One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[rjpalmer]

If he WASN’T making it up, wouldn’t the hoaxer have made damn sure that he included enough detail that the reader would confidently accept the murder, once he found it?

The more I think it over, the more inconceivable it is that a hoaxer (whether 'old' or 'new') would include a GENUINE--but little-known--murder using such a vague description.

If he wanted the diary to seem real, or want to frame 'Sir Jim' for this crime, he would give enough detail that it would be unmistakable. He would have used a sledgehammer, not a feather duster.

Which suggests the Manchester murder was simply made up.

Why?

I think Barrett worried that having a Liverpool man kill London women would be too big of a stretch for some readers, so he used Manchester as a sort of 'stepping stone' to set the stage. Manchester is only twenty miles away, and this would introduce the idea of Maybrick committing his murders while on business trips.

[Al Bundy's Eyes]

The debate, non Maybrick, has often looked at wether the killer emerged as a fully fledged ripper or started out with lesser crimes, working up to murder and then mutilation, hence the inclusion of Millwood and Tabram, for example. So if creating a hoax, or what may have been a genuine attempt at fiction, the writer would likely have to cross that bridge too. But the Manchester murders are back story, not the main event, so don't need the level of detail. Or any detail as is thus far ascertained. This would apply to both a modern hoax or an old hoax.
For all the little coincidences, and the really good big ones, it's somewhat odd that no contender for the pre London killings have come to light.

[rjpalmer]

The debate, non Maybrick, has often looked at wether the killer emerged as a fully fledged ripper or started out with lesser crimes, working up to murder and then mutilation, hence the inclusion of Millwood and Tabram, for example. So if creating a hoax, or what may have been a genuine attempt at fiction, the writer would likely have to cross that bridge too.

But was there such a thing as a 'debate' about the Ripper in 1991-92 (or earlier if you believe in an old hoax)? It would had to have taken place either in print or at Camille Wolff's gatherings. Even the first Ripper journal, Ripperana, wasn't launched until 1992.

The first author I can recall that suggested or worried about earlier botched attacks was Phil Sugden, who discussed Annie Millbank and Ada Wilson. But his book was not published until 1994--two years after the Diary emerged.

If the hoaxer had been sophisticated, or if his suspect hadn't have been stationed in Liverpool, you'd have thought he could have done something with 'Fairy Fay' or Martha Tabram if he wanted this earlier 'bridge.'

Personally, I don't think the hoaxer had any great knowledge of the Whitechapel Murders. All the details are very basic. There are only about 35 Ripper 'facts' in all of the diary, and at least two of them aren't even 'facts.'

[caz]

Good afternoon, Caz.

I’ve been reading your latest posts about Horwich, British weather, Cottonopolis, unrecorded strangulation attacks, etc., with enjoyment, but also with increasing confusion…and alarm.

Here’s the issue I have.

On a fairly regular basis, you remind your readers that you do not believe the Diary is genuine—ie.written by James Maybrick. In your opinion it is a hoax, though evidently an ‘old’ hoax.

Then why are you so hell bent on the diary being accurate? Why can’t the Manchester murder simply be made up? Why is a hoax required to be based on true events?

Alarm, RJ? A bit dramatic isn't it? Your issue is that you don't read all my posts carefully enough. I have repeatedly said lately that when I refer to an 'old' hoax, I mean any date that doesn't depend on Bongo obtaining the scrapbook from an O&L auction for Anne to turn into the Maybrick diary by 13th April 1992. You know I don't buy for a single second Orsam's awesome auction on 31st March 1992, and I can't for the life of me grasp why you or anyone else would jump on this as the truth Bongo himself never told.

I have also repeatedly said - very recently in fact - that I don't think our diarist was motivated to produce a 100% historically accurate record of events in 'that London', any more than they were motivated to find any of JM's handwriting to copy. I certainly don't expect a hoax, whether typed on Bongo's word 'prosser' since 1990, or handwritten by anyone else before the double event of 9th March 1992, to be 100% historically accurate, and I don't recall claiming it is.

Isn’t the whole point of a hoax that it ISN’T a representation of reality?

