One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[caz]

Bloody hell Switchy - it's like na-noo-na-noo time here on the Casebook today!

Sorry, Ms. Switchy ...

That was a bit spooky, Ike! Great minds think alike, or fools never differ?

Another thing to bear in mind is that anyone can plan to see a relative over the Christmas period, and put the date in their diary, but it doesn't mean a thing unless it actually happens. I'd have done pretty much anything to get out of an arranged date to see two of my ex brothers-in-law for example, known here in Brown Towers as Creepy Brother-in-law and Racist Brother-in-law.

Thinking of 'Sir Jim's' Christmas spirit with the kids reminded me of a tale my Mum used to tell, about her Uncle Percy when he was a child. I have a couple of photos of him as a tiny tot, taken in 1880, which I looked at again only the other day. [Something about Victorian photo sizes prompted me - cough.] Sitting round the dining table, with Father just about to carve the Sunday joint, young Percy foolishly forgets his place and says: "May I have a bit of the outside?" To which Father replies: "Outside you want, outside you go!", and poor Percy is sent from the room in disgrace, for daring to talk at the meal table.

He was meant to be seen and not heard.

Love,

Caz
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[caz]

Funny, you seemed to have been singing a different tune in Society's Pillock, Ike, when you argued that Florie was 'left alone at Christmas'!!

How on earth did I guess that you'd resurface singing 'The Twelve Days of Christmas'?

But it wasn't merely just a matter of Maybrick not visiting Thomas as Christmas, it was also a matter of Maybrick and Thomas having very little contact at all in recent years, which certainly deflates any claim that the Diary shows sophisticated knowledge of Maybrick's private relationships. Barrett explains that he simply made up this Manchester gathering because "everyone visits everybody at Christmas."

And lo, and behold, the information supplied by Yabs DOES strongly suggest that the hoaxer just made it up, so we have yet another confirmation of the accuracy of Barrett's confession. Had you, Caz, or Keith been able to actually prove Maybrick was in Manchester, then Barrett would have been shot down in the flames. But he hasn't been. His observations still stands--and has been strengthened.

And on the 2nd day of Christmas Bongo ordered the following:




Question. I think it may be a repeater.

If a man tries to buy a suitcase of plastic explosives on the black market, and is sent a box of plastic bananas, should we conclude that he is just fond of fake fruit?

What damns the Barretts is not what they were sent in the mail, but what they tried to obtain. You can throw special pleaders at it all day long and it still smells to high heaven.

Blimey, RJ. Cover yourself up man, your frustration is showing, and I don't blush easily.

It's not exactly a unique or insightful observation by Bongo, that "everyone visits everybody at Christmas", is it? How does that prove he wrote the words in the diary, when the evidence that he didn't is now so overwhelming, it must be hard to wade your way through it to come up for air?

I hardly think that the wording of the advert is the equivalent of an attempt to buy a suitcase full of plastic explosives on the black market [Bongo didn't use an alias and Martin Earl wasn't a black marketeer], but I can understand why you are thinking in those terms, because you'll need more than that to shift the fact that Mike Barrett asked Martin Earl to order and send him your 'box of plastic bananas' in order to commit the crime you believe he and Anne were guilty of.

Please explain how your plastic bananas are meant to smell to high heaven, and why you are not now doing all the special pleading around here. And why did you need to mislead people by suggesting Bongo had no control over what was 'sent' to him as a result of his enquiry? Make your special pleading work with the facts, RJ, and don't try to alter the facts to make your special pleading work. You'd preserve a bit more credibility that way.

Love,

Caz
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[Iconoclast]

Funny, you seemed to have been singing a different tune in Society's Pillock, Ike, when you argued that Florie was 'left alone at Christmas'!!

Did I not argue in my brilliant (please remember, Rog) Society's Pillock that Florie being 'left alone at Christmas' tied-in with Maybrick's trip to brother Thomas in Manchester? I'm not sure of your point, caller?

How are you getting on with my brilliant Society's Pillock, by the way? Brilliant, isn't it?

Ike

[caz]

I do find it ironic that RJ uses Bongo's claim to have 'just made it up', as evidence that he didn't 'just make it up' when telling the world he had written the diary himself, or when he changed that to Anne having written it, or when he added that Messrs Devereux and Graham deceased had both cheered the Barretts on from the sidelines.

You couldn't make it up.

Unless your name was Bongo Barrett, who made an art form of 'just making it up'.

Love,

Caz
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[rjpalmer]

you'll need more than that to shift the fact that Mike Barrett asked Martin Earl to order and send him your 'box of plastic bananas' in order to commit the crime you believe he and Anne were guilty of.

Hi Caz.

