One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[Iconoclast]

There once was a Geordie called Ike
Who ( THE REST OF THIS LIMERICK HAS BEEN REMOVED FOLLOWING LEGAL ADVICE)

Look, if it's all down to the quality of the limerick, Abe, the best one on this, The Greatest Thread of All, was incontrovertibly, unequivocally, undeniably the brilliant:

There once was a chap named Laurenz
Or Diego to most of his friends
He was typically mannish
But not the least Spanish
A scouser, a Maybrick - it ends!

They just don't write material like that anymore.

PS I looked-up the correct version from 11 years ago ...

Ike

[Iconoclast]

Wow - click on 'Last edited by Iconoclast; Today, 10:29 PM' and you'll get a really cool comparison between original post and edited post. How cool is that?

[Scott Nelson]

A lot of it came from "The Shop Girl."

[Al Bundy's Eyes]

Look, if it's all down to the quality of the limerick, Abe, the best one on this, The Greatest Thread of All, was incontrovertibly, unequivocally, undeniably the brilliant:

There once was a chap named Laurenz
Or Diego to most of his friends
He was typically mannish
But not the least Spanish
A scouser, a Maybrick - it ends!

They just don't write material like that anymore.

PS I looked-up the correct version from 11 years ago ...

Ike

There once was a chap named Laurenz Or did he really mean Florence?
"Diego's not James"
Lord Orsam complains
A Scouser? A Maybrick? What nonsense!

( May I take this opportunity to apologise for lowering the tone of this fine bastion of Ripperology to the base level of Limerick zingers. I promise not to do it again. The limericks that is, not the overall lowering of the tone )

[caz]

But we beat our heads against walls in these parts, waiting for the Big Indian with the sink. If you can look past the handwriting, the shenanigans by the Barretts...

If you can look past the handwriting...

Hmmm, yes, that is a problem, whoever one believes held the pen. How satisfied are you, on a scale of 1 to 10, that it was Mike's wife in early April 1992? Or are you having to 'look past the handwriting' in order to keep the Barretts in your tight little frame?

Come on, RJ old sport, give me something that will really make me chuckle.

And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Love,

The Great Cazby
X

[Iconoclast]

If you can look past the handwriting...

Hmmm, yes, that is a problem, whoever one believes held the pen. How satisfied are you, on a scale of 1 to 10, that it was Mike's wife in early April 1992?

Come on, RJ old sport, give me something that will really make me chuckle.

And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Love,

The Great Cazby
X

Well my confidence level is a big fat zero, Caz. Anne Graham was too savvy to write a 63-page confessional and not arse herself to replicate Maybrick's known (or believed) handwriting.

Ike

[caz]

Thanks, Caz, but it doesn't really change the point does it? (which I now see was made by Melvin Harris twenty-five years ago, and not by 'Lord Orsam,' though perhaps DB commented on it, too). von Roques' account of Florrie being left unattended in December (evidently at a social gathering that involved dancing) hardly suggests that Maybrick went to Manchester for Christmas 1888, unless one wants to grasp at straws.

You may be confusing me with someone else, RJ, because I don't need to believe that JM went to Manchester over the Christmas period or at any other time for that matter. Makes no difference to me at all.

And no, the Ryan/Fuller 'thing' was not lost on me. I think my argument was lost on you.

No one is disputing that Ryan created his volume by referencing primary sources. Hardly earth-shattering. That's what historians do. Keith Skinner has been making this same argument for 20+ years and it has never convinced me: Keith seems to be saying, as you are in the above, that if Ryan created 'The Poisoned Life' by referring to contemporary and archival sources, then the hoaxer could have done the same thing in order to have created the Maybrick hoax. Ergo, we see similarities in the phrasing.

Ah, so it was lost on you - totally.

Ryan referenced a primary source - Dr Fuller, testifying at Florie's trial in 1889 - but in his book he was paraphrasing, not using direct quotes. Now this bit is the clincher. If the Barretts knew, without consulting an earlier source, that the five words they read in Ryan: 'very little the matter with...' and chose for Mike's DAiry, would be the only five words to coincide exactly with the five words Fuller himself used in 1889, then they must have been psychic. 'Coincidences' like that only seem to happen in your world, RJ, but not in mine. If you don't appreciate the wildly improbable scenario of anyone copying verbatim from Ryan's own narrative, and by pure chance hitting on the five actual words Dr Fuller himself had used, I can't help you. Same goes for Anne using both sources, realising that Ryan had simply copied from Fuller without quoting him, and still copying the same five words into the diary, hoping nobody would smell a rat.

