One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[Iconoclast]

Not, ‘Love set you going like a fat gold watch…’?

Now that was seriously clever, MrB!

[rjpalmer]

Hi RJ,

Apologies for the delay in replying to your post #8260, but I wanted to get an answer from Keith himself. He has updated me as follows:

“Nothing at all strange is going on. On May 31st 1995, I took Anne to dinner as she was in London….

Thanks, Ike.

Keith’s contributions are now so rare it would be rude to disappear without acknowledging his email, but it appears to me that he has somewhat lost the plot. Perhaps you didn’t explain things very clearly?

We know what Anne claimed back in 1995—the question is: should believe her?

She stated that she first created a typescript of the diary when she and Mike were in a ‘go’ situation—an unfortunately vague phrase, but presumably meaning it was created when Mike began pitching the diary to publishers or literary agents, which is in itself problematic for Keith’s theory, since Barrett’s call to Doreen was supposedly spontaneous and unplanned, rather than an organized effort.

If, on the other hand, Anne only meant that the ‘go’ situation was after Doreen had agreed to meet with Mike in April 1992, then we have to wonder why Anne’s account flies directly in the face of the account given by Doreen herself, as reported in her letter to Nick Warren, dated 8 May 1994:

“Of course we know what the SFS [Serious Fraud Squad] found--a transcript of the Diary! There’s nothing sinister in that. "Right from the word go, everyone knew that Mike had bought a WP precisely to transcribe the Diary, in order to study its contents more easily.”

See the problem now?

Gone is the ‘go’ situation. It is now claimed the typescript was typed up for Mike’s personal use sometime before he began hunting for an agent (Paul Begg made a similar statement to Doreen’s back in 2001, so more than one person heard this other version).

Of some relevance is that Mike’s agreement with Crew, dated 30 April 1992, seemingly mentions nothing about the Barretts producing a typescript for the benefit of Doreen or Shirley, although it does refer to Mike relinquishing his ‘notes.’

"IT IS AGREED that the Owner will make available to the Author with mutually agreed safeguards for research purposes the Diary and his own research notes...."

Odd that there is no mention of a typescript, had one been requested by Doreen.

So not only have we been given two different accounts of the typescript’s origins, if we accept Doreen’s statement without question, then the creation of the typescript dates to shortly after Mike’s purchase of the Amstrad word processor.

The receipt shows this happened in April 1986—nearly 5 years before the installation of the heating units at ‘Battlecrease.'

As such, I’m a little surprised that Keith finds nothing strange about any of this.

But no matter--enjoy your summer.

Cheers, R P

[rjpalmer]

Ike--one more thing.

I noticed something that may shed considerable light on the validity of your foray into geographical profiling (if I may use that term).

Your map in Post #6767 is meant to show the startling proximity of Barrett, The Saddle, and Eddie Lyons in 1992, which, according to you, is circumstantial evidence of a link too coincidental to be ignored:




They are huddled suspiciously together, and--equally important--at some remove from the Portus & Rhodes, Battlecrease, and Alan Davies cluster. (I think it's Davies, you used similar blue push-pin colours so it is difficult to tell). Lyons, you argue, could have lived anywhere in Greater Merseyside, and could have been as far afield as Bowling, Rigby, etc. but he lived within a stone's throw of Barrett's watering hole.

As I noted earlier, this is circular reasoning, since it was Lyon's proximity to Barrett that led your suspicions in the first place.

Let's set that aside for the moment, however, and, for the sake of educational purposes, come up with a different address for Barrett and see what happens. One would think it would confirm your theory by spitting out an address unassociated with any of the electricians on the P & R team. Agreed?

And since Doreen dated the typescript of the Maybrick Diary to the Barrett's purchase of the Amstrad word processor in 1986, I'm going to use the address where Mike and Anne lived at that time.




15 Lincoln Street, Garston.


Holy Smokes! Look what happens.

