One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[Iconoclast]

The Diary keeps the wheels of the Ripper industry greased, whilst helping to keep the subject of JtR free from cobwebs and weeds.

We’ll that’s a rather nice way to put it, Simon. I like that.

Lord, I seem to be in a good mood for a man who’s had his dreams ripped out by an unnaturally tall and stocky Italian …

[rjpalmer]

I don't need to know the age of the diary Mike was talking about, nor whose handwriting is in it, nor even if it had yet to be written on that day. It's merely a question of calculating the probability of a) the work and b) the phone call colliding on the same day by pure chance. It is an entirely valid question to ask and to answer...

This is a very strange comment, Caz, and demonstrates that the Ike has succeeded in clouding the issue. This is EXACTLY what I've been saying for over a week and what Lord Orsam tried to calculate!! Yet you mocked those efforts and observations.

So, in other words, your comment above can be taken as a sidelong admission that Ike was engaging in junk statistics. Since you DO NOT know the age of the dairy (and seem to be admitting that it would be an irrelevant part of the equation), Ike's attempt to plug in 37,577 is obviously circular and bogus. (Yet he still can't fathom why)

The only thing one should calculate is how often Dodd had work done on his house, because work on his house coincided with Barrett's call to Crew. That's as much as we know for certain.

And although Orsam's sample is limited to only the year 1992, Dodd had work done on his house 14 times, which, correcting for holidays and weekends, comes out to 18 to 1.

I'm glad that you are finally getting there! (Sort of). Bravo!

[caz]

Understood. Do you have a ‘hard’ or specific date for when the watch was placed in the Murphys’ shop window? I’ve never seen it stated as anything other than ‘1992,’ and there are 67 days in 1992 that precede March 9th.

To continue with our statistical analysis, given that Johnson bought the watch in July, that would mean that there is a 1 in 3 chance that its appearance in the store window preceded March 9th, and the odds are is actually worse than that (from your perspective) considering that Johnson stated that he hesitated for a considerable time before making the plunge.

Of course, all of this is entirely irrelevant if we accept the Murphys’ account of owning the watch for years, but I am a new convert to Ike’s methodology of analyzing what we theorize is true, rather than what is actually in evidence. Goblins dancing on the head of a pin, and all that.

It seems to me that if you can narrow the date down, Ike could favor us with another one of his unimpeachable forays into probability theory.

best wishes.

Again, you seem to misunderstand the very simple fact that if we knew exact dates for when such things happened we wouldn't even be talking in terms of "What are the chances?"

You are falling into your own trap here, by using statistics to support what you theorize to be true, that the watch went on sale before 9th March, which is as screwy as anything you mistakenly accused Ike of doing.

If we knew whether the watch went on sale before or after 9th March, that would be just one obvious example of making the need for statistical analysis disappear in a puff of smoke. Similarly, if we knew that Mike had called Pan Books about the diary before 9th March, or called Martin Earl to request one before 9th March, or found the scrapbook in an auction sale on the last day of March. We can only consider what we know happened and when; not what we wish, or believe to be true or false.

For example, we know that the Murphys claimed to have seen scratches in 1992, where the disputed engravings were seen and deciphered in 1993; we know they also claimed to use jeweller's rouge, to try and improve the appearance of that surface, before selling the watch to Albert. We know that the experts determined the order in which all marks and scratches visible under the microscope had been made, with the disputed engravings beneath everything else.

Were the Murphys lying, or seeing scratches that were never there, or at least not visible under a microscope? Or did Robbie Johnson's relationship with weed and reputation as a chancer equip him with the skill to do what they couldn't, and remove every last blemish that would otherwise have been visible under a microscope, before he set to work on a blank canvas, as well as a forger's skill to scratch a signature into gold that would be comparable to how James Maybrick signed his name on his marriage licence - and a crystal ball if he hadn't actually seen a Maybrick signature? We know he could have done with that crystal ball, when including Stride's initials and excluding Tabram's, before it was public knowledge that the diary did likewise. He also had to guess that the diary would not prove to be a recent fake, taking the watch down with it, before the book even saw the light of day. Perhaps he enjoyed his short stay in chokey so much that he fancied a longer stretch next time, for a slightly more ambitious offence.

