One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[Observer]

One thing though Ikey, with regard to the Kelly murder. Mad Jim Maybrick writes of,

"A handkerchief red".

Now this is obviously a reference to Hutchinsons statement( good grief it's staring you in the facet that this has been gleaned from a late 20th century Ripper publication) with regard to Mr A giving Kelly a red handkerchief. So it's safe to say, (although we are in a parallel universe here), that Mr A is indeed the baddie known as Jack the Ripper aka Mad Jim Maybrick. Shortly after the Kelly murder, poet laureate in waiting, Mad Jim Maybrick writes in verse

"Sir Jim makes his call
He cuts them all
With his knife in his bag"

Hutchinsons suspect didn't have a bag. Come to think of it the man seen with Eddowes by Lawende and Co didn't have a bag either.

Furthermore, I hope you realise that there are a lot of Casebook contributors, and a lot more who are merely avid readers of this Forum who believe that Hutchinsons Mr A is totally fictitious in character. Look, when you say it's case closed I realise it's tongue in cheek, but the Hutchinson deniers can't entertain the fact that Mad Jim was Jack The Ripper

[caz]

As for Post #5347, you’re being increasingly ridiculous, Caz.

All I did was to pose two questions in order to hear your explanation. a) was Billy lying; or b) was he UNINTENTIONALLY being fed leading questions?

It had to be one or the other. It was simply an exercise in logic. And note my use of the word “unintentionally,” which I specifically used in order NOT to challenge the interviewer’s integrity or to claim that the interviewer had deliberately mislead the public.

Thus, your outrage is both misplaced and disingenuous.

But I guess when your arguments are falling flat, you have to play the “outrage” card.

Moving on, you now accept that Billy Graham lied to Feldman and Skinner, and they evidently accepted this lie, at least for a decade or so. What you didn’t quite answer is whether you now believe Anne coached her dying father to go along with this charade, and if so, why? It seems a rather ‘low’ and desperate move, does it not? To involve an ailing old man? (This was your own argument, if you recall). Or, if it was not Anne, why would Billy have done this on his own?

In other words, are we really supposed to believe it was in order to protect Anne’s estranged husband Bongo, who, by your own account, violent abused her? Why not just say “the sorry bastard got it from a man in a pub and paid $25 for it? I had nothing to do with it! I am tired of his lies!” By your own account, Anne was not accepting royalty checks at this point, and was filing for divorce. And Billy never got a dime! So why would they have been motivated to protect Barrett?

It’s a hard sell, Caz. I don’t envy your position. You evidently wish us to believe that Anne and Billy both lied in order to protect the man who had thrown a wrench into their lives and had proved an embarrassment and a potential legal liability.

No; I don’t find it the least bit plausible. If Billy lied,he lied to protect his daughter, not to protect Barrett. And Anne lied to protect herself.

Why would that be? Why would Anne need protecting?

But don’t bother to answer. As long as you’re going to be playing these games, I have no intention of discussing the matter further.

As for Fido, Evans, etc. from what I’ve read, none of them thought the Diary was anything other than a simplistic fake, and you never convinced them otherwise.

Anyway, I tend to agree with David B. that these forays into psychology are really neither here, nor there. The circumstantial evidence is what buries the Barretts; I don't really give a toss what they said or did on any given day.

Afternoon RJ,

Did you mean my post #5351?

All you did?

What you did - in plain sight - was to try and wriggle your way out of falsely accusing Keith outright, more than once, of fitting people up and putting dates in their mouths. How did you expect me to react? I have no reputation worth damaging, so you can falsely accuse me of anything you like, and if it's legal, hurts no-one and sounds like fun, I may as well try it if I'm going to be accused anyway. But Keith is a highly respected professional researcher, so you can call me as 'ridiculous' and as 'disingenuous' as you like, but I'm going to have my say and I don't need an "outrage" card to do so. Which 'arguments' of mine are falling flat? You just don't care for the information that has been posted over recent weeks, so you are forced to find new ways of altering or undermining it, or trashing the source, instead of actually taking it on board like an adult and testing your beliefs against it. But that's entirely your problem, not mine. Your playhouse collapsed under the weight of totally unsupportable, ludicrously unlikely speculation [circumstantial evidence my arse] but you'll have your work cut out to tear down Battlecrease House with your bucket of whitewash.

You can believe what you like, RJ, but it does seem increasingly clear that you judge others by your own standards, and are desperately trying to put words in my mouth now. You won't succeed. The last person to try that still has the teeth marks. So no, I won't bother to answer – at least not until you go back and try to answer all my outstanding questions from the last two or three months. Your distraction technique - 'threatening' to leave the playground on an almost daily basis - is showing, but isn't working.

