One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[Scott Nelson]

There in 2020. There in 1993. There in 1972. There in 1899.

There in 1888 ...

Duly noted by the police and doctors at the time, right Ike?

[Bridewell]

Do we know how long the FM had been there? Do we know that it was written by the killer? Do we know that it is in any way related to the murder? No. It could be relevant but it might not be. Even if an assumption is made that it was daubed by the killer, of what evidential value is it in advancing a case against a man whose own initials were JM? None unless you decide that the killer was writing, not his, but his wife's initials. But anyone making that argument would then presumably have had to exonerate Maybrick, had the initials JM been written, on the basis that his wife's name was Florence. The initials are interesting but they're not those of James Maybrick. I wouldn't use them in support of his candidacy which stands or falls on the merits of the Diary.

[Iconoclast]

Do we know how long the FM had been there? Do we know that it was written by the killer? Do we know that it is in any way related to the murder? No. It could be relevant but it might not be. Even if an assumption is made that it was daubed by the killer, of what evidential value is it in advancing a case against a man whose own initials were JM? None unless you decide that the killer was writing, not his, but his wife's initials. But anyone making that argument would then presumably have had to exonerate Maybrick, had the initials JM been written, on the basis that his wife's name was Florence. The initials are interesting but they're not those of James Maybrick. I wouldn't use them in support of his candidacy which stands or falls on the merits of the Diary.

Honestly, Bridewell, I'd retract that entire post if I were you. The remarkable lack of logic and the failure to understand the impossibly unlikely event of 'FM' being on Kelly's wall when the scrapbook author had written of Kelly's room "An initial here, an initial there, will tell of the whoring mother".

You either do not have much of a grasp of the Maybrick case or else you really don't understand logic.

PS The initials had been there since Nov 9, 1888.

Ike

[Scott Nelson]

The initials aren't there Bridewell. They don't exist.

[c.d.]

The initials aren't there Bridewell. They don't exist.

Hello Scott,

Well I certainly see what "appears" to be initials on the wall and I think many others do as well. But I can also see the face of a man on Mars and a likeness of Jesus on a grilled cheese sandwich. In all instances including the "initials" on Kelly's wall I think it is simply explained by pareidolia.

c.d.

[Bridewell]

Honestly, Bridewell, I'd retract that entire post if I were you. The remarkable lack of logic and the failure to understand the impossibly unlikely event of 'FM' being on Kelly's wall when the scrapbook author had written of Kelly's room "An initial here, an initial there, will tell of the whoring mother".

You either do not have much of a grasp of the Maybrick case or else you really don't understand logic.

PS The initials had been there since Nov 9, 1888.

Ike

Love the sneering tone!

You perceive a lack of logic. I don't. What I do see is an arrogant demand that I retract a post because you disagree with it. You quote from the Diary an extract which (assuming the Diary is genuine) could be a reference to what is in that photograph - but might not be. I don't dispute your claim that the initials had been there since November 9, 1888 - it could hardly be otherwise given the provenance of the photograph. The issue I alluded to was whether or not they were there before that date, something which is unknowable at this remove - unless your starting position is that they were written by the killer (not really a logical starting point in my view). Grasp of the Maybrick case? Not really my bag. I just drop in on this thread from time to time to see if the standard of debate has improved in the interim.

Best Wishes in these difficult times.

[Iconoclast]

Love the sneering tone!

You perceive a lack of logic. I don't. What I do see is an arrogant demand that I retract a post because you disagree with it. You quote from the Diary an extract which (assuming the Diary is genuine) could be a reference to what is in that photograph - but might not be. I don't dispute your claim that the initials had been there since November 9, 1888 - it could hardly be otherwise given the provenance of the photograph. The issue I alluded to was whether or not they were there before that date, something which is unknowable at this remove - unless your starting position is that they were written by the killer (not really a logical starting point in my view). Grasp of the Maybrick case? Not really my bag. I just drop in on this thread from time to time to see if the standard of debate has improved in the interim.

Best Wishes in these difficult times.

