One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[caz]

Well, I did get it a bit mixed up--as aways, I'm left wondering why Keith doesn't simply log-on to his still current account instead of relying on a postman who is in love with color-coded messages and small, medium, and large fonts. My mistake, though.

Either way, all my points are still relevant and on point. I doubt Keith thinks Anne is a 'fool.' Whether he still think she was incapable of hoaxing I'll leave for him to answer.

He hasn't given the whole story about Martin Fido, either.

What concerns me about Palmer's mistake here is not that he missed the colour-coded clues in Ike's post to whose 'voice' was whose, but that he was entirely unable to distinguish Ike's words from Keith's, from the tone and use of language alone, even after so many years of reading and responding to both.

I am left wondering how any kind of useful comparison could be made between the diary's use of language and that of Mike or Anne, from what little has been made public of their provably unaided writing, by anyone who admits to being fooled by Ike's words, imagining they were in fact Keith's.

Chalk and cheese, anyone?

[rjpalmer]

I think you weren't there so let's change "chases down" to the more plausible "sought".

I think you weren't there, Ike, so I'll stick with 'chased down.' I doubt Shirley had a sudden urge to explore the life of Bonnie Langford.

The way I picture it, she chased down copies of Barret's old articles with a growing sense of dread, confusion, and downright horror at the thought that the man she had previously dismissed as unremarkable bloke on disability was actually a struggling freelance journalist--precisely the type that turns to literary forgery when the well of inspiration has dried, and their source of income (Celebrity) has closed down. Who do you think writes literary forgeries? Jane Austen and Vladimir Nabokov? It's always the struggling bloke with minor talent.

What I find wildly convenient, but entirely implausible, is your strange theory that Barrett was embarrassed (and thus silent) about having published 20+ articles in a national magazine, but instead opted to portray himself as an unemployed scrap dealer with a bad back and a wife forced to be the bread winner. Lord knows, that's a great look to run up the flagpole.

As is so often the case, you're looking at it backwards.

You do not know this to be true. Either tell us how Warren uncovered Barrett's brilliant literary past or else do not make claims you cannot substantiate. My dear readers deserve so much better than this.

Your dear readers deserve someone with reading comprehension skills, Ike. You were already told that Nick Warren was alerted to Barrett's literary past by the Devereux Sisters. Do I have to write in a large, purple-colored font, four inches high?

I think I'll now disappear for ten or twelve days so you can regroup and reflect on the errors in your thinking. See you in December.

[Iconoclast]

I'd add reading Ike's "Society's Pillar" to that list, because an even and open minded view needs to encompass all the literature ... for anyone new to the debate I'd highly recommend it.

A very good summary of the need to read both sides of the argument, Abe, which I fear my dear readers occasionally don't fully do. That's a euphemism, by the way, if anyone missed it.

But can I politely remind you that it is my brilliant Society's Pillar - the eventual forerunner to what the literary experts are already describing in hushed anticipation as my remarkable Society's Pillar 2025 (available in all good browsers, probably in 2026)?

Notwithstanding your forgetful adjective, I thought your post (#10443) was excellent, old chum.

Ike

[Iconoclast]

4. In the July 1994 edition of Ripperana, Nick Warren revealed that Barrett had worked as a journalist in the 1980s--a fact Warren had learned while interviewing the Devereux Sisters. This revelation came AFTER Barrett had already confessed, and not during the two years he was marketed himself as an ex-scrap metal dealer. If any diary researcher was aware of Barrett's career before Warren, they have not, to my knowledge, said anything.

I really must protest at the use of the expression "worked as a journalist in the 1980s" and insist that a more accurate representation of Barrett's very brief and very occasional dalliance into the world of literature should be described as "attempted to forge a career as a writer in the 1980s". Getting twenty articles published is not to be sniffed at, but nor does the whole body of Mike's output nor even a single example of it reach much above the level of dabbling dilletante (doubtless a term that was impossible to use in Victorian times but perfect for our scrap metal hero of the Thatcher years).

