One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[MrBarnett]

Carrot Picking?

This one’s a wind-up, surely.

[Yabs]

Carrot Picking?

This one’s a wind-up, surely.

Hi Mr B

Of course you will find references to Picking carrots, I could go to the supermarket now and pick or choose which carrots I want.
it’s the term “freshly picked carrots” that hits the ear wrong and wasn’t used often, as shown by the Ngram.
Freshly picked is a term commonly reserved for things like berries which once picked last only 2-3 days, not root vegetables which last weeks or even months.
Other terms would be more common and do appear earlier than 1948
I completely accept that people would and could have used that term in 1888 though.

But with regards to the Ngrams accuracy, those three words are a completely different kettle of carrots than the two word phrase Bumbling Buffoon

[caz]

As for Outhwaite and Litherland, Alan Gray tried to gain access to their books, but was turned away.

That's not quite true, is it? Gray told Mike in November 1994, while they stood outside O&L, that to get them to check their records it all had to be done professionally, but Mike kept giving him different dates for the auction - including 1987 and 1990 - and at one point claimed it was Anne, alone, who attended the auction and bought the scrapbook. Gray asked Mike how he found out that a Victorian journal was for sale and Mike, being typically evasive, replied: "Sheer bloody luck."

By the following April, in another recorded conversation between the comedy duo, Gray tells Mike he has "checked and worried O&L out of existence – checking this date and that date – nothing". Mike said it was Lot 53 – Gray says "...after giving me Lot 112 wasn't it? There wasn't a Lot 53 on the day in question".

What the 'day in question' was I couldn't tell you. But I very much doubt it was any day in 1992 - or presumably Gray should have struck pay dirt, given the detailed description of the WWI photo album and compass in Mike's January 5th affidavit, which Mr Litherland assured us would have been itemised separately in the relevant catalogue, and not bunged in with miscellaneous items.

When the firm later checked their books at the request of Shirley Harrison, they checked an illogical span of dates inconsistent with a careful analysis of Barrett's confession.

That's not quite true either, is it? When Shirley checked with O&L for the second time, the same day she first had sight of Mike's detailed claims from January 1995, she went by the date Mike gave for the auction, which was early 1990. He had dated everything: the purchase of the red diary, the photo album, the pen, the nibs, the ink and indeed the creation of the diary itself, including the 11 days Anne took to write it into the scrapbook, back to 1990, before Tony Devereux died, and then had Tony die a year too early. With the most careful analysis, Shirley could not have made much more sense of Mike's dates than Gray had two years previously. Even if she was aware that there was hard evidence that Anne had paid by cheque for a red pocket diary for the year 1891, in May 1992, what was she meant to make of that, without knowing it had been requested, ordered and delivered to Mike in March 1992, just a few days before she saw the Maybrick diary for the first time? Even with that knowledge, I can't see it occurring to Shirley that the album might have been obtained, as Mike claimed, after the 1891 diary. It would have made no sense to her, and we don't know how much she may have learned about the physical diary in the run up to seeing it on 13th April 1992. If she knew for certain that Mike had it before the end of March, because he had described it over the phone to Doreen, it would be game over for Orsam's awesome auction.

By the time anyone noticed, whatever evidence may have existed had been pulped for all eternity.

You wish that evidence had existed. You have to believe it, so you do believe it. Isn't faith wonderful?

Are you still going to blame Alan Gray for Mike's 1990 dates?

Are you still going to blame Shirley for the blunders made by these two clowns?

Of course you are. Silly questions.

[Iconoclast]

I don't usually enter Diary threads, but berries, hops and things that grow on trees and shrubs can be picked. Players for sport teams or dockers in the Victorian East End could be picked. Root vegetables, by are dug up. Any pre-digital world that "grows it own" should be fully aware of how factually silly the phrase, "freshly picked carrots" is.

Pick:
[transitive] (rather informal) to choose somebody/something from a group of people or things
O.E.D.

I don't follow the logic of why such a simple phrase ('freshly picked carrots') should be so utterly implausible to you, but the hard facts are that someone very much in the pre-digital world (whether that was 1888 or 1992 or any given year in between) did actually use that term in the Maybrick diary.

According to The Google Ngrams Theory, it was impossible for James Maybrick (or indeed anyone else) to ever ever ever ever ever ever ever use that three word phrase in speech, writing, or type prior to the 1948 event horizon.

You evidently subscribe to this view (judging from your comments above), but I'm not sure there'd be a long queue to agree with you.

Market stall person: "Freshly dug-up carrots. Get your lovely freshly dug-up carrots here!"

By the way, offering the OED definition of 'pick' is a tad on the patronising side for what appears to be a mainly-English-speaking audience here on the Casebook. I suspect you cited it in order to show how easy it is to preclude any possibility that fresh carrots could have been 'picked' in 1888 by clarifying its modern definition but citing the OED for a word that has been in the English language about as long as English has is probably proving very little indeed.