[rjpalmer]

Again, you seem to misunderstand the very simple fact that if we knew exact dates for when such things happened we wouldn't even be talking in terms of "What are the chances?"

You are falling into your own trap here, by using statistics to support what you theorize to be true, that the watch went on sale before 9th March, which is as screwy as anything you mistakenly accused Ike of doing.

I take back my comments in Post #6617. It is now obvious that you still can't grasp that this is what Ike is doing, and not what I am doing.

Ike is the one foolishly incorporating his own theories into his mathematical equation. (That the diary is old, therefore the number 37,557 is relevant)

I am confining myself strictly to what is actually known: that Dodd had work done on his house on the day that Barrett called a literary agent.

If the Maybricknicks can't grasp this very simply concept, then why waste anymore time discussing it?

[Iconoclast]

I am confining myself strictly to what is actually known: that Dodd had work done on his house on the day that Barrett called a literary agent.

And if you choose to start only at the point you know the thing happened, you will lull yourself into believing that it therefore could not have previously happened (therefore you can disregard everything that went before).

This is like someone throwing a coin in the air once a day starting on a Monday until they throw a tails. Each day it lands on heads until Sunday when it lands on tails. Now, how many days could it have landed on tails? I think most rational people would understand that the answer is seven.

If you follow your logic, because it didn’t come up tails until the Sunday, it therefore could not have come up on any of the six days before that therefore your answer would be one.

The fact that the floorboards and the literary agent happened simultaneously on March 9, 1992 does not allow you to disregard the possibility that either or both events could have happened on any day amongst the 37,556 others days that had passed after Maybrick’s death and before the events of March 9, 1992.

Ike

[caz]

I see, Eddie Lyons could never have sold the diary like MB did. The diary was worth very little to him. But thousands and thousands of pounds to anyone else. Of course, MB had no "provenance, or any guarantee of age, never mind authenticity", which is why the diary was suspected of being a hoax from the start. It still sold for a lot of money, though.
I think the reason RJ - and everybody else - seems unable to grasp that argument is because it's completely worthless.

Your sarcasm does you very little credit, Kattrup.

Think about it. Eddie calls a London literary agent, claiming to have JtR's diary, and hoping to make thousands and thousands of pounds from its publication. When asked where it came from, he has to make something up. No provenance, or any guarantee of age, never mind authenticity. He can hardly say he pinched it from a customer's house, and he genuinely has no idea if it was written back in 1889, as the only date suggests, or could be a much later fictional treatment. Maybe the agent can fund whatever's needed to find out one way or another.

Now what do you think will happen if and when the agent secures a publisher for Eddie's diary and he stands to make a lot of money out of it? He knows it is stolen property, removed from a house where he is known - by his boss and fellow electricians at the very least - to have worked. If he doesn't appreciate, when first calling the agent, the damning truth that its supposed author actually lived and died in that house, he soon will. Not knowing if something about the old book could connect it with the house it came from, or with its current or previous occupiers, would be almost as bad as finding out later.

How long do you think it will take to link Eddie with the theft of the old book from the old house, if he makes that call on 9th March 1992 instead of Mike?

[caz]

Such a good point, Caz!

Why would Mike have dicked Gray around by 'withholding' the auction ticket when he could have produced it at any point and confirmed (or at least strongly suggested) that he really was the Greatest Forger of All Time?

Surely he hadn't lost it until 1999 when he found it again? Or maybe lost it and then pretended he had it in 1999?

None of this seems to make any sense, does it, given that Mike attended that O&L auction on 31/03/92 - desperate for a Victorian document - and miraculously purchased one just in time to get Anne to transcribe his typed epic ahead of his crunch meeting on 13/04/92. You might have thought he'd have retained something which would have proved his claims?

The more I think about it, the more I think Mike Barrett may not have been telling the whole truth on occasions. Do you think it is possible that he was just making a lot of stuff up so that he remained at the centre of the debate (or, 'at the centre' as he perceived it)?

Perhaps the answer lies with those who carried his flame for so long?

