One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[Purkis]

Less far fetched, in my opinion, than the idea that a modern forger could create a document, pre-internet, so accurate in it's tone and language that one phrase is still debated all these years later.

[Sam Flynn]

Less far fetched, in my opinion, than the idea that a modern forger could create a document, pre-internet, so accurate in it's tone and language that one phrase is still debated all these years later.

The diary is neither accurate in tone or language, and far from it. It's a train-wreck on both counts.

[Graham]

The diary is neither accurate in tone or language, and far from it. It's a train-wreck on both counts.

As I and others have said previously, Sam, the Diary right from the start struck me as being written by someone with not a lot of literary skill trying to make his prose (such as it was) 'sound Victorian'. It didn't and doesn't cut it for me.

Graham

[caz]

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.

Er, so you can quote where Mike ever said he received the diary in the Saddle, can you David?

And you can quote even a single 'diary defender' claiming Mike was being honest when saying this, can you?

Very interesting, because I have been under the impression since reading my first diary book that Mike always denied receiving the diary in any pub, but insisted he got it from Tony in his own home, while his poor dead pal was housebound - when he was not dropping his poor dead pal in it by accusing him of being involved in forgery.

Funny that.

I have long maintained that you could tell when Mike was lying his head off about the diary - when his lips were moving.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

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.

So good he managed to managed to do it twice!

And where David writes Page 238, he actually means Page 206.

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.

Robert Smith refers to 'Dr Voller' on pages 4, 5, 6 and 8 of his 25 Years..., published last year, while also referring to 'Dr Warren'. I assumed Robert would know.

Inside Story, from 2003, refers only to 'Nick Warren, a London-based surgeon', so we were at least consistent.

If Voller is indeed a doctor of Chemistry, does he not deserve the same title as Warren gets in the same post?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

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.

1992 actually, rj. But since when have modern hoax conspiracy theorists held up Dr. Eastaugh as their authority on the diary?

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.

'Specifically hired' to look for signs of bronzing, which Dr. Baxendale missed, you mean? I don't know off-hand what their written terms of engagement were, rj, so I can't really comment. Do you?

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.

Indeed he does.

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.

My enigma machine tells me there is no puzzle to solve if Dr. Eastaugh was not asked to examine each and every one of the 63 pages for bronzing and to report back on his findings. Was he? I feel sure I asked this question last time you or someone else brought it up, but I don't recall getting an answer, and I'm not holding my breath on this occasion either.

Dr. Voller [until I know that title is incorrect] said it was "barely visible", and that "some very slight bronzing" could "just be seen" "in one or two places" when "tilted to the light" from the window. This told him that the writing was "genuinely old".

So until you can come back here with some evidence that Dr. Eastaugh made a comparable examination of those same places under similar conditions and saw nothing at all, this 'enigma' will continue to be of your own making.

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.

Not really. First of all, if the diary had been written in Diamine ink, I'd have expected it to look identical to examples written in - er - Diamine ink, several years ago. Secondly, different inks behave differently over time, so there may be pronounced bronzing, less obvious bronzing or sometimes it won't happen at all.

4. Add to this Dr. Baxendale, an extremely experience document examiner, who...

...failed to find the iron in the diary ink and got the history of synthetic dyes wrong. Yes, by all means wheel him on again with his famous solubility result, which Dr. Eastaugh did dispute.

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

But they didn't find anywhere near enough chloroacetamide to make it remotely comparable with Diamine. It was at a level suggestive of contamination, not an active ingredient.

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.

