One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[rjpalmer]

No, no, no, no, no ...

June 6, 1994 11.30am-11.45am - Tim Martin-Wright on 'phone to Paul Feldman the day after he [TMW] found Shirley's book in Berwick:

TMW: And um, I know where it came from and I know who found it and I know where he found it.
PHF: Um, are you prepared to tell me which electrician it was?
TMW: I’ve been advised by my solicitor, whom you know, not to tell you. I have just told you exactly what I was advised to tell you.
PHF: You were advised by?
TMW: My solicitor.
PHF: And is that the same as my solicitor?
TMW: No. I think they are different people within the same practice.

I think I'm going to have to chuck it in, Ike. I'll wait until 2025 and perhaps you'll have it sorted by then.

One can't follow the conversation or the tale you're trying to tell when you're only supplying a snippet here and a snippet there.

I'm still lost somewhere between Berwick and Liverpool.

The conversation suddenly jumps to Feldman knowing that Martin-Wright is referring to an electrician? How did he know that?

And how did the solicitor enter the conversation?

You still haven't explained why, on seeing Shirley's book in a wayside cafe, or whatever it was, Martin-Wright decided to phone Paul Feldman. When you take up the conversation again, Feldman is somehow already aware that the two men might share some connection through a solicitor. But this is left unexplained.

It almost sounds as if Feldman got his information from Robert Smith, who as Shirley tells it, got wind of Martin-Wright through a London solicitor whom she names as Stephen Shotnes of Simons, Muirhead, and Burton.

Some key bit of information is missing. Is that it? That Feldman was actually alerted to Martin-Wright by Robert Smith who heard it from Stephen Shotnes, and this is why Martin-Wright called Feldman instead of Harrison?

And that Smith never bothered to check it out himself, having already debunked the electrician's story with Paul Dodd and his solicitor, but took it up again in 1997 when he finally passed the story on to Shirley?

I don't know, but as it is currently being told, it doesn't make any sense. At least not to me.

It's akin to one of those experimental foreign language films that just show random scenes that don't appear to fit together particularly well, and the audience has to supply the connective tissue.

I'll look for you in the winter of 2025.

[rjpalmer]

Example of muddying alert!

Is this how you treat your readers, Ike?

I came here in good faith, the only person who is actually seeking clarity, and when I ask a question about discrepancies, I'm accused of muddying.

Frankly, I don't really care when Martin-Wright opened the APS outlet other than it was supposedly the reference point for the all-important question of when he heard something, which he could not correctly recall, from his employee Dodgson.

Shirley Harrison, based on information supplied by Robert Smith, told the public the shop opened in October 1991, adding (somewhat humorously from our perspective) that the date fit nicely with Barrett bringing the diary to London in April 1992.

Am I to be blamed that the accounts of the diary faithful keep changing?

Read it with you own eyes. American Connection page 292. October 1991.



[At this stage, TMW, mirroring Dodgson, is saying it was 'a month or two' after the shop opened, when originally he could only tell Feldman that it was sometime within a six-month window of 18-24 months previously. Since 24 months earlier (June 1992) would have been four months before the shop supposedly opened, I can hardly be accused of 'mud' when it seems to be someone else's mud, the aforementioned TMW].

Be that as it may, James Johnston corrected this to November 1992, and then to late-October 1992--a full year later than the public was originally told---yet still retains the belief that it "appears to fit conveniently" with the idea of Barrett receiving the diary from an electrician!

But I'll let it go. If you want to call it October 1992 that's fine by me; but you boasted of having documentation for this, yet only referred to when Martin-Wright's business was 'incorporated,' which was in 1988, so I'm still uncertain of what your 'documentation' actually is.

But if you're happy with it, I'm happy with it, Ike. It's all good.

[John Wheat]

There is absolutely zero evidence the diary was written by Maybrick.

[Iconoclast]

Billy Graham took his photo album, which had been in his family for years, and pulled the photos out before giving it to Tony Devereux. Together, they rewrote the Maybrick as Ripper story and Billy gave the diary to Anne. Then she gives it to Mike.