Put it this way. Am I supposed to believe that if two well-read Ripper researchers (pick any two, let us say Gary Barnett and Debra Arif, or Keith Skinner and David Barrat) sat down to create a 29 page diary of the Whitechapel Murders, there is going to be a perfect overlap of the 'facts' presented? That in no instance Keith is going to mention a verifiable 'fact' from all these sources that Lord Orsam doesn't also mention in his 29 page transcript? Or that Barnett will consult the same exact sources as Arif does, and never anything else?

I do see this, but I have to refer the honourable gentleman to my point above about the perils of a modern hoaxer copying several words verbatim into the diary, from a modern source, where the author has created their own narrative of historical events. How many times would you expect the Barretts to have tried this and got away with it, because the primary sources just happened to play ball by using exactly the same words or phrases? Once? Twice? Not at all? You have to accept they got away with it with Ryan and Fuller, or they consulted both and then made the mistake of not changing the words 'Sir Jim' used when recording the diagnosis.

And again, how could Barrett have known this, without conducting a careful analysis? You seem to be saying that Mike got lucky when he referred to Ryan.

Not really, RJ. Mike was contracted to help Shirley with her Maybrick research for much of 1992 and 1993. He claimed that he ate and drank that diary, day and night, poring over the words. You evidently don't doubt that, if you have him creating those words on his word 'prosser', using Ryan as his guide. But obviously my own interpretation is that he wanted to impress Shirley and understand what the diary was all about, so when she introduced him to Ryan's book, he'd have devoured it and absorbed everything that tied in with the diary's words.

SH on the blower: Mike, have you got Bernard Ryan's book? It's a really helpful Maybrick source.

MB: Never heard of it, Shirl. I'll ask at the library.

SH: Good idea, Mike. It'll give you something to get you out of the Sadd... er, get your teeth into. We need to focus now and any input from you will be much appreciated.

MB: Right you are, girl. Leave it with me.

What a trick Mike missed there, if he 'just made it up'.

SH on the blower: Mike, have you got Bernard Ryan's book? It's a really helpful Maybrick source.

MB: Of course I have, Shirley. Read it from cover to cover, er, shortly after Tony died. Picked up no end of stuff on Maybrick. I'm a great researcher, me.

SH: Splendid. Did you not make any notes? There's nothing in your typed up research notes to suggest you had consulted Ryan's book.

MB: Simple, girl. Anne hoovered up all my scribbled notes from Ryan, so that's why his book and my detailed notes don't appear in the typed up version and what have you. I've got it all in my head though, so just ask and I can give it out straight. Any time. And if I ever decide to claim I wrot the dairy myself, I can con some private investigator using the same information I got from Ryan.

SH: Double splendid.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Well my confidence level is a big fat zero, Caz. Anne Graham was too savvy to write a 63-page confessional and not arse herself to replicate Maybrick's known (or believed) handwriting.

Ike

And I'll wager even Mike was not dim enough to think Victorian diaries were like shell suits, sold on a 'one size fits all' basis.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Hi Erobitha,

The use of 'The [month]' is not interesting. It's perfectly common in British English. Caz has mentioned this, above. The Baroness meant 'The December' not 'The [10th of] December' or whatever, so you are right, the expression allows for plurality (though does not guarantee it).

For the record, I've never been that excited by the Baroness's revelation about James' absence in the last month of the year as he - if he were Jack - must have left Florrie unattended on many a weekend prior to Christmas 1888. Maybe the Baroness was unaware of those absences because they were shorter and less significant to Florrie so she didn't mention them to her mum?

Ironically, Bernard Ryan has JM travelling often to London in 1888, for 'a day or two' at a time 'on business', leaving Florie not only unattended, but no longer feeling sure just where he was or what he was doing.

Assuming Ryan wasn't 'just making it up', this does give the Barretts plenty of licence to have 'Sir Jim' coming and going as much as he pleased, with no bugger being able to tie him down without impeccable independent evidence.

I expect the real JM left Florie unattended in the December, when she needed help dragging the Christmas tree into the withdrawing room, or someone to put up the paper chains and rude shaped balloons, or post all the Christmas cards she had written - to everyone in her address book whose surname didn't begin with G - or certainly when the sprouts went on to boil, around 2nd of the month.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Hi Erobitha

I believe Alice Yapp found the letter, it apparently fell from Mrs Maybrick’s dress at a time when she fainted and was either passed to Edwin, or its contents revealed to him.

Just to fill some other gaps..

Edwin returns from America on the 25th of April.

26th, Edwin visits James at his office and dines with him that evening.

27th, Edwin sees James briefly at the Wirral races.

