One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[caz]

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.

Refresh my memory, rj. Wasn't Nick Warren a surgeon by trade? And wasn't the conclusion he reached 'merely' based on visual examinations in a snapshot of time? Do you know how the ink Warren used has behaved in the years since those experiments? How well would you say it compares visually with the ink in the diary today? Shouldn't they now look identical?

The ink sent by Dr Alec Voller [I note your funny little omission here of his title] to both Shirley Harrison and Nick Warren, which Robert Smith used in 2012 for visual comparison purposes, doesn't resemble the ink in the diary as it looked last year and which, according to Robert, has not changed one iota in appearance from the day he first set eyes on it.

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

Entirely consistent, rj? Are you making this up as you go along? AFI claimed that Chloroacetamide was present in the diary ink at a level of just 6.5 parts per million. Wasn't the equivalent level in Diamine a heck of a lot higher than that? And where does AFI list the diary ink's other ingredients and give the levels found, so we can all see how you arrived at the formula being 'entirely consistent' with Diamine? I thought their brief was merely to check for the presence of Chloroacetamide.

Love,

Caz
X

[Spider]

Im not for a minute suggesting that debate should stop (its the purpose of the Forum) but id just ask: is anyone that believes the diary to be genuine either stupid or biased (or just genuinely mistaken?) Or is there an outside/minute chance that they might be right? Im just intrigued by why this supposedly ‘amateurish forgery’ still arouses such passions, and yes vehemence, 27 years later?

As a pro-diarist I would equally ask - 'is anyone that doesn't believe the diary to be genuine, either stupid or biased (or just genuinely mistaken?) Or is there an outside/minute chance that they might be right?'

I believe that many of those commenting on the subject have never thoroughly read the 'Diary'.

[David Orsam]

Mike Barrett = unscrupulous liar and forger

Mike Barrett (when saying something detrimental to the diary) = honest.

This is not an accurate characterisation of the debate. If anyone attacking the diary relies on something Mike Barrett has said then I can guarantee a Diary Defender will be down on them like a ton of bricks; this is very well policed.

The arguments about the diary being a forgery do not depend in any way on Mike being an honest person, at any time, and nothing Mike says is taken at face value without corroboration.

On the other hand, every single diary defender claims that Mike was being honest when saying that he received the diary in the Saddle pub, even though there is absolutely no supporting evidence of any such transfer occurring.

[David Orsam]

Voller = bad scientist

Scientists (whose work showed against the diary) = good scientist

I must have missed it when someone said that Voller was a "bad scientist". It thought the point RJ was making was that Voller didn't conduct any scientific tests on the diary, but only made a visual examination (and, I might add, he didn't write a report setting out his conclusions).

[David Orsam]

Did we ever get to see Keith Skinner's 'proof' that the Diary was abstracted from Battlecrease?

I think it might have been mentioned somewhere.

[David Orsam]

The Great Misunderstander strikes again!

No-one is saying Anne is stupid and, for all I know, her punctuation and use of apostrophes is perfect - certainly the majority of her spelling and selection of English words is fine (just like the author of the Diary) - so the reference to St James's here in this thread is pointless.

The reason I started a thread about Anne's use of English was because it was being positively stated, in effect, that she could not have written the expression "Frequented my club" because she was far too sensible and competent (a secretary) to have made such an error. I have conclusively demonstrated that she was not too sensible and competent to make basic errors of English - and that's it. She WAS capable of making basic errors. It's irrelevant to this point if anyone else makes basic errors of English or whether I or any other member of this forum is capable of such errors. So the person making the point in this thread is making a totally false point which is only making herself look stupid.

[David Orsam]

Indeed, which is why I suggested that it might thus have appeared in print among the writer's research materials.

Just as a matter of fact, both Ryan and Morland include reference to "St James's" in their respective books on the Maybrick case.

[Sam Flynn]

Just as a matter of fact, both Ryan and Morland include reference to "St James's" in their respective books on the Maybrick case.

Thanks, David. I was going to check The Poisoned Life later, but you've saved me the hassle.

[rjpalmer]

Very quickly.

1. Round about 1993, Dr. Eastaugh was specifically hired to examine the Diary's ink and paper. He studied the appearance of the ink, even under magnification, and said nothing whatsoever about the ink showing signs of 'bronzing'...a remarkable omission and oversight had there been any.

Is 'Herlock' (or more rightly, caz) suggesting Dr. Eastaugh is a 'bad scientists' for missing this? Or is it possible that Eastaugh is a good scientist, and the reason he didn't note any signs of bronzing was because there wasn't any? How could a “specialist in dating old manuscripts” (as Chris Jones describes him) fail to notice ink bronzing, when he was specifically hire to note such things? It’s a remarkable suggestion.

2. Roughly 2 1/2 years later, 1995, Alec Voller now notices slight bronzing in the ink. He concludes the ink didn't go on the paper in 'recent years' and suggests it could be as old as 90 years or more.

Now, other than Herlock, no one stated that Voller was a bad scientist. What I stated is that his opinions were entirely based on a visual observation--which is true. His ‘experiment’ was 'conducted' in Robert Smith's office. But Eastaugh already made a visual observation 2 or 3 years earlier and made no mention of the bronzing. So we have an enigma.

