One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[Iconoclast]

I could have easily edited these to make it more prominent to suit my argument, but that would be disingenuous. Again, anyone who knows photoshop will agree it is easily done. You may just see grime, I see F and M.

If you are looking for perfect caligraphy in blood, I would say you might be setting your bar a little too high.

Okay, enough of the 'For ****'s sake's - I do think Farson (1972) is my absolute favourite, for the record ...

This particular example of Kelly's wall (the one you show above) is the one I struggle the most with, ero b. I can see in it where I can see the 'FM' everywhere else, but this particular photo is disturbingly imprecise when almost all of the others are so relatively precise. That frustrates me as I can't understand why that would be so?

PS Lord O, does this earn me a membership pack?

Ike

[Al Bundy's Eyes]

For ****'s sake, Abe - why did you have to bring up coins!

You'll just set me off again ...

Just have a quick toss off, you'll be fine.

[Iconoclast]

Just have a quick toss off, you'll be fine.

[Al Bundy's Eyes]

...
?

PS Lord O, does this earn me a membership pack?

Ike

Ike, you've more chance of a Sunderland season ticket than Lord O giving you corporate seats.

[erobitha]

Okay, enough of the 'For ****'s sake's - I do think Farson (1972) is my absolute favourite, for the record ...

This particular example of Kelly's wall (the one you show above) is the one I struggle the most with, ero b. I can see in it where I can see the 'FM' everywhere else, but this particular photo is disturbingly imprecise when almost all of the others are so relatively precise. That frustrates me as I can't understand why that would be so?

PS Lord O, does this earn me a membership pack?

Ike

Hi Ike,

The issue with images is that it all boils down to the source. The image I was working from was a hi-res version supplied to me by Ozzy. I don't know if that was artificially enlarged or blown up from a lower quality source, which could cause an element of distortion if that is the case. Perhaps he can shed some light if he reads this.

There is definitely something there and it looks like F M to me.

[Iconoclast]

Hi Ike,

The issue with images is that it all boils down to the source. The image I was working from was a hi-res version supplied to me by Ozzy. I don't know if that was artificially enlarged or blown up from a lower quality source, which could cause an element of distortion if that is the case. Perhaps he can shed some light if he reads this.

There is definitely something there and it looks like F M to me.

Morning ero b,

I’m reading this on my phone (SE 2020) and now the FM is clear again in the first couple of versions. It must be something to do with scale and perspective for this particular version (for me)?

Cheers,

ike

[Kattrup]

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.

Mixing things up? Yeah, your posts do that all the time.

We're talking about how YOU have accused members of the crew of lying, like you do in the paragraph above and in the post I replied to:

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.

I remarked that you must know them well to sling such accusations around. To which you...I don't know, try to pretend that I'm accusing them of something? Let's recap: In your posts you accuse, with no evidence, Eddie Lyons of being a thief and a liar, and his coworkers of being complicit in theft and of lying to cover for him and their own complicity. That's very simple and factual.

Do try and keep your posts focused on the topic at hand.

[caz]

Theoretical chance probabilities of events known to have happened that generate the initial hypothesis are meaningless, and do not allow you to even lean towards causality. You are free to disagree, but that will not make you correct to do so. It is wrong to suggest you can in any way infer causality just because real life is improbable. Where probability comes in is when you make the prediction first. I predict, for example, that if the diary was not under the floorboards that the chance of finding dust/debris that is similar to that found under the floorboards is so low that if you did find it then my prediction would have to have been wrong, and since that prediction is tied to the idea of the diary not having been under the floorboards, it would weigh heavily against that hypothesis. Or, I could say "I predict that if the diary was under the floorboards the probability of finding physical traces consistent with the space under the floor is so high that if there is not such evidence then my prediction fails, and likewise my hypothesis". That's when probabilities matter. What we've been discussing up to now is smoke and mirrors.

- Jeff

Just reached this one, Jeff, and I'm very grateful for your input.