Seriously, no sneering, no tone. My advice was more for you to save face. Putting a bit more gravitas in there in order to prove your mettle does not alter the foolhardy nature of your line of thought. Your argument about the initials not being JM was utterly spurious. They should not have been JM. They had to be FM in order for the scrapbook line to make sense. If the line existed in the scrapbook and the scrapbook was a hoax, then you have the indescribably obscure coincidence that the line was made up (for little apparent reason) but - lo! - the initials were actually there (or - as c.d. notes - at very least appearing to be there). Coincidence would never dream of being so thoroughly daring. Coincidence simply doesn't work that way. Coincidence is usually so much milder than that. This one would be hardcore if it were not simply direct evidence for the authenticity of the scrapbook. That is, not coincidence at all.

Or they aren't there which is a hopelessly woeful position adopted by the likes of Scott Nelson and many others desperadoes.

Two caveats to my tale. A PM has prompted me to take a look at Thomas Bond's autopsy report as it apparently does list arterial blood spray on Kelly's wall, so I will report back on that when I have the opportunity to dig it out. Second caveat (if caveat it be - more an acknowledgement), I note your suggestion that the letters may have been on Kelly's wall before Nov 9, 1888, and I confess that that notion had not previously occurred to me.

Problem about dropping-in when you don't really know the case is you will probably make as arse of yourself and I was just trying to bale you out, mate. I'm big-hearted like that. Bit like Graham many years ago warning me against joining the A6 thread due to its complexities - advice which I duly noted. Not my bag and all that and what have you. And that's factual.

And if you don't know in whose confused, bemused, misused tongue I latterly speak, that just proves my case …

Ike

[Iconoclast]

Right, I said I'd get back re Bond's 'autopsy' (actually, his initial post-mortem examination). Bond stated that "The wall by the right side of the bed [i.e., from Kelly's perspective] & in line with the neck was marked by blood which had struck it in a number of separate splashes". It was put to me in a PM that Erobitha placed too much emphasis on the lack of arterial spray because Kelly would have been strangled first and thus no spray could have come forth, but the evidence from Bond seems to contradict this.

Now, that might read to the disinterested observer as "Dr Bond clearly saw blood splashes on the wall, and that's an end to it". All I would ask is that we consider a little perspective here. Given the astonishing sight which befell anyone in Kelly's room, is it likely that Bond (or anyone else) spent very much time at all interrogating the 'splashes'? If they were observed, still reasonably fresh (though dry by then, obviously), there is every reason to think that they would be noted, but not laboured-over. This was 1888, not 2020, after all, and there were plenty of other things to note of probably greater import.

So we can't know categorically from Bond that what he fleetingly took to be blood splashes in the dim light of Kelly's room were not structured letters. We can accept that what he saw was blood, but we must not jump to conclusions regarding how they got there. What we can know is what those 'splashes' looked like, and - other than the most hardcore of detractor - most folk accept that they look like a vague 'F' and a fairly uncategorical 'M'.

Now if you are not a statistician, you might think, "Big deal - that kind of thing happens all the time". But it doesn't. Hoaxes don't turn up all the time saying "An initial here, an initial there will tell of the whoring mother" and then the initials of that 'whoring mother' turn up in the crime scene photograph from 1975, 1972, and 1899. That doesn't happen, except but once, for real, back in 1992, and it speaks directly to James Maybrick's evil alter ego. End of.

Now this may be a little bit out of context, but I can't be arsed to look for the original post (or even thread) and I've been meaning to say it. Mike Barrett was indignant that after all his efforts since December 1993 to expose the scrapbook as a fraud, through the press, the publishers, the author of the book and his agent, people should go on Radio Merseyside and say the scrapbook was a fraud, so he went on Radio Merseyside and said it wasn't. On the one hand, we have James Maybrick plastered everywhere you look in this tale, and on the other you have Mike 'Bongo' Barrett 'destroying' all of the credible evidence with his changing versions of events. But never once - not even as vaguely as an 'F' on Kelly's wall - does Mike Barrett come anywhere close to a convincing argument in favour of his role as master-forger. All he does is reveal time and time again the terrible demons in his head persuading him to say what he wanted whenever it suited him, contradicting himself within the same sentence if necessary. Those who believe Barrett created the scrapbook thought these Radio Merseyside interviews were a propaganda exercise for the scrapbook, but they were recorded eight months after Mike had sworn his January 5 1995 affidavit saying he had created the scrapbook. He and Anne had been separated about twenty months and Mike’s whole world had collapsed. Not even Alan Gray had been able to rescue him. It is the emotional dynamics and human drama which pro-Barretts miss preferring, it seems, to treat this as just a case of forgers falling out. The human dynamics are critical when assessing Bongo's role in this unfortunate affair. Pretty much everything he claimed was driven by emotional discomfort.

