One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[caz]

I don't know about anyone else but I don't find it helpful that when I note that the ink used by Robert Smith to provide a test example in his book was "pre-1992 Diamine Black Manuscript Ink" that the word "Black" is highlighted in bold as if I, or anyone else, had missed it. On the contrary, it was the very point I was making. The ink in the test sample does not look black!!

So if a clue about Diamine ink is in the word "Black" why does it not look black in Smith's test sample?

Has the Great Electrician Defender considered the possibility that he might be ever so slightly colour blind? I'm not being rude, as many men are to a certain degree and may not even realise it, and to me [and to Robert Smith] the test sample in question does look black with bluish undertones, compared with the diary's irregular dark and light grey. Had the test sample on page 34 of the book not looked black to Robert, he'd have been a bit of a twit to put in on show and describe it on page 6 as 'denser and more opaque' than the diary ink and 'more definitely black, though you may be able to spot the "bluish undertones"'.

I'm not sure where any of this gets us though, because it's still bloody obvious that Robert's test sample was not written in the same ink used for the diary!

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

My understanding is that the Bluecoat art shop sold its last remaining pre-1992 bottle of Diamine Ink in July 1993 (although I haven't seen express confirmation that it hadn't ordered any 1992 ink prior to this).

But to say that disposes of the matter would be wrong because we cannot simply trust Mike Barrett to be telling us the truth as to the purchase of the ink. He might have purchased Diamine Ink from another shop entirely or someone else might have purchased it on his behalf, or given it to him, that person being someone he didn't want to name in his affidavit.

More to the point is what the formula of the ink was in 1992, and, of course, whether this new formula was commercially available in March 1992, and those questions I have not seen answered.

I don't think anyone said 'that disposes of the matter'. Voller said: 'Up to about two years ago we did make a manuscript ink almost identical to that used in Victorian times. However, under analysis, an expert would know the ink is modern'. The implication is that when he stopped making pre-1992 Diamine, he changed the formula to one that could not mimic a Victorian ink. In fact, I seem to recall a mix-up involving Warren obtaining the wrong Diamine initially, with the new formula, which was no good for comparison purposes. And as you say, we don't know that both would have been available on the shelves by March 1992, as there may have been an interval between running down stocks of the pre-1992 Diamine and producing and distributing the new one.

The one thing we can agree on is that 'we cannot simply trust Mike Barrett to be telling us the truth as to the purchase of the ink'.

No shi* Sherlock!

Without Mike, it's a case of "Yes, we have no Diamine, we have no Diamine today".

Love,

Caz
X

[Sam Flynn]

I'd question that [give me a call was a common Victorian expression]

I don't now, though, having found that "To give a call" appears in an 1859 book English Phraseology: A Series of Practical Exercises to be Translated into French by FJ Wattez, a French master at King's College School, London. That said, it was translated as "aller voir, passer chez", which indicates that it was used in the sense of "pay a visit".

[caz]

If Baxendale wasn't an ink chemist it simply means that he was not equipped to carry out the type of test described by RJ to date a document to the previous six months. But he was clearly equipped to carry out a solubility test. I fail to see the own goal here.

This is from rj's original post:

"Ink chemists determine the age of ink by the rate of extraction from the paper and the percentage of extraction. They measure how fast the ink can be chemically removed from the paper and how easily it is remove. Ink dries chemically in approximately three and one-half years according to Erich Speckin. By using the rate of extraction, ink chemists can determine the age of the application of the ink within six months. After the ink has completely dried, the chemist can only state that the ink is over three and one-half years old."--Attorney's Guide to Document Examination by Katerine Koppenhaver (2002)

This is our old friend, the 'solubility' test that was conducted by Dr. Baxendale in 1992. The ink 'extracted' from the paper very quickly, leading to the conclusion that it had been very recently applied.

This is what confused me. If rj is right about this indeed being our old friend, the 'solubility' test, that was conducted by Baxendale, was he 'equipped' to carry out this type of test or not?

Perhaps you could sort this out between you and clarify exactly what Baxendale was equipped for, and whether a competent ink chemist should have been able to determine the age of the diary writing to within six months, had the ink been applied as recently as you believe it was.