Absolutely - the handwriting told me this donkey's years ago. I see the diary as a spoof, possibly by someone who knew about the watch and decided to write Jim's fictional account to accompany it. If both had been found together, and the "old book" had been read carefully by the finder, before flogging them off to separate buyers, they might have examined the watch carefully too, and joined the dots.

I can readily see why true believers like Erobitha or Ike would be impressed by the mysterious case in Horwich.

Did I say I was 'impressed' by this case, RJ? I thought I was merely responding to your spurious arguments about the weather, as if it mattered to you what the weather was like on the night of 14th April 1888, when nobody suggested Bongo was referring to that date anyway.

True; they are forced to apply a shoehorn, but it’s somewhat “doable.” They can argue, as Erobitha does, that the passage in the Diary is an encapsulation of a several day trip to ‘Cottonopolis’; that Maybrick DID find Manchester damp at some point during the trip, and that he later wormed his way up north to examine the local cotton mills, came across a drunken woman, and right there and then decided to start his ‘campaign’ by strangling her with her scarf before shoving her down a slippery ravine. By the time Sir Jim makes it back to Liverpool and writes about it in his perverse journal, his overriding memory is the ‘thrill’ of having ‘squeezed and squeezed,’ so the details of the unfortunate woman’s demise as recorded in the diary don’t necessarily need to match perfectly with what we read in the inquest reports.

I have no issue with this apart from the fact that 'Sir Jim' [or Bongo if you must] actually writes: 'There was no pleasure as I squeezed, I felt nothing.' Not particularly memorable then, and certainly not enjoyable, on that cold, damp night in Manchester in April. Just teasing.

How would it benefit an old hoaxer to give an account of a murder in such vague terms that the reader would have no hope of ever recognizing it? How would such an unrecognizable account of the Horwich murder benefit the verisimilitude of the hoax, or achieve any conceivable purpose?

I don't recognise this need for a hoaxer to derive some 'benefit' other than maybe personal satisfaction at the thought of keeing the finder guessing. As for my own position, I have also described this recently as leaving me 'stuffed', because the handwriting remains unidentified, and apparently unidentifiable, as far as named individuals go, with any tangible connection to the diary story.

If he WASN’T making it up, wouldn’t the hoaxer have made damn sure that he included enough detail that the reader would confidently accept the murder, once he found it?

I suppose it depends on how cryptic our hoaxer wanted to be, but you make a very reasonable point. IF - and it's an enormous one - erobitha has, incredibly, uncovered a case which the hoaxer had in mind and put there as a teaser, then it has taken a lot of effort since the diary's emergence for time to reveal it. And it almost certainly couldn't be confirmed in any case. So I'm wondering why you are so uncomfortable with people still looking. Of course it could have been 'made up', and most likely it was, but you can't blame people for being highly sceptical that Bongo was behind it.

“The bitch screamed so I threw her down the bank. Ha ha ha. How I enjoyed the sound of her head bouncing off the rocks! A whore in Horwich. How clever I am!"

In short, I don’t quite understand what you are attempting to argue.

I was attempting to argue that your attempts to demonstrate what the weather was like on the night of 14th April 1888 in the Manchester area, make absolutely no sense at all, in the context of every other argument you have ever made, and in the context of your own beliefs in Bongo as the hoaxer.

Going back briefly to Bongo's mythical attendance at the auction on 31st March 1992, I note that you have not yet addressed my point about the 125 pages of Mike's scrapbook, which supposedly housed a large collection of WWI photos. The original scrapbook only ran to 128 pages, and the photos had supposedly been glued onto the pages. So perhaps you could explain - preferably without consulting with Lord O and using his words this time - how you think that would have worked? Did Mike manage to remove every visible trace of 20th century glue from all the remaining pages, before they could be written on? The only staining of old glue Alec Voller found was on top of the diary ink at one point. And what about any impressions left on the surviving pages by the photos themselves?

Any ideas, which don't involve Bongo being fed ideas along with the Scotch?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

The more I think it over, the more inconceivable it is that a hoaxer (whether 'old' or 'new') would include a GENUINE--but little-known--murder using such a vague description.

