One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[rjpalmer]

The difference between us is that my evidence is not based on anything claimed for the diary's origins by Anne or Mike themselves. You are still trusting the worst possible person for the truth, and I have no idea why anyone would do that. I'd advise you not to write THAT book. A thousand pages of 'The Truth According to Michael Barrett' won't make it any more believable.

No; this isn’t true, Caz. You do accept things that Barrett has stated, just as do I. The difference is that I admit it, and you don’t.

In effect, you’re misstating the problem we all face. It isn’t that Bongo Barrett lied 100% of the time, and we can safely dismiss everything he ever said; it’s that he lied 95% of the time, and we have to have the wisdom to recognize the rare instances when he was telling the truth.

For instance, you believe Barrett when he claimed to have spent a week in the Central Liverpool Library trying to find the “sweet intercourse of death” [sic] quote.

I don’t.

You believe Barrett when he said he randomly found a copy of Tales of Liverpool in a bookstore.

I don’t.

You don’t believe Barrett when he wrote in a private note that Anne wrote the diary.

I do.

Those who have concluded that Barrett never ever told the truth—not even 5% of the time—have created a psychological barrier that will forever prevent them from seeing the truth about the diary.

That’s my belief, but clearly you disagree and will always disagree.

Regards, RP

[caz]

Herewith three examples of MJK1.

The first, in sepia, is the original. I have done nothing at all to it.
The 2nd, is in B&W, with a sharper contrast etc
The third, in Grey, again with sharper contrast etc

On all three examples.. You can very clearly see there is NO "M" or "F" on the wall.
This, remember, is the original. I've made no erasure nor have I edited the photographic content in any way, just the colour and contrast.

Now, Iconoclast. Argue on. If there is no F, or M on the wall... It tells you that the photograph used for the Diary was one which was NOT the original, and therefore doctored.

You can't make sandcastles out of paper. You need the original material.

Phil

Hi Phil,

Nice to see Chelsea up where they belong!

According to Keith Skinner, the photo published in Shirley's 1993 hardback is - and I quote - 'direct from the original photograph whilst it was still on the page in the album'.

If this is what you meant by 'the photograph used for the Diary', could you make it clear who you are NOT accusing of 'doctoring' it, and also when you think this was done, as it would be a very serious allegation to make against anyone who became involved after the diary emerged, and I'm sure you would not want any readers to get the wrong end of the stick.

Thanks.

Hope you are well. My younger brother just came out of hospital last night, following a terrifying few days on oxygen and antibiotics, after getting COVID pneumonia. We thought we might lose him. The scary thing is that he had been double jabbed and was always super careful about social distancing and wearing his mask, and he still has no clue how he caught it. This thing is far from over, and goodness knows when we will finally hear the fat lady sing.

Puts everything in perspective, doesn't it?

Love,

Caroline
X

[caz]

I have stated, more than once, that Dr. Flint was mistaken about the phrase 'gathering momentum' being modern...

...Dr. Flint, a lecturer in Victorian literature, does indeed have a 'feel' for what Victorian language should sound like, and she is right that the diary is an obvious modern hoax, complete with many examples of over-egging the custard. But she was mistaken about this particularly phrase, which is why I argued that we need tools to temper our subjective assumptions with empirical evidence. Empirical evidence such as any lack of evidence that the well-known phrases 'one off instance' and 'bumbling buffoon'--so readily available in magazines and newspapers and books in the 1980s and 90s-- are mysteriously lacking in vast databases of Victorian and Edwardian literature and journalism.

I presume you could post a link to where Dr Kate Flint published her findings in full, RJ? I think you would agree that your readers have a right to know if she actually concluded, in her own words, that 'the diary is an obvious modern hoax'. [I'll let the custard slide ha ha]

According to your own admittedly subjective assumptions about how Victorians could or could not have expressed themselves, you are declaring her to be 'right' without allowing her to speak for herself and say what she was right about.

So far, her track record on being 'right' about specific phrases - such as 'top myself' and 'gather momentum' - because of her 'feel' for what Victorian language should sound like, is not especially encouraging, is it? Unless it was the entire diary content that failed the smell test to begin with, which then prompted her to seek out the smelliest examples she could find, in a bid to prove herself right and that her nose was in great shape?

Or was it the other way round? Did she begin by looking for words or phrases that stood out from the rest of the text because they sounded too modern to her trained ear?

The fact is, RJ, that very few words or phrases stand out by themselves as too modern, or Dr. Flint would presumably have been able to identify them as such, and today there are even fewer remaining that have not been found on the surviving record. A buffoon of bumbledom from 1891? Ouch, that one must have stung a bit. I bet the ultimate buffoon, Mike Barrett, would not have seen that one coming, if he or Anne had put the bumbling buffoon in the diary, thinking it felt 'right' for the character they were drawing from the same era. You do seem to find some of Gary Barnett's discoveries disconcerting, although a more objective mind would welcome the chance to learn more about the old lingo, and not linger in ignorance when a previous misconception can be corrected.