It would seem then, that the hypothesis which has the Barretts creating the physical diary from a photo album, bought at an auction on 31st March 1992, and Mike taking the finished hoax to London 13 days later, as it is adapted from claims made by a habitual liar and confessor, and then glued together with coincidences argued not to be coincidences at all - chiefly the pocket diary for 1891, which Mike ordered between 19th and 26th March 1992, and the popular Tales of Liverpool, which Mike took round to his friend Tony after he fractured his hip around Christmas 1990 - is just another case of smoke and mirrors?

This hypothesis relies on Mike having ordered the 1891 diary for no other purpose than to use it for Maybrick's diary [even though Maybrick was dead by May 1889]; and relies on Mike not lending a copy of Tales of Liverpool to Tony by coincidence, but as part of the process involved in hoaxing Maybrick's diary.

There is no actual evidence that Mike attended an auction on 31st March 1992, or that his photo album was among the items on sale, but the fact that one was held on that day, which he could have attended, is used as evidence that he did so, even though it's not something he ever claimed, when wanting to prove his part in the hoax.

The whole hypothesis depends on the word of a liar when it suits; changing his words when it doesn't suit; and seeing causality when none has been demonstrated.

Love,

Caz
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[caz]

If I pass a shop which has tools in the window, I think it's reasonable to think the shop may be a hardware store. If it turns out to be a hardware store, did my confirmation bias make it so or make me think it so? In your world, it would seem that that shop could just as easily be a maternity clothes store.

I walked into a shop the other day and asked to buy a wasp. When the manageress said she sold cakes, not wasps, I asked her, in that case, why she had wasps in the window.

She said something very waspish and I made a beeline for the door.

Love,

Caz
X

[Iconoclast]

I walked into a shop the other day and asked to buy a wasp. When the manageress said she sold cakes, not wasps, I asked her, in that case, why she had wasps in the window.

She said something very waspish and I made a beeline for the door.

Love,

Caz
X

Bee hive, Caz!

[caz]

Hi, Caz.

I think I may have traced the reason I have misunderstood you, and why it led to me to misrepresent you. As I offer my apologies, let me explain.

You see, you may not realize you are doing it, but every time you mention Eddie selling the diary of Jack the Ripper to a bloke in a pub, you refer to it not as the diary of Jack the Ripper, but as a book, or an “old book,” or even a “tatty old book.” Once you even referred to it as a ‘damaged’ tatty old book. Indeed, you just did it again in your most recent post: “old book.”

Can you see how someone as dull-witted as I am might be confused by the terminology that you've been using?

For example, some other quotes from you on this thread:

1. “Eddie's tatty, damaged "old book" had 17 unused pages after the last page of writing. Mike didn't have oodles of cash to splash, but he wanted Eddie's tatty, damaged "old book", and he wanted it bad.” (Post #5446)

2. “The enquiry was made by Mike very early on, when he would only just have got his sights fixed on Eddie's "old book" (Post #5453)

3. “A point that RJ seems unable to grasp - presumably because he has already convinced himself that Eddie could never have had the diary - is that anyone finding and removing this "old book" from a customer's house would have been unable to sell it on for big money” (Post #6496)

So—silly me—for all this time I have wrongly assumed that you were suggesting that Eddie was offering Mike a tatty, old book. Clearly, this was a misunderstanding on my part; what you were really acknowledging is that Eddie was fully aware that the book he just found under the floorboards of Battlecrease was the diary of Jack the Ripper and this was what he was attempting to fence to Mike at lunchtime on 9 March 1992.

“Mate, I just found the diary of Jack the Ripper under the floorboards of an old house in Aigburth, do you want it?”

Thus, Mike did not need to take actual ownership of the Diary on March 9th before seeking a publisher; he just learned from Eddie what he needed to know to make a sales pitch.

I think I have it now. That's the part I had wrong. I thought you were suggesting that Eddie only knew he had found a "tatty, old book," thrown into a skip, and thus Mike would have needed to gain physical possession of the diary in order to realize it was the confession of Jack the Ripper. In reality, Eddie told him this on March 9th.