Although this address would be unrelated and irrelevant and random, it places Mike directly in the hot zone. Battlecrease is just up the road, Portus & Rhodes is .4 miles away, and Alan Davies (the bloke who supposedly tried to sell the diary at a second-hand store) is within as much spitting distance as Eddie Lyons was in 1992!

Look how close No. 15 Lincoln Street is to the scene of the crime at Portus & Rhodes in St. Mary Street. In these years, Mike probably drank in the same pub as MANY of these electricians, no? Yet this was long before the miracle of March 1992 and should be entirely irrelevant and random.

(Which kind of suggests irrelevant and random things happen all the time)



Would it be unfair to suggest that, had the electrical work been done in 1986, your argument for a startling unlikely and miraculous geographical coincidence would be identical, except that your suspect would now be Alan Davies??

Cheers,

R P

[caz]

So Caroline, does this mean that Tony and Eddie could have known each other before March 9th?

It's possible, Scotty, if Eddie moved in with his girlfriend [who later became his wife] before August 1991, when Tony died. But Tony was pretty much housebound from the end of 1990 after fracturing his hip, so I'm not sure if they could ever have met in The Saddle.

The common link would have been through Mike Barrett, who was knowingly or otherwise connected with both Fountains Road residents - one who had supposedly given him Maybrick's diary in 1991, and the other who had actually worked in Maybrick's house on 9th March 1992.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

In brief, I was referring to your post here:

where you claim the crew would have covered for Eddie. Then immediately afterwards you think up some hypothetical scenario about Eddie, whom you're always - with no evidence at all - willing to paint as a thief and a liar (and a very dumb one at that), where you claim the crew might NOT cover for him.

So I can see why you'd scold RJ Palmer for actually trying to follow your argument and refer back to some of your older posts that contradict whatever you're claiming on a given day.

You seem to be mixing up two things here. The electricians who knew the old book was taken away, and let it happen, were not just covering for Eddie, but for one another, by trying - with limited success - to keep Arthur Rigby in the dark. He was the main man on the job on 9th March 1992, and put in a full day there. The others were just helping out for as long as he needed them.

A year later, when the boss questioned his employees in relation to the diary, it left Arthur a worried man, knowing that two of the electricians had been trying to hide something from him at the house that day, which is why he felt compelled to go back there and speak to the owner about it, to deny any personal involvement, but to name the two men who knew what had gone on. That's not an argument or a claim; it's a fact. If he had no concerns that anything had been found and taken away from the house while he was working there, he'd have had no cause to go back there and plead innocence.

[caz]

So we all just have a case of group motivated reasoning?

Like you have shown in your Eleanor Rigby example, there is enough of a coincidence for people to believe it is more than just a coincidence.

McCartney admitted he has spent time in that church as a teenager with John Lennon looking at headstones, as John had a relative buried there. He conceded he could have been influenced sub-consciously by a name he once saw - embedded deep in his memory. He accepts that as being possible. He believed he was inspired by other means, but he cannot 100% rule out that it was a gift from the sub-conscious memory.

I choose to believe that is exactly it and he cannot say it isn’t conclusively either.

Nuance is an important thing.

Hi Erobitha,

This is pretty much what I see happening to Mike Barrett at some point after 9th March 1992. He saw - as he thought, for the first time - a book called Tales of Liverpool, in the library or W.H. Smith, and flicking through the chapters his eye fell on a reference to Battlecrease, right near the top of one of them. From there he was able to identify who the diary author was meant to be. But he still needed an explanation for how he got the diary, because he couldn't name Eddie, a Fountains Road resident and virtual stranger, who wouldn't answer any questions about it, but reassured Mike that no bugger alive knew about it. The provenance at that point began and ended there. It was just not good enough, to echo dear Martin Fido's words about a man in a pub.

