One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[Herlock Sholmes]

Herlock, if you imagine the Diarist scribbling madly away while snorting, chewing, or fumbling with his charcoal tablets, you've fallen at the first hurdle. The black powder was not found in the Diary per se, but found in the edges of the cut-out pages, so it must have been associated with those now missing pages. I also suspect that you'll find that the charcoal used to treat indigestion,etc is not made out of animal bones for obvious reasons. Bone char is, however, commonly used as a pigment in inks and paints. It's easier for me to imagine Barrett scraping away at something with his Stanley knife or experimenting with a powdered ink that used bone char as its pigment.

Which were located in.....the diary.

To say that they must have been associated with the missing pages can’t be taken as a fact. The black powder just fell into the gap left by the missing pages and could easily have occurred long after the pages had been cut out.

Didn’t Barrett just say that he bought a bottle of Victorian ink? It’s hard to see him now as someone experimenting with bone char pigments surely?

[David Orsam]

I also suspect that you'll find that the charcoal used to treat indigestion,etc is not made out of animal bones for obvious reasons.

I'm not sure what those reasons are RJ. This is from a "Note-book of Materia Medica" by Robert Edmund Scoresby-Jackson, 1867:

Carbo-Animalis Purificatus – Purified Animal Charcoal – Bone black deprived of its earthy salts. Bone black, ivory black, or impure animal charcoal, is the powdered residue of ox and sheep bones, which have been exposed to red heat, with the access of air. In this state it consists chiefly of phosphate and carbonite of lime, carburet and sulphuret of iron, and sulphuret of calcium, with from ten to twenty per cent of charcoal, and to remove the salts in order to render it useful for pharmaceutical purposes, is the object of the following preparation process:-

PREPARATION. – Take of bone black sixteen ounces; hydrochloric acid, ten fluid ounces; distilled water, a sufficiency. Mix the hydrocholoric acid with a pint of the water, and add the bone black, stirring occasionally. Digest at a moderate heat for two days, agitating from time to time; collect the undissolved charcoal on a calico filter, and wash with distilled water till what passes through gives scarcely any precipitate with nitrate of silver. Dry the charcoal, and then heat it to redness in a covered crucible.

Dose. – From a few grains, frequently repeated, to a table-spoonful or more, occasionally, before or after meals in painful dyspepsia; or as an antidote, in doses of an ounce and upwards, according to the quantity of poison taken.

[rjpalmer]

Simple hygiene, I would think. Old Doc Scoresby-Jackson may have been still grinding up charred cattle bones circa 1867, but I think you'll find a lot of indigestion medicines in the 1870s and 80s proudly advertise the use of "vegetable charcoal."

“Bragg’s Vegetable Charcoal, for “Bile, Flatulence, Heartburn.”

Medicinal charcoal is now made out of food grade charcoal--coconut shells, etc. And what of that statute mentioned by Valentine Blake in 1889 forbidding the use of bone black in arsenic preparations?

But as all the indications are that the Diary was created in the 1990s, I somehow doubt I need to worry too much about an unidentified black powder—which could be associated with an ink or a paint--in the spine of the missing pages. It’s always the minutia that interests the conspiracy theorists, who are happy to wear blinders when it comes to the big ticket items like the purchase of blank Victorian paper only weeks before showing up in London.

It’s hard to see him now as someone experimenting with bone char pigments surely?

Eastaugh suggested the black powder was based on bone black, not that it was pure bone black. It contained other chemicals. As bone black is already an ingredient in some powdered inks, I am hardly suggesting Barrett made up it from scratch.

[Herlock Sholmes]

. Eastaugh suggested the black powder was based on bone black, not that it was pure bone black. It contained other chemicals. As bone black is already an ingredient in some powdered inks, I am hardly suggesting Barrett made up it from scratch.

Its been ages since i read anything about the diary but, and please correct me if im wrong, didnt Barrett say that he just bought a bottle of ready-to-use Victorian ink?