And here is why we are worlds apart, you and I. Yours is a black and white one, where you move people around like chess pieces, and imagine they are the ones making the moves. Mine is a world in which no two people are alike, or behave alike, or hold the same opinions, and I don't know a person until I know them. But I do know that any two people can work happily and productively alongside one another, even if they hold totally opposing views on a subject. A child of six knows that Mum and Dad are entirely separate individuals with their own way of doing things. Yet you seem to believe that my point about Fido and Evans was related to their beliefs about the diary, which couldn't be more wrong. Of course they never believed it was anything other than 'a simplistic fake' by one or both Barretts, and I never even dreamed that anyone would convince them it isn't. My point was that it didn't interfere with the mutual respect between fellow authors and researchers, and they could each disagree without being disagreeable. I don't know if Keith has a favourite ripper suspect these days, but all three differed about that profoundly, and it didn't diminish their willingness or ability to work closely together on related or other projects.

Why don't you and Ike and the crickets talk it over? I’ll check back in come August.

Blimey, this summer is flying by. I thought we were still enjoying flaming June.

Love,

Caz
X

[Iconoclast]

One thing though Ikey, with regard to the Kelly murder. Mad Jim Maybrick writes of,

"A handkerchief red".

Now this is obviously a reference to Hutchinsons statement( good grief it's staring you in the facet that this has been gleaned from a late 20th century Ripper publication) with regard to Mr A giving Kelly a red handkerchief. So it's safe to say, (although we are in a parallel universe here), that Mr A is indeed the baddie known as Jack the Ripper aka Mad Jim Maybrick. Shortly after the Kelly murder, poet laureate in waiting, Mad Jim Maybrick writes in verse

"Sir Jim makes his call
He cuts them all
With his knife in his bag"

Hutchinsons suspect didn't have a bag. Come to think of it the man seen with Eddowes by Lawende and Co didn't have a bag either.

Furthermore, I hope you realise that there are a lot of Casebook contributors, and a lot more who are merely avid readers of this Forum who believe that Hutchinsons Mr A is totally fictitious in character. Look, when you say it's case closed I realise it's tongue in cheek, but the Hutchinson deniers can't entertain the fact that Mad Jim was Jack The Ripper

Goodness, Observer, this is a rather good - pardon the pun - observation!

It is true that Maybrick is only Jack the Ripper if Jack the Ripper gave Mary Jane Kelly a red handkerchief, and I think you are right when you say that neither Hutchinson nor Lawende reported seeing a bag. I think Hutchinson reported seeing a 'small package' in Jack's hand, but if it had been a bag I'm sure it would have quacked like the duck it would have been so it probably wasn't that variety of duck at all.

I can't offer an explanation for why he'd claimed he carried a bag (like many of the crossed-out comments, this one has possibly been overlooked).

Are you - presumably - arguing that a hoaxer wrote "With his knife in his bag" without having first checked to see if witness statements to Eddowes' and Kelly's deaths had reported seeing one?

Ike

[rjpalmer]

And all the while, the late Mr. Devereux's daughter already has Mike's (alleged) copy of Liverpool Tales in her possession. Wow - that totally blows the case against the Rhodes crew completely out of the water!

I really do love you folks, that's why I find it is so difficult not to drop by while I sip my morning tea.

So now Keith can add yet another co-conspirator to the Great Battlecrease Caper! Nancy Steele, Tony Devereux's daughter, lied about borrowing Mike's 'Maybrick' booklet sometime before August 1991! (And 7 months before Dodd had some work done). All in order to hide the fact that Barrett--whom she evidently didn't even know--purchased the diary on the black market on 9 March 1992.

You got me there, Ike. One simply needs to keep expanding the 'nest of thieves' theory. What are we up to now, six? seven conspirators?

No doubt the 'court of history' is queuing around the block as we speak, all ready to convict Sir Jim.

Or maybe not.

Has there been a single solitary self-respecting historian who has accepted this chain of events?

[Iconoclast]

Goodness, Roger, I wasn't saying that Nancy Steele had lied. I was simply highlighting the fact that I don't believe that Mike's ownership of that book had ever been firmly established. Nancy could believe it to have been Mike's without it having been Mike's, you know.

There are no nest of conspirators, Roger, as well you and Lord Orsam know - only people who had the misfortune to be connected with this crazy tale and who could therefore be added to some mythical list of liars, cheats, and vagabonds whenever the most tenuous of arguments is made.

Has there been a single solitary self-respecting historian who has accepted this chain of events?

Other than me (you don't specify 'published' or even 'capable'), no I don't suppose there has been.

Given the antipathy he or she would inevitably have had to endure, does that honestly surprise you?

And does the absence of such a person (other than me) actually make any odds here?