Mike would have been drawn to Tales of Liverpool if there was something vaguely familiar about the cover, if purely at the sub-conscious level. For some reason, the book also brought to mind his old friend Tony Devereux - he had no idea why. It was enough. Bingo for Bongo. He now had a new, but only very slightly improved provenance, which began with a basic truth he could stick with, that he got the diary from a Fountains Road resident - just not a living one. A convenient coincidence here was that Mike had befriended Tony, who had died the previous summer and couldn't be questioned about the diary, and he could weave a tale using his genuine memories of this man and his home on Fountains Road. It's what liars do best. But they still need a good memory.

Mike's wife thought she might have given him a copy of Tales of Liverpool as a Christmas present. It was around Christmas 1990 when Tony fractured his hip and was confined to his home. According to the testimony of Tony's daughter Janet, speaking in 1993, she was visiting her dad in January 1991 when she saw the book and asked to borrow it. She never returned it, despite her dad saying he wanted it back because it belonged to Bongo. The book itself had nothing to distinguish it as Mike's; no marginal notes; no underlining of any words or phrases; no turned down corners; and no signs of the Florie Maybrick chapters being more thumbed through than any others. If Anne gave it to Mike that Christmas, he must have taken it round to Tony shortly afterwards, for Janet to have borrowed it in the New Year. It would make perfect sense if Janet was the first person to open and read it, and when Mike didn't see it again, it was out of sight and out of mind forever more – like Eleanor Rigby's headstone. Mike would have smiled at the comparison with Macca. He had no memory of ever lending the book to Tony.

Mike was to put the line about no bugger alive knowing about the diary in Tony's mouth on 26th April 1993, when he swore an affidavit that it was his dead friend who gave it to him. It was squeaky bum time, because just three days earlier Feldman had been faxed a list of Portus & Rhodes employees, their addresses and phone numbers. The list included one, Edward Lyons.

An address in Maghull, L31 was given for Eddie, but no phone number. Feldman had to call his closest workmate, James Bowling, for a contact number, and was told that Eddie lived with his girlfriend, round the corner from The Saddle. She answered the phone when Feldman first called her number.

If Mike had only known it on 9th March 1992, before calling the literary agent, the ideal provenance was within Eddie's grasp along with the diary. But as with RJ's imaginary scenario, in which the plan was for Eddie to turn up at Battlecrease that day and pretend to find Mike's diary there, the same fatal flaw would have applied to Eddie actually finding it and taking it away. Another fatal flaw in either scenario would have been for Mike to give the diary a Fountains Road provenance of all places, immediately giving away the strong geographical connection between that road, where Eddie was living, and Riversdale Road where he was working on 9th March.

But Mike didn't know then about Eddie's work connection to Maybrick's house, over in Aigburth, so it must have seemed like a good idea at the time. After all, his late friend Tony did make a very handy substitute, considering he had lived on the same street as Eddie. When Mike rashly gave the provenance away to a second Fountains Road resident, who had no known links to where Maybrick lived or worked, the real live connection between the first Fountains Road resident and where Maybrick spent his final days was lost and gone forever.


The alternative to the above is Orsam's hypothesis, whereby Mike Barrett had no provenance in mind for James Maybrick's diary - which covered just the final year and a bit of his life after moving into Battlecrease - until one day in August 1991, when Tony Devereux died suddenly and unexpectedly. Being a Barrett of very little brain and even less imagination, he still hadn't come up with a better idea seven months later, when he finally threw caution to the wind and contacted a literary agent with a view to getting the hoax published - before he had even found anything suitable to put it in.

What Orsam's hoaxer could not have anticipated in a million years, when naming Tony and giving his diary a Fountains Road provenance, was that another Fountains Road resident was already in position, and would come out of the woodwork for the second time in April 1993, having come out of it for the first time – quite literally – from Maybrick's house, and on the same day Mike had called the agent, 9th March 1992.

That's the scale of the coincidence Orsam and co have to face and come to terms with. I don't envy them.

