One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[David Orsam]

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.

I suppose that one would look to a dictionary, such as the O.E.D., for assistance as to the meaning of the word 'purchase' where we find it stated that it means 'The action or an act of obtaining something in exchange for payment in money or an equivalent'.

So I think most people would date the purchase to the day that Mike obtained the diary. It's pretty crucial when the key issue is whether Mike acquired the red dairy before or after he took the Victorian guard book to Doreen in London. I'm quite sure that Shirley had no intention to mislead but unfortunately she did.

[David Orsam]

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".

Good grief! So you clearly do want to continue with this discussion then!!

It is literally unbelievable that you can suggest that I am "perfectly happy to rake over" this issue in circumstances where I had accepted your express invitation to put the issue behind us and move on. Those were literally your words.

The only reason I set out the background to this issue in my previous post was because, in a moment of furious moral indignation, wrongly believing that I had accused Keith Skinner of withholding information in 'Inside Story', you dredged the whole thing up again, completely out of the blue as far as I was concerned, literally forcing me to respond and yet you portray this as me being "happy" to "rake over" it.

I wouldn't mind but, despite me quoting all the relevant posts, you don't even summarise them properly. You claim that I asked "does Keith still hold to his 2007 opinion on the strength of the Battlecrease evidence?" and that you responded "Yes he does". This is completely and demonstrably untrue. I love the way you describe it as you saying this "in no uncertain terms". You never said it! You are imagining it!

In fact, as I previously quoted, your words were these:

"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?"

That is far from you saying "Yes he does" in no uncertain terms.

Furthermore, I hadn't even asked you the question you attributed to me! You imagined that question just as you imagined your answer.

[David Orsam]

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.

Following a number of questions I asked you on 30 November, and reading your answers, and in response to your statement that, "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", I wrote on 1 December:

"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."

Here is your response on 9 December:

"Firstly, 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.

Secondly, I was slightly disappointed to see you state as a 'fact' that it's 'clearly no more than an assumption' (or worse - a 'notion') on my part that his position on the Battlecrease evidence remains the same. Whatever you may have assumed yourself, why would I need, or indeed want, to post less than professional 'assumptions' about Keith's thinking? We are co-authors of Ripper Diary, so if I hadn't already known for certain what his current thinking was, I'd have asked him before commenting on it publicly. I trust we can now put this behind us and move on?"

That is the very post in which you asked me to "put this behind us" and "move on". You said you were "slightly disappointed" at my post, but now you categorise what I said as a "false accusation" which was something you never said at the time. Seems to me like you want to put a new gloss on a mutually closed discussion on the basis of subsequent posts of mine on a completely different subject which you didn't like.

[David Orsam]

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?

No, I expected your post in which you said you were "slightly disappointed" to be truthful, and I fully respected your desire to move on and put the issue behind us, expecting that this was in line with your wishes.

[David Orsam]

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!"

How odd that you quote my post yet don't answer the two questions I asked at the start of it, namely: "would any of the scientists have tested for sugar? Would the presence of sugar have turned up in the results?"

I also love the way that, having told me in a previous post what Mike was asked at this meeting you now tell me, oh well perhaps he was asked something else and if he was asked something else then perhaps his answer should be viewed differently. Excellent!

Perhaps I shouldn't being relying on anything you tell me then?

[David Orsam]

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

No, as I've said many times, nor do I rely on anything Mike has ever claimed about the origins of the diary.

What I rely on is the fact that, after having obtained interest from a literary agent in JTR's Diary but prior to showing the Diary to her, he made efforts to acquire a Victorian diary from a specific decade, specifying that it must contain a minimum of 20 blank pages, and went ahead and acquired a Victorian diary.

[David Orsam]

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?

Well, in the first place he might have remembered no more than someone saying "It's only taken us 11 days to complete the diary!" so that THIS was what stuck in his mind. It's pure assumption on your part that he must also have remembered it "all happening" within a 16 day period.

In the second place, there is nothing in the affidavit which says that he did not know or remember that it "all" happened within 16 days. The timing of the purchase of the red diary, or its relationship with other events, is not stated other than it being suggested that it occurred before he acquired the guard book from O&L.

So, no it isn't rocket science, and my argument about the 11 days still stands as far as I can see (and has not been answered).