And I very much doubt that Nick Warren tracked down the source of Barrett creative juices. I assume Barrett just told him. How else would Warren have uncovered this? And - if Barrett revealed it to Warren (as seems inevitable) - who else did he reveal it to who didn't have the viper Warren's insidious drive to uncover a fraud and therefore just laughed it off as 'child's play' (which - in literary terms - it literally was in part). Nothing to see here, RJ.

5. Shirley Harrison (apparently alerted by Warren's article?) chases down Mike's old publisher at Celebrity magazine and received copies of three of Mike's articles, receiving them in November 1994. (Four months after the Ripperana article).

I think you weren't there so let's change "chases down" to the more plausible "sought". No-one bar the nest of vipers had any concerns about Barrett's more than humble attempts at Hemingway, RJ, so you should not be working creatively on a back story for which you do not have clear and obvious evidence. Stop re-refereeing history, RJ, that's my advice. That's not what your role is, mate. Pack your bags and get yourself out of Stockley Park, you've been relegated to the National League (being American, you may want to Google what 'relegation' means in a sporting context).

This gives a better understanding of how the news of Barrett's writing career came to be known.

It does no such thing, and you know it. We don't know how Warren knew and that's the relevant bit, not what he then did with that information.

It came from someone (Warren) asking questions ...

Of whom were these questions asked by the arch-viper-in-chief?

... and not by anything Barrett had revealed on his own.

You do not know this to be true. Either tell us how Warren uncovered Barrett's brilliant literary past or else do not make claims you cannot substantiate. My dear readers deserve so much better than this.

I leave you with this: a copy of one of Barrett's articles--not the best of the bunch, in my opinion--but characteristic. This one is from Celebrity in June 1987, and you can judge for yourself if this is anything that would have 'embarrassed' Barrett ...

Not sure what relevance citing a random article is if there's the known influence of his wife's 'tidying-up' and the certainty of editorial alteration - but if anyone is interested, I've got all of Mike's Celebrity articles (ironically, thanks to the generosity of the Dark Lord of Dark Darkness himself who sent me the one I foolishly forgot to photograph in my excitement at getting close to the end of the 1,080 articles I photographed of this most prestigious doctor's-waiting-room-come-emergency-toilet-paper periodical) so - if you want to see more - just let me know at historyvsmaybrick@gmail.com (I think that's the right address).

Ike
Generous to a Fault

[jmenges]

Who is Makus and what did they say?

It doesn't matter.
Move along.

JM

[Iconoclast]

I think someone should probably review the new code of conduct, Makus, paying particular attention to items 7 & 8.

Major Rules - Casebook: Jack the Ripper Forums

Your posts don't seem to serve any other purpose other than to inflame and harass.

But thank goodness for the 'mute' button.

Who is Makus and what did they say?

[rjpalmer]

1. In the first edition of The Diary of Jack the Ripper (1993) there was not a PEEP about Barrett previously having been a writer. Nothing to suggest it whatsoever. In fact, we were told (falsely) that after receiving the diary in 1991, Barrett only then bought a word processor in order to write the diary's story for himself, but he was over his head, and thus he ultimately contacted a literary agent.

2. Yet, even before this, but not included in Harrison's book, Martin Chittenden in the Sunday Times' included an interesting but unexplained snippet that Barrett had written word puzzles for a children's magazine, Look-In. This doesn't sound to me like something that Mike would have spontaneously revealed. I have a theory about why and how Chittenden discovered this, but I'll leave my theories out of it.

3. In subsequent editions of Harrison's book, a slow drip of information begins to morph Barrett from a scrap metal dealer into to a bloke who did a spot of writing, but never on any professional level. In Harrison's "Blake" edition, she now includes the Look-In bit, and admits that Barrett belonged to a local writer's circle, but for me, this only leaves the more discerning members of the public to wonder why this hadn't been said earlier, since any rational person knows that it should have been reported.

