One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[caz]

But isn't Anne's story that Mike had possessed the diary for about a year before he contacted Doreen? And that during this time he "started to investigate it"?

So what? Anne is an unreliable witness, if you recall, as she totally changed her story between April 1992 and July 1994. And of course, you don't believe for a moment that Mike even had the diary when he contacted Doreen, never mind had been investigating it for months.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

I fail to see what Baxendale's knowledge of the history of nigrosine has to do with his findings on solubility if he is a competent forensic document examiner.

It's his personal interpretation of his findings that could be an issue, David. I have never suggested he wasn't competent to test for solubility or to obtain a valid result. How many more times do you want me to repeat myself?

However, Baxendale failed to find any presence of the iron in the ink, which Eastaugh - supposedly less qualified for the job - found in clearly measurable amounts. Baxendale also revealed his lack of knowledge about nigrosine, which led to his personal interpretation that the presence of it in the ink (which was never confirmed by anyone else) put the date no earlier than 1945.

How do you know for a fact that Baxendale's personal interpretation of his solubility result did not also stem from a lack of sufficient knowledge of the history of ink solubility, and the range that can be found among known Victorian documents?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Then you are confusing me for I thought that your claim is that the Diary is a hoax produced either in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century.

Did you, David? Where did I claim this? It may have been when I had an episode of transient global amnesia, just over two years ago, but I didn't think you were around then. I merely don't accept it was an early 1990s Barrett production.

Tell me how you can sustain such an claim without arguing that Baxendale got it wrong over solubility.

If I wanted to 'sustain' such a claim, I would need to invoke the Battlecrease evidence. Luckily for you, I don't. I would never claim to know that Baxendale was off in his interpretations of the evidence, even though I personally believe they cannot be considered entirely reliable.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

If Dr Baxendale was misquoted or misrepresented by the Sunday Times in what was a major news story that weekend in September 1993, why do you suppose he has not publicly objected to this?

Fair point, David. So you are saying it was Baxendale who allowed the inference that he was substantially narrowing the goal posts, and not the Sunday Times misrepresenting his true position?

It's a pity he didn't clarify anywhere (as far as I am aware) that it was only the ink he considered 'likely' to have originated since 1945, while 'expressly excluding' the possibility of it meeting the paper before 1989.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Well that's not the story told in 'Inside Story' (p.2). What is said there is that after speaking to 'Mr Williams' on 10 March 1992, "Montgomery wrote to Williams, confirming that she and Harrison would look forward to meeting him and his wife...". Then it says "In a subsequent phone call to Montgomery, Michael Williams revealed that his real name was Michael Barrett". The explanation for this is that "He had decided to conceal his true identity until he was sure his story would be taken seriously."

Yep, so because Mike feared his story might not be taken seriously (imagine that!) he gave Doreen a false name. Not sure the point you are trying to make, but when he was reassured that he was being taken seriously he felt no further need to hide his true identity. His thinking may have been that if Doreen had laughed and put the phone down on him, all was not lost because he could try other means to get a publisher and it would not be on record that a Mr Barrett had already tried once and failed.

But I have no idea what any of this has got to do with anything I've said.

It's all about what Doreen might have asked and how Mike might have reacted in the immediate aftermath of their initial conversation. Giving a false name, then being reassured enough to give her his real name, may only be the tip of the iceberg for all you know. What else may Mike - and Doreen - have sought reassurance about before the appointment was made for April 13th? If Mike was paying his own train fare how did he raise the money? If Doreen agreed to pay for it, how did Mike convince her it was worth it? She wasn't wet behind the ears.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

That's the second time you have referred to "the likes" of me. Can I ask you what you mean by that?

I explained it for you in plain English, David, the 'likes' of you being yourself or any other casebook member who might object to what I choose to write.

I'm glad to see you confirm you wouldn't dream of telling me what I may or may not post, but it did sound like you were trying to shut me up.

I was telling you how I would respond.

Well you haven't responded with your feet yet, and there was I hoping it was a promise. It certainly wasn't a threat.

Do feel free to respond as promised and trot off somewhere nice this evening instead of sitting down to yet another session. Perhaps if I say 'Battlecrease evidence' again here it will speed you on your way.

I haven't been this irresistible in a long while.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

The logical extension of this is that you wouldn't rely on Mike actually writing the diary to tell you who wrote the diary. A strange position to take indeed.

What? I wouldn't rely on Mike telling me he wrote the diary, to tell me who did write it.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

'this' means the advertising for, and purchase of, a Victorian diary. The 'grand plan' is defined in the question: "do you think this was all part of a grand plan to put future investigators onto the wrong scent?"