Love,

Caz
X

[Iconoclast]

Although this address would be unrelated and irrelevant and random, it places Mike directly in the hot zone. Battlecrease is just up the road, Portus & Rhodes is .4 miles away, and Alan Davies (the bloke who supposedly tried to sell the diary at a second-hand store) is within as much spitting distance as Eddie Lyons was in 1992!

Look how close No. 15 Lincoln Street is to the scene of the crime at Portus & Rhodes in St. Mary Street. In these years, Mike probably drank in the same pub as MANY of these electricians, no? Yet this was long before the miracle of March 1992 and should be entirely irrelevant and random.

Cheers,

R P

Hi RJ,

This is an interesting spot and if it were all down to 'being within half a mile of Portus & Rhodes' (Davies was roughly twice as far away from Mike's Lincoln Street address in 1986 as P&R's offices, and twice as far away from Barrett as Eddie Lyons was in 1992) then you would have a convincing argument that The Miraculous Day was a fairly common event in Liverpool in the 20th century.

Obviously, the Miraculous Day gave us an electrician and a literary agent caller who were known to drink in the same pub rather than us having to surmise it may have been true also of Garston. By chance, Barrett lived roughly half a mile from The Saddle so it was a fair old jaunt to his 'regular' but we know it was a required jaunt because it was on his way to pick up his daughter from school nearby.

Now, if in 1986 until the Barretts moved to Goldie Street, Maybrick's study floorboards were known to have been raised on the same day Barrett had telephoned a literary agent where it was established that Mike drank in the same pub (or met in some other way) any member of P&R, then we would absolutely be on similar grounds to say that we were investigating a strong provenance possibility. Obviously none of that happened so it is interesting to note that in 1986 Barrett lived within half a mile of P&R and about a mile from one of the 1992 P&R electricians. Would that have been compelling in itself? Possibly. Perhaps some people would have started to investigate to see if there was a deeper link going on. If they had, they'd have presumably found no such common place for, say, Barrett and Davies to have met but if they had that would have been very interesting indeed. But there was presumably no common place to meet, and certainly no phone call to a literary agent, so the nearness of Barrett to P&R and to Alan Davies would certainly not have held us spell-bound in the way The Miraculous Day simply must do.

Lincoln Street appears to have been pretty pub-free so it's possible that Barrett walked the half mile to St Mary's Road (where P&R were based) for a pint or two in one of its pubs, but I wonder if it was not more likely that Mike would have sought a cheeky wee shandy in the splendidly-named Garston Woodcutter's Social Club which was just around the corner to him (assuming it existed in 1986-89)?

Anyway, it was an interesting spot, but The Miraculous Day has the guy who admits to being in Battlecrease on that fateful morning drinking in the same pub as the guy who made the call that same day. This is all on the record. Not on the record in 1986-1989 (I think that was when the Barretts moved to Goldie Street) are the floorboards coming up, Alan Davies being there, and him and Barrett quaffing the fine ales of a known emporium (or any other specific reason why they might come in contact with one another). So interesting, but not particularly stimulating.

It does make the point, though, that Barrett lived within a mile of an electrician who wasn't Eddie Lyons at the wrong time historically, so I'll give you that - maybe such proximity from so few people really is like the shared-birthday experience of just 30+ people when one might have imagined it would be more like ten times that?

Ike

[caz]

Deciding if the diary really did come from under the floorboards, and was handed to Mike in the pub, can only be assessed by demonstrating that story leads us to information that cannot, or should not, occur if that story is false. If it does that (leads us to evidence that should not otherwise occur I mean), then we have evidence that our story, which is only one of an infinite number of possible stories we could invent from those two known events, might be the one true one.

Hi Jeff,

I think I may have just demonstrated something of the sort. Nobody should have been found living on Fountains Road and working in Maybrick's house on 9th March 1992, if, when Mike called a literary agent on that day about having Jack the Ripper's diary - which would turn out to be supposedly by Maybrick - and came up with an invented Fountains Road provenance for it [thanks to the late Tony Devereux], he was yet to know that such a man as Eddie even existed.

