One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[caz]

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.

But he had no intention of spending any money - Anne had to spend hers.

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.

Yet by 1995 he recalls it taking him and Anne exactly 11 days to write the thing out, but has no real idea if there was a day, a week, a month or a year of stalling before the writing began, during which the red diary arrived and proved too small and was replaced by the guard book won at auction? And no real idea if there was a day, a week, a month or a year to wait, after the pen was put down, before he took the diary on the train to London?

I believe David considered it entirely possible that when the red diary is received and rejected on Saturday March 28th, Mike goes straight to O&L where an auction is taking place that day and comes home with the guard book, which is now all they need to get the diary written and ready for Doreen. Eleven days later, around say Wednesday April 8th, it could be finished, giving him a few more days to check it through once more and prepare for his momentous trip to London. Was he itching for those days to pass? Excited? Nervous? Or was he not particularly bothered? Did forging Jack the Ripper's diary come so naturally to him that he just regarded it as one more of his money-making schemes, which might just come off this time?

If he had more than enough time at this crucial final stage of the process, why did he not remove all traces from the inside cover of the guard book, where he claimed more photographs had been mounted? If he dealt with all those inside the book by hacking out all the pages containing them, why was he worried about a little more defacing to remove any remaining signs of its potentially post-Victorian usage?

Fortunately for the Barretts, nobody knows for sure if there were any photographs to remove, nor if the book was originally home to photos, business cards or Victorian cartes de visite. The traces left behind, contrary to what we have been assured in the past, are perfectly consistent in nature and size with items known to be from the right period. I have a small album of maternal family photos dating back to the 1860s, some of which were cut to fit the individual mounts while others fit snugly without the need for any cutting.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

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).

I'm sure David argued that Mike was so poor at the time that he could not easily afford to shell out for the physical book, the pen or the ink until he could be sure Doreen would bite. This was David's explanation for Mike calling Doreen before he'd even tried to locate a book for the forgery. That was fair enough, but we know it was Anne who had to pay the £25 for the red diary in May because Mike had still not settled the bill, long after Doreen had seen what was on offer, and was down as a 'late payer'. We have also read Mike's claim that Billy Graham gave him the £50 for the guard book. The rail fare therefore has everything to do with it because someone had to pay up front for that and the point is that Mike didn't have a blessed clue if Doreen's initial interest would suddenly drop through the floor on seeing his precious oevre.

Money was either a serious consideration for Mike - as David argued - or it wasn't. Seems to me like another red herring.

Love,

Caz
X

[David Orsam]

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.

David has not missed the point. He is being told that as of 10 March 1992 Mike Barrett has two somewhat contradictory aims. On the one hand he seeks a Victorian diary which is 'similar' to the big black guard book in his possession so that he can, for reasons which are not obvious, write out some extracts from the JTR Diary for Doreen while, on the other hand, he seeks to establish if Victorian diaries were, in fact, similar to the big black guard book in his possession so that he can confirm that the JTR Diary is genuine.

In respect of the latter aim, he apparently believes that all diaries from the 1880s were identical so that he only has to get hold of a single diary from the 1880s and he will then know what each and every diary from the 1880s looked like. Unfortunately, he ends up with a single diary from 1891 which is small and red. He is either shocked to discover that Victorian diaries were all small and red, not big and black as he was expecting, or he forms the view that diaries from the 1890s must have been small and red while those from the 1880s were big and black.

Either way he hasn't achieved very much.

[David Orsam]

The blank page request is no more tricky to explain in terms of Mike innocently trying to make some sense of what he has

Except that this has never been explained.

than is the failure to address page size if he needed something large enough for a successful forgery to show Doreen

It's been addressed. He didn't need a large page size if he had a sufficient number of small pages.

[David Orsam]

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.

Yes, in Caz World the advertisement should have been about 100 words long, specifying every possibility and eventuality, from the exact size required to the exact number of blank pages required and the consecutive nature of those blank pages. Hey, perhaps he should have explained that he was wanting to forge JTR's diary, and that way he could have found precisely what he was after.

Certainly, no-one could every have assumed that any Victorian diary would be very likely to contain entries from the start of the diary, written on consecutive pages, so that any blank pages would appear consecutively at the end. That kind of thinking is far too sophisticated. Much better to set out exactly what is required to the last detail and make sure the advert is really long and complicated. That way he'll never get any responses. Perfect!

[David Orsam]

But he had no intention of spending any money - Anne had to spend hers.

Of course he had an intention of spending money: Anne's money.

That's why I said in my post: "He has to speak to Doreen first to find out if she's interested in a Diary before spending any money." NOT "spending any OF HIS money".

[David Orsam]

Yet by 1995 he recalls it taking him and Anne exactly 11 days to write the thing out, but has no real idea if there was a day, a week, a month or a year of stalling before the writing began, during which the red diary arrived and proved too small and was replaced by the guard book won at auction? And no real idea if there was a day, a week, a month or a year to wait, after the pen was put down, before he took the diary on the train to London?

We seem to be going in circles, back onto points that have already been discussed. Caz, no doubt, has a perfect memory and remembers events in her life and the order they occurred with perfect clarity. But ask her to put herself inside the mind of a shambolic drunk who has a bad memory to start with and she simply can't do it.

[David Orsam]

I believe David considered it entirely possible that when the red diary is received and rejected on Saturday March 28th, Mike goes straight to O&L where an auction is taking place that day and comes home with the guard book, which is now all they need to get the diary written and ready for Doreen. Eleven days later, around say Wednesday April 8th, it could be finished, giving him a few more days to check it through once more and prepare for his momentous trip to London.

Yes, entirely possible. Haven't heard a good reason why not.