Okay, Scotty, I'll engage:

Is there is any evidence you know of which shows that Billy knew Tony Devereux?
What would Billy's motive be for giving the old photo album to Tony?
Are you suggesting that Tony had the original scrapbook containing the Maybrick as Ripper Story which they then rewrote into Billy's family photograph album?
If so, whose handwriting was it in?
And why?
How did Billy know Tony had this diary (or 'text')?
Why did Billy give the diary to Anne?
Are you saying that Anne then gave the diary to Mike who then would go on to say he was given it by Tony?
How did the original diary (or 'text') come into Tony's hands?

I hope you can see that there are one or two gaps in your reasoning which do need to be explained and evidenced before we really start to take a deep dive into your theory ...

Cheers,

Ike

[Iconoclast]

All things considered, I think I'll wait and see what you come up with in 2025, Ike. You're presenting a confusing cast of characters and events, but as we peel back the foliage, and hack our way to the center of the thicket, there doesn't appear to be anyone who actually saw anything.
Ciao. I'm going to back to bed.

But this is what you do, RJ, not I. You take a reasoned argument and pick every tenuous hole in it you can think of and turn it on its head so that it just looks plain wrong when in fact it is pretty darned watertight to those who are not actively seeking an anti-Voltairian 'worst of all possible worlds'. Your fellow Chuckle Brother, Algernon Orsam (for clarity, that's Lord Orsam and no other) plays a similar game and it really ought to be red cards all 'round.

'Incorporated' vs. 'opened' - no-one cares, man. We all know what the issue is and it's not whether one set of documents was filed as opposed to some other set. This is just nitpicking to set the straw man up for a fall. And I ain't falling for it, Buster!

Example of muddying alert!

What you're remembering is Robert Smith hearing about TMW's account from a shared firm of solicitors in 1997. This is recounted in one of the later editions of Harrison's book and again in The American Connection.

No, no, no, no, no ...

June 6, 1994 11.30am-11.45am - Tim Martin-Wright on 'phone to Paul Feldman the day after he [TMW] found Shirley's book in Berwick:

TMW: And um, I know where it came from and I know who found it and I know where he found it.
PHF: Um, are you prepared to tell me which electrician it was?
TMW: I’ve been advised by my solicitor, whom you know, not to tell you. I have just told you exactly what I was advised to tell you.
PHF: You were advised by?
TMW: My solicitor.
PHF: And is that the same as my solicitor?
TMW: No. I think they are different people within the same practice.

Incidentally, as Linder et alia tried to bring out in Inside Story, the relationship between Robert Smith and Paul Feldman during 1994 was at an all time low. Two camps had emerged in 1993 and information was not being shared - hence the suspicion and distrust of Feldman when he eventually made contact with Anne Graham and learned about her and her father's story. By the time Tim Martin-Wright contacted Feldman on June 6, 1994 the electricians - as far as Feldman was concerned - were a busted flush so he had very little time for Tim's story who he saw as just somebody else out to fleece him. Big mistake. BIG mistake (thank you, Julia Roberts).

I find that strange because in 1997 MTW led Robert Smith to the shop in Bootle, where Dodgson was working and Dodgson said nothing about seeing the diary, in a pub but only hearing about someone else having heard about it being inside a biscuit tin. There was no pub in that telling.

I guess that'll be because Dodgson and Davies were talking in Dodgson's shop not in a pub. Eighteen months later, Tim Martin-Wright misremembered the bit where the book was apparently sold with the place where Dodgson first heard from Davies about the book. It's not crime of the century and definitely is 'nothing to see here'.

There's no confused list of characters and events, except in your ambition.

Our dear readers can looks forward to my remarkable Society's Pillar 2025 but - at this rate - it is going to be very badly named as I'm just chocca right now and it doesn't look like it's going to get any quieter any day soon.

PS I loved your analogy about the foliage as Mrs Iconoclast and I are currently having our front hedges ripped out (they're all dead) and replaced by lovely living ones.