And the reverse is also true: Mike should not be giving a fake Fountains Road provenance for his Maybrick diary, blissfully unaware that a man lives on the same street who was working in Maybrick's house on the very day he called the agent.

Mike wasn't psychic. If he had been, Fountains Road would have been the last place on earth he'd have gone for.

Love,

Caz
X

[Iconoclast]

That's the scale of the coincidence Orsam and co have to face and come to terms with. I don't envy them.

Love,

Caz
X

Hi Caz,

I know I will suffer claims of bias, but that was a bloody excellent post!

Very considered, I thought ...

Cheers,

Ike

[Iconoclast]

Dear Readers,

Just back on my favourite topic - Florence Maybrick's initials placed on Kelly's wall by Florence's jealous husband James Maybrick who used the pseudonym Jack the Ripper (you may have heard of one or two or even all three?), here is a super montage emailed to me by my old mucker F.D.C. depicting the various versions of the letters based upon different versions of the infamous photograph. I can see the initials pretty clearly in every version (with the exception of the uber-close-up top right and the one below it). What is really interesting is the wide range of quality reflected in the various prints. Can anyone properly explain why there is such a range? Is it simply because some derive from copies of copies of copies, etc. and therefore the quality diminishes each time?



You'll note that me old mucker included various incarnations of the letter 'M' to be found in Ripper letters and James Maybrick's watch. Very interesting.

He also drew my attention to Casebook: Jack the Ripper - The Kelly Crime Scene Photographs by Stewart Evans. Well worth a wee peruse, dear readers - here is a key part (in blue) below:

The famous photograph of the body of Mary Kelly, full length, lying on the bed is thus known to exist in the form of two separate original prints, as described above. They are easily identifiable from each other and may be described as follows:-
These two photographs, copies of both of which have appeared in many books on 'Jack the Ripper,' are identified as follows:-
Photograph No. 1 - CLP/MJK 1 - [Located in the City of London Police photographic department in 1967 by Donald Rumbelow] Has a tear at the bottom centre and a 'light spot' just to the left of the apparent letter 'M' above the body. There are also two pin-holes at the top centre. It is understood that Don Rumbelow passed this original to the Black Museum and that it is still there.
Photograph No. 2 - NSY/MJK2 - [Found in the album returned to New Scotland Yard in 1988] Lacks the aforementioned blemishes to CLP/MJK1, and has a pin at top left corner, and corner fixing marks at both right corners. It also appears to be a paler sepia colour. Around 1993 it sustained a crack which runs across the top left of the photograph, just missing Kelly's foot. This original print is now held at the Public Record Office, Kew, Reference MEPO 3/3155. The crack damage was sustained before the page was microfilmed. [NB the same file page contains the photographs of Nichols, Chapman, Eddowes standing against the wall, and the second Kelly photograph taken from the opposite side of the bed - ref. NSY/MJK3]. This photograph usually appears paler and less 'contrasty' than Photograph No. 1.
Having recorded the provenance and description of the Kelly photographs it is interesting to note their use in Ripper related books:-