You talk to a chemist then, rj, about that percentage, if you don't know what we'd expect to find. You are the one who wants the diary ink to be Diamine, so you need the evidence. Shirley's book gives the ingredients of liquid Diamine ink and their percentages, which, excluding the 92.08% water, add up to 7.92%, with chloroacetamide coming in at 0.26%, which is the equivalent of 0.02%, or 200 parts per million [is that right?] with the water taken out. AFI's figure was 6.5 parts per million. As chloroacetamide was used as a preservative, I would like to see your evidence that in just 2 or 3 years of normal exposure to air and sunlight, one would expect to find just 6.5 parts per million remaining of the original 200, to do the job of preserving the ink. And what is your evidence that the diary pages were exposed to much air or sunlight in their first 2 or 3 years? Whether it was shoved under floorboards or kept in a bank vault, I can't see it getting out much in the fresh air, can you?

I can't recall seeing a straight comparison between the chemical make-up of all the Diamine ingredients and the chemicals known to be present in the diary ink, but if you wanted to demonstrate once and for all that they are, or at least could be the same, despite all opinions to the contrary, it's surely something you should consider. You wouldn't need percentages or parts per million, but that information would be a bonus, putting it beyond all doubt if they tallied.

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.

I don't think I suggested he 'couldn't' do it. You seemed to be playing down Dr. Voller's observations, because they were based on a 'mere' visual examination, while in the same post playing up Dr. Warren's, also based on a 'mere' visual examination.

Diamine's own ink chemist versus a surgeon, whose simple experiment took no account of how his ink might look today alongside the ink in the diary.

And round and round it goes - for the next 26 years.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

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".

Is this some kind of joke?

Did Drs. Voller or Warren have any evidence at all that Anne or Mike had the knowledge, or the motive, means or opportunity, to do any of the above, let alone the expectation that they would get away with it?

This is desperate stuff to put forward as evidence for a Barrett hoax. It really is.

I suppose they knew what they were doing by putting Crashaw in there too. I notice that not even David has attempted to explain that one away yet. I did think Gareth might have had the balls to take a crack at it. Mike never mentioned, to my knowledge, how clever they both were to pop Crashaw into their funny little Whitechapel Liverpool, Whitechapel London yarn, considering the poet's father had been the vicar at the original White Chapel, St. Mary Matfelon. It would have gone down much better in his affidavit than that silly ass in the photo.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

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".

Even more importantly Dr. Voller describes the exposure of the text to the radiation needing to have taken place 'a few weeks' after ink met paper, which conjures up a rather sweet image of Anne sitting with the diary - which she could only have completed in her expertly disguised handwriting around 11th April 1992 - under her sunlamp at some point between, what would it be? The beginning of May and the beginning of June 1992?

Cutting it a bit fine, weren't they?

Love,

Caz
X

[Scott Nelson]

Just an aside, although a surgeon, I don't think Nick Warren is a doctor.

[Elamarna]

Just an aside, although a surgeon, I don't think Nick Warren is a doctor.

Scott, i think you will find that to be a surgeon in the Uk you MUST first qualify as a Doctor at an approved Medical School.
It would be illegal to practice as a surgeon without being qualified as a Doctor i beleive you will find. Of course they may not then practice any medicine other than surgery

In the UK surgeons do not use the title Dr but Mr/Mrs/Miss or even Ms. That however does not mean they are not.

Steve

[David Orsam]

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

That is certainly true but the problem we have here is that "one off instance" is an evolution in the language from "one off job" (or just "one off" to mean a unique manufactured product, pattern or design) - itself almost certainly an evolution from "one off" to mean a mere quantity, whereby you could have "two off", "three off" etc. - and we don’t have any recorded examples of "one off job", or just "one off" for that matter, until the 20th century. It's literally insane to think that "one off instance" would be found in writing before "one off job" and that we then wouldn't then find another example of "one off instance", or anything similar to that in respect of something unique other than a product, pattern or design, for at least the next fifty years. The only sensible, and indeed undeniable, conclusion is that "one off instance" did not exist in the English language in 1889, which means that the Diary is a forgery.

[David Orsam]

I'm happy to rephrase my statement from #4443 as follows:

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 from a friend with whom he drank in the Saddle pub, even though there is absolutely no supporting evidence of any such transfer occurring.