Nothing whatsoever to do with ‘credit’—Eddie retained ownership.

Whew.

Even so—if I still understand you correctly--Mike immediately called a literary agent in London, telling the secretary that HE owned the diary of Jack the Ripper. The next day, he repeats this to Doreen, March 10th.

Mike, off to York, now hatches a plan to get the diary of Jack the Ripper from Eddie by offering him the going rate for a blank or partially blank Victorian diary. To this end, Mike phones Martin Earl.

As you wrote as recently as June 28th, Post #6393 :

“If he could show Eddie a recent and legitimate bill for a genuine, unused or partly used Victorian diary, he could offer him the same amount - £25 - for his tatty, damaged and partly used "old book", for which there was no evidence of it even being Victorian, never mind written by yer actual Jack the Ripper.”

There’s that tatty old book again, but what you really mean is that Mike is going to offer £25 for the alleged diary of Jack the Ripper, which Eddy knows came from under the floorboards of an old house in Aigburth.

I think I got it now.

Then, for the next 17 days, Eddie cools his heels, perhaps visiting Liverpool University with the diary, or perhaps not, but, either way, he fails to find another buyer other than the stranger Mike Barrett, or come up with a more generous offer for this possibly real, or possibly dodgy artifact of potential historical interest; for two-and-a-half weeks, Eddie is content to hold the diary of Jack the Ripper for Mike Barrett (but not on credit), who is still no more than a bloke from a pub that he may or may not have known.

How am I doing?

Finally, on March 27th ('Inside Story', p. 237, states that Martin E. Earl mailed the maroon memo book to Barrett on 26 March), Mike receives the bill from Earl.

Mike again meets with Eddie, who agrees to part with the diary of Jack the Ripper for the twenty-five quid.

Do I have it right, now? Is that a reasonably accurate rendition of what you have been suggesting? I don't want to misrepresent you.

If I finally have it right, then I think no further comment is necessary. The merits of your theory will be readily apparent to all.

All the best,

R P

It was only a thought, RJ, based on neither Eddie nor Mike knowing at that stage who the diary author was meant to be. After all, Mike happily ordered a pocket diary for 1891, priced at £25, between 19th and 26th March 1992, as if he wasn't aware that the diary he was meant to be 'selling' to Doreen covered a period from early 1888 to May 1889, when the writer signed off as Jack the Ripper.

As far as Eddie or Mike were concerned, the thing could have been someone's attempt at fiction, in which case it may as well have been signed Spring-Heeled Jack or The Invisible Man. Indeed, your belief is that the photo album had no writing in it at all on 9th March, so from your point of view the diary may as well have been written in invisible ink.

You seem pretty sure that anyone seeing the name Jack the Ripper in a tatty old damaged book in Liverpool would immediately think it was the work of the bloke who committed those murders in London in 1888.

I went for my routine eye test on Tuesday and the optician asked me about my daily use of a computer screen and what have you. When I said I had co-authored a book in 2003 and was still interested in the subject matter, she asked what it was about, so I mentioned the diary signed by Jack the Ripper which turned up in Liverpool in 1992. She grimaced and said she couldn't understand people like that who could torture and kill, but she was surprised when I said he was never identified and never likely to be. She responded that at least he was probably dead by now, so I then had to explain that the murders were committed back in 1888. She was no spring chicken either, and I would estimate her age to be around the fifty mark.

Not everyone knows this stuff, RJ, or is remotely interested in learning more. What could Eddie have done if he thought there was any chance that the person who wrote Jack the Ripper in that old book in Riversdale Rd, Aigburth, was the real murderer from Whitechapel, London?

[Scott Nelson]

The Saddle is still seen as the common link between Mike and Eddie, giving legs to Feldman's original hypothesis by adding that Eddie could have brought the diary with him to the Saddle on 9th March where Mike had his lunchtime pint, before picking his daughter up from school at 3.15.