1. Vacher l'Eventreur et les Crimes Sadiques, Lacassagne, Lyons/Paris 1899, presumably an original print additional to the above, current location not known.
2. Police Journal, 1969 - CLP/MJK1.
3. Jack the Ripper, Farson, 1972 - CLP/MJK1.
4. The Complete Jack the Ripper, Rumbelow, 1975 - CLP/MJK1.
5. Jack the Ripper, The Final Solution, Knight, 1976 [close-up] - CLP/MJK1.
6. The Complete Jack the Ripper, Rumbelow, 1987 - CLP/MJK1.
7. Jack the Ripper: 100 Years of Mystery, Underwood, 1987 [close-up] - CLP/MJK1.
8. Jack the Ripper the Uncensored Facts, Begg, 1988 [close-up] - CLP/MJK1.
9. New Murderers' Who's Who, Gaute/Odell, 1989 [close-up] - CLP/MJK1.
10. Jack the Ripper the Mystery Solved, Harrison, 1991 [close-up] - CLP/MJK1.
11. The Ripper and the Royals, Fairclough, 1991 - CLP/MJK1.
12. The Jack the Ripper A - Z, Begg/Fido/Skinner, 1991 [close-up] - CLP/MJK1.
13. Diary of Jack the Ripper, Harrison, 1993 [in album with crack] - NSY/MJK2.
14. The Black Museum, Waddell, Waddell, 1993 [reversed!] - NSY/MJK2.
15. The Complete History of Jack the Ripper, Sugden, 1994 [close-up] - CLP/MJK1.
16. The Lodger, Evans/Gainey, 1995 [no damage] - NSY/MJK2.
17. Jack the Ripper the Simple Truth, Paley, 1995 [with crack] - NSY/MJK2.
18. Jack the Ripper A - Z, Begg/Fido/Skinner, 1996 p/b [close-up with crack] - NSY/MJK2.
19. The Secret of Prisoner 1167, Tully, 1997 [close-up] - CLP/MJK1.
20. Jack the Ripper Whitechapel Murders, O'Donnell, 1997 [close-up] - CLP/MJK1.
21. Le Livre Rouge de Jack l'Eventreur, Bourgoin, 1998 - CLP/MJK1.

As may be seen, the majority of the books use the photograph located by Don Rumbelow, in many cases poor copies of it, usually as close-ups. However, the New Scotland Yard copy of the photograph, located in 1988, has gradually come into circulation.
On May 29, 1998 I questioned Don regarding the photograph. He stated that no negative was found, only the photograph. This, he said, he had copied and then placed the original with the Black Museum. Don has a first generation copy from this negative, and passed one to Professor Francis Camps at the London Hospital also. He has no spare copies of the Police Journal in which, in 1969, he first published the photograph. The importance of Don's actions, and his foresight in preserving these items back in the 1960's cannot be overemphasized.
Other Copies
The copy used by Lacassagne, not known if still in existence, has already been mentioned. Another copy was in the possession of Dr. Percy J. Clark, Dr. Bagster Phillips' assistant, in 1910. A fifth copy was amongst the documents, including the Littlechild letter, purchased by antiquarian dealer Eric Barton from Sotheby's in the early 1960's. These documents were the remains of the criminological collection of George R. Sims, and it was presumably given to Sims, with other Miller's Court photographs, by Sir Melville Macnaghten, his close friend. In his 1907 article in Lloyd's Weekly News Sims refers to these photographs being in his collection. Eric told me, 1993, that he had never sold the photographs and that to the best of his knowledge they were still somewhere amongst his collection at Sheen Road, Richmond. They were never located before Eric died.

So there are possibly as many as five original prints (it's hard to decipher whether 'copy' means an original print produced more than once or whether it means a copy made of such an original?) and possibly more. It doesn't necessarily clarify why the versions are quite different, but surely we can all agree that those pesky initials are not going away any day soon?

Cheers,

Ike

[Iconoclast]

From Farson (1972) ...

[Iconoclast]

From Lacassagne (1899) ...

[Iconoclast]

So quite difficult to detect (impossible if you don't know what you're looking for) in 1899, but fairly unmissable 73 years later. How is that possible, dear readers?

[Iconoclast]

And even the 73 years later was still 31 years away from Feldman's little foray into letters on Mary Kelly's wall.

Fascinating ...

[Kattrup]

That's the scale of the coincidence Orsam and co have to face and come to terms with. I don't envy them.

Yeah, colossal coincidence. Mind-boggling. Almost on scale with the “coincidence” of a man with sketchy past shopping for a blank Victorian diary suddenly presenting a provenance-less diary of Jack the Ripper!

I don’t think your little novel managed to face and come to terms with that, did it?