[rjpalmer]

My enigma machine tells me there is no puzzle to solve if Dr. Eastaugh was not asked to examine each and every one of the 63 pages for bronzing and to report back on his findings. Was he?

Dr. Baxendale did. He looked at every single line of the Diary and saw no sign of bronzing. And Casey Owens, Rendell, etc. also found no sign of bronzing in 1993, even when specifically looking for it. But Voller finds faint bronzing after two or three minutes?

"In July 1992, Dr. David Baxendale examined the Diary handwriting line-by-line using a Zeiss binocular-microscope. At that time not the slightest trace of age-bronzing was found. Yet this phenomenon should have been present in an iron-based ink that was years old, certainly in one said to have been applied in 1888-9. Following that, in October 1992 Dr. Nicholas Eastaugh also saw no signs of age-bronzing.

The next examination of the Diary pages took place in August 1993, and was conducted by Warner Books' commissioned examiners. The members of this team were free to express their independent views. Neither Kenneth Rendell, Dr. Joe Nickell, Maureen Casey Owens, or Robert Kuranz saw any signs of age-bronzing. And my own limited examination of the Diary pages, in October 1993, led to the same conclusion." ---Melvin Harris.

It certainly sounds like the ink bronzed sometime between 1992 and 1995, which would match the observations made by Nick Warren using the ink that Voller had sent him to "play around with."

Voller's suggestion that the ink was old was evidently based on its washed-out and unevenly faded appearance. An amateur forger like Barrett might have simply added water to the ink in order to give it a faded look.

[David Orsam]

If we translate the post in response to mine about Voller into English from the current Evasivespeak in which it is written I think what we are being told is that the authors of Inside Story made a mistake and that the rebuttal by Voller was on 30 October 1995, not 20 October.

And, further, it now seems that there is some significant doubt as to whether Voller does hold a doctorate after all!!! The only person in this whole case who appears to have assigned the tag of "Dr" to Voller is Robert Smith. Personally, I wouldn't rely on Robert Smith for anything, nor Shirley Harrison for that matter, but she does say that Voller is only a mere Bachelor of Science, so unless she made that up he's not a doctor of anything!!

Looks like RJ was quite right not to assign a fantasy title to the guy.

[David Orsam]

Q. How can you tell when a Diary Defender is rattled?
A. When they start prattling on about Crashaw in discussion about the Diary ink!!

And also when they start calling their own expert, Voller, "a joke"!!!!

When I posted those quotes from Voller's correspondence I deliberately made no comment. His words speak for themselves.

What he was saying was that while the ink certainly looked to him like it was 80-90 years old, this impression could have been the result of simply putting the diary under an ordinary sunlamp. It doesn't matter that he refers to "at least some of the effects" being produced in this way because in the letter he is accepting the possibility that it could have fooled him. He doesn't comment on whether the sunlamp could have been used effectively as soon as the diary was written so it's not possible to conclude that this wouldn't have worked.

Focussing on Mike Barrett on any response to Voller is a mistake because he is a red herring. The issue of whether the fading could have been artificially induced should not, and, in fact, does not, hinge on our knowledge of the character of one suspected forger, not least because we have no idea if Barrett, or any other suspect, had accomplices, one of whom could have been given the diary in order to artificially age it.

Voller, in my opinion, was quite wrong to have ever factored in Mike Barrett's stupidity in the first place when assessing the diary (regardless of whether Barrett is stupid or not) because he should have assumed that he could be dealing with a forger who would take any humanly possible steps to make the Diary look old. It's a classic mistake made by experts to underestimate the lengths a determined forger can go to, and the knowledge that is available outside of the scientific community, which leads them to conclude that a forged document is genuine.

Mind you, why Voller was told that Barrett was stupid, and who told him, is quite another question. If it was someone involved with researching the diary this should never have happened because it clearly could, and this case did, lead Voller to give an incomplete answer in the first instance.