One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[caz]

David wrote:

What I have never seen anyone do until now is adjust the chronology in Mike's affidavit with the acquisition of the 1891 diary in mind and give serious consideration to whether the diary could have been forged in an 11 day period after 26 March 1992 but before 13 April. Now, perhaps you will tell me that it was all given very deep consideration as soon as the details emerged about the 1891 diary acquisition but, if so, could you direct me to where I find anything said about this in writing, including your book?

I responded:

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.

David then responded:

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.

So now I'm left wondering why David was asking me about any references in our book (which he has read) to any serious consideration being given to an 11-day Barrett forgery possibility, if he a) already knew there were no such references and b) already knew why.

Could it be that between posts (and before I told David the ad was not seen by Keith until December 2004) a little bird told him why Ripper Diary had failed to mention this 'crucial' piece of information or to go into a detailed study of the logistics of Mike receiving and rejecting the red diary on or around March 28th 1992; attending an auction at O&L and acquiring the guard book; then getting straight down to the task of removing any suspicious or provably post-Victorian traces of its previous usage before Anne copied out the text by hand; and finally showing their work to Doreen on April 13th?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

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.

Wonderful. 'Other people' on and off the internet have known about the 'crucial' advert and its wording for years, yet David was behaving for all the world as though he had come across something new - something highly significant and deeply suspicious - which none of those other people were apparently clever enough to have noticed before him, or to have considered in any depth. I didn't need to place any reliance on what they may or may not have thought. They had the same info to work from as David could have found on his arrival.

Let me say once again that our 2003 book was more than happy to leave its readers with information we had at the time - for example that Mike had indeed purchased a Victorian diary (with Anne's cheque) - and to let them make of it would they will.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

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?

Now David has lost me completely. If, from Mike's point of view on March 9th 1992, he knows the physical book he has in front of him, signed Jack the Ripper in 1889, has to be genuinely from that period if Doreen and various dating experts are going to treat him and his 'find' seriously, and he therefore wants to find out if personal diaries from the 1880s were physically similar to this one before taking it all the way to London, why on earth would he be ordering one from anything other than the 1880s??

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

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.

Cheeky. David has no idea how much time I have on my hands to 'think about' anything much at the moment. In fact it has been very little since before Christmas, for personal reasons too numerous and boring to go into.

If I could give a 'definitive' explanation for Mike's actions at any time, I'd be even more awesome than I am already, and a sight more so than David himself.

Love,

Caz
X

[Scott Nelson]

I wish I knew what George Grossmith's connections were with Aigburth, and how and when they began. Seems a strange place for a Londoner to choose for his honeymoon, but that's where George spent his.

This has always been a key interest of mine. It may that there's more here than meets the eye. I'm eagerly awaiting the Battlecrease evidence.

[David Orsam]

Now, back in the 19th century, bone black was used to cleanse the blood and the digestive system. In particular, it was and is very effective in absorbing residues left by heavy metal poisons such as mercury, lead, and - arsenic.

But wasn't it also used (under the name ivory black) to blacken shoes and boots and to restore the blackness of leather chairs and seats? Not to mention being widely used by artists for painting as well as being used in black ink.

[David Orsam]

Not sure if David is still here, but I can't see anything strange about being unable to conclude, from having seen and read the diary facsimile, that the Barretts - or anyone else for that matter - created it.

How I was supposed to set out 'detailed conclusions' for such an inability is equally beyond me.

I might find it strange if anyone who hadn't even read the thing through once was able to conclude that it was indeed 'the Barretts' and nobody else who created it - presumably on the strength of Mike saying so in 1995 and citing the little red diary as his proof. But maybe that's just me.

I'm afraid I don't understand a word of this. I thought you were saying that from your reading of the Diary you were able to form a view as to who did, or rather did not, write it. I was asking you to set out your reasoning for whatever conclusion you had come to.