At best, he may have been master-thief, taking the Maybrick scrapbook from someone in Battlecrease House and having it published. That's at best. At worst, he was quite simply the biggest disaster ever to hit the world of Ripperology. We needed him for the scrapbook to emerge, but we needed him to stand aside and let the evidence do the talking, but tragically that wasn't Mike's way.

Ike

[caz]

Morning Ike,

I very much doubt that Mike was made aware that the diary had been 'liberated', much less from Maybrick's old home, when he first saw it and impulsively rang the Rupert Crew Literary Agency on 9th March 1992. That would have been way too risky. At that point there is no independent evidence that he had worked out who the diary's author was meant to be, never mind where 'Sir Jim' lived or when he died. Mike was clearly shocked a year later, when he went with Feldy et al to the house on Riversdale Road, formerly known as Battlecrease House, and learned about the electrical work that had been done there. You can imagine the thoughts running through his head: "That bloody Sparky from the Saddle! I bet he worked here and nicked it. No wonder he wouldn't tell me anything! I'll send Portus & Rhodes a letter from my solicitor, asking for the names of the electricians. Then I'll know for sure." Needless to say, Colin Rhodes did not respond to this request.

Mike's consistent denials, from that time to the day he died, that the diary came out of Maybrick's house, tell their own story. I don't believe he ever realised that the 'liberation' had taken place on the very day he called Doreen. Similarly with Sparky, who knew he'd been helping out there on 9th March 1992, but clearly had no idea that Mike had called a literary agent about the diary before the close of play that day.

Mike's 'unusual' request for a Victorian diary came very quickly on the heels of that first call to Doreen, with the now famous advert appearing on 19th March. Within the week, Martin Earl was back in touch with Mike, describing precisely what he had been offered and the asking price for it, as Martin did with all his customers, to avoid ordering anything that did not meet with their requirements. But Mike was happy to give Martin the go-ahead to order from his supplier a tiny diary for the year 1891, with printed dates three to a page and no literally blank pages, priced at £25, so it could be sent out to Goldie Street. It was duly posted on 26th March, to flop impotently onto the Barretts' doormat a day or two later.

Nothing has been mentioned around here 'as regards' the matter, so it will be interesting to see how deftly this one gets swept under the shag pile. Unlike the 1891 diary, Martin Earl won't fit into a standard dustpan and brush set, so they'll need one the size of a large wheelie bin. It seems to be a recurring theme lately, doesn't it?

Love,

Caz
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[Iconoclast]

Morning Ike,

Nothing has been mentioned around here 'as regards' the matter, so it will be interesting to see how deftly this one gets swept under the shag pile. Unlike the 1891 diary, Martin Earl won't fit into a standard dustpan and brush set, so they'll need one the size of a large wheelie bin. It seems to be a recurring theme lately, doesn't it?

Love,

Caz
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Crikey, Caz. So Mike continued with the purchase of what Martin Earl probably described as "A totally inappropriate tiny diary with no room anywhere really to write anything really, and from a quite impossible year which will have to be Typp-Ex'd out [when it's invented] three times on every page before you can even think about creating one of the great masterpieces of hoaxing history in it, Bongo - plus you'll have to skip about 60+ pages of the 60++ page epic you've been typing in your word prosser for the last umpteen years".

I can just imagine Mike's response. "I'm the greatest forger in history - I'll make it work".

Hmmm. I'm just starting to think that maybe Mike Barrett didn't have the slightest hand in any hoaxed diary of Jack the Spratt McVitie, you know.

PS Isn't Battlecrease House some eight miles south of Goldie Street? And yet - of all the places Eddie Lyons could have lived (west, north, east, or south) of Battlecrease House and however far he could have travelled (one mile, ten miles, fifty years, you get the picture), on the very day he was working in Battlecrease House - he drove home just over eight miles north to within a gnat's chuff of Goldie Street, and even less than a gnat's chuff to The Saddle, where both he and Mike Barrett drank? And Eddie was working at Battlecrease House on the very day Mike rang Doreen Montgomery? Well, I'll be blowed over with a feather. I have to say that that is really rather unexpected, wouldn't you say, everyone?