Nope, I still don't know what you mean by a 'grand plan to put future investigators onto the wrong scent'. So my answer would be no, unless you can explain the nature of this 'wrong scent', aside from the pungent whiff of all the porkies Mike has told over the years.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

So are you saying that Mike thought all Victorian diaries were identical, being just like the big black Victorian guard book that he had in his possession, and he spent £25 of his wife's money in the expectation that he would be receiving a big black 1891 diary (guard book) which, simply by virtue of being big and black, would then confirm to him that his own Jack the Ripper diary was, or was likely to be, genuine?

How am I meant to know what Mike 'thought'? You clearly have Mike thinking it would be fine to go to all the effort and Anne's expense of ordering a Victorian diary with blank pages without giving a thought to the size of those pages. We know what thought did in that case.

And, if so, do you think he was stunned and surprised to receive a small red 1891 diary?

Well he wouldn't have been thrilled, would he? No matter what his intentions had been and what he was hoping or expecting to receive, this wasn't it. For what he was about to receive, he was never going to be truly grateful, was he? And by Anne's account she was even less thrilled. Not surprising if her role was to hand write the thing, and not surprising if her only role was to pay for it some two months later, when it would have been much harder to return as not what was ordered, even assuming she knew that.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

I said that Mike was supposed to have had this transcript prepared for Doreen in March 1992 and you asked me: "In March, or before March?"

That's because there is no evidence that a typed transcript was even in existence as early as March 1992. We can't rely on the Barretts to tell us but it was of course entirely possible that they began preparing one later that March, while Mike was waiting to see if his order might bear fruit. He didn't know the little red diary would be popping through the letter box just before the end of March, did he? Even less that it would be of any use to him.

My point was simply that if Mike had the transcript in March, or it was in the process of being typed, why was he intending to write out extracts for Doreen in a difficult to obtain and expensive Victorian diary in the same month?

See above. We know he placed the advert very early on, in the wake of his first contact with Doreen on March 9th. But nobody would report seeing the completed transcript until several weeks after Mike's trip to London with the diary on April 13th. So there is no conflict here. We know his intentions when he placed the order (whatever those intentions were) were thwarted, but he wouldn't know that until around March 28th, by which time Anne could easily have been working on the typed transcript. Mike arguably knew more about Doreen's expectations, and had had more advice from her by then, than he had when placing the order. There is not a shred of evidence that Mike told Anne about his order until the middle of May, when she had to pay for it.

Love,

Caz
X

[David Orsam]

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.

No, Caz, I wasn't insinuating anything of the sort. You've grabbed hold of completely the wrong end of the stick (and not for the first time). Defensiveness seems to be your first response every time I mention the book.

I was having to respond to your silly point that "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."

My post was doing no more than providing an explanation for why the news of the purchase of the 1891 diary was not perceived to be very significant when details of it first emerged. The reason is because when the details first publicly emerged (which I think was in your book) no mention was made of the crucial advertisement - so that the reason behind the purchase could not be understood by anyone.

That was nothing more than a statement of fact. Nowhere was I suggesting that the advertisement was deliberately not mentioned by anyone, least of all the authors of your book. In fact, look at my #3054 of yesterday where I expressly said: "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". I was under the impression that the advertisement was discovered in 2007 based on an internet post mentioning this date but if it was at the end of the 2004 then great. I obviously assumed that the advertisement wasn't known at the time of the book's publication otherwise I'm quite sure it would have been mentioned.

Your understanding therefore is completely wrong. Whether you want to apologise to me is completely up to you.

[David Orsam]

On the issue in question, I might add that certain misinformation about the date of the acquisition of the red diary probably didn't help either.

Shirley Harrison's 2003 book 'The American Connection' states (p.296):

'The red diary was in fact purchased after the Diary had been bought to London. (Anne has the receipt)'.

I suspect this is what fooled Iconoclast earlier in this thread because, if I remember correctly, he said the same thing, but retracted when I drew his attention to the correct date of purchase.

[David Orsam]

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.

I assume that this inappropriate and mean-spirited outburst was a result of you thinking, quite wrongly, that I was accusing the authors of 'Inside Story' of some sort of dodgy behaviour. So now you suddenly decide to re-open an issue that I thought had been closed last year.

As you admit, you posted on 6 December 2016: "I trust we can now put this behind us and move on?". I thought you genuinely meant it so I didn't refer to it again. I see I was mistaken in your intention. You have evidently been holding some kind of personal grudge against me which has been simmering away beneath the surface the whole time.

I have no blushes and happen to stand by everything I posted on this forum. Amazingly now you seem to want to discuss it all again. Let me just remind you of what was actually said (with some of my bold to highlight certain bits).

On 29 November 2016 I asked you:

"Has Keith Skinner ever put anything in writing which states that he finds compelling the evidence (whatever that may be) that the diary has a Battlecrease provenance? If not, what has he actually said that makes you think he finds that evidence compelling?"