28th, James becomes unwell, Edwin sleeps at Battlecrease at James’s request.

29th, James is feeling better, Edwin leaves Battlecrease and returns the next day

30th, Edwin accompanies Florence to a fancy dress ball and stays at Battlecrease for a few days.

1st & 2nd of May, Edwin delivers lunch to James at his office at the request of Florence.

Edwin was then away from Battlecrease for the weekend until his return on the 6th by which time James was fully attached to his deathbed.

Hi Yabs, All,

Florie and Edwin were particularly close, and it would appear that Florie herself filled Edwin in on the changes to her social life over the festive season of 1888, while he had been in America.

I don't think there is a problem, therefore, with Edwin having learned the juicy details from Florie after his return in 1889. She may have felt she owed him that much.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Caz, I know you and Ike don't have much going on in your lives to the point where you sit on here jawing all day, nearly every day of the week, about possibly the least credible Ripper suspect imaginable, but I'm a busy guy. Out in the real world, people have genuinely immediate things to do with their time, I'm one of them. I know that Casebook and these little faux intellectual battles that you imagine you're involved in seem like life and death situations, but in reality, they're not.

This is a passing hobby for me, I've no books to write on the subject, and the prospect of Keith Skinner intimidating anyone is frankly cute, but you are an aging woman, so maybe you're confusing your crush on Keith with me, a former boxer and current premier league security person, being frightened of him. In case you didn't realize, Caz, as I've mentioned in the past, I work for Everton FC, I'm generally a busy guy and I travel a fair bit, which was why I didn't stay, not because I didn't fancy it, but because I'm up at all hours for work. I went along to honour the wishes of a friend I bought my ticket with, the plan being I'd have a natter and a pint and see how long I could stay for, I didn't expect the jawing to go on as long as it did and obviously my job in the real world is much more important to me than impressing middle-aged neckbeards with my Ripper knowledge. My offer for you, Keith or anyone, still stands, I'm a PM away, I'm a friendly guy, I'm in Liverpool, and if you, or Keith, were genuinely interested in having any kind of discussion should you happen to be about here any time soon, you'd be happy to take me up on the offer, but it's much easier to pretend that I, former boxer and current premier league security person, is somehow frightened of Keith bloody Skinner, lol.

Anyone here who finds themselves visiting Aigburth, feel free to hit me up, I know the best pubs to visit, or alternatively, we can grab a jar of ale in the local post office.

Blimey, I didn't want your life story, Mike! But thanks all the same. Now I'm intimidated - not.

I was actually joking about Keith Skinner being 'intimidating', but I realise I should have left the comedy to Scousers, they're simply the best.

And in case you didn't know, because you are not and never will be an ageing woman [I assume!], I am way too old to have crushes. I'm even too old for hot flushes. In fact I don't know how I'm still posting at my age. Must be the fact that my pension allows me the time and freedom you will have one day, young man. You might even learn in time that post offices don't, and never have, doubled up as pubs. Establishments known as post houses do, and traditionally did, serve up liquid refreshment.

You can lead a man to a post house, but you can't make him think.

Love,

Caz
X

[c.d.]

You can lead a man to a post house, but you can't make him think.

I got it. I got it. Good one, Caz.

c.d.

[caz]

If Mike and Anne genuinely came into possession of a genuinely old tome which could very well (conveniently and dramatically, like a piece of fiction, I might add) solve one of the biggest riddles in the annals of crime, then there'd be literally, and I mean literally, be no reason whatsoever for a series of ridiculous provenances.

If you discover an artefact of interest, unless you half-inched it from a museum or a prominent person's home, you need not give at least three different explanations for how you came into possession of it. That's the tell-tale sign of a hoax straight away that people (rubes) are only too willing to ignore because they want to be fooled, consciously or subconsciously, they allow themselves to make that first mistake.

You don't know my views very well, do you Mike? I'm more than happy with my own tell-tale signs of the diary being a hoax, thanks very much. I didn't need the Barretts to do the work for me. I just read the effing thing.

Provenance number one: Eddie [who half-inched the diary from a person's home on 9th March 1992 without that person's knowledge and without telling Mike Barrett] morphs into Tony, because Tony died the previous summer and is thus unable, reluctantly, to 'come out on's grave' to answer a series of questions about an "old book" he never saw and knew bugger all about.