If he wanted the diary to seem real, or want to frame 'Sir Jim' for this crime, he would give enough detail that it would be unmistakable. He would have used a sledgehammer, not a feather duster.

Which suggests the Manchester murder was simply made up.

Why?

I think Barrett worried that having a Liverpool man kill London women would be too big of a stretch for some readers, so he used Manchester as a sort of 'stepping stone' to set the stage. Manchester is only twenty miles away, and this would introduce the idea of Maybrick committing his murders while on business trips.

Ah, that's better. Normal font! How hard can it be, RJ, to write all your posts this way?

But here's the thing, RJ. You may be assuming too much. You assume the author did want the diary to seem real, and did want to frame their fictional, over-the-top 'Sir Jim' for the 5 main Whitechapel Murders, even though there was no attempt to try and make the handwriting resemble that of the real JM.

Have you given up on Ryan as Bongo's main Maybrick source? I wouldn't blame you, considering there is pretty much zero chance of picking five words at random from Ryan's narrative, for 'Sir Jim' to record in his diary, and ending up with a direct quote from the primary source concerned.

But I wondered, because at the very top of page 29 of my paperback, we learn that in 1888 the real James would travel often to London for a day or two 'on business' [Ryan's own quote marks there], but Florie could no longer feel sure of just where he was or what he was doing.

Surely that was a gift sent from heaven for Bongo, which would have negated the need for any such convoluted plot device as sending 'Sir Jim' off to Manchester as a stepping stone between Whitechapel Liverpool and Whitechapel London. And you can see the need negated by Bongo himself, on the very first page of his DAiry: '...I finally decided London it shall be. And why not, is it not an ideal location? Indeed do I not frequently visit the Capital and indeed do I not have legitimate reason for doing so.' [Notice he doesn't copy verbatim from Ryan's paraphrasing at this early stage.]

Mind you, had Bongo taken just a wee bit more care, he'd have cottoned on to the reference to JM's handwriting on page 25, when Mr Cottonopolis was working in Norfolk Virginia: 'Once more he returned to his desk to write his own correspondence by hand...'

Now I can't speak for anyone else, but if I was stuck in Liverpool, and had possibly never even been south of Watford, never mind across the pond, and wanted to write a DAiry that would 'seem real' and would frame 'Sir Jim' for the ripper murders down in "that London", I think I might be just a tad worried that Ryan knew what he was talking about and may have seen examples of JM's daily handwritten correspondence, or at least knew of their existence.

But no, Bongo doesn't give a flying feck - and more to the point, neither does Mrs. Bongo.

Love,

Caz
X

[Iconoclast]

Now I can't speak for anyone else, but if I was stuck in Liverpool, and had possibly never even been south of Watford, never mind across the pond, and wanted to write a DAiry that would 'seem real' and would frame 'Sir Jim' for the ripper murders down in "that London", I think I might be just a tad worried that Ryan knew what he was talking about and may have seen examples of JM's daily handwritten correspondence, or at least knew of their existence.

But no, Bongo doesn't give a flying feck - and more to the point, neither does Mrs. Bongo.

Hmmm … I think we need to broaden our thinking, guys. I see it more like this:

GOLDIE STREET – MONDAY APRIL 13TH 1992 - MORNING

MIKE BARRETT IS LOOKING AT GARDENING MAGAZINES TO SEE HOW MUCH GREENHOUSES COST. HE WEARS A NEW SUIT. THE DIARY WITH BLOTTING PAPER BETWEEN EACH PAGE IS WRAPPED IN BROWN PAPER IN HIS BRIEFCASE READY TO GO DOWN TO LONDON

ANNE BARRETT SITS QUIETLY READING BERNARD RYAN’S ‘THE POISONED LIFE OF MRS MAYBRICK’

IT IS THE FIRST DAY OF THE SCHOOL EASTER HOLIDAYS. UPSTAIRS THEIR TEN YEAR OLD DAUGHTER, CAROLINE, CAN BE HEARD PLAYING HER BUGLE ACCOMPANIED BY HER FRIENDS WHO HAVE ALL BROUGHT THEIR MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS ALONG.