I now realize that I left out two important details to the timeline posted earlier.

So, adding to the above:

4. In the July 1994 edition of Ripperana, Nick Warren revealed that Barrett had worked as a journalist in the 1980s--a fact Warren had learned while interviewing the Devereux Sisters. This revelation came AFTER Barrett had already confessed, and not during the two years he was marketed himself as an ex-scrap metal dealer. If any diary researcher was aware of Barrett's career before Warren, they have not, to my knowledge, said anything.

5. Shirley Harrison (apparently alerted by Warren's article?) chases down Mike's old publisher at Celebrity magazine and received copies of three of Mike's articles, receiving them in November 1994. (Four months after the Ripperana article).

This gives a better understanding of how the news of Barrett's writing career came to be known. It came from someone (Warren) asking questions and not by anything Barrett had revealed on his own.

I leave you with this: a copy of one of Barrett's articles--not the best of the bunch, in my opinion--but characteristic. This one is from Celebrity in June 1987, and you can judge for yourself if this is anything that would have 'embarrassed' Barrett--who admitted he was an unemployed scrap metal merchant--or if this alleged "embarrassment" is really a plausible reason for Barrett having withheld his writing career as Tom Mitchell now argues.

[jmenges]

I think someone should probably review the new code of conduct, Makus, paying particular attention to items 7 & 8.

Major Rules - Casebook: Jack the Ripper Forums

Your posts don't seem to serve any other purpose other than to inflame and harass.

But thank goodness for the 'mute' button.

Thank you, RJ.
However, if I wasn’t interested in the topic under discussion (unhealthy so) I might have missed this post. A friendly reminder to use the report post button if you see something out of line.

JM

[rjpalmer]

I think someone should probably review the new code of conduct, Makus, paying particular attention to items 7 & 8.

Major Rules - Casebook: Jack the Ripper Forums

Your posts don't seem to serve any other purpose other than to inflame and harass.

But thank goodness for the 'mute' button.

[Al Bundy's Eyes]

It’s not too late to change your mind RD.

Keith Skinner emailed me to offer you some advice:

”Without wishing to discourage or influence RD in any way, I would suggest to him/her that the first thing he/ she has to decide is whether the diary is a modern hoax - and I would suggest he/she read all of R.J.Palmer's contributions and Lord Orsam's diary to help him/her to reach a conclusion. If RD is persuaded by their arguments that the diary was created by Mike and Anne Barrett, then all discussion about FM on the wall and whether JM was JTR becomes irrelevant.”

Wise words from Keith, and quite right. The diary debate is a convoluted thing, and far from simple, it has complex characters and facts and findings that are far from clear at the best of times. I wholeheartedly endorse Keith's view, I'd add reading Ike's "Society's Pillar" to that list, because an even and open minded view needs to encompass all the literature. Keith understandably wouldn't mention this particular dissertation as he doesn't think Maybrick was Jack, but for anyone new to the debate I'd highly recommend it. Even the most hardened sceptic can't get around some of the fortuitous luck the hoaxer had, if of course, it was luck at all. Start from scratch, be convinced of nothing without the facts, read both sides of the argument and don't be afraid to change your mind. The Maybrick Diary is characterised by deception and changing stories, and no one will pick it up quickly. Feelings run high, and independent discourse can soon be replaced by partisan rhetoric. Keep in mind, the evidence for some provenance claims hasn't been fully released, if at all, but also the modern hoax isn't without its own pitfalls. Draw your own conclusions, from what information is available.

(Ero, I appreciate this isn't exactly a reply to you per se, but since your the medium, I've gone through you.)

[rjpalmer]

Alan Gray had 'seen' a cassette first-hand? Wow.

Not 'listened' to it?

Strange use of words if this was more than just a label on a cassette, shown to Gray by a suspected forger. But we can't have everything, can we?