Ike

[Iconoclast]

I really do love you folks, that's why I find it is so difficult not to drop by while I sip my morning tea.

Sipping your morning tea? Bloody Hell, I know lockdown has hit us hard but I had expected the people of Chigwell to be up-and-at-'em early doors like a lark, man!

Get your arse out of bed a bit quicker tomorrow and I promise you the tea will taste ten times better for it …

Ike

[rjpalmer]

Hi Ike.

“I do remember my sister asking my dad whether she could borrow a book that was on his table. It was called Murder, Mayhem, & Mystery, by Richard Whittington-Egan. My father told my sister, “OK, but let me have it back on the weekend; it belongs to Bongo.” That was Tony’s nickname for Mike.

"This was the very book that Barrett said had led him to deduce that the diary had been written by James Maybrick. (That book, with Mike’s name in it, was eventually handed over to Scotland Yard)."

--Feldman, p. 139.

It sounds to me like it’s been established, Ike.

And that places Mike’s ‘Maybrick’ book (which he had already described to Feldman/Harrison) safely in the hands of Tony Devereux sometime before August 1991 ( the month Tony died).

Which is at least 7 months prior to 9 March 1992—the day Barrett supposedly first learned of Maybrick and his dodgy diary.

Seems like there's yet another problem in paradise, mate. But, water off a duck's back, eh? When one has grown accustomed to ignoring 'debilitating' data, what is one more bit to ignore?

[Observer]

Are you - presumably - arguing that a hoaxer wrote "With his knife in his bag" without having first checked to see if witness statements to Eddowes' and Kelly's deaths had reported seeing one?

Ike

A hoaxer might have been a tad more thorough when it came to accuracy, but of course I've always been of the opinion that the Diary of Jack The Scouser was originally intended to be a novel. Of course the bag isn't the only stumbling block that our "hoaxer", or "Novelist" created, there's also the breasts on the bedside table, the farthings at the Chapman murder scene, the envelope with the letter M, again at the Chapman murder scene, there are more. No real problem if the Diary was intended to be a novel, poetic licenses don't you know big troble for a hoaxer though

[c.d.]

A hoaxer might have been a tad more thorough when it came to accuracy, but of course I've always been of the opinion that the Diary of Jack The Scouser was originally intended to be a novel.

Hello Observer,

I have had that thought as well. Ever since the trial of Florence Maybrick any author (or potential author) worth his salt must have realized that this scenario was the Holy Grail of Irony and Cosmic Justice. Imagine history's most notorious killer and butcher of women is himself killed by a woman! That is a plot and a novel just begging to be written.

c.d.

[Iconoclast]

Hi Ike.

“I do remember my sister asking my dad whether she could borrow a book that was on his table. It was called Murder, Mayhem, & Mystery, by Richard Whittington-Egan. My father told my sister, “OK, but let me have it back on the weekend; it belongs to Bongo.” That was Tony’s nickname for Mike.

"This was the very book that Barrett said had led him to deduce that the diary had been written by James Maybrick. (That book, with Mike’s name in it, was eventually handed over to Scotland Yard)."

--Feldman, p. 139.

It sounds to me like it’s been established, Ike.

And that places Mike’s ‘Maybrick’ book (which he had already described to Feldman/Harrison) safely in the hands of Tony Devereux sometime before August 1991 ( the month Tony died).

Which is at least 7 months prior to 9 March 1992—the day Barrett supposedly first learned of Maybrick and his dodgy diary.

Seems like there's yet another problem in paradise, mate. But, water off a duck's back, eh? When one has grown accustomed to ignoring 'debilitating' data, what is one more bit to ignore?

Actually, Roger, I do remember reading that now, so fair play, Tony D had what he claimed was Mike Barrett's copy of Tales of Liverpool and - of course - I'll accept that it was his copy.

But here's the rub. There is no evidence that Mike ever read Tales of Liverpool and - even if he had - as you note it was before Tony died in Aug 1991. It could have been many months before or it could have been years before (if he ever read it properly at all). So many months later (after Tony's death), Barrett gets his hands on the scrapbook and at some point after that he claims he put Battlecrease House together with Maybrick to work out who the author of the scrapbook was by discovering 'Battlecrease House' in Tales of Liverpool. Well, here's another rub: I've just flicked through my copy and I can only find four references to Battlecrease House - three on the first two pages of the story of James' death, and a final mention in the final paragraph. So that's just four mentions of a house name many months, probably a year, possibly many years after Barrett may have read the book (or may not). I think we can make allowances for his not having immediately put two and two together when he first read the scrapbook in March 1992, don't you?