MIKE: “Bloody racket.”

ANNE: “Michael. On page 96 of Ryan’s book it says that James Maybrick’s Will was written in a rather shaky hand on blue paper.”

MIKE: “Here’s one which costs £49.99. We’ll be able to afford that now girl. I’ve written a best seller and..."

ANNE: “It’s just that whoever was inhabiting me when I wrote the diary I don’t think she had a shaky hand.”

MIKE: “Oh sugar lumps.”

ANNE: “Don’t worry Michael. Just make sure you don’t mention ‘The Poisoned Life of Mrs Maybrick’. Pretend you’ve never heard of Bernard Ryan’s book.”

MIKE: “Good thinking girl.”

ANNE: "Now, haven't you got a train to catch?"

Ike

[rjpalmer]

Going back briefly to Bongo's mythical attendance at the auction on 31st March 1992, I note that you have not yet addressed my point about the 125 pages of Mike's scrapbook, which supposedly housed a large collection of WWI photos. The original scrapbook only ran to 128 pages, and the photos had supposedly been glued onto the pages. So perhaps you could explain - preferably without consulting with Lord O and using his words this time - how you think that would have worked? Did Mike manage to remove every visible trace of 20th century glue from all the remaining pages, before they could be written on?

Does this strange observation really require an answer?

Barrett was drinking heavily. He wasn’t always the greatest at articulating his thoughts.

Since Barrett elsewhere states that he removed the unusable pages from the ledger with a Stanley knife, I would have thought that it would have been patently obvious to any sentient being that Mike meant that it was only those missing pages that contained photographs. I don’t care whether it was 50 or 150.

Now I can't speak for anyone else, but if I was stuck in Liverpool, and had possibly never even been south of Watford, never mind across the pond, and wanted to write a DAiry that would 'seem real' and would frame 'Sir Jim' for the ripper murders down in "that London", I think I might be just a tad worried that Ryan knew what he was talking about and may have seen examples of JM's daily handwritten correspondence, or at least knew of their existence.

But no, Bongo doesn't give a flying feck - and more to the point, neither does Mrs. Bongo.

Nor should they have.

The mistake you are making, Caz, is a common one. You are suggesting that Barrett was creating a forgery. He wasn’t; he was creating a hoax, and the standards of a hoax are much lower.

But why listen to me? Listen to Barrett himself.


“I told my wife Anne Barrett, I said, "Anne I'll write a best seller here, we can't fail.”


Note: bestseller. Not a forgery to fool the experts, nor to sell to a gullible collector, but a literary hoax to publish.

A hoax doesn't need to be good or even plausible: it only needs to be titillating and/or sensational. [see Von Daniken's Chariots of the Gods, PT Barnum's The Fiji Mermaid; the 'Autopsy of an Alien' documentary, The Cardiff Giant, etc.]

All the hoaxer needs is a promoter to realize the commercial possibilities (in this case, Robert Smith) and a curious public willing to dole out their shekels.

It’s the idea that matters. Flaws are fine. If the document needed to be flawless or even plausible, it never would have been published. As it turned out, two panels of experts gave it a thumb's down, as did the court system, who allowed the Sunday Times out of their non-disclosure agreement on the grounds that the public was going to be fleeced.

The diary was published anyway. So how good did it really need to be?

In other words, Bongo didn't need to fool the Kenneth Rendells, or the Melvin Harrises, or even the Caroline Browns of the world.

He only needed to fool a few hundred Iconoclasts.

[rjpalmer]

Hello again, Caz.