Whenever I can't sleep, I lie in bed chuckling to myself over Alan Gray's statement on having met Mike in the street in 1998 where their exchange ended thus:

Gray: You are a liar and a cheat and if I had my way you'd be charged with conspiracy ...

Barrett: I give my name to history, what love can do to a gentleman born.

Gray: Don't ring me anymore or contact me. I am going now before I kick the **** out of you.

What a merry dance Bongo led our poor private dick. I wonder if Mike ever paid him anything???

Just reached this post of yours, Ike.

When Mike's diary was being branded in the newspapers as a fake, he brazened it out, but would surely have been smarting inside. What did that say about him, as the Scouser who had brought it forward in the naive belief that it would be accepted as genuine? That he was just the kind of thicko who would easily be conned by such a 'shabby' hoax? Or that he was a consummate conman, who had succeeded in parting many fools from their money?

I'd guess that on balance, with Mike under growing pressure to decide what he'd sooner be remembered as, and no other options on the horizon, he'd have finally plumped for the conman image over the thicko. Which is in effect what he did. And it worked like a charm - except with the people who knew and understood him best.

It's just another potential motive for a false confession, in the absence of any material incentives to volunteer a true one.

Love,

Caz
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[caz]

I'm always interested in reading how long-term students of the Whitechapel Murders case decide who is, and who is not, a good suspect in the murders.

The above analysis is interesting in that allows Bill Bury to be a better suspect than M. J. Druitt--but not a better suspect than James Maybrick.

Fascinating.

I agree, RJ. It is indeed fascinating how much you were able to read into my very simple post, and make 2 + 2 = 5.

Bury is a better suspect in my view, than anyone who was not known to have been a murderer or violent offender against women - whether or not they were considered a suspect at the time. That would include Maybrick, who had no suspect status back then, and only the disputed diary and watch to connect him in theory to the case in 1993. So it's also fascinating to see you even thinking in terms of him being a ripper suspect, when I have said many, many times over the years, that I don't.

[caz]

Sorry, but I picked up that nasty habit from Caz. She once ripped out my throat for accidently misspelling Croydon, which, believe it or not, is a more grievous abomination than not accepting her explanation for why Mike Barrett went shopping for a blank Victorian diary. But only barely.

Is it really so difficult for students of the case to spell Macnaghten's name correctly? Yes, it is a pet peeve of mine...

So it's a pet peeve of mine to see Croydon misspelled, because it was my home town from 1978 to 2011, and where my daughter was born and grew up.

And it's a pet peeve of yours to see Macnaghten misspelled.

I would think that makes us pretty even, where that particular nasty habit is concerned. I can't help it if you picked it up from me. I didn't know it was catching.

[caz]

No, Caz. The trouble is that I do observe, and what I now observe is that you are reduced to bending the truth every which way but straight.

The only thing that any of the electricians ever claimed was in a brown bag (or a pillow case, or a shopping bag) was dog vomit.

(I apologize, dear readers, but this is no joke! I wish it was!)

Dog vomit or perhaps dog excrement--which one is not clear.

The only electricians who claimed to have seen a discovery at Battlecrease described, not a brown paper parcel, but:

A book.

Or: two books.

Or: a book and a ring and a watch in a biscuit tin.

Not a peep about a brown paper parcel.

The only person who mentioned brown paper to Feldman was a bloke named Rigby.

Enter James Johnston, who managed to get a statement out of Rigby's brother:

'My brother never actually witnessed the finding of anything whilst he worked there. It was only the odd behaviour of the other two who went quiet in his presence and he saw them quickly put something in a pillow case or shopping bag under the seat as he approached...He told him his mother's dog had been ill and he was taking a sample of something to be examined.'

If you are confused, Dear Reader, this is because Caz apparently wants you to be confused.

Questioned by Feldman, who had interview techniques so notorious that Shirley Harrison was worried he was polluting the investigation, Rigby was describing an entirely different event that had nothing to do with a book allegedly being found at Battlecrease.