I have little doubt that Martin Earl, quizzed many years after-the-fact, stated that he liked to touch base with his customers. We have no record whatsoever what actually transpired between Barrett and Earl, beyond the adveristement, or whether he was even able to get Mike on the phone. You are simply milking a vague customer service policy for all it is worth. We do have Mike stating, in his confession, what appears to be shock and disappointment that what Earl had sent him was so "very small."

Barrett, it should be remembered, was ON THE CLOCK. He was also, by all accounts, impulsive. He had scammed Doreen Montgomery by telling her he had the Diary of Jack the Ripper, and now he had to scramble to find the suitable raw materials.

This he did, by requesting that Earl find him a blank (or if not, a partially blank) Victorian diary, 1880-1890.

Now, seeing that you and Ike are fond of imaginary conversations, let me try my hand.

Earl: "Hello? Mr. Williams? I am afraid that I am having trouble filling your highly unusual request. Blank Victorian diaries are hard to come by in the year 1992."

Barrett: (aside) "Bloody Hell! That Doreen woman expects me any day!"

Earl: "Hello? Are you there, Mr. Williams?"

Barrett: "Yes, yes, this is Mr. Williams."

Earl: "As I was about to say, I did locate a small pocket memo book. It was manufactured in 1891. Would that interest you?"

Barrett: (aside) "1891? I'm bloody desperate! Uh....yes, yes."

Earl: "Hello? Did you say something, Mr. Williams?"

Barrett: Yes, yes, send it. I'll try to make it wor….I mean....I would be very much interested in seeing what 20 blank Victorian pages look like. I hear that 20 blank pages look very different from 18 blank pages or 5 blank pages. That's why I asked for at least 20 blank pages. It's a sort of Zen thing. The more blank pages, the more you realize what blank pages look like. I've always been curious about the appearance of blank pages."

Earl: "Right ho. Well this one is ENTIRELY BLANK, Mr. Williams, so you should like it. I'll post it this afternoon."

Barrett: "Right. Please hurry, I have a woman in London waiting for me."

Two days later.

Barrett (opening the package): "Small? That rotten Earl! This thing is a bleeding postage-stamp! Blimey, now what will I do?"

Anne: "O you idjit! You paid 25 pounds for that? Why don't you ever think?"

[rjpalmer]

And before you ask, how do you know the black ledger Barrett eventually bought wasn't also an inappropriate year?

Didn't Mike state he had to cut off a tag from the inside cover because it showed it was manufactured in the Edwardian era?

Doesn't the diary show damage to the front inside cover, or have I been misinformed about that?

[Al Bundy's Eyes]

That pesky red diary...

The only credible non hoax theory for it is, as Caz says, as a reference for the value of a diary. But that could, and was, achieved without ever having to part with cash. Also, if Barrett intended to use it to entice Eddy, he never mentioned it to Eddy, so again, why actually pay for and obtain it?
Then, both Anne and Mike keep well schtum about it, because? Presumably, it would kind of look a bit dodgy, buying a blank, Victorian diary while trying to convince a publisher you have Jack/Jim's real one.
The other idea, that Barrett wanted to make a 'replica' to take to London seems unlikely because that would entail getting it written out by hand from a pre prepared source in a short time, which is argued against the Barrett's hoaxing the diary.
So, if the Barrett's hoaxed the whole thing, buying the diary was a stupid thing to do.
If Mike received Jim's book from Eddy Lyons, buying the diary was a stupid thing to do.
If it really came via Deveraux, buying the....well you get the picture. That's the problem with Mike, most arguments for and against him seem to hinge on 'was he capable of doing reckless, unpredictable and outright batshit things?' Sadly, he was his own worst enemy, regardless of wether the diary is real or not.

Oh Bongo.

[Iconoclast]

You know what? We should have Rules de Bongo on this site. In those rules we would categorically agree which lies, contradictions, misdirections, makings-up, and confabulations Bongo Barrett is allowed to have as 'givens' and which ones we can legitimately debate over.

The reason I say this is that the list is very very very very very very very very long indeed. Barrett lied, contradicted, misdirected, made up, and confabulated even when there was absolutely no reason to have done so and no great consequence to us, his bemused observers. Many times he did all of these things in spades in the same sentence and showed absolutely no concern for the truth (perhaps because whatever he spoke he genuinely believed to be true).

Let me give you a single example: Mike Barrett was interviewed on April 14 1994 in Liverpool Central Library and during that interview Mike explained that he was having trouble making sense of his research notes around August 1991 (the month Tony D died, by chance) so he and Anne - not being able to afford a new word processor - sourced and bought a secondhand one from Mersey Mart. Now, here's the rub. Everyone knows Bongo Barrett borrowed the money from Anne's dad to buy a brand new Amstrad from PC World in 1986. Lord Orsam (I think) himself sourced the actual receipt. So this is a blatant lie. What he said he and Anne did, did not happen the way he said it.

