One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[caz]

As I thought I had made clear, it would have been impractical if not impossible to frame an advertisement giving an exact ratio of required diary size to number of acceptable blank pages.

Impossible? Possible to state a minimum number of blank pages, but 'impractical if not impossible' to state minimum page size and that the blank pages have to be consecutive?

The wording of the advertisement, which I assume was drafted by HP Bookfinkders, was clear and to the point.

Are you suggesting it wasn't Mike who specified the need for at least 20 blank pages? If he did, what was preventing him from adding that the pages had to be consecutive and at least, say, 6"x6"?

What was the point of not doing so if nothing else would have fit the bill? And would HP Bookfinders have taken it upon themselves to ignore those crucial specifications to save space, with the risk that Mike would be justified in refusing to pay for either the useless advert or the resulting useless article?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

That's a lot of words in response to a straightforward question. That question is: Why did Mike intend to write out extracts of the Diary in his handwriting into a Victorian Diary from a specific period of 1880-1890-1 when he could have written these extracts out into a modern exercise book or prepared a typed transcript?

We don't know Mike did intend to write out diary extracts for Doreen. It was just a suggestion. If that was his intention it would have been just an idea he had, which we know he didn't pursue. He could have had the idea to use a modern exercise book, or prepare a typescript, but we only know that it was the typescript which became a reality.

I made a very simple point in addition that a transcript was supposedly being prepared for Doreen in March anyway. But if you don't believe Mike and Anne on this point then - fine that answers that - but I still seek an answer to my question above.

I know Mike and Anne prepared the typescript, and there is no reason why they could not have begun work on it as early as March, while Mike was patiently waiting to see if his enquiry might bear fruit. We just don't know exactly when the typing began and ended.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Well the dates are muddled in the affidavit but Mike says in that affidavit: "In fact Anne purchased a Diary, a red leather backed Diary for L25.00p, she made the purchase through a firm in the 1986 Writters Year Book". So I would say that there is a 'shred' of evidence that she was aware of the purchase at the time. Whether that is reliable evidence is a different matter but it is a 'shred'.

Anne was obviously aware of the purchase because she made it herself. My point was that there is no evidence that she was also aware of the order until the day she signed the cheque used to complete the purchase.

Since Mike was trying to use the red diary to claim he and Anne wrote the diary together, it stands to reason he was implying that she was in on the reasons for the purchase as well as the purchase itself. If you consider that a 'shred' because it was in his affidavit, we've been here before. Its reliability is indeed an entirely different matter.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Hold on there Caz. I wasn't asking if Mike would have been 'truly grateful' or 'thrilled' to receive the small red 1891 diary. I was asking if he would have been 'stunned and surprised' to receive it. The reason for asking this is that your theory appears to be that he thought all Victorian diaries were identical so that in ordering an 1891 diary he would have expected to receive a big black diary, identical to the Victorian guard book already in his possession.

Hold on, David, where did I suggest that Mike may have 'thought all Victorian diaries were identical'? What on earth would have been the point of ordering one to see if 'the' diary was typical if he already believed they all looked the same and that his was no exception?

Whether he was hoping for a diary in which to write out the prepared draft of the forgery, or was just curious to know how closely 'the' diary might compare with someone's actual personal diary from the 1880s, the little red diary was not physically like anything he would have been hoping to see.

But on your case he must surely have now doubted the genuineness of the Maybrick Diary because it was so different to what a real Victorian diary looked like, no?

Possibly, although he would have quickly realised if he had been sent the Victorian equivalent of an appointments diary for the year 1891, with some pages written on and others not, and therefore not the kind of diary used for setting down one's personal memoirs. He'd have been back at square one in that case, not knowing if what he had was a typical example of that kind of diary.

Well, hey, I suppose he just pressed on regardless, simply ignoring the results of his elaborate comparison test.

Well yes. I doubt he wanted to go through all that again. Your idea of 'pressing on regardless' was to head off without further ado to see if O&L were holding an auction and might just have on offer the kind of book he actually needed, as opposed to the one he had just waited weeks to receive in the post, which he needed like a hole in the head.

My idea is that he abandoned his idea and went with his gut instincts that 'the' diary could be very valuable indeed and Doreen would be very pleased to see it.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Well we haven't yet established when the April 13th date was set.

As far as I know, Mike could have agreed the April 13th date after getting hold of the Victorian guard book. But if you have any further evidence on this that wasn't included in 'Inside Story' what is it?

You could always check with Keith. Strictly speaking, anything not included in our book is not mine to post publicly even if I have that information. I've already mentioned the appointment letter Doreen sent to Mike 'Barrett' to confirm the date and time of their first meeting in London on April 13th. But I couldn't say when that date was first discussed and agreed with all parties concerned, although I personally have no problem with Mike already having the guard book when Doreen wrote that she would like to see it 'in due course'.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

I think this is a silly question for so many reasons.

In the first place, what do you think is wrong with having a Plan A and then a Plan B if Plan A fails?

Nothing, except it was you who introduced the concept of Doreen's ticking clock. So what do you think is wrong with having a Plan A and a Plan B running consecutively - like the blank pages Mike would have needed to complete Plan C, the actual writing out of the forgery draft?

Running a Plan B in parallel with Plan A is not, of course, impossible but not something that everyone has to do.

But it would have been so easy for Mike to keep an eye on any upcoming local auctions while waiting to see if he would get a response to his telephone enquiry and the advert placed as a result. Yet he says nothing about this in his affidavit, so you are left to presume that he only thought of trying O&L when the red diary arrived at the end of March and proved useless.