[rjpalmer]

You do seem to find some of Gary Barnett's discoveries disconcerting.

I do? Where have I said any such thing? I've always been impressed with his genealogical research, but I am not the least bit convinced by his or yours or Ike's arguments about the language of the Maybrick hoax.

The mere fact that you keep misunderstanding and misrepresenting what I've written is an excellent indication of why we are wasting each other's time.

The diary first arrived in 1992. No credible person has claimed to have seen it before that date. In 1992 the phrase 'one off [instance]' was in wide usage. This is undeniable.

Gary's suggestion was that the diarist could have meant 'one-off' colt, or some similarly strange suggestion. Sorry, but I don't think that some obscure term from horse husbandry that doesn't even fit the context of the diary is a credible alternative, particularly since the diarist also refers to a police inventory list not made public until the 1980s! Why seek obscure and myopic explanations, when an obvious one is staring you in the face?

Nor is any nonsense rhyme about 'Bumbledom' convincing. At most, it is a one-off (sorry!) piece of word play, written in an age that was fond of word play. (And no, please avoid the entirely circular reasoning that because the diary implies that it is Victorian, that it IS Victorian, and thus written by a contemporary of Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear).

In stark contrast to "Bumbledom," the phrase "bumbling buffoon" is a recognizable insult, proved to be in wide usage in the 1980s and 1990s--when the diary emerged. You've still come up utterly empty in proving it was in any usage before 1940, so you're stuck with one-off near-misses and hoping against hope that 'Maybrick' was a wordsmith who coined the phrase independently. The same diarist whose wordsmithing reaches the inventive and lofty heights of 'with the key I did flee.'

Sorry. I'm not feeling disconcerted.

As for Dr. Flint, that's a discussion you need to have with someone else. This is another example where you actually partially agree with me, but one would never guess it by your tone. GB is the one who suggested that n-grams were for those who don't have a 'feel' for language. I suggested that we need objective tools for analyzing language. Vast newspaper archives are one such tool, as is the OED, as are n-grams. Those tools combined leave the diary's text floundering, and its defenders jumping over obvious explanations in search of dubious ones that will keep their subjective beliefs safe and warm and cozy.

RP and Out!

[caz]

RJ Palmer's remark that the defense is still not acting in good faith is perfectly illustrated by this post.

So says someone who would know all about not acting in good faith.

You regularly accuse me of accusing the P&R electricians of all sorts, when I have merely pointed to what they have said themselves. The casual reader might be misled into thinking you have them all down as pure as the driven snow and won't have a bad word said about them.

The defence in this case - you - could not be acting in worse faith on this thorny issue.

As one of the hoax busters, who you gonna call?

Which witnesses in the electricians' story are you going to defend and on what basis?

At least four different witnesses, on separate occasions, have named Eddie Lyons in connection with a discovery made in Battlecrease House while electrical work was being done there, one of them being Eddie himself, who mentioned his find to Brian Rawes in July 1992, long before the diary became public knowledge, and again in June 1993, when he agreed to meet Mike Barrett and Robert Smith in The Saddle.

So you have 1) Eddie Lyons, at least twice [see above]

2) Brian Rawes, who repeated his account several times over the years to different investigators.

3) Robert Smith [see above]

4) Arthur Rigby, who was so worried that he went to see Paul Dodd in the summer of 1993 to deny any involvement in theft and to name two men who knew about it: Eddie Lyons and Eddie's closest work colleague, JB.

Eddie has denied the conversation with Brian, but bizarrely has also denied ever meeting Robert Smith in The Saddle, or ever seeing Mike Barrett there. He has denied finding anything at all [hardly surprising either way] despite what both Brian and Robert said they heard from Eddie's own lips.

More recently, however, Eddie volunteered the information that he was at Battlecrease helping out with JB, on Arthur Rigby's rewiring job on the first floor, in preparation for the storage heater installation. The records prove when this happened, so Eddie had no need to try and remember any dates, and wasn't asked. Keith Skinner even threw him a lifeline and told him he couldn't have been there that day because his name was not on the relevant weekly timesheet. But Eddie was adamant - he WAS there. He saw no reason to deny it, but then he didn't remember the date [naturally enough, who would?] and didn't yet appreciate its significance to diary researchers.

So come on, Kattrup. Restore the readers' faith in your own good faith and take a stab at reconciling all the above claims. Do you believe it was Brian, Robert and Arthur, who all decided to make up stories about Eddie? Or should Eddie's denials be taken with the healthy pinch of Anglesey sea salt?