What do you make of the following? From Martin Howells interview with Mike Barrett in September 1993:


MB: At that stage I didn’t and what happened was I kept on looking throughout the library for Jack the Ripper, Jack the Ripper, Jack the Ripper. I was looking in all the books, Jack the Ripper, Jack the Ripper. Well the opening page of the diary has got ‘Whitechapel Liverpool Whitechapel London’, so I thought to myself “hang on a minute Mike stop,” but this is after many months – I emphasise many months. Stop looking at Jack the Ripper and start looking at Liverpool murders. Right and I got a book out by Richard Whittington Egan. Right, and in that book, its got quite a lot of short stories, short stories, just very small short stories – Springheel Jack and everything else what have you, and I come across Florence Maybrick, the murder, right, I think it was called Poison and Motive[?] if I’m not mistaken, and I come across that and then I come across that and I found Battlecrease House, which is very important – Battlecrease House. I suddenly realised Battlecrease House is in the diary. So consequently it had to be. So instead of looking for the Ripper I went all the way for James Maybrick, and this is what started to convince me.

MH: Did you ever show any of these books to Tony Devereux?

MB: No. Well Tony Devereux was dead.

MH: Yeah. It’s just that one of the daughters has apparently said that in fact she remembers that book Murder Mayhem and Mystery being lent to the younger daughter. Tony Devereux’s.

MB: Well which daughter? Sorry.

MH: The younger one. I don’t know the names. In other words that the book that you had which was your book.

MB: Are you trying to imply that Tony wrote it?

MH: No.

MB: Quite honestly, I don’t think that he had the capability of writing it. I’m not being disrespectful to a friend.

MH: No, you didn’t give the book to Tony Devereux to read when you were investigating it?

MB: Not to my knowledge. No.

Barrett denies lending the book to Devereux. He pretends to know nothing about it.

Meanwhile, less than a month later, October 1993, Scotland Yard visits Janet Devereux and retrieves the book. She informs them that she received the book from her father (apparently in the summer of 1991--before August, when Tony died) who informed her that it was Bongo's--ie., Mike Barrett's.

There is no credible reason to doubt her account.

Scotland Yard then visits Barrett and he DENIES having lent the book to Devereux. He admits ownership but tells them he doesn't remember who he lent it to....despite the fact that Howells had already quizzed Mike about the matter less than a month earlier.

Setting aside the fact that Howells had inadvertently let the cat out of the bag in his interview with Barrett, how can this be anything other than a lie on Mike's part??

Are we supposed to believe Barrett's word over the word of Tony Devereux's two daughters (who had no motive to lie), and the physical evidence of Janet's possession of the book?

The question I would pose to you (and even to Lord Orsam) is why is Barrett so eager to disown and deny Tony Devereux's possession of this book?

As far as Mike's phony provenance story goes, this really shouldn't have bothered him, should it? Why not just say "Yes. Tony gave me the Diary. I studied it. I eventually found a reference to Maybrick in Tales of Liverpool. I even showed Tony the book, but he didn't have any answers for me. Hell, I think the book may still be at his house." No harm, no foul.

Instead, Barrett's knee-jerk reaction is to deny everything. Suddenly, he doesn't want the connection to Devereux.

And this was at a time when Barrett was still trying to convince everyone that the Diary was real.

My belief is that this places the hoax somehow in Devereux's hands. On some level, he was involved, and this is why Barrett lied about it.

It also shows that Barrett and Devereux discussed the Diary before August 1991, which eliminates the Battlecrease provenance from consideration, not that it ever amounted to much.


This will be my last post until I compile some relevant data, which may take a fair amount of time. Ciao.

[Iconoclast]

... which eliminates the Battlecrease provenance from consideration, not that it ever amounted to much.

Roger,

Not a bad post by your standards, but why'd you have to bespoil it so badly with this silly claim?

The Battlecrease provenance may not turn out to be correct (though the evidence is somewhat overwhelming!) but you make a fool of yourself making statements like "not that it ever amounted to much".

Oh, I wish that pesky argument would go away. Tell you what, I'll just say it doesn't amount to much. That'll fool the idiots on the Casebook.

I expect so much more of you, Roger.

Ike
Disappointed

[caz]

I expect so much more of you, Roger.

I don't, Ike. Not these days.

I used to think Roger could think for himself, but now it's like he gets all the words from someone who has learned to throw his voice. Honestly, it's like bleedin' Ray Alan and Lord Charles all over again.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Does this strange observation really require an answer?

Barrett was drinking heavily. He wasn’t always the greatest at articulating his thoughts.