Now, would RJ, Lord Orsam, Observer, and all of the others in the Barrett-as-Master-Hoaxer crew come on here and persistently argue that Mike bought a secondhand word processor from Mersey Mart in 1991 simply because Mike had said he had? Given that the evidence is that he did not, I assume they would not. So they would have to accept that Mike Barrett was 'unreliable' (or an inveterate liar). And yet - despite clear evidence in this one example alone - that Mike Barrett lied like you and I do our shoelaces, brush our teeth, or breathe, why would anyone trust a single word he said about absolutely anything whatsoever?

He had a stroke. Turns out he didn't have a stroke. He had a malignancy and was dying. Turns out to be a sebaceous horn. He had an auction ticket in his pocket. He didn't produce it. He could prove he wrote the scrapbook with a pen and some ink but Anne wrote the scrapbook.

He said he hoaxed the scrapbook, and none of the details made sense.

At this point, it seems to me that the Rules de Bongo need to kick-in because it seems that Bongo is allowed to lie, contradict, misdirect, make up, and confabulate to his heart's content and his acolytes allow it - they know it's not true but they allow him the licence to say it. But when it comes to the creation of the scrapbook, he doesn't lie, contradict, misdirect, make up, and confabulate once. Not even slightly. It is all true. Every word. Maybe it is compelling because it was framed in an 'affy David', I don't know, or maybe it's just that the lying, contradicting, misdirecting, making-up, and confabulating is a sideshow which his 'affy David' miracuously survived unscathed from and thereby - for once in his hopelessly-inept life - Bongo told a few truths and they happened to align with certain people's agenda so they were never questioned.

Well, I for one continue to question them. Mike Barrett lied, contradicted, misdirected, made up, and confabulated like a politician and that should be more than enough for every one of his observers to take note and heed and then resist the charm and the appeal of the bits they particularly like.

For the record, I would like to put it to this house that the Rules de Bongo are short and to the point: None of his utterances can ever be trusted, thus all of them should be consigned to the skip from which - who knows? - the Maybrick scrapbook may well have come out of.

Ike

[rjpalmer]

The only credible non hoax theory for it is, as Caz says, as a reference for the value of a diary.

Hi Al.

I don't think that that is Caz's argument anymore, but, out of curiosity, how is it credible?

Diaries have no inherent, stable worth, do they? They can be worth half pound or they can be priceless relics worth thousands or millions.

And how would asking for "at least twenty blank pages" help someone reference the worth of the Diary of Jack the Ripper?

It doesn't seem to be the least bit credible.

No one has ever answered why 'twenty blank' pages were needed by Barrett.

Caz uses the figure '63 pages' for the diary, but the typescript found on the Barrett's word processor was 29 pages.

And this is ex-post facto reasoning. The Diary Barrett eventually produced was indeed 63 pages, but it text has been elongated. We don't know how long the diary would have been, if Barrett had found a different ledger.

[caz]

Hi Caz.

I have little doubt that Martin Earl, quizzed many years after-the-fact, stated that he liked to touch base with his customers. We have no record whatsoever what actually transpired between Barrett and Earl, beyond the adveristement, or whether he was even able to get Mike on the phone. You are simply milking a vague customer service policy for all it is worth. We do have Mike stating, in his confession, what appears to be shock and disappointment that what Earl had sent him was so "very small."

You couldn't be more wrong, RJ. But go on believing Mike's rotten lies rather than what Martin Earl himself says about it, it's becoming the norm in Barmy Bongo Land.

Mike states 'what appears to be shock and disappointment' that a tiny diary for the year 1891, with printed dates three to a page turned out to be of no use, merely because it was too small to accommodate Maybrick's 1888-9 memoirs?? That's truly off-the-scale 'psychology' there, if you don't mind my saying. How can you wring the double emotion of shock and disappointment out of a handful of words typed up for Mike by Alan Gray? And that's quite apart from the fact that Mike doesn't think to mention that the printed 1891 dates throughout the red diary would have been rather more of an impediment than its diminutive dimensions.

Barrett, it should be remembered, was ON THE CLOCK.

Why? What pressure was on him to go to London, with a diary he didn't yet have [because Anne hadn't written it yet, or he was still negotiating the price with Eddie more like] on a particular date? Do you honestly think Mike couldn't have come up with another excuse to delay that meeting - like the one he used to Doreen in early March about going off to York?

He was also, by all accounts, impulsive. He had scammed Doreen Montgomery by telling her he had the Diary of Jack the Ripper, and now he had to scramble to find the suitable raw materials.