Ike

[rjpalmer]

As I recall, this is explained by Feldman in Feldman. Something to do with sharing the same firm of solicitors (but not the same solicitor). Yes, absolutely (before you ask), this does not clarify how TMW knew that he shared a firm of solicitors with Feldman or even why he linked Feldman to Shirley Harrison's book. Somehow he did and that - for now - is enough for me. It's a valid question, yes, but not a dealbreaker in the tale given that it did actually happen.

No, Ike.

Your memory is deceiving you, just as my own memory was temporarily short circuited (I blame oxygen debt) leading me to call Martin-Wright by the name of Martin-Davies.

Feldman never mentions TMW in his book--I checked. The information TMW passed along to Feldman in that phone call in 1994 was so flawed and insignificant (in Feldman's mind) that he doesn't mention him and doesn't appear to have passed on this supposedly important information to anyone. Certainly Robert Smith wasn't made aware of it.

What you're remembering is Robert Smith hearing about TMW's account from a shared firm of solicitors in 1997. This is recounted in one of the later editions of Harrison's book and again in The American Connection.

So how TMW immediately traced Paul Feldman is very much a mystery and I think a relevant one, since it could be another instance of TMW badly misremembering how--and when--this conversation went down. It might be useful if James (or your own good self) could confirm the date of the phone call between TMW and PF.

I had to briefly contact your good friend Lord Orsam to ask for clarification about something he wrote. He pointed out that you keep wrongly referring to the date that APS was incorporated. A1 Security and Electrical (the name of Martin-Wright's company) was incorporated in 1988. APS Security and Electrical was incorporated (by Alan Dodgson) in 2007. What you apparently mean is when the small shop in Bootle opened, which James Johnston gives as late October 1992. How he determined that date was not explained.

I'm not sure how this is relevant anymore since TMW didn't refer to a conversation between Davies and Dodgson in this shop when telling his tale to Feldman in 1994, but to a conversation between himself and Dodgson at an unspecified time during a six-month window, wherein Dodgson had supposedly seen the diary (or more correctly, a copy of the diary) with his own eyes while in a pub. So did the conversation between Dodgson and Davies even take place at APS or was it in a pub? The six-month span got narrowed down to a 'month or two' (possibly by Dodgson) and then (later--perhaps as much as ten years later) to a single month: December.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I noticed that Orsam, in discussing this with James, made a very shrewd suggestion that the reason TMW was able to trace Feldman (instead of the appropriate Shirley Harrison) is because Feldman was investigating the electrician's angle in April 1993 and this is really when TMW and Dodgson had had their conversation. 'TMW' had a 'story to tell', as Feldman states, so I await clarification how the two men came into contact.

Well, the good news is that TMW told the same tale in 1994 that he was telling a decade later so I assume James used the interview he had to hand which must have been the 2004 one? As James was the author of the transcription of the June 6, 1994 recording, I have to assume he was vaguely aware of it.

Did it? Did it remain consistent, and he was still referring to Dodgson seeing the diary with his own beery eyes when interviewed by Keith in 2004?

I find that strange because in 1997 MTW led Robert Smith to the shop in Bootle, where Dodgson was working and Dodgson said nothing about seeing the diary, in a pub but only hearing about someone else having heard about it being inside a biscuit tin. There was no pub in that telling.

All things considered, I think I'll wait and see what you come up with in 2025, Ike. You're presenting a confusing cast of characters and events, but as we peel back the foliage, and hack our way to the center of the thicket, there doesn't appear to be anyone who actually saw anything.

Ciao. I'm going to back to bed.

[Iconoclast]

Hi Ike. Back home. More than a wee bit tired having hiked up one of the local peaks.

Good to hear you're keeping the old bones oiled with healthy exercise, RJ. Watch the ticker, mind - heights put quite a strain on the heart which is why I avoid heights, exercise, and movement generally (if I can).

I keep coming back to this initial post of yours and many questions spring to mind, but I don't want to scare you off by being too nit-picky or bombarding you with too many questions about minutia.

