One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[David Orsam]

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.

Well a post-1945 date (if this was based on the result of the solubility test, which you told me it was) excludes the ink from being Victorian, in the sense or being applied to the paper in the Victorian period, as does his reported view that the ink had been put on paper in the two or three years prior to 1992.

[David Orsam]

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.

We really are getting into a convoluted argument here.

Do I understand you correctly to be saying that Mike knew perfectly well when he was drafting his affidavit that the 1891 diary was acquired in March 1992 but he nevertheless stated that the 1891 diary was acquired before he purchased the guard book, which he was saying took place in about January 1990?

Er...so he would he have known that once the date of purchase of the 1891 diary was established, the story in his affidavit would have been exploded. Yet the only way for the 11 days to have any meaning for the reader of his affidavit would have been if they knew that the 1891 diary was purchased on 26 March 1992 and the JTR diary was produced to Doreen on 13 April 1992.

But of course once these two dates were established, the rest of the affidavit, with its focus on 1990, would have been exposed as false. So why go to the trouble of dropping in the 11 days which, unless you've established the 26 March and 13 April dates, is meaningless? But once you've established those dates, you will know from the affidavit that the diary had been forged two years before the purchase of the 1891 diary.

My head is spinning.

So is it your position that you think that Mike was hoping that someone like me would come along (without any other assistance from him) and actually adjust his chronology so that the forging of the Diary which he said took place in 1990 would be switched to 1992 to fit in the with the rest of his affidavit?

Well Caz in which case Mike is clearly pulling my strings from beyond the grave but I must say this picture you paint of him as some kind of super criminal genius, planning ahead for events long after his death, doesn't seem to fit with someone who doesn't even know the difference between 9/11 and 11/9.

[David Orsam]

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

No, you are wrong. Totally wrong.

What I have always said is that it is the attempt to specifically acquire a Victorian diary with blank pages that cannot be explained away. Mike's actual purchase of the 1891 diary could be explained away, and was explained away, by Mike wanting to see what a Victorian diary looked like. A pretty feeble explanation admittedly, unless he thought they all looked the same, but certainly nonsensical when we know that he would have accepted a completely unused diary, so he wasn't even interested in looking at the handwriting or the contents of any text entries. But to repeat, it's not the purchase of the diary that provides the clue but the knowledge that he was seeking a diary from a specific period with blank pages.

[David Orsam]

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.

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?

Well it's quite simple, Caz, if I'm allowed to use that word. From Anne's point of view, Mike might, at any time, have remembered the name of the bookfinding company or just that it was in Bucks. And then a researcher (or private detective) could have tracked down that company and they would, if being helpful, have revealed that the payment for the diary was made from Anne's account. So, had she lied about it, she would then have had some explaining to do. There was, in other words, a clear risk of the payment being discovered.

As for the advert, perhaps you haven't read my post where I set out my thinking that it was the HP Bookfinders that placed the advert (based on Mike's instructions to them as to what he was after). This being so, it is perfectly possible that Mike himself didn't know of its existence. He certainly didn't mention it in his affidavit when one would have thought it would have been useful to him.

Accordingly, if she didn't know about the advert, there would have been no obvious reason for Anne not to 'confess' to having paid for the diary or to have handed over the payment details.

[David Orsam]

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.

I have never argued that 'Mike need not have mentioned anything about the guard book already being in his possession'. It's you who has the wrong end of the stick.

What I said is that Mike need not have told Doreen anything about the shape, size or colour of the Diary.

However, it has always struck me as perfectly obvious, and beyond any need for debate (regardless of the quote in 'Inside Story') that Mike told Doreen that he was in possession of JTR's diary. Otherwise what was the point of the conversation? A theoretical chat to determine whether Doreen would be interested in Jack the Ripper's Diary should Jack the Ripper's Diary ever happen to materialise? That would have been ridiculous.

No, Mike's possession of such a Diary was a fundamental given, but what he wanted to know was whether Doreen would be professionally interested in that Diary. When she said she wanted to see it, she was giving him the green light that she was indeed interested.

Time, therefore, to invest some hard cash into the project.