That makes sense - not. Who in their right mind would confirm a date for going to London with a forgery they didn't even have the raw materials for yet? And do you seriously imagine anyone who tried a trick like that would not be rumbled in a heartbeat? Despite what you appear to be suggesting, Doreen, Shirley, Brian Lake and Robert A.H. Smith were not complete idiots. Had Anne just blotted the final page of a diary created by Mike on his famous word 'prosser', before he set off from Lime Street, none of us would be here now, and it would all have been over by 13th April 1992.

The dialogue was funny, but not in a good way. Mike didn't use an alias, for a start, and if he had behaved anything like the Mike you portray, you are not convincing anyone that he was remotely capable in March 1992 of forging the diary, and only capable of making a twit of himself.

You make it too easy for me, RJ.

Love,

Shocked and Disappointed of East Devon
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[caz]

And before you ask, how do you know the black ledger Barrett eventually bought wasn't also an inappropriate year?

Didn't Mike state he had to cut off a tag from the inside cover because it showed it was manufactured in the Edwardian era?

Doesn't the diary show damage to the front inside cover, or have I been misinformed about that?

How do you know it was an inappropriate year? How do you know Mike was not 'just making it up'? Many pages were torn or ripped out too, so any damage to the front inside cover proves nothing.

You have taken on the task of trying to make just one of Mike's forgery claims stick. If it's too much for you, just say so. Nobody will hold it against you.

Love,

Caz
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[Al Bundy's Eyes]

Hi RJ,

Credible along the lines of, if your going to look for a reason other than hoaxing, it's either for reference or to make a copy, so I'd go for using it as a comparison/reference for an old diary. The idea of a legitimate 'copy' is, well, it is what it is.
Like I say though, that's assuming you want to explore a possible non hoax motive. I think I'm right in saying Caz is fairly undecided on Mike's reasoning behind buying the little book. Personally, I think even if it was described to him, Barrett thought it would do the trick.

Ike - How have you got shoelaces? It's all velcro where I am.

[Iconoclast]

Many pages were torn or ripped out too, so any damage to the front inside cover proves nothing.

Perhaps the funniest of all Mike's lies was his gem when explaining the large kidney-like blemish on the inside front cover of the scrapbook. When pressed, Mike gave a muted example of his mental meanderings (I can't recall what mince it was on that occasion), but when pressed further - in the course of the same interview, as I recall - it suddenly became the result of … hold it, hold it, you have to truly imbibe the truth rays from this little sunspot … Anne accidentally dropping a kidney onto it!!!!!

Well, naturally right now RJ, Lord Orsam, Observer, Mike JG, inter alia are all nodding sagaciously, thinking "Hmmm, that happens a lot, it must be true".

My greatest joy is 1) debating the clear fact that James Maybrick was Jack the Ripper and wrote the Victorian scrapbook, followed closely by 2) why Mike Barrett did not. My greatest fear in this whole inane pantomime is having to debate why someone else wrote the Victorian scrapbook.

As Caz says, whilst sharpening the switchblade through gritted teeth, you really do just make it too easy for me ...

[Iconoclast]

Hi RJ,

Credible along the lines of, if your going to look for a reason other than hoaxing, it's either for reference or to make a copy, so I'd go for using it as a comparison/reference for an old diary. The idea of a legitimate 'copy' is, well, it is what it is.
Like I say though, that's assuming you want to explore a possible non hoax motive. I think I'm right in saying Caz is fairly undecided on Mike's reasoning behind buying the little book. Personally, I think even if it was described to him, Barrett thought it would do the trick.

Ike - How have you got shoelaces? It's all velcro where I am.

We haven't even got shoes, Abe.

Which is a shame because - if we did - I'd hear the staccato dragging on the tiles of Observer's steps as he oleaginously sidled-up to my bed further down the ward to whisper more Barrett-derived inanities into my ear. He's put my recovery back about ten years, or so The Voices tell me.

He's ******* bonkers that lad, I'm telling you.

And that's coming from me. And I emphasise that.

[Iconoclast]

That's something I agree with you on 100% Ike. And I believe Oscar nominated screenwriter Bruce Robinson also agrees. All those who subscribe to the 'one wet Wednesday' view are entitled to their opinion. It's entirely wrong of course, but they are entitled to it.

Now then Ike - what do you make of Yabs' observation that a contemporaneous source puts several main players in a different place to where the Diary places them over the Xmas of 1888?

Owlly,

Just while I'm thinking on, I think you'll find the expression which has passed into Maybrick folklore (and was even quoted by Bruce Robinson in his We All Love Jack) is 'one wet weekend'. If I am right, it first appeared in the final paragraph of the first ever post in this, The Greatest Thread of All.

Not even Bongo Barrett could have knocked this one out in just the one day …

Crikey Ikey