Since Barrett elsewhere states that he removed the unusable pages from the ledger with a Stanley knife, I would have thought that it would have been patently obvious to any sentient being that Mike meant that it was only those missing pages that contained photographs. I don’t care whether it was 50 or 150.

No, RJ, I can see you don't care. You don't care if Mike was off his head or stone cold sober when dictating his detailed affidavid to Alan Gray and swearing it at the solicitor's office. You couldn't give a flying toss, could you, if Mike was stone cold sober or off his head when he said he'd removed the much smaller number of unusable pages with a Stanley knife. It's all the same to you. If he'd said he removed the pages with Stanley Dangar, while Anne stood by with a kidney ready to drop on the "old book", you wouldn't turn a hair, would you? You'll always be able to get a reason out of Lord O to explain why Mike was appearing to lie one minute, contradict himself the next, or just not 'the greatest at articulating his thoughts', while still telling the basic truth that he was involved with Anne, Tony and Billy in creating his DAiry. And you had the cheek to claim that psychology has nothing to do with your reasoning.

Nor should they have.

The mistake you are making, Caz, is a common one. You are suggesting that Barrett was creating a forgery. He wasn’t; he was creating a hoax, and the standards of a hoax are much lower.

Ah, but I thought you believed it was Anne whose handwriting appears in Mike's DAiry. So she thought to herself, well it really doesn't matter what the handwriting looks like, or even if it can be identified by a professional document examiner as my own. It's obviously not a forgery [as I have said myself, over and over and over again on these threads, RJ, but will anybody listen? Most people still refer to it as one, and to Bongo as the forger], but a harmless hoax, where the standards are much lower, so even if Mike goes on to earn thousands of pounds from it, we'll just get a slap on the wrist and we can have a jolly good laugh about it in years to come with our daughter Caroline, and even write another bestseller: 'Hoaxing For Dummies'. That'll learn 'em.

But why listen to me?

I'm fast beginning to wonder.

Listen to Barrett himself.

Gawd, do I have to?

I told my wife Anne Barrett, I said, "Anne I'll write a best seller here, we can't fail.

To be fair, if we ignore the 'we', as you ignore so many other things Mike said, he did write a bestseller - with Shirley - over 1992 and 1993. That was his main claim to fame right up until his dying day. He knew he could use the "old book", that cost him £25 [not the tiny 1891 diary that cost the same amount, but had no story in it and disappointingly no pictures either], to tempt a publisher into giving him a book deal. It worked like a charm without him having to make up a single piece of Maybrick or Jack the Ripper information. It was all there, already in Eddie's "old book".

Note: bestseller. Not a forgery to fool the experts, nor to sell to a gullible collector, but a literary hoax to publish.

Indeed, but Mike didn't know what the hell he had. He let the 'experts' decide whether it was a literary hoax or possibly genuine. I think he'd have died of shock if anyone had read it in those early days and accused him of creating it himself.

A hoax doesn't need to be good or even plausible: it only needs to be titillating and/or sensational. [see Von Daniken's Chariots of the Gods, PT Barnum's The Fiji Mermaid; the 'Autopsy of an Alien' documentary, The Cardiff Giant, etc.]

All the hoaxer needs is a promoter to realize the commercial possibilities (in this case, Robert Smith) and a curious public willing to dole out their shekels.

Not quite sure where you want to go with this one. Did Mike himself ever claim this was the Barretts' intention all along? To produce something that was neither good nor plausible, but titillating [really??] and/or sensational? In other words, no big deal, if it merely appealed to the book-buying, library-using public, willing to pay a few pounds or spend a few hours to satisfy their curiosity? Melvin Harris will be turning in his grave along with his period oboes, to hear you trivialise the offence in this way.

It’s the idea that matters. Flaws are fine. If the document needed to be flawless or even plausible, it never would have been published. As it turned out, two panels of experts gave it a thumb's down, as did the court system, who allowed the Sunday Times out of their non-disclosure agreement on the grounds that the public was going to be fleeced.

The diary was published anyway. So how good did it really need to be?

In other words, Bongo didn't need to fool the Kenneth Rendells, or the Melvin Harrises, or even the Caroline Browns of the world.