Absolutely no problem whatsoever in my version of paradise, and no need for any water off a duck's back. What you are hanging your argument on is a Liverpool scally having read Tales of Liverpool and - even if he had - that he would remember the most irrelevant of details which only occurs four times in the book a full year or so later.

Personally, I have no problem dealing with 'debilitating' data. Could you let me have some to deal with, though, before you go making these unsubstantiated claims?

Cheers,

Ike

[Observer]

A hoaxer might have been a tad more thorough when it came to accuracy, but of course I've always been of the opinion that the Diary of Jack The Scouser was originally intended to be a novel.

Hello Observer,

I have had that thought as well. Ever since the trial of Florence Maybrick any author (or potential author) worth his salt must have realized that this scenario was the Holy Grail of Irony and Cosmic Justice. Imagine history's most notorious killer and butcher of women is himself killed by a woman! That is a plot and a novel just begging to be written.

c.d.

Hi c.d.

The centenary of the Maybrick trial followed quickly after the Jack The Ripper centenary. I believe the Liverpool Echo at the time covered the Maybrick saga. The trial was re-enacted in Liverpool in 1989 I believe. So both the Ripper, and the Maybrick sensations were in the public eye, the Maybrick saga more so for the people of Liverpool. Micheal Barratt could certainly spin a yarn, he always wanted to be a writer, owned a word processor, had material published albeit in a small way, owned several editions of those pesky Sphere books, ordered and bought a Victorian diary, at no small expense, well you get the picture. It's Barratt all the way for me.

[Observer]

This for Ikey

I don't know if you subscribe (as Paul Feldman did) to the notion that Maybrick wrote the Saucy Jack postcard? Feldman wrote that the reference to

"number one squealed a bit"

was a direct link to Stride's "not very loud scream" whilst being assaulted by Schwartz's suspect. The thing is "Maybrick" then goes on to describe Deimshutz's pony and cart frustrating him in his attempt to mutilate Stride. The trouble here of course is the amount of time between those two events ten minutes at least. Are we to believe that "Maybrick slit Strides throat, then went for a walk around the block before returning to the scene only to be thwarted by Deimshutz?

[Al Bundy's Eyes]

This for Ikey

I don't know if you subscribe (as Paul Feldman did) to the notion that Maybrick wrote the Saucy Jack postcard? Feldman wrote that the reference to

"number one squealed a bit"

was a direct link to Stride's "not very loud scream" whilst being assaulted by Schwartz's suspect. The thing is "Maybrick" then goes on to describe Deimshutz's pony and cart frustrating him in his attempt to mutilate Stride. The trouble here of course is the amount of time between those two events ten minutes at least. Are we to believe that "Maybrick slit Strides throat, then went for a walk around the block before returning to the scene only to be thwarted by Deimshutz?

So, if we can conclusively prove that Astrakhan man was real, and that Strides killer was disturbed by Diemschutz' donkey, Maybrick is squarely in the frame. Pretty sure these two things are taken as given in the Ripperology community.

[Al Bundy's Eyes]

Straight forward enough question, but I'm struggling to pin down the specifics.

Feldman gives a presentation to the C+D club, with Anne Graham, on Jan 7th 1995, two days after Mike "Bongo" Barratt signs his affidavit.

Mike's affidavit wasn't known about at this point, or certainly wasn't common knowledge.

Working on the assumption that the Graham family provenance story was about reclaiming control of the diary ( in a genuine belief that it came from Deveraux ) from Mike's attempt to destroy it, at what point did each of these stories start to surface? Who's first on record, Mike or Anne? When did each party start to formulate their plans? For Feldman to initiate the Graham provenance, he must have known Mike had an intention to claim that he himself hoaxed it, furthermore, Mike couldn't have given away the Battlecrease provenance, even in an act of drunken spite because any mention of it around 1994 would mean that Feldman's defence would have to nail any claims of the diary coming from Battlecrease, which as has been proved since, an investigator / detective would link Portus + Rhodes, Battlecrease, The Saddle and 9th March.

So I think what I'm asking is was Feldman aware of Mike's intention to claim the hoax in Jan '95 when he publicly presented Anne Graham to the C+D club, and if so, for how long had the possibility of Mike blowing the game been a serious concern?

Sorry, I realised I said "question" implying one but I didn't not know I wasn't going to not get to the point. Or not.
( There you go Ike, just for you!)

[Observer]

So, if we can conclusively prove that Astrakhan man was real, and that Strides killer was disturbed by Diemschutz' donkey, Maybrick is squarely in the frame. Pretty sure these two things are taken as given in the Ripperology community.

No, I suggest you read the post again Al. A man wasn't carrying a bag. Also, the little matter of the time gap between Stride's assault by that naughty BS man, and spoilsport Demshutz's entry into the drama needs to be addressed.