[David Orsam]

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?

I really have to explain this again?

Before he spends any money he wants to know that there is someone who is interested in JTR's Diary.

So on 9-10 March 1992 he finds out that Doreen is interested.

It is now worth spending some money on a Diary and materials. The text has already been drafted, or at least seriously considered, and it is not going to take a very long time simply to write it out in manuscript.

So it's really all about finding a diary from the period. We all know what happens next: A bookfinding company is instructed, then the 1891 diary is acquired (not suitable), then the Victorian guard book is acquired.

Or at least that's what I think happened next.

[David Orsam]

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.

There would have been no point in enquiring if Doreen was interested in a theoretical diary which Mike did not purportedly possess. What I'm saying is that, for Mike, the important purpose of the conversation was not to tell Doreen that he had a Diary (which was a necessity) but to find out if that information generated any interest.

[David Orsam]

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.

As I've already said, of course he had to tell her that he was in possession of Jack the Ripper's Diary but that was not the purpose of the call. I mean, according to Shirley Harrison, Mike had already contacted Pan Books and I assume he told them about the Diary but he couldn't interest them in it. His purpose wasn't to phone round publishing companies and agents to tell them about his Diary. It was to find out if they were interested in that Diary. In other words, could he make any money out of it?

[David Orsam]

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.

Why is it for me to find out if there is any evidence that Doreen asked for a transcript of the Diary prior to seeing it? I was doing no more than responding to your suggestion that Mike might have been "typing a transcript of it at Doreen's request?" (#2972). I only wanted clarification of what you were saying. But if you want to know if Mike was typing a transcript at Doreen's request there's no point asking me.

[David Orsam]

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.

The short point I'm trying to get at is if Mike was in the process of preparing a transcript why did he also want to write out extracts of the Diary for Doreen?

[David Orsam]

I have never suggested he wasn't competent to test for solubility or to obtain a valid result.

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?

Are you suggesting that Dr Baxendale wasn't sufficiently competent to understand the result of his solubility test?

[David Orsam]

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.

Well Caz it may be because you have repeatedly stated in this thread that the Diary was an 'old hoax'. For example,

"My current thinking is that it is an old hoax" (7 August 2013, #1111)

"My own theory is that the diary is a much older hoax" (9 August 2013, #1146)

"My take is that it has to be an old hoax" (13 October 2016 #1995)

"Old 'hoax' is what I personally favour" (18 October 2016 #2025)

"I also believe it to be an old hoax." (6 December 2016 #2088)

And also because someone resembling you and posting under the name 'Caroline Morris' on JTR Forums in a thread entitled "Stuart Cumberland & The "Florence Maybrick Diary"" said on 2 September 2011:

"But for me it would strengthen my gut feeling that someone wrote the diary in the immediate wake of the trial - someone who possibly read Flo's diaries and ran with the idea of turning Jim into the very Devil, since his widow had been turned into a she-devil."

and

"If a highly literate medical student could have gone to the trouble to wind Lusk up with that gruesome parcel and letter, with no guarantee of a reaction, why could a similarly enterprising student or Punch writer not have done the same with the diary, depositing it in Battlecrease House, for a Maybrick family member, servant or new occupant to come across and muse over?"

[David Orsam]

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?

Well I don't think that the first thought I would have is that the Sunday Times was misrepresenting his true position. Why would I think that?

"substantially narrowing the goal posts" is your expression and not one that I understand. As Dr Baxendale's report had not been published, and its contents were not publicly known, in September 1993, I'm not sure what 'goal posts' you are even talking about.

[David Orsam]

Not sure the point you are trying to make

The point was no more that you said that Doreen issued her invitation to Mr Barrett (not Mr Williams) to bring the diary to London whereas 'Inside Story' says that the invitation was issued to Mr Williams - and Barrett only revealed his identity in a subsequent telephone conversation. Just trying to get the facts straight Caz.

[David Orsam]

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.

What is the purpose of these questions?

Why not ask how Mike 'raised' the money to eat lunch or drink beer?

Who cares how he 'raised' the money for his train fare?