It's make your mind up time.

Love,

Caz
X

[erobitha]

I was not aware that Gary had found 'Buffoon of Bumbledom' from 1891. As soon I search for it on the BNA it pops up immediately.



I expect it must be nigh on impossible for people in spoken parlance to even consider re-wording such a phrase to 'Bumbling Buffoon' and then write it down in a private document that may not have been ever for public consumption.

I found a 'Babbling Buffon' as early as 1851, and I keep finding more lately.

[caz]

No; this isn’t true, Caz. You do accept things that Barrett has stated, just as do I. The difference is that I admit it, and you don’t.

In effect, you’re misstating the problem we all face. It isn’t that Bongo Barrett lied 100% of the time, and we can safely dismiss everything he ever said; it’s that he lied 95% of the time, and we have to have the wisdom to recognize the rare instances when he was telling the truth.

Absolutely, but I did say that my evidence is not based on anything claimed for the diary's origins by Anne or Mike themselves. I accept nothing that Mike or Anne ever stated about its origins, because they were equally unable to prove they knew anything about them - you know, with real, hard, supporting evidence that stands up to the toughest scrutiny - and nor has anyone else, up to this day. You shouldn't have to rely on having 'the wisdom to recognize the rare instances when he was telling the truth'. It was his task to prove when he was being truthful about where the old book came from and he failed, leaving you to stare at tea leaves and believe in your own ability to see the truth in them. Just more subjective assumptions, based on what you want to believe, and not on what can be proved.

For instance, you believe Barrett when he claimed to have spent a week in the Central Liverpool Library trying to find the “sweet intercourse of death” [sic] quote.

I don’t.

So there we have it - why personal 'belief' is never going to be enough. You can't prove Mike didn't do this, and there is fair bit of circumstantial evidence to suggest he did, but your 'wisdom' alone tells you he didn't. Yet there is not a shred of evidence, circumstantial or physical, that a Sphere volume 2, which Shirley confirmed was available in the library when Mike claimed to find the quote, had ever been in his home. The only copy he was able to produce, in December 1994, could not have been obtained in the way he described.

You believe Barrett when he said he randomly found a copy of Tales of Liverpool in a bookstore.

I don’t.

That's not quite how he worded it, but again, it's not something that can be proved either way, and the fact that Tony had a copy in his house until January 1991, when his daughter borrowed it and never gave it back, proves nothing either. It certainly doesn't prove they were discussing a Maybrick hoax in the planning stage, months before the scrapbook was obtained. Mike said nothing of the sort in his affidavit, claiming that Tony was alive when the diary had been written and was ready to go. I don't believe him, but nor do you. So we are quits on that one. They were not waiting for Tony to die so they'd have a provenance, were they?

You make something of it; I can't.

You don’t believe Barrett when he wrote in a private note that Anne wrote the diary.

I do.

Of course I don't believe it - not without an expert identifying the writing as Anne's. Was this in a private note, supposedly meant for Anne's eyes, but which she presumably never received? Ever wondered how this 'private' note got shared around and ended up in the public domain? Ever wondered why? Doesn't your wisdom let you recognise when Mike was playing another of his silly games?

Those who have concluded that Barrett never ever told the truth—not even 5% of the time—have created a psychological barrier that will forever prevent them from seeing the truth about the diary.

That’s my belief, but clearly you disagree and will always disagree.

Regards, RP

That's an erroneous and rather puerile observation on your part, based on a careless reading of my post. Nobody has ever to my knowledge claimed that Mike never, ever, ever, ever told the truth about anything. That would be every bit as silly as you trying to claim they have. I repeat that I won't be relying on anything Mike or Anne claimed when talking about the diary's origins. I have the accounts of the electricians to weigh up against the accounts of the Barretts.

Your psychological barrier was put up years ago, when you invested too heavily in Mike only telling the truth when he was in 'confession' mode.

But it's good to see you now talking about beliefs, and agreeing or disagreeing, instead of accusing people of knowing damned well that the Barretts created the diary and it was fraud.

[caz]

So what do you make of Barrett telling Shirley Harrison privately that initials can be found in the Eddowes' photograph?

The Baron already reposted Melvin Harris's remarks on this:

"Apart from that you have Fido's text which speaks of the Ripper "putting his personal mark on his victim's face". The victim, of course, was Eddowes and the only person to speak of these marks as forming an M was Mike Barrett. This does not mean that it was his personal discovery; it might have been Devereux's for all we know, but it was Mike, and Mike alone, who made the idea public. THIS IS ACKNOWLEDGED BY Mrs HARRISON IN HER HARDBACK (page 170). In writing of the alleged clues at the murder sites she says that an M "...was carved on the cheeks of the fourth woman to die, Catharine Eddowes- a fact that Mike Barrett was the first person ever to notice."