This is one of the strangest comments ever made on the Maybrick forum.

What is being suggested?

That Barrett took a blank cassette tape and put a phony label on it, so Gray would wrongly conclude that Mike had interviewed Dorothy Wright, and thus wrongly reveal to the world the writing career that Barrett himself had tried to hide?

A writing career that has now been documented?

It sounds more than a little desperate, Caz, if you don't mind me saying.

And your own book doesn't state anything about Mike 'showing' this to Gray or Gray already suspecting Mike of being the 'forger.' Gray supposedly spotted it and then began to wonder...

So, as I see it, you are quite probably mischaracterizing what happened to fit your 'narrative.'

Goodbye.

[rjpalmer]

I've got a brief update from Keith Skinner regarding the 'research paper' Anne failed to get published in a peer-reviewed journal. He notes:

I know the report Martin is referring to because it was me who sent it to him - but I don't remember it being specifically commissioned by Feldman? Martin phoned me up to discuss the report and was staggered when I told him it had been prepared by Anne. But not having met Anne or knowing anything about her, why should he be staggered? That I think is the more pertinent point I regret not asking Martin at the time.

Before I continue, please note Tom's sarcastic suggestion that this paper was intended for--and rejected by--a peer-reviewed journal. Tom (with permission, of course) could always slap a copy of this document up onto our screens so we can judge its quality for ourselves, but don't hold your breaths, dear readers, don't hold your breath.

Moving along...

Despite his belief to the contrary, I hold no animosity towards Keith, but I can't help wondering if his own view that the diary is a mysterious and 'fascinating' document--and one not written by the Barretts---sometimes leads him to wrongly remember the views of others as having aligned with his own, when in fact, they did not.

For instance, last month, in justifying his decision not to release the Barrett/Gray tapes, Keith wrongly stated that Alan Gray had concluded that Mike and Anne had not written the diary, when in reality, Gray swore an affidavit in 1998 stating his belief that Anne HAD written the diary based on a storyline concocted by Tony Devereux.

And it's certainly no mystery why Martin was 'flabbergasted' (the word he apparently used) that the report written by Anne Graham, who Martin had only known to be the unassuming wife of an unemployed scrap metal dealer, was so polished; Martin tells us why in Keith's own book, Ripper Diary: The Inside Story, p. 150.

Martin was flabbergasted because "he now believed she could have concocted the basic story of Maybrick as the Ripper 'with one hand behind her back.'

It's really no great mystery is it?

Except perhaps to one who went on to see first-hand Anne's research skills and now forgets that this skill was not self-evident to others.

It's also worth adding that Martin Fido concluded that Anne could not have written the diary because she would be incapable of solecisms and making spelling mistakes. Martin also acknowledged the handwriting in the diary was not the same as Anne's.

I think Keith may be forgetting that this was not the full story, and Martin was evidently only referring to the penmanship of the finished product and a mistaken belief that Anne was a better speller than she was, based solely on this one report.

On 22 March 2001, Martin expanded upon his suspicions by offering up a 'scenario' of how the diary could have come to be: Anne had composed the diary on Mike's word processor (as a work of fiction?) and then Mike took this work of fiction and turned it into the physical diary, complete with spelling errors and solecisms.



I was impressed by Martin's theory when I recently came across it again, not having remembered it, but I confess it is because I had already come to the same conclusion many years ago. I still believe that it has considerable explanatory power. I've been told by Caz, however, that it is madness--utter insanity to believe Mike and Anne could have written the diary---so I must be content to be confined to the same asylum that the late Martin Fido should have been confined---Martin, the university professor, writer, broadcaster, Shakespeare scholar, and madman.

What Martin could not have known is that the 'professional' report Keith had given to him was not characteristic of Anne's private correspondence, as published on these forums by David Barrart, for it shows the similar spelling errors that we see in the diary. In particular, both Anne and the diarist had trouble with homophones. I was also informed years ago that Anne had a habit of tossing out the occasional malaprop (there's an embarrassing one in Ripper Diary) and we see the diarist's 'gorge out an eye'--a malaprop for 'gouge.'