Provenance number two: when Mike volunteers the ridiculous statement that he wrote the diary himself [which nobody believes at the time, for eye-wateringly obvious reasons], implying that he didn't get it from Tony after all, his estranged wife comes up with a rescue package, for herself and her daughter as much as for anyone else. Anne knows Mike didn't get the diary from Tony around May 1991, unless it took Mike ten months to walk back to Goldie Street with it from Fountains Road. Is that what they call a pub 'crawl' in Anfield? Whether you believe he got it from Battlecrease via Eddie, or from Orsam's awesome auction, the scrapbook would not have been in the Barretts' home before the March of 1992.

Provenance number three: Mike produces his affidavit on 5th January 1995 to explain what really happened and when.

And if you have plumped for number three - or should I say the almost unrecognisable version of number three, made up by someone desperate for you to join his funny little band of brothers, and put your faith in Bongo's Tales of a Liverpool Scally - you have my deepest sympathy.

It's not enough that the provenance of said "diary" has multiple, awful, unverifiable versions...

Ah, but provenance number one does have ten times more circumstantial evidence going for it, than Orsam's awful, woefully unsupportable claim to know what was going on behind the net curtains of Goldie Street between 31st March and 13th April 1992. You won't know about all the evidence right now, but it's thriving and getting stronger, while the 'circumstantial evidence' for Orsam's affi-David has been ailing in recent weeks and is now sick unto death.

When you've got an already dodgy diary, a red flag is the icing on the cake, and there's a few of them, but obviously, if you can ignore a dodgy provenance or three, you can ignore the odd red flag as well.

Like the little red diary, you mean, that was once the icing on Orsam's cake, but is now a sickly green, flowing down like MacArthur Park? Someone left his cake out in the rain, and I don't think he can take it, 'cause it took all of eleven days to bake it, from Bongo's self-raising forgery claims, and he'll never have that recipe again.

Now, Caz, you never really seem to explain your position regarding the diary, for some reason, but you always maintain it must be an older artefact merely because you cannot believe Barrett had anything to do with it. That, to me, and to anyone who is actually interested in solving anything in a logical manner, is plainly ridiculous, and it just shows why this entire case has so many ridiculous, crackpot "investigators" pulling out painters, princes, Indian military men, and everything in between as supposed suspects. There is no evidence that the diary is an old hoax, there is no viable suspect for having written it, why they'd bother to write it, or why, if it was an old artefact, that the Barretts would bother to pretend that they'd been behind it, then they hadn't, then it'd been in Anne's family, then it wasn't...etc.

If I can't believe Maybrick wrote it, and will never believe that the Barretts put a single word in it [where has Anne ever bothered to 'pretend' they'd been behind it?], then I'm pretty much stuffed, aren't I? I don't know why that should bother you, because it doesn't bother me in the least. It's what makes it an intriguing human puzzle as far as I'm concerned. An 'older' artefact for me would simply mean it existed as the diary before 31st March 1992, when Orsam will have you believe it suddenly sprang into Mike's hands from an auction held at O&L, and was home to some 125 pages [according to Mike's affidavit] of WWI photographs, followed by more than enough pristine, unused pages of just under A4 size - ideal for Anne to copy the text into, using her carefully practised disguised handwriting, and still have 17 blank pages to spare at the end, to represent Maybrick's inability to write any more after 3rd May 1889. How that works, when the extent of the original scrapbook was only 128 pages, I don't know. 48 pages cut out, followed by 63 pages of writing, followed by 17 unused pages. Something doesn't add up. Mike thought he was very clever, coming up with 125 pages out of the 128 being used for photographs - which would have been glued onto the pages.

If you find an antique book, you don't pretend you wrote it, you only admit to writing it if you did, indeed, write it, or know who did and can confidently pretend that it was yours. If you pretend you wrote it, and then you have a bust up with your partner in crime, I'd guess that there'd be a tussle, and the partner in crime would attempt to make up their own origin story, such as the one Anne gave about the book having been in her family for decades, which is exactly what happened.

So why do you think Mike admitted to writing this diary, if that's really what you believe he did? Where was the pressure on him to 'come clean' and damage the earning potential which you presumably believe was his sole motive for forging it in the first place? There are plenty of reasons Mike could have had for 'making up' his forgery claims, one after the other, at that low point in his life, but I have never seen a good explanation for him handing himself over on a plate as the forger if that's what he was. Do you have him down as a man of conscience, even while he was telling one lie after another, to anyone who would listen?

People who generally find genuinely antique artefacts don't go through the type of shenanigans that the Barretts went through, even if they're trying to make a few quid on it. It doesn't happen.

And how would Mike have known a 'genuinely antique' artefact from a box of kippers, when he first saw the "old book" and wanted to know what the hell Eddie [Tony] was playing at?