[caz]

Crikey, Caz. So Mike continued with the purchase of what Martin Earl probably described as "A totally inappropriate tiny diary with no room anywhere really to write anything really, and from a quite impossible year which will have to be Typp-Ex'd out [when it's invented] three times on every page before you can even think about creating one of the great masterpieces of hoaxing history in it, Bongo - plus you'll have to skip about 60+ pages of the 60++ page epic you've been typing in your word prosser for the last umpteen years".

I can just imagine Mike's response. "I'm the greatest forger in history - I'll make it work".

Hmmm. I'm just starting to think that maybe Mike Barrett didn't have the slightest hand in any hoaxed diary of Jack the Spratt McVitie, you know.

PS Isn't Battlecrease House some eight miles south of Goldie Street? And yet - of all the places Eddie Lyons could have lived (west, north, east, or south) of Battlecrease House and however far he could have travelled (one mile, ten miles, fifty years, you get the picture), on the very day he was working in Battlecrease House - he drove home just over eight miles north to within a gnat's chuff of Goldie Street, and even less than a gnat's chuff to The Saddle, where both he and Mike Barrett drank? And Eddie was working at Battlecrease House on the very day Mike rang Doreen Montgomery? Well, I'll be blowed over with a feather. I have to say that that is really rather unexpected, wouldn't you say, everyone?

Before Inside Story, I was pretty gobsmacked when visiting Liverpool, to find precisely where Riversdale Road Aigburth was in relation to the Saddle. It just seemed too much of a coincidence that one of the Battlecrease crew actually drank at Mike's local, and was living very close by. But at the time we just couldn't make a connection using the only dates we had to work with. It was only later, when Keith got access to the Portus & Rhodes time sheets, that the two worlds of Sparky and Bongo collided on the one date: Monday 9th March 1992. Eddie was then living with his girlfriend in a house on Fountains Road, the same road where Tony Devereux had been living up to August 1991.

If you work your way through the inns and outs and ins of this entire saga, using Monday 9th March 1992 as your starting point, it becomes really rather startling how well everything fits if the "old book" did indeed surface on that day. Mike's awareness of precisely what he was about to receive, when asking Martin Earl to send him the little 1891 diary, points to his ignorance of why the writing in the "old book" should have ended abruptly, on 3rd May 1889, leaving nearly twenty unused pages, if this was a genuine diary dating back to the 1880s. He'd have had no idea at the time that 'Jack the Ripper' was meant to be James Maybrick, who had died on 11th May 1889.

It makes no sense whatsoever that Mike would have asked Martin Earl to order that little red herring - sorry - diary for him, if he was intending to fill it with his fake ripper diary. And without this 'rock', an auction held by Outhwaite & Litherland on 31st March 1992 [a date which Mike never even hinted at] becomes an irrelevance, leaving Lord O and his diminishing fan club between a rock and a hard place. Time will reveal what efforts are made to reinstate Bongo and Mrs Bongo as the villains of this piece.

End of Act One...

Love,

Caz
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[Al Bundy's Eyes]

It is interesting to wonder why, if Martin Earl gave Barrett an accurate description of the red diary sometime around say 17th March, and Barrett had every intention of faking a diary that would need undated pages and to be of a much larger size that he would go ahead with the purchase? But he did. Why though, assuming Barretts having a few light ales when his mate, the sparky, comes in to The Saddle with his 'old book', newly liberated from Battlecrease, does he (perhaps logically) think "I could get a book deal out of this, I'll rush home and phone an agent" but then also phones a book finder to source a blank Victorian diary? Which he neglects to mention for the next few years. So yes, I agree it's strange that he proceeded with the purchase of the red diary. But why, if he genuinely received the old book from a man in the pub, did he rapidly try to source a blank Victorian diary?
The world's of Eddie Lyons and Mike Barrett crossing in the close confines of Aigburth is explained by the timesheet/phone call to Doreen coincidence, but nothing explains why he felt the need to find a blank diary pronto.