Well, it's not like you and Lord Orsam have not got me razor-sharp and ever-primed to deal with the sort of irrelevant minutia that the rest of us don't even notice or ever think is relevant. I'm locked and loaded, RJ, and ready to stand firm when my iron will meets your penny bag of quarks.

I must say I am very impressed, and perhaps even a little surprised, that Feldman was tape recording his incoming phone calls and thus we have a transcript of the exact initial conversation with Tim Martin-Davies---I assume that this is what we are looking at--which you date to 6 June 1994.

Yes, transcript. I don't have the original recording. I may as well say it now (as I know what's coming), it's Martin-Wright not Martin-Davies.

You refer to 'verbal evidence that Davies was specific' but nowhere is Davies referred to in this excerpt and from the context it appears that Martin-Davies was oblivious to Alan Davies' existence unless he comes up later in this conversation (?)

My explanations would be so much clearer if I had time to sit down and get all of the details together, but I'm as busy as an ambitious bee climbing the hive's corporate ladder, so I have no choice but to rely on my recall alone. Davies does not get a mention on June 6 - presumably because TMW did not know his name or did not recall it (it being 18 months or so after the event).

I'm also pondering how if Martin-Wright drove down the A-1 on 5 June 1994, and fleetingly browsed a copy of Shirley Harrison's book during a pit stop, how the very next day, as you tell us, he managed to trace and contact Paul Feldman. How did he get Paul Feldman's number? How did he know who Feldman was?

As I recall, this is explained by Feldman in Feldman. Something to do with sharing the same firm of solicitors (but not the same solicitor). Yes, absolutely (before you ask), this does not clarify how TMW knew that he shared a firm of solicitors with Feldman or even why he linked Feldman to Shirley Harrison's book. Somehow he did and that - for now - is enough for me. It's a valid question, yes, but not a dealbreaker in the tale given that it did actually happen.

Yes, I sound like a three-year-old.

[Sigh] We know, RJ, we know ...

I also took the time to review the previous posts on this same topic, especially between James Johnston and your good friend David Orsam, and am surprised that James, in discussing this matter, never referred to this all-important initial account given by Mr. Martin-Davies to Paul Feldman, but instead refers to an interview Martin-Davies gave to Keith Skinner fully a decade later, 2004.

Well, the good news is that TMW told the same tale in 1994 that he was telling a decade later so I assume James used the interview he had to hand which must have been the 2004 one? As James was the author of the transcription of the June 6, 1994 recording, I have to assume he was vaguely aware of it.

If I'm reading it correctly, it was at this time--ten years after-the-fact--that Martin-Davies pinpointed his conversation with Mr. Dodgson to December 1992 based, rather surprisingly, not an any direct reference to the conversation in a notebook, but to the purchase and storage of an antique hand-stand which (for reasons not entirely explained) he associated with his discussion with Alan Dodgson.

As I recall, TMW was clear in 2004 that APS Security had been incorporated in October 1992 and that the discussion with Dodgson had occurred a couple of months after the shop had opened for trading. Thus, he pinpointed December 1994 for his discussion with Dodgson on the basis of that initial recollection coupled with a note in his diary regarding his buying an old hatstand that month (and it was the purchase of the hatstand which had triggered Dodgson's awareness that TMW was interested in old artefacts). Hatstand, hand-stand. Who knows? Who cares? (Now awaiting Lord Orsam's twenty-three page analysis showing that it was impossible for TMW to purchase an old hatstand and that it had to be a hand-stand - which, honestly, is how he frequently turns irrelevance on its head to make it seem interesting and less anodyne.)

I can't help it, Ike---it sounds a wee bit...vague and uncertain, with ample room for human error.

Well, keep taking the tablets, RJ, and maybe things will improve after a wee kip?

Worried about you, mate. You're not in your seventies any longer!