Another note, to Caz, your earlier suggestion that Maybrick's case isn't known in this city is absolutely fictitious, as I've already explained. In the period that the Barrett's came out with the "diary", the story of Sir Jim was indeed as known as it is today among people who are actually capable of knowing about it. There's a Maybrick mural in Aigburth Vale for a reason, he's a local person of interest who is regularly included in books about the city and its crimes and mysteries, it's as indented in the lore of the city as much as the Cameo murder and the Menlove Gardens murder, as much as the tales of Spring-Heeled Jack standing atop the spiral of SFX church. To suggest otherwise shows a distinct lack of knowledge about the city, almost as if you don't live here! lol.

So this Maybrick mural has been in Aigburth Vale since before the diary emerged, has it?

I can only go by the reactions I have had personally, from speaking to your wonderful people of Liverpool over the years, from 2002 onwards, and seeing how many - or how few - knew the Maybrick story in any shape or form, from Florie's trial for a murder I don't believe she committed, to Bongo's ongoing trial for a diary I don't believe he forged. One either has an interest in all one's local history, or one doesn't. It's not compulsory and it most certainly isn't universal. How many East Enders think we are all loonies for having an interest in the Whitechapel Murders of 1888? How many Liverpudlians could give you chapter and verse on whether they think Florie was guilty or innocent of murdering Jim, and why?

The Fabled Barretts of Goldie Street

The great Michael B,
he was no twit,
even quoted in Latin
- a little bit.

His wife with two hands
was nobody's fool,
she could write it in days
and get away with it all.

The Barretts between them,
The Knave and his Queen,
Were Jacks of all trades
'til Bongo came clean.

The DAiry he Wrot,
Never mind how.
Arise, Sir Michael
and take your bow.

So a salute to the Barretts,
please raise a glass,
to the two fabled forgers
who dunnit - my arse.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Hi Roger,

Here's a rather interesting aspect regarding the headstone and the Maybrick family vault. It also contained the remains of Edwin Maybrick which Ryan does not mention.

But Mike Barrett's research notes - supposedly from Autumn 1991 (I say 'supposedly' for my benefit I guess as I have shifted these days towards a Battlecrease House provenance on March 9 1992 for the scrapbook) - stated:

"‘Relevant facts connected with Maybrick’:
“Four brothers: William, Thomas, Edwin and Michael – Edwin is burried [sic] along with James and their mother and father at Anfield cemetry [sic].”

It is intriguing to wonder where Barrett collected that little gem. The obvious place was the cemetery itself - perhaps he really was a hoaxer and he meandered along there during his long research phase and discovered this fact (or he really did have the scrapbook in his possession in Autumn 1991 and meandered along for the same reasons)?

So he got everything he put into the scrapbook about the Maybricks from Ryan, but he had additional information about them which was not in Ryan. Intriguing.

Ultimately, his proximity to Anfield cemetery means that we will have to imply that that was how he uncovered that particular fact, but it is fascinating nevertheless.

Ike, Musing

Hi Ike,

I see RJ has not responded with an explanation of where Mike found the information that Edwin was buried along with James and their parents, if not from Ryan's book.

Another 'coincidence' is that on the page you mention, immediately beneath the heading: Facts on James Maybrick, Mike lists the information to be found on the Maybrick gravestone itself, without needing Ryan's book at all!

Born: October 24th 1838 - Died on 11th May 1889.

Father: William Maybrick - Born 15th April 1815. Died 28th of June 1870.

Mother: Susanna - Born September 1816. Died 1st May 1880.

Then comes the bit you quoted about the four brothers, including the fact that:

Edwin is 'burried' along with James and their mother and father at Anfield cemetery.

These notes were published back in September 2017, so I'm not sure why RJ appears to have ignored the implication - that Mike simply took the information from Maybrick's grave when he found it for the first time.

If Mike did claim to have read the information about James's parents in Ryan's book, then it doesn't tell us much, because he could have taken Shirley's advice and read it, and found that Ryan knew something he already knew from the grave itself.

Makes a change from claiming to know something from one's cradle.

There's a nice clear photo of the gravestone [before it got badly damaged] opposite page 257 of my 1969 hardback copy of Trevor Christie's Etched in Arsenic.

Love,

Caz
X

[Iconoclast]

There's a nice clear photo of the gravestone [before it got badly damaged] opposite page 257 of my 1969 hardback copy of Trevor Christie's Etched in Arsenic.X

Hi Caz,

Yes, I've got that same copy. I assume that you can't actually read the inscription? Certainly, I couldn't from my copy so I assume the same is true of yours. Maybe if someone has a clear copy they might post it for us all to see.

Cheers,

Ike