Baxendale, as I recall, did not conclude that it had been 'very recently' applied, as in 'just a few weeks ago at most', or even 'within the last six months', did he? Within the last 2 or 3 years was a lot vaguer, and a bit too near the 'approximately three and one-half years' mentioned above for comfort.

In short, I'm still left wondering if Baxendale really was the best person to carry out this type of test, and if either of you are suggesting he may not have been, how can anyone else be confident about any of his conclusions?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

I don't now, though, having found that "To give a call" appears in an 1859 book English Phraseology: A Series of Practical Exercises to be Translated into French by FJ Wattez, a French master at King's College School, London. That said, it was translated as "aller voir, passer chez", which indicates that it was used in the sense of "pay a visit".

Cheers, Gareth. That was very decent of you.

Love,

Caz
X

[Sam Flynn]

Mon plaisir, Caz

[caz]

The Hitler Diaries would have been shown to be modern fakes, irrespective of whether they'd been forged by Konrad Kujau or Joe Schmoe.

Well quite - because there was actual proof, beyond anyone's personal opinion, that they were modern! And that proof came pretty quickly too.

Any amateur con merchant trying a similar trick on the back of that would have had to be fearless - and very, very lucky.

Love,

Caz
X

[Sam Flynn]

Any amateur con merchant trying a similar trick on the back of that would have had to be fearless - and very, very lucky.

I don't think that the Hitler Diaries debacle put off too many forgers, amateur or otherwise. Besides, Hitler's Diaries were always likely to attract far more expert scrutiny than Maybrick's (even with the JTR connection), and some experts were indeed taken in by them initially.

[caz]

Not only have I read the title of this thread Gary but, as I have repeatedly stated in this thread, I have posted a one-off incontrovertible, unequivocal, undeniable fact which refutes the Diary. I did it in 2016 and here we are in 2018 and nothing I have said on the subject has been controverted.

Nothing the Great Electrician Defender has said on the subject of one off instances has stopped him having to post millions more words on other diary related subjects, so you have to wonder what good it has done him in the long run.

Fancy another 26 years of watching him go round and round in circles, hoping against hope that we'll all come to believe that 'one off instance' really was put there by the Barretts one day in early April 1992 using Diamine ink? I'm up for it. I've got a season ticket that rather coincidentally and conveniently expires the day I do.
Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Mon plaisir, Caz

I love it when you talk dirty, Gareth.

[Sam Flynn]

I love it when you talk dirty, Gareth.

Thank'ee. We're like an inverted version of Gomez and Morticia

[Herlock Sholmes]

I think that i recall calling you two the Sid James and Barbara Windsor of Ripperology

[Sam Flynn]

I think that i recall calling you two the Sid James and Barbara Windsor of Ripperology

You did indeed.

[caz]

No doubt she will tell us exactly how long a forger needs to wait to present a forged document as genuine. I'm sure they are all happy to forgo any immediate profit and lock them away for a number of years to allow the ink "to dry"...

...And it's just a shame that our expert in the forgery of historical documents can't provide any sensible explanation as to why Mike Barrett searched for, and purchased, a Victorian diary with a minimum of 20 blank pages at a time when he had supposedly already "found" a genuine Victorian diary containing plenty of blank pages.

Have you ever wondered why Mike [helped along by Alan Gray] backdated the writing of the diary to early 1990 in his January 1995 affidavit, putting Tony Devereux's death back accordingly to mid-1990? It seems not to have occurred to him that anyone might be able to trace his enquiry for the little red diary to a totally incompatible early 1992. And Alan Gray probably didn't have a clue it was purchased that late on in the game.

In fact, it sounds for all the world as though Mike was being advised by someone who believed [rightly or wrongly] that a forger would have had to leave the diary for at least a couple of years to dry out completely before it was subjected to its first tests. Back in the days of Melvin Harris et al, it was routinely trotted out by modern hoax theorists that the diary was almost certainly forged at some point in the late 1980s or very early 1990s, so the ink couldn't be dated by mid-1992 when it was finally offered up to scrutiny.