Ike
Concerned Citizen

[rjpalmer]

That said, there seems to be verbal evidence that Davies was specific when mentioning the diary to Alan Dodgson who passed the message on to Tim. Apparently, Davies had said (from a telephone called between Paul Feldman and Tim Martin-Wright the day after he found Shirley's book in the book shop in one of the Berwick's on the A1):

TMW: I have just been reading a very interesting book.
PHF: Yes, I heard. I understand you’ve got your story to tell about it.
TMW: Yes, in fact. I’ll go back to the first, the inception of my involvement in the story which is about two years ago, I think. A guy who worked for me said, um, he knows that I collect antiques and am interested in old books etc. He said; “I saw a really interesting book that you would like in the pub the other night”. I said, “Oh yeah”. He said; “It, um, is a copy of Jack the Ripper’s Diary.” I said, “Oh yeah?”
PHF: A copy, a copy of it?
TMW: Well I asked that, and he said it was a copy of Jack the Ripper’s Diary.

Hi Ike. Back home. More than a wee bit tired having hiked up one of the local peaks.

I keep coming back to this initial post of yours and many questions spring to mind, but I don't want to scare you off by being too nit-picky or bombarding you with too many questions about minutia.

Still...

I must say I am very impressed, and perhaps even a little surprised, that Feldman was tape recording his incoming phone calls and thus we have a transcript of the exact initial conversation with Tim Martin-Davies---I assume that this is what we are looking at--which you date to 6 June 1994.

You refer to 'verbal evidence that Davies was specific' but nowhere is Davies referred to in this excerpt and from the context it appears that Martin-Davies was oblivious to Alan Davies' existence unless he comes up later in this conversation (?)

I'm also pondering how if Martin-Wright drove down the A-1 on 5 June 1994, and fleetingly browsed a copy of Shirley Harrison's book during a pit stop, how the very next day, as you tell us, he managed to trace and contact Paul Feldman. How did he get Paul Feldman's number? How did he know who Feldman was?

Yes, I sound like a three-year-old. How? Why?

We know from Shirley's old posts that she was very leery of Feldman, and even made a special effort to contact and interview potential witnesses before Feldman got hold of them (fearing he might pollute the process with poor interviewing techniques) so it seem unlikely, to me at least, that a call to Harrison or Harrison's publisher would have ended up with Martin-Wright getting contact information for Feldman. I wonder if you can shed some light on this.

I also took the time to review the previous posts on this same topic, especially between James Johnston and your good friend David Orsam, and am surprised that James, in discussing this matter, never referred to this all-important initial account given by Mr. Martin-Davies to Paul Feldman, but instead refers to an interview Martin-Davies gave to Keith Skinner fully a decade later, 2004.

If I'm reading it correctly, it was at this time--ten years after-the-fact--that Martin-Davies pinpointed his conversation with Mr. Dodgson to December 1992 based, rather surprisingly, not an any direct reference to the conversation in a notebook, but to the purchase and storage of an antique hand-stand which (for reasons not entirely explained) he associated with his discussion with Alan Dodgson.

I can't help it, Ike---it sounds a wee bit...vague and uncertain, with ample room for human error.

But my head is swimming, so I'm going to bed.

Regards.

[Iconoclast]

PS. I dated Harrison's book publication to the end of September 1993, but the book launch was 3 October, so I'll agree that it was October 1993.

Yep, it'll all be locked and loaded when I get time to pull it all properly together, including dates (1994 not 1992 - simple slip of the thought process). I can't answer for why Tim remembered the conversation with Dodgson of 18 unrelated months later the way he did, but it's really not the issue here, and you know it. Tim stated APS was incorporated in October 1992 and he provides evidence for why he knows it to be the case. All locked and loaded, mate.

What else did you query?

Ah, yes, Tim knew it was June 5, 1994 because his business diary said he was at the bash in Auld Reekie on Saturday, June 4, 1994.

Anything else?

Tim has hardly embellished the story by thinking Dodgson had seen the diary in a pub. That bit was obviously what Alan Davies had said to Dodgson (that the diary had been shown around a pub in Liverpool) and what Dodgson told Tim but which - one and a half long years of unrelated business later - Tim misremembered.