[caz]

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.

Had Anne told a demonstrable lie, yes. But as I suggested, all she needed to do was say "I remember giving Mike a cheque for £25 for some book or other, and being annoyed about it, but I couldn't tell you when that was and I no longer have the cheque book". So what if the payment was discovered without any further help from Anne? What explaining would she have had to do?

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.

Fair point, except that the specifics of the advert, including those oh so 'crucial' blank pages, must have come from Mike, so he could have included those in his affidavit to add more punch. That bit was at least true!

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.

Well quite. That's what I have been trying to say all along. As I don't personally believe Anne did know about the advert, nor indeed why Mike wanted another diary to compare with the one he already had, she had no reason not to give Keith all the details she had about the red diary and the payment. She also handed over the diary itself. What I question is whether she would have done all that if she was well aware that Mike had obtained it in the first place as part of their joint diary forging enterprise.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

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.

Except that here again you talk about Mike not wanting to spend his money before sounding out Doreen to check there would be enough interest in the publishing world in Jack the Ripper's confessional diary to justify his expenditure.

He didn't spend any of his own money on either item, if what you 'think' happened next did happen next. Anne paid for the red diary, but not until a month after Doreen had already seen the guard book. And according to Mike, Anne's father had coughed up for that one.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

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?

Do you not see why this is a pointless question? We know Mike's enquiry was made within just a day or two of his first conversation with Doreen. Only he knew his reasons for making that enquiry. We don't know when Mike and Anne began the process of preparing the typescript, nor when the idea first occurred to one or other of them, or was put to them.

There are a couple of references in the May to photocopies of the diary itself being received and a typescript being prepared, but Shirley only received a copy of the latter the following month.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

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?"

I'll ask you again, David. Where have I actually 'claimed' or 'stated' that the diary is what I personally believe it to be?

You do know the difference, I take it?

But thanks for going the extra mile to find and quote the above. I'm flattered that you consider I'm worth it.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

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.

'Inside Story' says the initial letter to Mr Williams confirmed Doreen's interest in seeing the diary 'in due course'. Mike subsequently told Doreen his real name so she was then able to write to Mr Barrett when confirming the time and date of their meeting.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

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?

Well you seemed to care very much about Mike's budget for forgery materials and argued that he needed to be sure of Doreen's interest before splashing out unnecessarily. We know he didn't splash out on the red diary or the guard book if Anne paid for the former and her father the latter. But someone paid Mike's train fare to London, before he could possibly know if Doreen's interest would survive once she saw the fruits of his and Anne's 11-day labour.

If you don't care whether money played any part in Mike's wooing of Doreen, I certainly don't. It was you who brought the money into it so you could explain why Mike began wooing Doreen before he even knew if it was possible to obtain a suitable book for the forgery.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

You said you wouldn't rely on any of Mike's actions to tell you who wrote the diary.

I find that a rather strange unless you think he fakes his actions.

The logical extension is that even if Mike was reliably seen to have been writing the diary you wouldn't believe he wrote the diary because him writing the diary was an 'action'.

I'm rapidly losing the will to live here.

Okay, I wouldn't rely on any of Mike's known actions to provide the truth about the diary's origins.

The logical extension of this is that I don't believe for one second that Mike was seen writing the diary, 'reliably' or otherwise. Clearly if he was, nobody has yet come forward to spill the beans.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

In other words, are you saying that Mike attempted to acquire a Victorian diary with blank pages in March 1992 while being in possession of the Maybrick Diary so that he could one day claim to have forged the Maybrick Diary and thus mislead investigators into thinking he was not in possession of the Maybrick Diary in March 1992?

No.

I find the idea as silly as Mike's actual claim to have included a reference to the Poste House in the diary in case he might one day want to come clean as its author and prove it with his funny little 'deliberate mistake'.

Mike was trying desperately from June 1994 to use anything and everything he could find that might help him claim inside knowledge of the diary's creation. The red diary was one of his better ideas, I'll grant you. But was it all his own idea, or did he show this diary to Alan Gray in the latter part of 1994, who had the brainwave and helped him milk its potential significance? Why no mention of it prior to January 1995 if Mike had known perfectly well for at least six months how he could use it to his advantage?

Love,

Caz
X