[Kattrup]

It is interesting to wonder why, if Martin Earl gave Barrett an accurate description of the red diary [...] So yes, I agree it's strange that he proceeded with the purchase of the red diary. [emphasis added]

Not sure why you find it interesting, is there anything to suggest that Earl did? Even if he told MB that the diary was from 1891 (as I recall, we don't actually know what MB asked for), MB might have thought the date could easily be cut out, for instance if might have been printed only on the top of the pages, so one could cut off the offending first 2 cm. Just as, in fact, pages were cut out of the diary, obviously because they didn't match the desired end product. Or the diary might have contained blank pages for notes etc. as most commercial calendars do, and MB could have thought the paper useful anyway.

Again, the diary has no provenance and the guy introducing it and trying to profit from it wanted to buy a blank victorian diary...one does not have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out what happened

[Al Bundy's Eyes]

Again, the diary has no provenance and the guy introducing it and trying to profit from it wanted to buy a blank victorian diary...one does not have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out what happened

Hi Kattrup,

Yeah, suppose it could be seen like that! I like to look at different angles and I've always thought the red diary is hardest to explain away, I mean, Barrett wasted no time sourcing it. And until his "confession" there was no mention of it, both he and Anne kept schtum about it. So if one wanted to pursue the Battlecrease theory, I'd say a solid explanation is needed.

Obviously, if Mike was a hoaxer.........

[caz]

It is interesting to wonder why, if Martin Earl gave Barrett an accurate description of the red diary sometime around say 17th March, and Barrett had every intention of faking a diary that would need undated pages and to be of a much larger size that he would go ahead with the purchase? But he did. Why though, assuming Barretts having a few light ales when his mate, the sparky, comes in to The Saddle with his 'old book', newly liberated from Battlecrease, does he (perhaps logically) think "I could get a book deal out of this, I'll rush home and phone an agent" but then also phones a book finder to source a blank Victorian diary? Which he neglects to mention for the next few years. So yes, I agree it's strange that he proceeded with the purchase of the red diary. But why, if he genuinely received the old book from a man in the pub, did he rapidly try to source a blank Victorian diary?
The world's of Eddie Lyons and Mike Barrett crossing in the close confines of Aigburth is explained by the timesheet/phone call to Doreen coincidence, but nothing explains why he felt the need to find a blank diary pronto.

Hi Al,

This is what we have been trying to figure out. If we don't start with the presumption that Mike's initial enquiry, for an unused or partly used [not 'blank'] diary dating from 1880-1890, must have been made with the intention of obtaining something he could use for forging the Maybrick diary [because we now know from Martin Earl himself that Mike was told what his enquiry had produced, yet he still went ahead and ordered the tiny 1891 diary, with printed dates three to a page], we should consider alternative explanations. By the way, the advert was placed on Mike's behalf by Martin and appeared on 19th March, so Martin was offered the 1891 diary as a result of the supplier seeing the advert. He then contacted Mike to make sure it met with his requirements before ordering it from the supplier and getting it sent out to Goldie Street on 26th March.

I still don't really have an answer myself, and the one Anne gave, that Mike said he had just wanted to see what a real Victorian diary was like, seems less than satisfactory, given his specific request for at least 20 blank pages. But then, it's Mike's mind we're attempting to read here, so who knows? When he spoke at one point about his initial reaction to seeing the Maybrick diary and, in particular, the last page signed off Jack the Ripper, he said he had wanted to know what the hell 'Tony' [or Eddie?] was playing at. Quite a normal reaction, I'd have thought, and one that seemed to have a ring of truth about it. When recalling this, he made a point of emphasising that the last page of writing is not actually on the last page of the book itself, as though he had found it strange, if this was meant to be a genuine diary from the 1880s [the last entry was dated 3rd May 1889], to see so many pages surviving unused. There are in fact 17 unused pages after the 63 pages of writing. If this really was the first time Mike had set eyes on the "old book" containing the diary, he would have had no idea that those pages were never filled because 'Jack the Ripper' had supposedly died shortly after writing that last entry and hiding the thing away to be found at some point after his death. Conversely, I have to ask why he'd have paid any attention to those blank pages at the end if he knew they were simply left after Anne had finished copying out the diary text from his word 'prosser'. It's lucky they are there though, because how much more suspicious would it have looked if the scrapbook had been filled to capacity, with the final entry before Maybrick's death appearing right on the very last page? Even more so, if Anne had tried to cram all the writing into the 1891 diary, after removing all the printed dates and whatnot.

Good to have a civilised discussion with you, Al.

Love,

Caz
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