But he didn't forget that Alan Davies mentioned the diary of Jack the Ripper in December 1992.

But don't worry about that - Mike Barrett probably told Davies about it on a train in London whilst he was forging the document under a newspaper.

I shall await your response, RJ, patiently.

Ike

[rjpalmer]

PS. I dated Harrison's book publication to the end of September 1993, but the book launch was 3 October, so I'll agree that it was October 1993.

[rjpalmer]

Anyway, June 4, 1992, Tim is up in Edinburgh on the lash with his mates at some corporate bash. Next day, he's heading home to Liverpool via the A1. Yes, yes, I know that the obvious route home to Liverpool is the A720 Edinburgh bypass, the A702 to Abingdon Services, the M74 southbound, pick up the M6, and whizz down to Liverpool, but Tim is a posh Geordie lad and he's driving to Liverpool via his parents' home in Newcastle (I'm guessing Darras Hall but I could be wrong) because they have been looking after the kids. On his way down the A1, he stops in Berwick on the Scotland-England border and he's in a coffee shop (my memory is slipping a bit here) and he sees a copy of Shirley Harrison's book at the counter. Intrigued, he picks it up and reads the first page (or a summary on the cover) and realises that she is writing about the very diary of Jack the Ripper the Portus & Rhodes electrician Alan Davies had been talking about in December 1992.

I'm at my computer today, Ike, so I can respond immediately, but I must head off soon, so I only have time for a quickie until tomorrow.

According to your above account, on the day after 4 June 1992 Martin-Wright sees a copy of Shirley Harrison's book that wasn't published until September 1993 and recalls a conversation that wouldn't take place until five months later in December 1992?

Okay, Ike. Thanks for these "facts." But you're not off to a very promising start unless Mr. Martin-Wright was traveling down the A1 in a phantom toll booth.

I assume you must mean 4 June 1994?

Can you confirm where you got this date--was this based on Mr. M-W's memory or was it the documented date of his call to Feldman?

Anyway, in calling Feldman over the next day or two, he recalls Dodgson mentioning seeing with his own eyes a 'copy' of the diary of Jack the Ripper in a pub, even though when Dodgson is interviewed by Robert Smith and Shirley Harrison in 1997, he never saw the diary of Jack the Ripper in a pub, but had only heard about a leather-bound diary in a biscuit tin, as outline in Shirley Harrison's book, Jack the Ripper: The American Connection.

I can put that account up for you if you like. She also was told Martin-Wright's shop opened in October 1991 and dates the conversation to a month or two after that, so I hope you've seen the documents relating the incorporation with your own eyes as the public has been told two different accounts.

I'm not 'muddying the waters."

I'm pointing out the glaring inconstancies in the various tellings of the tale.

It's sounds like Mr. Martin-Wright has embellished the story or has badly garbled it, because Dodgson never mentioned seeing it, which is why one should always go to the source and not count on hearsay evidence from four or five degrees removed.

The source is not Martin-Wright or even Alan Dobson or even Alan Davies. It's whomever told this tale to Davies, and from what James Johnston has reported, he didn't even clearly remember who that was.

More anon.

[Iconoclast]

Hi Ike - Thanks. I'll just drop the following and you can respond when you get the time.

Lord, I don't know where to begin with that long trail of muddying 'facts', RJ.

Really quick version for the benefit of my dear readers: In late 1992, almost certainly December 1992 (as dated by the incorporation of APS Security in October 1992 as well as an entry in Tim Martin-Wright's diary - and confirmed by Tim in writing - as well as Alan Davies' recovery from his motorcycle accident in June 1992) the chronology is that Alan Davies mentions to Alan Dodgson in APS Security (a shop, by the way) about a diary of Jack the Ripper which he had known to be doing the rounds. He's been out of action for six months due to his accident so his knowledge of events is not red hot. Anyway, Alan Dodgson (remember, dear readers, this is the quick version) mentions it to his boss Tim Martin-Wright. Tim shows interest and asks to see it so Alan Dodgson tells Alan Davies who then breaks the bad news that it was sold in a pub in Liverpool (no timeframe given), and Tim forgets all about it.