You replied as follows on 30 November:

"Keith spoke publicly about this in 2007 in Liverpool in response to a question - or observation - from Jeremy Beadle. I expect someone recorded it at the time, but I don't have that information. He did make it obvious to the entire audience on that occasion that he finds the evidence for a Battlecrease provenance compelling."

I asked on the same day:

"Well perhaps some people in the audience came away with the impression that he found the evidence for a Battlecrease provenance compelling but did he actually say that?"

I also said: "Even if he did say it in 2007, I am unconvinced that he still holds this view (and you did use the present tense when you said in #2042, "I completely understand why he finds the evidence so compelling.")

You replied on 1 December:

"What Keith said was that if the documents in his possession were put before a jury (and he clarified later that he meant this in the same context as the event where he made the statement - the 2007 Trial of James Maybrick in Liverpool - a court of history, not of law) he believed the verdict would be that the diary came out of Battlecrease House.

You may interpret that how you wish. Fill your boots."

So I was given an invitation to interpret your post how I wished and even to fill my boots.

In the same post you also said:

"Well now, just how am I meant to convince you that he does indeed still hold this view? He doesn't post on the boards and if he asked me to post a message to that effect on his behalf, how could I convince you I hadn't made it up, just for jolly?

Once again, I don't expect anyone to accept what Keith or I have said at face value, but I would find it deliciously ironic if you were more open to the possibility of Mike's various 'confession' statements reflecting the truth, or partial truth, without having seen a jot of evidence for it, than you are to Keith Skinner holding a very different position that is backed up to the hilt. Demand evidence by all means before you take anything said about Keith's long and painstaking research seriously, but where are your demands to see evidence for any of Mike's claims? Your demands have been for evidence that he lied, which does suggest a predisposition to favour Mike's claims over Keith's. If I'm getting the wrong impression I'm sure you'll put me straight."

That was, needless to say, a very offensive post, suggesting that I had "a predisposition to favour Mike's claims over Keith's". What a ludicrous and insulting statement to make and one for which I have certainly never seen an apology.

Anyway, my response on 1 December was this:

"you are talking about an off the cuff comment made nearly 10 years ago. People's views change.

The notion that Keith Skinner still holds to that opinion today is far from "backed up to the hilt". In fact, it's clearly no more than an assumption on your part."

I might add here that you agreed with me on this because in your reply you said: "I didn't mean 'the notion' that Keith holds to that opinion today is 'backed up to the hilt'; I wrote that his position is backed up to the hilt."

I also said in the same post:

"It is quite wrong of you to link the fact that I am unconvinced that Keith Skinner holds this opinion today (for which I do happen to have a good reason for saying so, but which I am not prepared to elaborate on in this forum) with anything you happen to think I believe about Mike Barrett's affidavit. It is even worse for you then to conclude that I might have "a predisposition to favour Mike's claims over Keith's". So, yes, you have got very much the wrong impression".

I was talking here, quite clearly, about my opinion as indeed I was in my 30 November post for which, as I stated, I had good reason for holding. I happen to know that I was absolutely right that I was indeed holding this opinion.

In any event I allowed you to have the last word on the subject on 9 December and then, as you invited me to, moved on and didn't return to the issue again (which I have not done until you have forced me to do so today).

The actual position is more complicated than your ill mannered summary of it suggests and I have absolutely nothing to apologise to you for. In any case, I have never sent an unsolicited first Private Message to any member of this forum and don't intend to start doing so for the likes of you (by which I naturally mean yourself or any other casebook member who tells me what I should be doing).

Are we actually moving on now or continuing this discussion?

[David Orsam]

Leeds University would disagree with you there.

Really? Did Leeds University say that the ink looked Victorian then?

How exactly do they say it 'behaved' like a Victorian ink, as opposed to containing the ingredients of a Victorian ink?

I note that they apparently concluded that the ink was not easily soluble. I find this very interesting because Baxendale found the ink to be freely soluble in the summer of 1992 yet by late 1994 it was not soluble.

To me, this suggests that the ink had dried between 1992 and 1994 or, in other words, that the ink was barely dry on the paper in 1992.

[David Orsam]

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

Well it's an interesting question – would any of the scientists have tested for sugar? Would the presence of sugar have turned up in the results?

If the answer to either is yes and no sugar was found then Mike was clearly lying. But two things to note. Firstly, as I mentioned, the question put to Mike was put on a false basis. He was being told that the ink looked old and behaved like a Victorian ink, neither of which was true, and was being asked to explain this. Tell a person something that isn't true and you might not get a true answer back. Secondly, I get the impression that Mike was happy to tell people whatever he thought they might want to hear so he's quite capable of lying even about things he had no need to lie about.

If the answer to both my questions is no (or don't know) then perhaps Mike did put sugar in the ink thinking it would make it look and act like a Victorian ink.