[David Orsam]

David seems to forget here (if he ever grasped it) that my original point was merely that caution was needed in light of 'demonstrable untruths' in Mike's affidavit. I neither know nor care if David had previously made the same or a similar point, but it never hurts in my experience to see one's point repeated independently by someone else. Moving on, it was David who 'wanted' me to demonstrate 'untruths', because he had mistakenly assumed I was defining these exclusively as wilful lies - that is, deliberate deception - rather than as untrue statements, which could have been lies but equally could have been false beliefs - that is, factual errors - or a combination of both.

After spending a stupid amount of time trying to tell me I couldn't define 'untruths' as anything other than wilful lies, instead of apologising for his mistake on that score David fell back - with delicious irony - on the above 'pointless waste of time' [because it's all been said before] argument.

What Caz seems to have forgotten (if she ever grasped it) is that, in my reply to her post #2046, I didn't challenge or contradict her "original point", namely that much of what Barrett claimed in his affidavit has turned out to be 'demonstrably untrue', but I asked her to demonstrate these demonstrable untruths (#2051) and, in doing so, specifically requested that she take into account the points I had already made on this forum. Despite reading the two posts to which I drew her attention, she was still unable to accept that the so called 'demonstrable untruths' were of no consequence in the context of my posts.

So for Caz to say that she neither knows or cares that I made a similar point is to show that she has still failed to understand what I was saying to her. It was the very fact that I had made a similar point to which I was drawing her attention!

As for the meaning of the word 'untruth' (for which Caz bizarrely posted a couple of synonyms to define it rather than a dictionary definition to which I had to draw her attention) the entire point is moot bearing in mind that she doesn’t for one second think that Barrett made innocent factual errors in his statement - she thinks they were deliberate lies. Therefore, when she said that there were demonstrable untruths in Barrett's affidavit she must, QED, have been referring to deliberate lies. Why she tries to deny this (if that is what she is trying to do) I have no idea.

[David Orsam]

So now I'm left wondering why David was asking me about any references in our book (which he has read) to any serious consideration being given to an 11-day Barrett forgery possibility, if he a) already knew there were no such references and b) already knew why.

The answer should be bleedin' obvious Caz. Because I was responding to your earlier post (which you have omitted from the summary) in which you tried to make a point out of the fact that no-one shared my opinion about the importance of the 1891 diary when details of it first emerged. Do you remember that post? You said "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."

My point was that the diary wasn't clobbered over the head years ago, when details first emerged, because no-one had given serious consideration as to whether the diary could have been forged in an 11 day period between 26 March and 13 April 1992.

And I wasn't specifically asking you about whether this discussion could be found in your book, I was asking you about whether this discussion could be found anywhere, including your book. If the answer was negative - as I thought it was - then your own question was answered.

[David Orsam]

Could it be that between posts (and before I told David the ad was not seen by Keith until December 2004) a little bird told him why Ripper Diary had failed to mention this 'crucial' piece of information or to go into a detailed study of the logistics of Mike receiving and rejecting the red diary on or around March 28th 1992; attending an auction at O&L and acquiring the guard book; then getting straight down to the task of removing any suspicious or provably post-Victorian traces of its previous usage before Anne copied out the text by hand; and finally showing their work to Doreen on April 13th?

I've read this over a few times and I still can't quite work out what is being said here. But I rather think that Caz is trying to suggest that I lied in an earlier post when I stated that I wasn't accusing the authors of 'Inside Story' of withholding information about the 1992 advertisement.

If that is what she is saying then it is as grossly offensive as it is untrue.

Nothing in the quotes of mine she has pasted even begins to support such an allegation. Nor can I understand why she seems to think I needed someone ("a little bird") to tell me why the 1992 advertisement wasn't mentioned in 'Inside Story'. It was obvious to me that it wasn't mentioned because the authors didn't then know about it.

I was also aware from what has been said earlier in this thread, and elsewhere online, that the advertisement was first publicly mentioned at a 2007 public meeting. Long after publication of 'Inside Story'.

No-one has told me anything. I haven't discussed the advertisement or anything connected with it with anyone. So, no, it could not be, as Caz bizarrely speculates, that a 'little bird' has said anything to me.

I do hope that deals with that.