[Iconoclast]

it's the term "freshly picked carrots" that hits the ear wrong

It may hit the 'ear wrong' to you in 2021, but is that some established benchmark of irreducible truth?

and wasn’t used often, as shown by the Ngram.

Please don't slip in logical inconsistencies in order to advance a position: the absence of this term in Ngrams - if you follow the logic pursued elsewhere on this site on this issue - means that that term could not ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever be used before 1948 in speech, writing, or type. Is that honestly what you're saying? If it is, then you can't have it both ways and the use of Ngrams for 'one off instance', etc., needs to be stopped immediately.

Freshly picked is a term commonly reserved for things like berries which once picked last only 2-3 days, not root vegetables which last weeks or even months.

And you know that for a fact or simply for a rather convenient opinion, and even if it were true would that categorically preclude the possibility that James Maybrick wrote it in 1888?

But with regards to the Ngrams accuracy, those three words are a completely different kettle of carrots than the two word phrase Bumbling Buffoon

I think you are attempting to have it both ways twice in one post?

[caz]

I recently pointed out that it was rather strange for people to theorize how likely it would have been for Maybrick to own the collected works of Dick Crashaw, when the diary wasn't in his handwriting. I thought it a fair point, but I was chastised for my lack of objectivity.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't the true Barrett believers the ones who typically lined up to air their views on how likely it would have been for Maybrick to have ever heard of Crashaw, never mind read any of his Catholics-only verse? It seemed not to occur to them that their efforts were entirely pointless if the diary couldn't have been penned by Maybrick anyway, or if Mike's amazing library find couldn't have happened.

Surely the point is that, for those of us who consider it extremely likely that the diary existed before Mike first clapped his eyes on it, it's then a case of which factors may have prompted the author to pick a quote from Crashaw for 'Sir Jim' to write down at that particular point in the diary.

[Yabs]

Please don't slip in logical inconsistencies in order to advance a position: the absence of this term in Ngrams - if you follow the logic pursued elsewhere on this site on this issue - means that that term could not ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever be used before 1948 in speech, writing, or type. Is that honestly what you're saying? If it is, then you can't have it both ways and the use of Ngrams for 'one off instance', etc., needs to be stopped immediately.

Hi Ike

Of course I’m not saying that, I’ve stated twice that I accept it was used back then, you must have read that when editing my post for your reply.
I personally never thought of Ngrams as anything other than a good search indicator for a particular medium, in this case, books. But certainly not the be all and end all.
We also have other mediums, millions of newspaper entires etc.
I would however, also expect a more common phrase like one-off or Bumbling buffoon to appear in an Ngram book search than “freshly picked carrots”

[Iconoclast]

Hi Ike

Of course I’m not saying that, I’ve stated twice that I accept it was used back then, you must have read that when editing my post for your reply.
I personally never thought of Ngrams as anything other than a good search indicator for a particular medium, in this case, books. But certainly not the be all and end all.
We also have other mediums, millions of newspaper entires etc.
I would however, also expect a more common phrase like one-off or Bumbling buffoon to appear in an Ngram book search than “freshly picked carrots”

Of course I saw that in your post ("I completely accept that people would and could have used that term in 1888 though") but your post was ambiguous on this point and I read it that you were acknowledging that 'picked carrots' had been used in 1888 as that was the term MrBarnett had cited and you had critiqued.

If you are accepting that 'freshly picked carrots' would have been used in 1888, it's lack of commonality (relative to 'bumbling baffoon' or any other phrase) - which you claim but do not prove - is irrelevant: Ngrams should have detected it or else any other phrase which Ngrams fails to detect must by necessity be accepted as falling through the same Google net and therefore be as likely a fish in the 1888 sea of expressions as any other.

When posters use terms like "I would have thought" or "I would have expected" (or whatever) you can generally rest assured there's not a lot of a rational science being employed beforehand, and that's dangerous because the ill-read will come on the Casebook, read these opinions, and walk away thinking they are fact. Later, they will regurgitate them as fact, and the well gets more and more poisoned.

[Yabs]

Of course I saw that in your post ("I completely accept that people would and could have used that term in 1888 though") but your post was ambiguous on this point and I read it that you were acknowledging that 'picked carrots' had been used in 1888 as that was the term MrBarnett had cited and you had critiqued.

If you are accepting that 'freshly picked carrots' would have been used in 1888, it's lack of commonality (relative to 'bumbling baffoon' or any other phrase) - which you claim but do not prove - is irrelevant: Ngrams should have detected it or else any other phrase which Ngrams fails to detect must by necessity be accepted as falling through the same Google net and therefore be as likely a fish in the 1888 sea of expressions as any other.

When posters use terms like "I would have thought" or "I would have expected" (or whatever) you can generally rest assured there's not a lot of a rational science being employed beforehand, and that's dangerous because the ill-read will come on the Casebook, read these opinions, and walk away thinking they are fact. Later, they will regurgitate them as fact, and the well gets more and more poisoned.