A dog owned by the mother of one of his co-workers had become ill, so they were taking a sample from the poor canine to have analyzed at Liverpool University. Maybe they suspected poisoning; we aren't told. Whatever the case, when later hounded by Feldman, (sorry, I couldn't resist), this was the only incident that Rigby could remember that involved both his co-workers and a sack (or shopping bag, or pillow case).

A bag or pillow case containing dog excretions of some kind.

None of the electricians who actually claimed to have seen a discovery of a book mentioned brown paper, or any other covering at all, for that matter, other than some apparently mythical gigantic biscuit tin that was never produced.

Caz's claim that Rigby "described this to Feldy, before this detail was in the public domain" is, of course, misleading, because Feldman was well-aware that the Barretts had already claimed that the diary had been given to them by Tony Devereux wrapped in brown paper and string, and this is why, presumably, he had asked Rigby leading questions about a brown paper parcel. The conversation doesn't appear to have been recorded, but this is the obvious implication. The poor guy Rigby was trying to help, but the only thing he could remember is the incident of the poor pooch!

Orsam went over all of this before, and those interested can find all the gory details here:

Befuddle and Confuse - Orsam Books

As for me, I am now sorry that I, like the poor dog, brought it up.

So did Arthur Rigby claim to actually see anything related to a sick dog or a dog's sick?

If not, I humbly submit that this was almost certainly a dog tale, or shaggy dog story, designed to put him off the scent of what was really wrapped in the "brown paper" he mentioned to Feldy.

Who would ever think of taking a sample of anything from a dog to a University, rather than a vet? If you swallowed that pile of dog's vomit, I can see how you swallowed Mike Barrett's forgery claims.

Arthur was the one in charge of the rewiring job on 9th and 10th March. The job was finished by lunchtime on the second day. The others who had been at the house and knew that Eddie had found something were understandably not going to give chapter and verse about it to Arthur if they could help it. So the 'something' became a sample from a dog, and absolutely not an old book that would be more in line with a trip to the Uni to see what they made of it there - not dissimilar to Shirley's trip to the British Museum with Mike's old book that had been wrapped in brown paper.

A year on, a worried Arthur returned to Battlecrease voluntarily, to deny any involvement in the theft, but gave Paul Dodd the names of two electricians who knew about it. No prizes for guessing one of those names.

I think by then Arthur had worked out what wasn't in the package hidden under the car seat. No prizes for guessing it didn't come from Fido.

[Kattrup]

But wasn't Arthur R in the car, going to Liverpool Uni? A trip you automatically date to the 9th. Events moved kinda fast that day, huh?

I wonder what your precious timeline looks like for the 9th. House work was not complete, yet the crew had time to find the diary, go to the uni and then back to selling it at the pub at lunchtime.

[Kattrup]

How long do you think it will take to link Eddie with the theft of the old book from the old house, if he makes that call on 9th March 1992 instead of Mike?

A very, very long time. How much time did anyone spend probing MB's provenance before they started cashing in?
Eddie wasn't officially allocated to Battlecrease, was he - he wasn't on the timesheets, and you've already explained that the crew was perfectly willing to lie about him stealing. You must know them quite well in order to sling such accusations around.

[caz]

Come to think of it, I'm not even sure they mentioned a watch. I'll have to go back and check. I think it was just a ring and a book.

Either way, the whole thing is clearly a combination of urban folkore, bad interviewing techniques, and one bloke attempting to cash-in on Barrett's hoax.

So 'clearly' there was no theft from Battlecrease then, in your view, because the collective witness testimony of the individuals who would have known something about it, at first, second or third hand, had it happened, does not amount to an honest, truthful, reliable, accurate, consistent or well-remembered account of it, guaranteed to be free of any leading questions from the investigators?

If this is your position, RJ, I wonder if your expectations may be a tad high. Witness testimony where a crime has, or may have been committed, does tend to be an unholy mix of admissions, denials, truths, secrets, claims and lies; hearsay and circumstantial evidence; inaccurate, mistaken or conflicting descriptions of events and conversations; or provoked by poor or corrupt police procedures. Using the same logic, would you conclude that there were no Whitechapel Murders, no Kray twins terrorising the area and no Great Train Robbery, because the witnesses, suspects and investigators just couldn't be trusted to come up with a truthful and consistent account between them?