[David Orsam]

Wonderful. 'Other people' on and off the internet have known about the 'crucial' advert and its wording for years, yet David was behaving for all the world as though he had come across something new - something highly significant and deeply suspicious - which none of those other people were apparently clever enough to have noticed before him, or to have considered in any depth. I didn't need to place any reliance on what they may or may not have thought. They had the same info to work from as David could have found on his arrival.

Not for the first time, Caz has lost track of the argument.

Her original claim was that no-one found the diary suspicious "when details of it first emerged." That was, of course, in January 1995, in Barrett's affidavit, supplemented by the information in the 2003 'Inside Story' (and the misinformation in Shirley Harrison's book later that same year). I was dealing with THAT point and saying that at this time no-one knew of the advertisement.

Now Caz unilaterally changes the premise of the argument to the period when people first knew about the advertisement, a completely different point in time to when the details of the diary first emerged.

Then in a strange sentence at the end of her post she says that 'Inside Story' was happy to leave its readers with the information that Mike had purchased a Victorian diary. Well of course it was 'happy' because that was the only information known to the authors in 2003. But that purchase was explained by a quote from Anne as Mike wanting to see what a Victorian diary looked like. Without knowing that Mike wanted a Victorian diary with blank pages the reader could not possibly have known that Anne's explanation made no sense.

Further we saw Caz's attitude earlier in this thread that it would have been insane for Mike to present Doreen with a forged diary only days after writing it. And she didn't think it was possible for it to have been written in an 11 day period. It's this kind of thinking I believe that has prevented serious consideration being given to the notion that the diary was written between 26 March and 13 April 1992.

[David Orsam]

Now David has lost me completely. If, from Mike's point of view on March 9th 1992, he knows the physical book he has in front of him, signed Jack the Ripper in 1889, has to be genuinely from that period if Doreen and various dating experts are going to treat him and his 'find' seriously, and he therefore wants to find out if personal diaries from the 1880s were physically similar to this one before taking it all the way to London, why on earth would he be ordering one from anything other than the 1880s??

Caz needs to concentrate on reading the posts with due care and attention.

Let's look at this part of my post:

"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?"

See that? I was asking about Mike buying the diary for the purpose of writing extracts into another 'similar' diary for Doreen. Not for the purpose of finding out what a diary from the 1880s looked like.

[David Orsam]

Cheeky. David has no idea how much time I have on my hands to 'think about' anything much at the moment. In fact it has been very little since before Christmas, for personal reasons too numerous and boring to go into.

If I could give a 'definitive' explanation for Mike's actions at any time, I'd be even more awesome than I am already, and a sight more so than David himself.

So, after offering two different explanations for Mike's action over a large number of posts, Caz now has had no time to think about it.

And I wasn't asking for "a definitive explanation" I was asking for "your definitive explanation".

[caz]

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 continues to miss the point. If Mike has no idea if the guard book in front of him would be considered 'normal' for someone's personal diary from the 1880s (apart from it containing Jack the Ripper's confession of course ), and if he wants to see a genuine diary from 1880-90 so he can compare the two (for example, Doreen asks if it looks like a typical Victorian diary and Mike thinks about it then says: "To be perfectly honest it looks more like a photo album than a diary and what have you"), he is not thinking about minimum or maximum page dimensions when placing his advert. He just wants something for comparison purposes.

The blank page request is no more tricky to explain in terms of Mike innocently trying to make some sense of what he has, than is the failure to address page size if he needed something large enough for a successful forgery to show Doreen.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

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.

My late mother was a maths teacher and didn't suffer fools gladly.

What's actually best of course (if not downright essential) is a diary with a sufficient number of consecutive blank pages of a size that is not so small that it would prove difficult if not impossible to write more than a sentence or two to the page in tiny handwriting. If this is what Mike needs for Anne to write out the draft, this is what he needs. He doesn't have to choose between page size or page numbers, or consecutive blank pages or non-consecutive ones; he doesn't have to leave any of that to chance. He's been planning this for some time and he's not even going to be paying for any of it (he has Anne or his father-in-law on hand for the vulgar bit), so he can order something that has at least a slightly better than cat in hell's chance of being fit for purpose - if it can be located and sent to him before he reluctantly has to put Doreen off.

Love,

Caz
X