Secondly, Mike can't go to an auction without cash and we have no idea from his affidavit when he obtained the £50 he says he got from Anne's father. All he says about this is that it occurred "At about the same time" as the purchase of the diary. I mean, if Anne's father only offered the cash after the failure of the Bookfinders mission then that answers that doesn't it?

Okay, so Anne's father gave him the cash after he was sent the red diary and before he went to the O&L auction. Got it. Maybe he asked for the rail fare to London at the same time.

But what if none of that is true? It's hardly reliable evidence, is it?

I could go and remark that if I tried to argue that Mike went out and spent £50 on a diary before seeing what Bookfinders could get him for £25 you would probably tell me that I was quite mad.

What a strange thing to say. You are the one obsessed with Mike's budget. If he didn't know where the money was going to come from for whichever book he eventually managed to obtain for his forgery - and it certainly wasn't from his own pocket - he presumably didn't care either. Con merchants tend to beg, borrow or steal what they need or they wouldn't become con merchants in the first place. Did Mike specify a maximum of £25 when ordering the red diary which Anne would eventually pay for? Did he set himself a maximum bid of £50 for the guard book, from the cash he got from his generous father-in-law?

Love,

Caz
X

[David Orsam]

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?

But once she's admitted to paying for the diary what does she gain by withholding the documentation?

If anything, by providing the documents showing that the payment was in May 1992, two years after Mike was claiming in his affidavit to have forged the Diary, she is supporting her own story that the purchase had nothing to do with the forgery.

Furthermore, in providing a cheque dated May 1992, i.e. after Mike took the diary to London, it could easily have been believed that this was the date of the purchase. It's certainly what fooled Shirley Harrison.

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!

Yes but, if I've correctly worked out that the bookfinding company placed the advertisement, then Mike may not have been aware of the advertisement himself.

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.

But Anne's possible lack of knowledge of the advertisement doesn’t help you. As I mention above, Mike himself might not have known about the advertisement. If Anne didn't know about the advert then, as I've already said, she had no reason to withhold any information about the diary.

[David Orsam]

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.

Tell me Caz, how did he acquire the diary without spending any money? I assume you agree that he did acquire the diary? I never mentioned Mike spending his money. In acquiring the diary, he appears to have spent his wife's money.

If your point is that Mike did not need to be in any way concerned about spending money because he was spending his wife's money or money given to him by his father-in-law it's just ridiculous. The money was spent and he was responsible for that spending.

[David Orsam]

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.

It's not a pointless question at all once you understand it's a hypothetical question. Obviously I don't think that a transcript was prepared in March 1992 because my view is that the Diary was not completed until April.

What I have been trying to establish from you is this: If Mike was (hypothetically) in the process of preparing a transcript, would it still, in your view, have made sense for him to hunt for a Victorian diary into which to write extracts?

If the answer to this question is "yes" then frankly it doesn't matter whether a transcript was or was not, in fact, in the process of being prepared. But I don't know if your answer is "yes" or "no" because you haven't told me.

[David Orsam]

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?

No, Caz, I most certainly do not know the difference.

Are you really saying that you believe the Diary is an old hoax but, despite stating this opinion on the forum, and despite saying "it has to be an old hoax", you've never claimed it's an old hoax?

I mean, surely everything that anyone states or claims on this forum about the origins of the diary is their belief, their view, their opinion, their take and nothing else. I was hardly saying that you claimed to have been around at the time of its creation and witnessed it being written with your own eyes!

Semantics and pedantry is one thing Caz but you seem to take it to an extreme level. In Caz Land perhaps you've never stated that the diary is an old hoax but here in Normal Land you've done it time and time again.

[David Orsam]

'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.

Yes and that is entirely consistent with what I have been saying all along.

In other words, Doreen vaguely wrote to 'Mr Williams' that she looked forward to meeting him 'in due course' and, at a subsequent point in time, possibly as late as 10 April (but we just don't know), Mike telephoned her again and they agreed to meet on 13 April, which meeting was confirmed by way of a second letter.

[David Orsam]

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.

No, I don't care at all about Mike's budget nor have you correctly summarised my argument.

My argument is that Mike's action in waiting to ensure that Doreen was interested in the Diary before splashing out unnecessarily is perfectly understandable. He didn't need to do it this way but it made sense.

You seem be the one who has difficulty understanding or accepting it. THAT is the only reason I have had to discuss Mike's 'budget' on this forum.

[David Orsam]

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.

I thought his story was that he was given £50 by Anne's father which means he certainly did splash out on the guard book.

I really don't understand the distinction you make between Anne's money and his money. It was the Barretts money wasn't it?

And there was no way he was going to know if Doreen's interest would survive UNLESS he caught the train to London. But I don't know Caz, perhaps he dodged his fare and sat in the toilet when the guard came round. Or perhaps he borrowed some money from his wife. Or his father-in-law. Or a friend. Or he sold some scrap metal. Or perhaps he had money from the social security. Or perhaps a friend drove him down. Or he took the coach.

Who cares about the bleedin' train fare?!

[David Orsam]

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.

All I said about money was that it made sense for him not to spend any on the Diary project until he had secured interest from an agent.

Since then you've banged on about money non-stop.

I certainly never mentioned any train fare, which was all your doing.

[David Orsam]

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.

If you are losing the will to live it's only because of your silly statements.

It's one thing saying that you can't rely on any of Mike's statements, but to say you can't rely on any of his actions is ridiculous.

Your latest formulation that you wouldn't rely on any of his known actions is even more ridiculous because you can hardly rely on any of his unknown actions can you?