So, in conclusion, I think Martin didn't have all the necessary documentation at his disposal, but he was (in my opinion) very close to the mark. And this does not make Anne a 'hoaxer'--but rather, the victim of an abusive husband, and I strongly suspect that she eventually realized what his true aim was, but went along with it because 'one didn't say no to Mike,' and also because she believed that Doreen would 'just send Mike packing' once she laid her eyes on the relic--which is what Anne herself said she thought would happen. But how wrong she was, and the rest is history.

[Iconoclast]

Thank you kindly for your message.
I can imagine it does get quite heated, but I will try to remain impartial as best I can.
I have several questions regarding Maybrick, but I will try and pace myself.
I find the Watch absolutely fascinating; and believe that is one of the most powerful elements for those who favour Maybrick as the Ripper.
Regards
RD

You mean the fact that it contains James Maybrick's signature including the highly idiosyncratic 'k'?

I find it fascinating and conclusive.

[The Rookie Detective]

I did initially think there could be a fantasist angle, but in his lifetime the C5 were not defined. Which to me means either it was Maybrick or the potential hoaxer had knowledge of the C5.

My own theory on Maybrick is I believe the watch to be 100% genuine. The science is too compelling to ignore. I’m open-minded to the diary being genuine but I have a theory it might have been created to support the watch. I even have a potential candidate who could be an interesting suspect for writing it.

What I will say is this debate can get quite heated at times, so be prepared.

Thank you kindly for your message.

I can imagine it does get quite heated, but I will try to remain impartial as best I can.

I have several questions regarding Maybrick, but I will try and pace myself.

I find the Watch absolutely fascinating; and believe that is one of the most powerful elements for those who favour Maybrick as the Ripper.


Regards

RD

[Iconoclast]

I've already answered most of this, Ike.

That may be true, but I did say I couldn't be arsed to look it up, didn't I? (A bit like I couldn't be arsed to critique my own brilliant Society's Pillar so I got Lord Orsam to do it for me - genius or what?!? I'm still not sure if he's twigged-on yet, by the way, so I'm going to do it again in 2026.)

1. In the first edition of The Diary of Jack the Ripper, there was not a PEEP about Barrett previously having been a writer. Nothing to suggest it whatsoever. In fact, we were told (falsely) that after receiving the diary in 1991, Barrett only then bought a word processor in order to write the diary's story for himself, but he was over his head, and thus he ultimately contacted a literary agent.

Okay. It's not the red flag you think you're waving, RJ, but point made - Shirley Harrison did not think (if she even knew) that Mike's amateur attempts at a literary career were worthy of note when she was writing a book about a scrapbook she genuinely believed James Maybrick wrote.

2. Yet, even before this, but not included in Harrison's book, Martin Chittenden in the Sunday Times' included an interesting but unexplained snippet that Barrett had written word puzzles for a children's magazine, Look-In. This doesn't sound to me like something that Mike would have spontaneously revealed. I have a theory about why and how Chittenden discovered this, but I'll leave my theories out of it.

So the viper Chittenden found out that Mike had submitted some word puzzles to Look-In. Unless the answers magically formed a story, I doubt even he would seek to make a literary career from it on his CV.

3. In subsequent editions of Harrison's book, a slow drip of information begins to morph Barrett from a scrap metal dealer into to a bloke who did a spot of writing, but never on any professional level.

Professional as in 'paid a few times for some articles' or professional as in 'significant years of genuine literary output under contract and appropriately recompensed'?

In Harrison's "Blake" edition, she now includes the Look-In bit, and admits that Barrett belonged to a local writer's circle, but for me, this only leaves the more discerning members of the public to wonder why this hadn't been said earlier, since any rational person knows that it should have been reported.