He only needed to fool a few hundred Iconoclasts.

Neat. No, Bongo didn't need to fool anyone. He just had to open his mouth, make an awful lot of things up about being the world's greatest forger, and reel 'em into his world.

You can stay in Bongo's World, RJ, and I wish you joy. I'll have none of it.

The only hoax that lad pulled off began in late June 1994 and is still fooling you today.

Love,

Caz
X

[rjpalmer]

I don't, Ike. Not these days.

I used to think Roger could think for himself, but now it's like he gets all the words from someone who has learned to throw his voice. Honestly, it's like bleedin' Ray Alan and Lord Charles all over again.

You live in La-La-Land, Caz.

I am not in 'consultation' or communication with anyone in Diary World, pro or con; it's just your paranoia. The Committee for Integrity, or whatever its name was, disbanded many many years ago.

In other words, there is no secret cabal of anti-Diarists exchanging emails and meeting down at the David Hume Club on Saturday nights, thinking of clever ways to slur the brilliant and trustworthy works of Edwin Woodhall and Donald McCormick (see Society's Pillar for details on this barmy accusation). Just several disinterested parties that have independently come to the same conclusion that nearly everyone in the mainstream has: that the diary is a modern hoax, created with Barrett's involvement.

If I occasion refer to information supplied by David B on his website, it is merely because I find his arguments more rational than your own. Sorry to disappoint.

Now back to work.

[rjpalmer]

Ah, but I thought you believed it was Anne whose handwriting appears in Mike's DAiry.

Did I say that? It's a possibility, but I'm not the one who said it. I'm starting to think that David B. should be paying rent for so obviously living inside your head.

[caz]

Hello again, Caz.

What do you make of the following? From Martin Howells interview with Mike Barrett in September 1993:

I know it well, RJ.

MH: No, you didn’t give the book to Tony Devereux to read when you were investigating it?

MB: Not to my knowledge. No.

Barrett denies lending the book to Devereux. He pretends to know nothing about it.

Words have meaning, and Martin asked Mike if he gave RWE's book to Tony Devereux to read when he [Mike] was investigating the diary.

Mike had already told Martin that Tony was dead when he [Mike] began investigating the diary. Mike said it was 'many months' after that, when he got RWE's book and found Battlecrease. He didn't need to deny lending that copy to Tony, because he'd been dead 'many months' before Mike said he even began to look at Liverpool murders. He seemed to have no memory of having given Tony a copy of the same book to read, many months before his fatal heart attack in August 1991. In the seventeen years since we covered what we knew about the Tales of Liverpool story in Ripper Diary, new information has emerged to show that it was actually about January 1991 when Tony's daughter borrowed the book from him and was told to return it "on the weekend" as it belonged to Bongo. Seven months' worth of weekends would go by, without it being returned to Tony, and without Bongo asking for it back, and then Tony died. Is it such a stretch to believe that Bongo had forgotten all about it long before then? He appeared clueless as to why Martin was mentioning his book in connection with one of Tony's daughters.

The question I would pose to you (and even to Lord Orsam) is why is Barrett so eager to disown and deny Tony Devereux's possession of this book?

So eager, RJ? Without actually hearing Mike's take on it, I'm not sure how you can discern an emotion such as eagerness, or even conclude that his denial was an outright lie, and not based on his genuine confusion over two copies of the same book - one he simply didn't remember lending to Tony many months before he died, and the other which he said he didn't get until many months after Tony died, when he was trying to identify the diary's author.

As far as Mike's phony provenance story goes, this really shouldn't have bothered him, should it? Why not just say "Yes. Tony gave me the Diary. I studied it. I eventually found a reference to Maybrick in Tales of Liverpool. I even showed Tony the book, but he didn't have any answers for me. Hell, I think the book may still be at his house." No harm, no foul.