Was he itching for those days to pass? Excited? Nervous? Or was he not particularly bothered? Did forging Jack the Ripper's diary come so naturally to him that he just regarded it as one more of his money-making schemes, which might just come off this time?

What does it matter?

If he had more than enough time at this crucial final stage of the process, why did he not remove all traces from the inside cover of the guard book, where he claimed more photographs had been mounted? If he dealt with all those inside the book by hacking out all the pages containing them, why was he worried about a little more defacing to remove any remaining signs of its potentially post-Victorian usage?

If those questions are addressed at me I don't understand them. When did I say he had "enough time" to forensically remove all traces of the guard book?

Fortunately for the Barretts, nobody knows for sure if there were any photographs to remove, nor if the book was originally home to photos, business cards or Victorian cartes de visite. The traces left behind, contrary to what we have been assured in the past, are perfectly consistent in nature and size with items known to be from the right period. I have a small album of maternal family photos dating back to the 1860s, some of which were cut to fit the individual mounts while others fit snugly without the need for any cutting.

Of course those traces will be from the right period. The question is why were they removed along with the pages, and who did this.

[David Orsam]

I'm sure David argued that Mike was so poor at the time that he could not easily afford to shell out for the physical book, the pen or the ink until he could be sure Doreen would bite. This was David's explanation for Mike calling Doreen before he'd even tried to locate a book for the forgery. That was fair enough, but we know it was Anne who had to pay the £25 for the red diary in May because Mike had still not settled the bill, long after Doreen had seen what was on offer, and was down as a 'late payer'. We have also read Mike's claim that Billy Graham gave him the £50 for the guard book. The rail fare therefore has everything to do with it because someone had to pay up front for that and the point is that Mike didn't have a blessed clue if Doreen's initial interest would suddenly drop through the floor on seeing his precious oevre.

Money was either a serious consideration for Mike - as David argued - or it wasn't. Seems to me like another red herring.

Again, I find myself understanding none of this. I've never said that Mike was so poor that he couldn't afford, or "easily afford", stuff. I just said that he was sufficiently poor that it could, in his view, have been foolhardy to spend any money until he got some interest from a literary agent or publisher in the Diary. Once he had that interest it was then sensible to spend some money, whether that was on materials or rail fare or anything else. And that was the case whether he was spending his money, Anne's money, Anne's father's money or someone else's money.

[ChrisGeorge]

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

And the fact that Mike wanted a comparison diary would argue that, despite his varied claims otherwise, he was an innocent when it came to manufacture of the Diary. That somehow a book came into his hands containing the infamous 63-odd pages of writing ending with the salutation "Yours truly, Jack the Ripper." And he didn't know whether it was usual for a Victorian diary to be written in such a book.

Best regards

Chris

[caz]

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.

I suppose it depends on whether one dates the purchase to when it was sent to Mike (March 26th) or when it was actually paid for by Anne (mid-May). I don't think there would have been any intention on Shirley's part to mislead. But the significance, if any, is of course in the fact that Mike tried to get hold of such a diary in the immediate wake of his initial conversation with Doreen.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

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?

Blimey - so no apology from you then. Fine. But you seem perfectly happy to rake over the whole "does Keith still hold to his 2007 opinion on the strength of the Battlecrease evidence?" question, which both Keith and I answered you in no uncertain terms with "Yes he does".

So I make no apology for reminding everyone of what you said publicly to me - that it was 'clearly no more than an assumption' on my part. I don't care what reasons you may have had at that time for being unconvinced, unsure or ignorant about Keith's current position. The plain fact of the matter is that you were wrong about me, and you did not double check your facts before making that false accusation.

If you think I'm still not happy about that, you're damned right I'm not. Did you expect me to laugh it off?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

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.

I'm not sure there is a record of the actual wording of the question, but if Mike was merely asked what he did to the ink to try and make it look old on the paper it's not such a leading question is it? He was supposedly at that meeting to prove, once and for all, that he had had a hand in forging the diary. If he said he obtained the ink for the forgery himself, and that had been true, he would presumably have had some idea of what he did to it, if anything, before it was put to paper. He could have said nothing, but he chose to say he added sugar and it was "simple!"

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.

Quite so. The trick has always been to work out when he wasn't lying about the diary.

Which is why, once again, I don't rely on anything he ever claimed about its origins.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

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.

I'm not surprised. You read a whole lot more into this than what I was actually saying. I think one of my subsequent posts should have cleared up what I meant. Mike puts all the action back to 1990, including the purchase of the red diary, followed by the 11 days of preparing the guard book followed by the trip to London with it.

He may have got the year wrong due to the effects of the demon drink, but if he managed to recall it taking 11 days to get the diary Doreen-ready, then any suggestion that he had no clue that the interval between a) receiving/rejecting the red diary and obtaining the guard book, and b) taking their 11 days' work to London was 16 days, but thought it could have been 16 weeks or 16 months just doesn't add up. You had been trying to argue that it was quite a coincidence, if Mike was making it all up, that 11 days fitted so well into the actual interval between red diary and London. You asked why he didn't claim it had taken 11 weeks if he was making it all up. The answer is right there - if he knew or remembered enough to say 11 days, it was because he would also have known and remembered it all happening within 16 days.

Not rocket science, is it?

Love,

Caz
X

[David Orsam]

And the fact that Mike wanted a comparison diary would argue that, despite his varied claims otherwise, he was an innocent when it came to manufacture of the Diary.

But is it a "fact" that he wanted a comparison diary?

The wording of the advertisement, with its requirement for a minimum of 20 blank pages, suggests not.

And even if he did want a comparison diary, it could be equally argued that he wanted to see what a Victorian diary looked like before he started to forge one.