[rjpalmer]

Yup. Diamine Manuscript ink from Bluecoat Chambers Art Shop. Later subjected to experiments by Nick Warren and Melvin Harris who found it a credible claim. But who said he hit a home run his first at bat? You don't think forgers experiment with ink?

[David Orsam]

Simple hygiene, I would think. Old Doc Scoresby-Jackson may have been still grinding up charred cattle bones circa 1867, but I think you'll find a lot of indigestion medicines in the 1870s and 80s proudly advertise the use of "vegetable charcoal."

That may be but in the Pocket Pharmacopoeia by Charles Edward Armand Semple of 1891 (being an abridgement of the British Parmacopoeia of 1885 with the Appendix of 1890) we find the same thing being said as in 1867, i.e.

"Animal Charcoal. Bone Black. The residue of bones, which have been exposed to a red heat without the access of air. Consists principally of carbon, and phosphate and carbonate of calcium. Used in preparing Carbo Animalis Purificatus. Used in cases of poisoning, and in dyspepsia..."

[David Orsam]

And what of that statute mentioned by Valentine Blake in 1889 forbidding the use of bone black in arsenic preparations?

According to Levy, commenting on Blake's affidavit:

"The statute requires arsenic sold by chemists to be mixed with soot or indigo, not charcoal..."

[Herlock Sholmes]

Yup. Diamine Manuscript ink from Bluecoat Chambers Art Shop. Later subjected to experiments by Nick Warren and Melvin Harris who found it a credible claim. But who said he hit a home run his first at bat? You don't think forgers experiment with ink?

Im not going to press this point because i cant recall enough about it but i seem to recall Harris and Warren’s testing requirements coming in for considerable critisicm regarding the information that they requested. Anyway, of course i accept that he might not have ‘hit a home run his first at bat.’ Im sure that forgers do experiment with ink but i dont think that anyone is suggesting that Mike was an experienced forger? Surely he would have looked for the simplest option....a usable ink? Would he have had enough knowledge to come up with some kind of compound good enough to prevent alarm bells from immediately going off?

[Graham]

Alec Voller, the Chief Chemist of Diamine Inks Ltd, was confident that the Diary ink was not Diamine.

Graham

[Spider]

..........But as all the indications are that the Diary was created in the 1990s, I somehow ............

Are you trying to lay this down as Fact? Please elaborate on the indications, but please omit any b*ll*cks about Barrett & Co. being involved in its creation.

IMHO all indications are that the 'Diary' was actually created in 1888/89.

[rjpalmer]

Alec Voller, the Chief Chemist of Diamine Inks Ltd, was confident that the Diary ink was not Diamine.

Graham

Big deal. Voller's opinion was merely based on a brief visual examination. He conducted no tests whatsoever. So it had nothing to do with the actual chemical composition of the ink, but the fact that the ink showed slight signs of bronzing, which made him conclude it was old.

The problem is that when Baxendale, Eastaugh, and the rest of the document examiners studied the diary several years befor Voller, none of them mentioned any bronzing. Subsequent experiments conducted by Dr. Nick Warren, using Diamine ink, showed signs of bronzing in as little as 2 or 3 years.

Ergo, Voller was mistaken. The tests run by AFI showed the ink was entirely consistent with Diamine ink.

Spider: one word: Baxendale. Two other words: one off. Four words: tin match box empty. Five words: At least 20 blank pages.

[David Orsam]

According to Levy, commenting on Blake's affidavit:

"The statute requires arsenic sold by chemists to be mixed with soot or indigo, not charcoal..."

Just for the record, this appears to be a reference to the Sale of Arsenic Regulation Act 1851:

Provision for colouring Arsenic.

No Person shall sell any Arsenic unless the same be before the Sale thereof mixed with Soot or Indigo in the Proportion of One Ounce of Soot or Half an Ounce of Indigo at the least to One Pound of the Arsenic, and so in proportion for any greater or less Quantity: Provided always, that where such Arsenic is stated by the Purchaser to be required, not for Use in Agriculture, but for some other Purpose for which such Admixture would, according to the Representation of the Purchaser, render it unfit, such Arsenic may be sold without such Admixture in a Quantity of not less than Ten Pounds at any One Time.