3. Subsequent experiments by Warren demonstrated that Diamine ink showed signs of bronzing in as little as 2 to 3 years, which puts Voller's opinions in serious doubt.

4. Add to this Dr. Baxendale, an extremely experience document examiner, who previously found the ink readily soluble, which again strongly suggests that the ink had been very recently applied to the diary's paper, which casts even further doubt on Voller's opinion.

5. A subsequent test conducted by the scientists at AFI showed the Diary contained chloroacetamide, an additive in Diamine ink.

So, considering the textual indications of a modern hoax, and the prevarications of Barrett & Graham, their attempt to obtain genuine Victorian paper only a few weeks before the Diary’s initial appearance, etc., etc., any reasonable person would certainly conclude that the Diary is a recent concoction.


caz -- Certain chemicals leach out over time, due to oxygen, sunlight, etc. You are assuming (wrongly) that because Diamine ink had a certain percentage of chloroacetamide in its liquid state, that, 2 or 3 years later, after it had dried out and was exposed to air and sunlight, that it would still have the same percentage of chloroacetamide. Not true. Experiments would need to be conducted to determine the percentage that one would be expected to find. Talk to a chemist.

And, personally, I consider physicians (including Warren) to be men of science, so it is ridiculous to suggest he couldn't carry out a simple experiment that depended on nothing more than visual observations. But, using your own rhetorical gimmick, is a book publisher a scientist? I think most people would wish to have a more disinterested observer than the Diary’s owner, no matter how sincere he or she might be.

How is this unreasonable?

[David Orsam]

Funny little omission of a title

From Inside Story:

Page 96

"Diamine’s chemist Alec Voller…"

Page 168

"More controversially, Alec Voller, who would examine the Diary on 30 October 1995…"

Page 238

"On 20 October 1995 came a rebuttal of this possibility from a source who could hardly be bettered, Alec Voller, head chemist at Diamine ink....Voller announced his conclusion after barely two minutes…"

How Voller managed to managed to form any conclusions about the Diary ten whole days before he actually examined it is a mystery.

Voller, if he is actually entitled to be referred to as Dr Voller, is, presumably, a doctor of Chemistry or something like that (although Shirley Harrison only refers to him as "ALEC VOLLER Bsc", 2003 book, p.344, which isn't a doctoral degree) whereas Dr Nick Warren is, I believe, a proper medical doctor (or surgeon), so that might account for the use of a title in his respect.

[David Orsam]

He concludes the ink didn't go on the paper in 'recent years' and suggests it could be as old as 90 years or more.

It's a little known fact that Voller qualified his opinion on this subject in a letter to Dr Nick Warren dated 8th February 1996, as follows:

"It was an honest opinion, taking into account all the known facts and making due allowance for the various unknowns and purely on the basis of appearances, I can see no reason to change that opinion. What you may not be aware of however, is that having expressed this opinion, I was asked whether I could think of any way in which such an appearance could be simulated by a forger and the gist of my reply was that I could not think of any method which would not be unmasked by chemical analysis. In the light of your comments about Mike Barrett [that he had once been a freelance writer], I rather regret making that statement because even at the time, I knew it not to be entirely true. There is in fact such a method but I did not think it even worth mentioning because it seemed to me that a complete idiot such as I assumed Mike Barrett to be, could not possibly comprehend the details."

He then sets out a possible method of forgery which might have fooled him, involving the use of a modern ink chemically identical or near chemically identical to a genuine Victorian ink, an accelerated fading apparatus (which could either be a big carbon arc lamp within a metal drum, a xenon arc lamp or a mercury-tungsten fluorescent lamp) and an exposure of the text to the radiation from one of these lamps a few weeks after it was written. He says he does not know how long it would take to produce an 80-90 year old fading effect because no experiment had ever been conducted.

He goes on:

"I also have to say (ruefully) that as a method of forgery, the above technique would probably produce more convincing results in amateurish rather than professional hands because a person unused to the finer points of the operation of the equipment would probably obtain willy-nilly, exactly the sort of uneven fading that is characteristic of old documents."

Voller was sufficiently uncertain about the age of the Diary to say to Dr Warren in a subsequent letter dated 13 February 1996 that, "your remarks about the text actually having been written by some nameless confederate (I have always thought that Anne Barrett was the favourite suspect) have given me food for thought."

Perhaps most importantly he concedes in this letter that, "at least some of the effects of an accelerated fading apparatus could be duplicated" by the use of "no more than an ordinary sunlamp".

[David Orsam]

I believe that many of those commenting on the subject have never thoroughly read the 'Diary'.

Au contraire, I think you'll find that many of those commenting on the subject have read the Diary very thoroughly and have noted the presence of an expression - "one off instance" - which was not known in 1889, thus revealing the Diary to be a later forgery.

[Purkis]

Somebody, at some point was the first person to put 'one off instance' into print.

[Sam Flynn]

Somebody, at some point was the first person to put 'one off instance' into print.

Several decades before it's ever seen again, and in a short document which contains other anachronistic phrases such as "spread mayhem"?

[Purkis]

Several decades before it's ever seen again, and in a short document which contains other anachronistic phrases such as "spread mayhem"?

Quite possibly, yes.