for the simple reason that the ink in the Diary did not look and behave like a Victorian one.

Leeds University would disagree with you there.

So did Mike lie about the sugar? Was any found in the ink? Or did he put some in, believing it would help?

I've provided a list of experts who all said that the ink looked new, not Victorian, and we have the solubility test whereby Dr Baxendale expressly excluded the ink as being Victorian.

Don't think he did. He thought there was nigrosine in the ink (no mention of sugar), but nigrosine was in general use in writing inks by the 1870s. He only considered it 'likely' that ink met paper after 1945, using his nigrosine error to give his considered opinion of the earliest possible date, not his solubility result. If you can quote where he 'expressly excluded' an earlier date as an impossibility, perhaps you would be so kind as to provide a link.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

What you failed to do was respond to the point that Mike could have said it took him two months or six months to produce the Diary but he happened to give it a time frame of 11 days that fits perfectly into the period 28 March to 13 April.

But don't you see? Mike knew he was using the little red diary to claim he forged 'the' diary. He only referred to it in his affidavit for that purpose. He must then have known to squeeze the writing of 'the' diary into the two week interval between receiving and rejecting the red diary, obtaining the guard book and taking the finished article to Doreen. It's neither a suspicious coincidence nor rocket science, is it?

But what it might suggest is that he wasn't quite as confused and befuddled by drink as his dates would suggest. He had to give a time frame that would fit 'perfectly' into that period, or his little red diary would have been even more useless for his forgery claims than it would have been for an actual forgery.

You've been had - in my humble opinion of course.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

The point you are missing here is that the purchase of the 1891 diary was not in itself incriminating and could be explained away by saying that Mike wanted to see what a Victorian diary looked like (which, of course, it was Anne said).

Well that's a departure from your usual position that it cannot be explained away.

What was incriminating was the advertisement in which the request was for a diary with blank pages. As far as I can see, knowledge of the existence of this advertisement did not emerge until some years later. So, on the basis that Mike's affidavit is true, there was no reason for Anne not to confess to the purchase. Had she tried to deny it but then evidence emerged of that purchase, that would have been foolish.

I see what you mean, but then Anne would not have known if or when the advert might come to light, and there is no evidence she even knew about it herself. The fact remains, if she knew about the advert, and that Mike had ordered it as part of their joint scheme to forge the diary, there was no reason for her to 'confess' to anything and open herself up to conspiracy allegations. Her first documented involvement was the cheque for £25 she signed in the middle of May, in settlement of the invoice, which Mike would have received with the book or shortly afterwards. He was marked as a 'late payer', which suggests he received at least one payment reminder before finally asking Anne for the money. Had Anne herself not helped Keith to trace that cheque and its payee, in 1995, so he could start building a paper trail back to Mike's original inquiry (which H.P Bookfinders told Keith was made over the telephone, asking them to locate a Victorian diary), how do you suppose any evidence of the purchase would have emerged by itself, given that Mike gave the year as 1990? Anne could simply have admitted to paying for another of Mike's flights of fancy, while claiming to have forgotten exactly when she gave Mike the cheque or who the payee was (I think the stub only said 'book'), and having long since destroyed the cheque book it came from. I'm sure Lloyds Bank would have been thrilled to be asked in 1995 to search their records back to 1990 for Anne's £25 cheque.

And, of course, Keith Skinner might have tracked down the bookfinding company to whom Anne paid the cheque. So not lying about the purchase was probably the sensible thing to do.

See above. Keith needed Anne's help to trace the payment to May 1992, and thence to the payee's name, in the first place. Maybe she liked playing with fire. Maybe she had been careful to restrict any evidence of her own involvement to the payment alone. Or maybe she had no involvement and only found out that Mike had ordered this pricey little 1891 diary when she was asked to cough up for it. If so, what would she have known about the advert and its wording before December 2004, when Keith finally obtained it?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

No, I relied on the account of the conversation in 'Inside Story'.

Which gives us: "I've got Jack the Ripper's diary, would you be interested in seeing it?"

What didn't you understand about this when trying to argue that Mike need not have mentioned anything about the guard book already being in his possession?

Maybe he didn't. Maybe Doreen got the wrong end of the stick.

Or maybe that's you.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Yes, that's the statement I was relying on. But this wasn't an announcement.

My Concise Oxford dictionary tells me that the meaning of the word "announce" is to "make publicly known".

Oh for heaven's sake. Okay, one can't 'announce' to a loved one, a couple of friends or small group of relatives that you have galloping knob rot without using a megaphone or facebook or the papers to make sure it's publicly known. Fine.

You asked: "why the indecent haste to announce you have Jack the Ripper's diary before you even have something to write it in?"

Okay, so why the indecent haste to tell Doreen he's got a diary he hasn't even found yet and has no idea if he ever will?

He was simply enquiring of Doreen if she would be interested in Jack the Ripper's diary, like I said.

No he wasn't, David. He may have been lying, but telling her "I've got it" was more than 'simply' enquiring if she was interested in such a thing. He'd have been better off 'simply' gauging her interest, if he didn't have a blessed clue if or when he might actually have one for her or anyone else to see.

Of course this was based on him informing her that he had the Diary and of course she would need to see it but the purpose of the initial conversation was no more than to find out if she was interested.

You don't know that, David. If the purpose was not to tell Doreen he had such a diary, she had a tongue in her head and would have wanted to know the reason for his enquiry. It's kind of a pointless question otherwise, but maybe Mike was hoping for a one-word answer "Yes" before ringing off and getting stuck into the task of producing one.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Is there any evidence that Doreen asked for a transcript of the Diary prior to seeing it?

I think that's one for you to find out, David. I don't have the time or the inclination to trawl through my voluminous timeline to provide you with answers you will inevitably find fault with. Believe it or not, I'm not a masochist. But I can safely say the transcript was produced (as in finally handed over) with the agreement of Doreen and the co-operation of Mike and Anne.

And if she did, why did Mike make such an effort to acquire a Victorian diary in which to hand write extracts from the Diary for Doreen when he knew he was going to hand over to her a transcript of it?

But when did he know he was going to hand over a transcript? He'd have needed to know that in early March if that was when he first tried to obtain the red diary. He only took himself and the guard book to London on April 13th, and there was plenty of time for the transcript to be prepared and typed up before it was first seen by Shirley and co. My understanding is that his famous 'research' notes followed in about the July or August, but I'm not sure if anyone was able to provide an exact date.

Love,

Caz
X