It absolutely should have been reported, I agree, but we don't have to see mendacity at work when it wasn't.

4. Feldman, in his 1998 (?) book, largely portrays Barrett as an illiterate drunk who can't string two words together ...

And that was true!

... and we later learn that someone had told Alec Voller that Barrett was a "mental vegetable." This, of course, is the image that you strenuously endorse and promote.

Well we weren't dealing with Hemingway's ghost here, RJ, were we?

5. In Ripper Diary: the Inside Story (2003) we are treated to the Devereux Sisters being surprised that Barrett has been portrayed as a "ordinary Liverpool bloke,' when they had heard he had been a journalist who had contributed to magazines, sometime before 1991. Which is a FAR CRY from what Harrison and Smith had published in 1994.

And who had simple Liverpool lasses heard this gem from? From the literary circles they were members of? From Melvin Bragg on the South Bank Show? No, of course not. They heard it from their dad who liked to have a few beers with the blowhard that was Michael Barrett. Great source material for your theory, I think not!

6. The same authors also reveal (page 150) that by at least 1994 Shirley Harrison had received three articles from D.C. Thompson publishers, showing Barrett had written for Celebrity magazine, which makes me wonder why more hadn't been made of this and revealed in Shirley's 'Blake' edition. No doubt you think it was "irrelevant," but I doubt the public would feel the same way.

It absolutely should have been reported, I agree, but we don't have to see mendacity at work when it wasn't.

7. As late as 2017, Robert Smith, in his own book on the subject, was still claiming Barrett was only responsible for children's puzzles in Look-In. He was entirely oblivious to the D.C. Thompson articles, and didn't mention them, despite Shirley Harrison having had this information for more than 20 years. This is what got Lord Orsam's goat, I think, and deservedly so.

It got Orsam's goat because - and mark me here, RJ - he is an excellent researcher (the dark matter to Keith Skinner's matter, you'll recall - that was a compliment not an insult) and his researcher genes were firing at Robert's disinterest; but Robert was an author putting forward a view and I'm guessing that he did not see Barrett's embarrassingly poor literary output in the 1980s as ever worth mentioning.

8. So it was at this point that your good friend, Lord Orsam, in writing a book review of Smith's efforts, mentioned that Barrett's writing career was being mischaracterized, and revealed his own research into the matter by not only locating the 3 articles that Shirley must have seen (but hadn't reproduced), but many others, including some contributions to Chat. He also later found the amusing Kylie Minogue blurbs, complete with photographs of Mike's daughter and nephew. I think it is fair to say that Orsam was the first to chronicle the full story and let interested parties see the articles for themselves and draw their own conclusions ...

All true, but all true of an excellent researcher.

and it's a bit petty to pooh-pooh your friend's valuable work.

I don't believe I ever have. He can't help being a key member of the underworld and the very spirit of the dark arts. I've never held it against him personally.

For the first time, we can fully appreciate not only that Barret was a freelance writer in the 1980s, but the interesting fact that his main audience and financial supprt had dried up because Celebrity went defunct. Barrett was left scrambling to make his mortgage payment, dreaming of new writing ventures to bring in the much-needed cash. Danny the Dolphin Boy wasn't cutting it, and what Barrett really needed was a best-seller--and fast.

But we leap from Danny the Dolphin Boy to a brilliant hoax of a Jack the Ripper journal which has kept us all enthralled for thirty years. Surely that gives you cause to pause and reflect on how rational it is to believe such evolutionary jumps are possible?

9. Finally, in 2019, Robert Smith publishes the second edition of this work, and only now does he acknowledge that Barret published interviews and articles in the 1980s, but wrongly claims they 'weren't interviews as such' and states, without giving a source, that despite being late to the party, he now knows that Barrett merely handed in some random quotes and an unnamed "inhouse writer" did the rest. Which is what I object to.

Fair enough. That's your right. Just don't go thinking it makes you right, RJ.

Hope this helps.

Ike