It's still 1992, remember, everyone.

In early 1993, Paul Feldman comes on the scene and seeks out the Portus & Rhodes electricians, some of whom (it later turned out) had heard all about Jack the Ripper's diary in 1992, before anyone else knew about it - other than those connected to the eventual publication of Shirley Harrison's book in October 1993.

Keeping up, everyone? It's really not that difficult, is it?

Anyway, June 4, 1992, Tim is up in Edinburgh on the lash with his mates at some corporate bash. Next day, he's heading home to Liverpool via the A1. Yes, yes, I know that the obvious route home to Liverpool is the A720 Edinburgh bypass, the A702 to Abingdon Services, the M74 southbound, pick up the M6, and whizz down to Liverpool, but Tim is a posh Geordie lad and he's driving to Liverpool via his parents' home in Newcastle (I'm guessing Darras Hall but I could be wrong) because they have been looking after the kids. On his way down the A1, he stops in Berwick on the Scotland-England border and he's in a coffee shop (my memory is slipping a bit here) and he sees a copy of Shirley Harrison's book at the counter. Intrigued, he picks it up and reads the first page (or a summary on the cover) and realises that she is writing about the very diary of Jack the Ripper the Portus & Rhodes electrician Alan Davies had been talking about in December 1992. Amazed, he contacts Paul Feldman the next day, and the rest is the history of the uncovering of the truth about the Battlecrease provenance - and you all thought the diary story was dead and buried!

Listen, far more detail (and dates that I'll check in case I was one or two days out above) in my remarkable Society's Pillar 2025, but just be reassured for now, my dear readers, that the James Maybrick confessional scrapbook is no shoddy hoax and this and his watch and many other circumstantial evidence point the finger of blame firmly in James Maybrick's direction.

Evidence, eh? You just can't beat it!

Ike

[rjpalmer]

First things first, even without any evidence, it is hard to imagine why Tim would have been so taken by Shirley's book in the book shop in Berwick (or was it North Berwick?) on his journey down the A1 back to Newcastle to pick the kids up if he did not already realise that the mysterious diary he was offered was supposedly penned by Jack the Ripper.

Hi Ike - Thanks. I'll just drop the following and you can respond when you get the time.

I'm unclear about the relevance of Berwick. Is it your suggestion that this particular book caught Mr. Martin-Wright's eye, during a trip between Liverpool (presumably) and Berwick in what must have been June 1994, because Mr. M-W had already heard about Jack the Ripper's diary, so he was drawn to this particular title?

Is that how Martin-Wright tells the story? I was under the impression that his previous conversation with Dodgson only dawned on him later while reading the book, but I'll have to recheck my source for that.

Also, I have a sneaking suspicion that anyone reading your post will be confused by the chronology, so it might be helpful to add any specific dates you might have.

The conversation in red, between Martin-Wright and Paul Feldman, took place in June 1994? If it was recorded, you must have a more precise date, but at any rate, Mr. M-W recalled during this conversation with Feldman that he had heard about a diary (for the sake of objectivity, I don't think we can say the diary) 24 months earlier--sometime around June 1992? (Although I also think Mr. M-W might have further admitted that it could have been only 18 months earlier, ie. December 1992?) As he recalls it, his employee, Dodgson, claimed at that point to have personally seen the diary--or a 'copy' of the diary---in a pub.

“I saw a really interesting book that you would like in the pub the other night”. I said, “Oh yeah”. He said; “It, um, is a copy of Jack the Ripper’s Diary.”

The words 'copy' is worrisome (and it appears to have been worrisome or at least notable to Feldman) and I wonder if some of your readers are going to wonder if all Dodgson saw was a facsimile of Jack the Ripper's diary--ie., Shirley Harrison's hardbound book, published in the autumn of 1993.

Don't shoot the messenger, but that has to be a possibility, doesn't it? That Mr. Martin-Wright is off by a year? And what drew him to Shirley's book in June 1994 during his journey up to Berwick was having heard about Shirley's book from Dodgson in 1993? which Martin-Wright accidentally and innocently dated to two years earlier, when it was actually only one?