Because he was genuinely baffled by the questions, and knew Tony and his daughters had bugger all to do with the diary? If Mike found RWE's book, shortly after seeing the diary for the first time, on 9th March 1992, and from it made the Battlecrease/Maybrick connection all by himself, and almost had to be scraped off the ceiling, he might have found it rather hard, when suddenly confronted with the suggestion that he had lent this same book to the late Tony Devereux more than a year before, to incorporate it craftily into his phony provenance in the way you describe. If Mike had remembered everything with the clarity you so generously allow him, then yes, he might have 'just' said what you imagine he could easily have said. Unfortunately, real people living real lives tend not to do or say what you might expect them to, in any given situation, and without the benefit of listening to all the nuances in a conversation it can be a fool's errand to think you can put yourself in their place and decide when they might be lying and about what. We both accept that Mike failed to tell the truth about how, when and where he acquired the diary, whenever he opened his mouth or dictated a letter or affidavit. He never once gave a truthful collective answer to all three questions. You can believe he was merely confused by the booze, or just wasn't the greatest at articulating his thoughts, when you want to believe him, and you can believe he was lying when you don't - if that makes you happy. But that has nothing to do with a careful, objective examination of all the evidence, context and chronology, and everything to do with what you, personally, prefer to believe or disbelieve.

Instead, Barrett's knee-jerk reaction is to deny everything. Suddenly, he doesn't want the connection to Devereux.

No, he simply can't see this particular connection to Devereux, because his 'dead mate' provenance was never part of the true story. Mike 'made it up'. Sound familiar? Again, you interpret his reaction as 'knee-jerk' because it suits your own version of the story. You evidently believe Tony was also involved in some way with your Barrett hoax, purely on Mike's say-so, even though you don't think RWE's book played any part in its creation - which, forgive me, sounds just a little bit bonkers. So many times lately I have had to suppress a fit of the giggles when reading this thread, in case my furloughed better half thinks I'm having too much fun without him.

My belief is that this places the hoax somehow in Devereux's hands. On some level, he was involved, and this is why Barrett lied about it.

Ah, and here it is. And I suppose Devereux also agreed to peg it unexpectedly, to give his closest friends a phony provenance they could use the following March, after alerting a literary agent to the diary, which Mike hadn't yet been able to obtain, until Martin Earl helpfully located a tiny one for 1891, which Mike thought would be just the ticket.

It also shows that Barrett and Devereux discussed the Diary before August 1991, which eliminates the Battlecrease provenance from consideration, not that it ever amounted to much.

Ha ha. It 'shows' no such thing. All it shows is that Mike lent Tony a very popular little Liverpool book to read, while he was housebound and unable to go for a pint in the Saddle.

What it does show is that you actually appear to believe that someone who drank heavily; wasn't the greatest at articulating his thoughts; couldn't spell and had serious difficulties whenever trying to put pen to paper; lied compulsively; and ordered a tiny 1891 diary, intending it for the Maybrick diary, not only created it, but managed to get Anne, Anne's father and Tony Devereux to help him make it a bestseller.

This will be my last post until I compile some relevant data, which may take a fair amount of time. Ciao.

Blimey, and there was I, thinking you had already wasted such a colossal amount of time and effort on this hoax that you had no intention of spending a moment longer on it, let alone 'a fair amount of time' to compile some data, which would be for others to examine and judge the relevance. You haven't been doing too well lately on that score, have you?

Love,

Caz
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[caz]

You live in La-La-Land, Caz.

I am not in 'consultation' or communication with anyone in Diary World, pro or con; it's just your paranoia. The Committee for Integrity, or whatever its name was, disbanded many many years ago.

In other words, there is no secret cabal of anti-Diarists exchanging emails and meeting down at the David Hume Club on Saturday nights, thinking of clever ways to slur the brilliant and trustworthy works of Edwin Woodhall and Donald McCormick (see Society's Pillar for details on this barmy accusation). Just several disinterested parties that have independently come to the same conclusion that nearly everyone in the mainstream has: that the diary is a modern hoax, created with Barrett's involvement.

If I occasion refer to information supplied by David B on his website, it is merely because I find his arguments more rational than your own. Sorry to disappoint.

Now back to work.

It's the same hymn sheet though.

And hymn sheets speak to me of religion.

I'm out.

Love,

Caz
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