If Mike had been an expert in forgery, like David apparently is now, would he not have known that the diary could be written one day and tested the next, without giving away just how fresh the ink really was on the page? More to the point, he must have known this if he happily took it to London just a day or two after Anne had penned the last lines into it - in which case he missed a trick by not boasting about this when swearing that affidavit.

On the other hand, assuming Mike had no such expertise, and Alan Gray was equally clueless, would it not make perfect sense of Mike's claim to have completed the diary back in early 1990 and left it for while - more than a while - two years in fact, before actually showing it to anyone?

Once again, I am indebted to the Great Electrician Defender for posts like this one, which has made me look at Mike's claims with fresh eyes. There was method in the madness after all. Neither Mike nor Alan Gray thought it would be credible to claim the diary was forged any later than 1990 [and certainly not as late as April 1992, when the little red diary had finally put in an appearance], so that's what went in the affidavit.

And I still have some considerable sympathy with that view, as someone who doesn't know any more than Mike or Alan Gray apparently did about how soon a forgery could be exposed to the dating game, and evidently less than the Great Electrician Defender knows about it. [I can't resist the spark plugs - they're Champion.]

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

'Roughly round about January, February 1990 Anne Barrett and I finally decided to go ahead and write the Diary of Jack the Ripper...'

Then comes the bit about the little red diary, no dates mentioned.

Continuing on...

'I feel sure it was the end of January 1990 when I went to the Auctioneer, Outhwaite & Litherland...

...When I got the Album and Compass home, I examined it closely, inside the front cover I noticed a makers stamp mark, dated 1908 or 1909 to remove this without trace I soaked the whole of the front cover in Linseed Oil, once the oil was absorbed by the front cover, which took about 2 days to dry out. I even used the heat from the gas oven to assist in the drying out...

...This last 64 pages inside the Album which Anne and I decided would be the Diary. Anne and I went to town in Liverpool and in Bold Street I bought three pens, that would hold fountain nibs, the little brass nibs. I bought 22 brass nibs at about 7p to 12p, a variety of small brass nibs, all from the 'Medice' art gallery.

This all happened late January 1990 and on the same day that Anne and I bought the nibs we then decided to purchase the ink elsewhere and we decided to make our way to the Bluecoat Chambers, in fact we had a drink in the Empire Pub in Hanover Street on the way.

Anne Barrett and I visited the Bluecoat Chambers Art shop and we purchased a small bottle of Diamine Manuscript ink. I cannot remember the exact price of the Ink. I think it was less than a pound.

We were now ready to go and start the Diary. We went home and on the same evening that we had purchased everything, that is the materials we needed, We decided to have a practise run and we used A4 paper for this, and at first we tried it in my handwriting, but we realised and I must emphasie (sic) this, my handwriting was to (sic) disstinctive (sic) so it had to be in Anne's handwriting, after the practise run which took us approximately two days, we decided to go for hell or bust...

...Anne and I started to write the Diary in all it took us 11 days. I worked on the story and then I dictated it to Anne who wrote it down in the Photograph Album and thus we produced the Diary of Jack the Ripper. Much to my regret there was a witness to this, my young daughter Caroline.

During this period when we were writing the Diary, Tony Devereux was house-bound, very ill and in fact after we completed the Diary we left it for a while with Tony being severly (sic) ill and in fact he died late May early June 1990.'

It's not clear if the 11 days included the 2-4 days of preparations [the linseed oil treatment and the practice run] followed by just 7-9 days for the actual writing, or if the whole thing took more like 13-15 days from auction house to completion. But things are even tighter than I had previously thought, because the only auction David found was on March 31st 1992 and the finished diary was in London on April 13th 1992. But the emphasis on all this happening in early 1990 is quite striking and would certainly be explained by a belief that if Mike and Anne had forged this diary it would have needed a good two years before it could safely be shown to anyone.

The funniest thing is what Mike wrote towards the end:

'I have now decided to make this affidavit to make the situation clear with regard to the Forgery of the Jack the Ripper Diary, which Anne Barrett and I did in case anything happenes (sic) to me. I would hate to leave at this stage the name of Mr. Maybrick as a tarnished serial killer when as far as I know, he was not a killer.'

A bit rich if Maybrick's name would never have been tarnished in this way if it hadn't been for Mike's idea to do just that!

Love,

Caz
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