[Scott Nelson]

The tests run by AFI showed the ink was entirely consistent with Diamine ink.

RJ, I believe the later tests run by Leeds showed there was no Diamine in the ink.

[rjpalmer]

Hi Scott. I think you mean chloroacetamide. Leeds, in fact, found it on their first test. They then retried and claimed they didn't find it on the second run, and blamed the mixed results on contamination. They also claimed there was no sodium, which clashes with Eastaugh's earlier findings. So these results don't exactly inspire confidence.

"Fortunately for the truth, Robert Kuranz, the US forensic ink analyst, had retained 12 unused ink-on-paper samples taken from the Diary in Chicago (August 1993). These samples were placed in gelatine capsules (six to each capsule) and kept under optimum storage conditions. Robert Kuranz cooperated by sending over to me one of these capsules; this was then despatched unopened to the laboratories of Analysis For Industry and they were asked to test the six tiny samples for the presence of chioroacetamide.

The subsequent AFI report of 19.10 1994, concluded:-"When the six black ink dots were extracted with acetone and analysed using gas-liquid chromatography procedures chloroacetamide was indicated to be present in the ink used..."

When the AFI report was published, Mrs Harrison's publisher, Robert Smith, decided that it was opportune to become helpful. approached me and agreed to further tests. We reached an understanding that these tests would duplicate the procedures used by AFI. It was accepted that identical tests, would be staged by two laboratories, one of these being AFI once more, the other being one chosen by them.

This never happened. The agreement was violated when Mrs Harrison arranged for quite different tests to be carried out at Leeds University. The original standards applied at AFI were never matched; the results were unsatisfactory and did nothing to resolve matters. One report from Leeds first showed the detection of chloroacetamide, then its non-detection on a re-test. The reason given for this clash was that Leeds had used contaminated equipment on its first run! AFI, by contrast, had used anticontamination tests before and after every one of its recorded runs, and it had shown that its apparatus could detect the preservative at extremely low levels (at nanogram levels)

Other tests at Leeds, invoiving a Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM/EDX) led to the conclusion that the Diary ink did not use Nigrosine since that "...contained sodium salts. [and] The presence of sodium was not detected in any of the materials examined" (ie The Diary ink on its own and the same ink on paper)

Following this the Diary camp used the cry of "no sodium" almost as a victory chant. And Mrs Harrison confidently wrote "...the findings... show that there is absolutely no connection with Diamine ink.. there is no chloroacetamide or nigrosine in the diary ink..." (Dec 12 1994)

She went on to state "I believe that the responsible way forward is for me to offer Analysis for Industry and Dr David Baxendale the opportunity of re-testing the ink..." superficially this was a fair offer, but, like so many statements emerging from Diary sources, it proved to be nothing but window-dressing. More than two years have passed since that letter and no attempt has been made to organise new tests. You may draw your own conclusions.

So there it was, a laboratory test stating that the lack of sodium in the Diary ink ruled out the modern Diamine product. Conclusive? Seemingly so, but my experience of Diary antics led me to dig deeper. I tried to lay hold of the earlier report by Dr Eastaugh, since he too had used an Electron Scanning Microscope. So what were his conclusions? Why were they not being used to support the verdict from Leeds?

Finding a copy proved difficult. The paths were blocked, so blocked that it was not untIl December 1996 that I managed to secure his report. Thankfully 'The Sunday Times' had retained a photocopy in its Legal Department files; and that proved bad news for the Diary people. Very bad news. This once-elusive report was eye-opening. Dr Easthaugh had tested four samples of ink taken from the Diary and his verdict negated the statement from Leeds. EACH OF HIS TESTS RECORDED THE PRESENCE OF SIGNIFICANT AMOUNTS OF SODIUM IN THE DIARY INK!" -- Melvin Harris.

[rjpalmer]

It's also interesting to note that Alec Voller, the darling of the Diary Defenders, stated the ink contained nigrosine...which contradicts their other darling, the Leeds report. Putting it all together, I conclude that Harris and Warren were right and Barrett told the truth (on this occasion).