(Something about Keith Skinner and Martin Howells unraveling the confusion over the alleged monograph The East End Murderer: I Knew Him comes to mind here).

Another thing that must make this story so confusing and perhaps doubtful to the casual reader is that it materially differs from the account given by Shirley Harrison in later editions of her book. In her version, she has Robert Smith contacting Mr. Martin-Wright in the Summer of 1997 having heard an account of this same story from a solicitor friend of Martin-Wright.

Yet, when Smith goes to visit Mr. Dodgson in Bootle (A.D. is unnamed in Harrison's book but I'm assuming it's him) he says nothing of having personally seen the diary, but only having heard about it from Davies, who claims that at the end of 1991, a biscuit tin had been found at a work site (presumably Paul Dodd's house) containing a leather-bound diary and a ring.

Yet the diary is not leather bound, as such, nor is it likely to fit inside a standard biscuit tin.

What was seen and when it was seen appears to be quite...what's the right word?...fluid.

Isn't that fair to say?

The reader will also wonder why Feldman never passed along Martin-Wright's tale to Smith back in June 1994, and thus Smith had to learn it from someone else in 1997---unless Feldman had already dismissed the account as unimportant.

Yours truly &tc.

[Iconoclast]

There's much to unpack in your account, and I'm relatively certain that I don't wish to do it, but I suspect that if your good friend David Barrat was here he might gently ask if you are quite certain that Alan Davies mentioned a Jack the Ripper diary or whether this is your memory playing tricks? Isn't it true that Davies only mentioned a diary or (if his missus can be believed) an old book?

It's Monday morning, RJ, and a spot of work looms (as well as YouTubing Newcastle 2,Tottenham 1 from yesterday about 25 times) so I can't give you a fuller answer to your many interesting questions just yet but I will come back to them later.

First things first, even without any evidence, it is hard to imagine why Tim would have been so taken by Shirley's book in the book shop in Berwick (or was it North Berwick?) on his journey down the A1 back to Newcastle to pick the kids up if he did not already realise that the mysterious diary he was offered was supposedly penned by Jack the Ripper. I doubt he'd have made any connection at all, don't you?

That said, there seems to be verbal evidence that Davies was specific when mentioning the diary to Alan Dodgson who passed the message on to Tim. Apparently, Davies had said (from a telephone called between Paul Feldman and Tim Martin-Wright the day after he found Shirley's book in the book shop in one of the Berwick's on the A1):

TMW: I have just been reading a very interesting book.
PHF: Yes, I heard. I understand you’ve got your story to tell about it.
TMW: Yes, in fact. I’ll go back to the first, the inception of my involvement in the story which is about two years ago, I think. A guy who worked for me said, um, he knows that I collect antiques and am interested in old books etc. He said; “I saw a really interesting book that you would like in the pub the other night”. I said, “Oh yeah”. He said; “It, um, is a copy of Jack the Ripper’s Diary.” I said, “Oh yeah?”
PHF: A copy, a copy of it?
TMW: Well I asked that, and he said it was a copy of Jack the Ripper’s Diary.

Now there are various issues to unpack with this conversation between Feldman and Martin-Wright, not least is his suggestion to Feldman that Dodgson had claimed to have actually seen the book in the pub himself "the other night", but the crucial thing is that he told Feldman that he had been told that it was Jack the Ripper's diary (albeit, he calls it a 'copy' which is another issue). The key bit is that Martin-Wright is clear to Feldman that he had been offered a look at Jack the Ripper's diary not simply an old diary.

PS It turns out that it was Berwick.

More when I have time. May be a while!

Cheers,

Ike

[Iconoclast]

What? So you don't take trips down Hallucination Way?? Just about everything I've written about the diary could have happened. It's reasoned from an alternative view of the 'facts' as they have been presented in books and postings by others, including you good self.

Just a bit of good-natured banter, Scotty - no offence intended.

Ike