There is an additional irony here. You have to dismiss the theft possibility from your mind, because it would mess with your certainty that the old book is a literary hoax cooked up by Mike Barrett. So you point to all the understandable, human nature flaws in the electricians' accounts, while making excuse after excuse after excuse after excuse for Mike's total inability to tell a straight story, or to support even one version of it with hard evidence.

I'm not sure why a theft of the diary from Battlecrease would disqualify it in your mind from being a literary hoax, or 'novella' if you prefer; or why a literary hoax/novella could not also become stolen property. Clearly, you can't allow for it to have been stolen without also allowing for Mike to have conned you with a theft he later claimed was his own literary hoax. For every literary hoax there must be millions of cases of theft. Few if any would boast openly about their involvement in theft, but if Mike Barrett was going to be accused of anything, there were worse things than writing Jack the Ripper's diary. As proud boasts go, it was a corker.

[caz]

I thought you were going shopping, Caz? If so, pick up a grade-school book on logic before you (wrongly) lecture me.

My critical thinking skills are fine. Ike is making the same stupid error that many make, not understanding the differences between causality, correlation, and coincidence, and foolishly attempting to calculate the odds of two (probably) unrelated incidents, not even knowing if one of them happened!!

His statistical analysis is asinine and irrelevant.

Are you telling me you genuinely cannot see the assumption that is hiding in the middle of his equation?

I seem to recall your brother having helped you in the past, Caz, when you couldn't quite grasp a logical point. He probably wouldn't be interested, but if so, run it all past him and see if he agrees. Or give Jeff Hamm a shout out, and see if he agrees that Ike's statistical analysis is valid.

I'm happy to be corrected by someone who actually knows what they are talking about. But I won't be.

You can then come back wiser...and maybe even apologetic.

My brother is a doctor of physics and retired patents attorney. I'm not sure he could help straighten out all your latest misunderstandings - even if he had the least motivation to try.

Keep digging yourself a deeper hole, RJ. Unlike my sensible brother, I am shallow enough to find your efforts entertaining.

[caz]

It is pointless asking RJ or LO to check the premises I gave in my previous post (above) but I strongly advise that everyone else does.

This truly feeble 'analogy' (Lord, it's not even that) falls at the point that Mike Barrett contacts a literary agent (the firecracker going off), and thousands of Paul Dodds' houses have their floorboards lifted that day (the apples falling all over the world in that moment). Even if there was just the one apple falling (as indeed there was) all that is required is a link between the two events for us to dispense with chance once the probability falls so unbelievably low. Was there a link between the two events? Indeed there was and his name was James Maybrick. Was there a link between our mythical firecracker and our mooted falling apple? Clearly not. Enough apples fall all of the time that one is perfectly likely to fall when our firecracker goes off. Clearly, these two events can occur simultaneously without invoking any form of association. As Paul Dodds (actually, James Maybrick) had one house not thousands, we are simply unable to compare apples with flares.

If anyone is keen on believing that Mike Barrett hoaxed the scrapbook (I'm not saying it wasn't hoaxed, note), then they are welcome to get excited by RJ/LO's astonishing post, above. We'll call it The Firecracker One for posterity. Feel free to believe that the longwinded ecstasy of monstrous stupidity proves that my simple statistical analysis is in some way faulty. You absolutely must understand that I don't give a **** whether anyone thinks my analysis is wrong unless that person can demonstrate why it is wrong. If you return to my simple premises, and don't add any or twist any, or just be plain and obviously utterly mendacious, then you will see that this is genuinely not hard at all.

By the way, I didn't think the Pedant Pair would attempt to salvage the 1-in-18 probability nightmare, but they have. Such egos as these cannot be trusted with your confidence, dear readers. They are mugging you off. Don't buy it.

Ike

'As Paul Dodds (actually, James Maybrick) had one house not thousands, we are simply unable to compare apples with flares.'

Oh how I wish I'd come out with that line.

If nothing else, the rotten apples and flares analogy neatly demonstrates the meaning of garbage in, garbage out.

Love,

Caz
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