But the Saddle is a place, not an event, and without cctv we can't place both men in there at the same time with anything like certainty. It's not an unbreakable link in the chain of evidence. I submit that we may have been looking at the wrong common link - this one unbreakable: Fountains Road. We don't need cctv to know that both Tony Devereux and Eddie Lyons lived on that road.

So Mike calls Doreen about the diary on 9th March 1992. He later claims he was given the diary in 1991 by fellow Saddle regular Tony Devereux, at his home in Fountains Road. Also living in Fountains Road is another Saddle user called Eddie Lyons, who worked on the floorboard job on 9th March 1992.

Reverse this and you get floorboards being lifted; EL returning home to Fountains Road; MB drinking in the Saddle there and attracting interest in the diary; MB saying he got it from another Fountains Road resident.

Caroline, so the so-called "Fountains Road" link are the facts that EL lived there and worked at Battlecrease House, and drank at the Saddle Pub, where MB went? Shouldn't there be a stronger Devereux connection since he lived on Fountains Road, knew MB and also drank at the Saddle? This assumption would seem to obscure the entire chronology of assumed events. The Inside Story doesn't really address Devereux's involvement in this regard.

[Ozzy]

I can't recall where I got that Kelly image from, apart from online from some website. I've wondered about it's source. I don't know if it was scanned from a book where it's appeared or what. It would be nice to know.

[erobitha]

I can't recall where I got that Kelly image from, apart from online from some website. I've wondered about it's source. I don't know if it was scanned from a book where it's appeared or what. It would be nice to know.

Thanks Ozzy. My guess the image was artificially enlarged so there is every chance of pixel distortion. It would be very interesting to get a hi-res copy from the original source and run it through the AI.

[caz]

Caroline, so the so-called "Fountains Road" link are the facts that EL lived there and worked at Battlecrease House, and drank at the Saddle Pub, where MB went? Shouldn't there be a stronger Devereux connection since he lived on Fountains Road, knew MB and also drank at the Saddle? This assumption would seem to obscure the entire chronology of assumed events. The Inside Story doesn't really address Devereux's involvement in this regard.

When our book was published, Scotty, nobody alive had connected the floorboards coming up and Mike's phone call to Doreen to one day in March 1992.

When we were working on the book, it struck me as one hell of a coincidence that Eddie had been living on Fountains Rd of all places, if he had no connection with Mike, or with Tony, or with the diary. The distance from there to Riversdale Rd really made me sit up and take notice. But it had to be a genuine coincidence, because none of the dates we had to work with added up. It's why Feldman gave up in 1993 and concluded that the electricians he spoke to were trying to con him.

It was only when we later learned - completely out of the blue - that this second Fountains Rd resident had actually been working in Maybrick's house on the very day Mike called Doreen about Maybrick's diary, that this was a potential game-changer and the coincidence might not be one after all.

Tony's 'involvement' was only ever claimed by Mike, and later endorsed by Anne. There is nothing to prove Tony ever knew the diary existed, or discussed with anyone the concept of such a diary. There is nothing to connect Tony with Eddie apart from them once living in the same street, where The Saddle was their nearest pub. They may never even have met. Eddie may only have come to know Tony's name because of the claims Mike - and later Anne - made about him in a diary context. Eddie did read Shirley's book [first published in October 1993], so he'd have been aware that Mike's story was that he was given the diary in 1991 by a man called Tony Devereux, whose local was The Saddle.

It's not a 'so-called' link, Scotty. Eddie and Tony did live on the same street and both used The Saddle, if not at the same time. The question is whether or not Mike knew of Eddie's existence and where he was living, when he first gave the diary a Fountains Rd provenance, by naming a resident - Tony - who had died the previous summer.

If not, it must have come as a shock to Mike to discover where Eddie lived, when Feldman was trying to connect this man to the diary.

And it must have come as a shock to Eddie to learn that Mike had connected the diary to someone from the same street.

Love,

Caz
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