Just for the record I’m not a forum poster that has just picked a side and is looking to defend it.
I happen to believe to diary to be a modern hoax due to the information that I have picked up from here, the Maybrick trial and the opinions and posts of others and I’m always happy to change my mind if presented with other evidence.
If the common term One-off for example was only quickly searched on Ngrams then no I wouldn’t consider that conclusive.
My understanding is that the research done on that phrase runs a lot deeper than that.

[erobitha]

Freshly picked is a term commonly reserved for things like berries which once picked last only 2-3 days, not root vegetables which last weeks or even months.

Is it really?

Galloway News 19/10/1883

[erobitha]

Just for the record I’m not a forum poster that has just picked a side and is looking to defend it.
I happen to believe to diary to be a modern hoax due to the information that I have picked up from here, the Maybrick trial and the opinions and posts of others and I’m always happy to change my mind if presented with other evidence.
If the common term One-off for example was only quickly searched on Ngrams then no I wouldn’t consider that conclusive.
My understanding is that the research done on that phrase runs a lot deeper than that.

Ngrams is fraught with issues for studying historical language data.

Mostly issues around OCR technology and transcribing older style typefaces, combined with poor print quality. Those who like me have used newspaper archives will know what I mean. The previewing of pages can sometimes read like gibberish. The older the periodical, usually the worse it is. Ngrams technology is not much different.

I have also proved previously putting an adjective descriptive before the word buffoon is not a new concept. I have already provided examples of this with "Babbling Buffoon" from the mid 1800s.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Hello Ike and all in diary land,

I make a point of keeping out of diary discussions because I just don’t know enough about the subject but I have to ask one question about phrasing (actually it’s more of a point than a question.)

No one has been able to refute David Orsam’s ‘one off instance’ point. I’ve heard a few suggestions but none of them have come close to even putting a dent in the point. Robert Smith was reduced to a rather embarrassing prison-related ‘explanation’ in his book. Why doesn’t this appear to bother anyone? Why, if he’s so confident in the provenance of the diary, doesn’t he simply commission an expert in the evolution of language to provide a refutation of David’s point (which, after all, appears to be the strongest point against the genuineness of the diary.) If the diary was mine I’d want to attack the enemy’s strongest point. Doesn’t this smack of a lack of confidence?

[Yabs]

Is it really?

Galloway News 19/10/1883

Erm.. yes I know, we are discussing the complete phrase “freshly picked carrots” not showing up early in an Ngram search and why that might be.
As you’re on the archives and my subscription isn’t currently active, are there any results for that full phrase out of interest?

[rjpalmer]

There is too much to unpack here, so let me concentrate on this:

That's not quite true, is it?

And...

Are you still going to blame Shirley for the blunders made by these two clowns?

Of course you are. Silly questions.

I don’t wish to call anyone a “clown,” but in reference to the above remarks, please reread my carefully chosen statement:

they [O & L] checked an illogical span of dates inconsistent with a careful analysis of Barrett's confession

This is absolutely true.

Why is it true?

Barrett stated in his confession that he was forced to go to Outhwaite & Litherland in search of a suitable diary or scrapbook because when the red diary arrived from Martin Earl, it was "very small" and thus unsuitable for the hoax.

We all KNOW that Barrett was hazy with dates. (And by the way, as shown by David B., Gray had amended Barrett’s estimate of these events from 1990 to 1991).

It was the chronology that was relevant. The red diary came first, the scrapbook came afterwards. This was in the statement that Barrett signed.

And by this juncture Keith Skinner had already obtained a receipt for the payment of the little red useless diary, dating to May 1992. It was also known that Barrett had been put down as a 'late payer,' so it should have been painfully obvious that he had ordered the red diary a few months earlier. And so, it proved to be...March 1992.

So if Barrett's confession states that he bought the scrapbook after the red diary, what was the bloody point of having O & L check their books for 1990?

When dealing with someone like Mike, it doesn’t pay to be slavishly chained to literal interpretations. Use your noggin.

This was an opportunity missed, and I noticed this mistake some 16 or 17 years ago, and David B. independently realized it as well.

The only conclusion I can draw is that Keith Skinner either never informed Shirley Harrison of the correct date for the red diary's purchase, or one or both of them didn't put two and two together until it was too late, or that they were already so convinced that Barrett couldn’t have created the diary as late as March or April 1991, that Harrison wrongly asked O & L to check an "illogical span of dates inconsistent with a careful analysis of Barrett's confession"

Which is what I wrote.

And because of this, and because O & L’s records have now been pulped, we have no way of disproving that Barrett wasn't describing an actual event.

You may not like it, but those are the facts.

Fortunately, we can confirm that Mike’s highly suspicious purchase of the red diary did, in fact, happen, and Barrett tells us why it happened. To create a hoax

I hope that finally clarifies matters, since we've gone over this a dozen times or more.

R P

[rjpalmer]

I should add to the above that it is entirely possible that Alan Gray was himself uncertain about Mike's timetable, and may have even checked the wrong dates had he been given total access to O & L's books, but that is a strictly theoretical question and it wouldn't have made him anymore of a 'clown' than subsequent researchers who made the same error of logic.

What's done is done.