It appears that Mike suddenly had a lot more to say about initials when speaking privately, no?

Hi RJ,

You addressed the above to Ike, but may I ask where and when Melvin Harris posted the remarks quoted by The Baron? Also, do you know which text by Martin Fido is being referred to by Melvin?

It wasn't Mike Barrett who 'made the idea public'. Shirley wrote what she wrote based on Mike's research notes, which you will no doubt have read for yourself.

Nor is there any suggestion that Mike spoke privately about initials. For anyone who may have been misled, either by Melvin's choice of words or your own, here is the relevant quote from Mike's typed up notes, which appears to be the basis of what Shirley wrote:

'Maybrick says he left his mark on Catharine Eddowes. The only
marks I can come up with are the triangular flaps about an inch
and a half on each cheek (V) Could he have been trying to carve
M on her cheeks VV ?'

Mike's previous note may also be of interest here:

'Why does he say "initial here initial there" ? Why did he
underline ha ha after the initial M when he says in the rhyme
"along with M ha ha" - M has to be is [sic] mark.'

That second line from the diary appears to refer back to the Hanbury St crime scene, not Mitre Square or Miller's Court, so we don't know what Mike's thoughts were regarding initials mentioned in connection with the Kelly murder. No mention here, there or anywhere of the wall or the wounded forearm, so it's anyone's guess what initials the diary author was seeking to exploit, and where the idea originally came from.

[caz]

While browsing elsewhere, I found the following:

But check, re-check, question 'certainties,' don't get bullied into accepting the party line without independent confirmation.

Source: #106, Witnesses: Full notes on Charles Cross/Lechmere, 1^st October 2021

It's a pity RJ has never practised what he preaches above when it comes to the Barretts.

Independent confirmation of their joint enterprise is lacking, while RJ continues to fill the gap with his own subjective beliefs and wisdom, but sadly little wit.

[caz]

You have to love Caz. She gives you a three paragraph bollocking before agreeing with you.

Sorry about that. I'll give you the bollocking this time without agreeing with you.

Ike—why, in typical Ike fashion, did you post a photograph of a defensive wound in post #7331[edit: #7418] that is the exact opposite of what we are looking at in the infamous Kelly photograph? Why do you always do these things, old boy? It’s a symptom of sloppy thinking, and a half-arsed way of going through life.

Ask yourself this. Where are the arteries and veins in your forearm? On the outer, back, boney side of your arm, or on the inner, palm side of your arm? And which side are you looking at in the Kelly photograph? Which side are you looking at in your photo? Isn’t it really enormously foolish of you to say there will be buckets and buckets of blood pouring from the back of Kelly’s arm?

Next question. How many times can you scream in 5 seconds? Don’t just guess. Try it. When you come up with a suitable answer add the following complications: panic, hyperventilation, adrenaline, a cut trachea.

Now lay down on a bed. Lift your left arm and place it on your right shoulder. Cup the shoulder. Lift your left elbow slightly and imagine someone is attacking you with a knife and wants to cut your throat—from your right to the your left as described by Dr. Bond. Notice that the right side of your throat is exposed. Remember that Bond describes arterial spray on the wall to your right from this exposed area.

Now sit still. Don’t move. Don’t move your arm. Think very very carefully.

Don’t clutter your mind with all of your preconceived notions about what you *think* the result would look like and sound like. Five seconds and one scream is all you get. Think.

You have to love RJ. Did anyone else note the irony in his extensive six paragraph defence of his argument that the cuts to Kelly's forearm, described by Bond as 'extensive and jagged', could have been defensive wounds - lacerations - inflicted before death, which hardly bled if at all?

In short, if the same effect we see in the photo would have been produced by the killer's knife if he made those cuts after death, it's no longer - er - a cut and dried case of self inflicted wounds [which RJ really ought to be an expert on by now] but one of defending what is the more likely explanation for the bleedin' not being more obvious.

My poor old boney shin is living proof that even shallow wounds can bleed like a stuck pig, completely obscuring their shape beneath, so I'm biased.

[caz]

The diary first arrived in 1992. No credible person has claimed to have seen it before that date. In 1992 the phrase 'one off [instance]' was in wide usage. This is undeniable.

To be precise, no credible person ever mentioned hearing about such a diary either before Monday March 9 1992. This also is undeniable. Your fun task for today is to ask yourself - seriously now - how blabbermouth Barrett managed to keep such a tantalising secret from slipping out after a session or ten at the Saddle, while supposedly engaged with Tony, Anne and Billy in the planning stages of their hoax, over months if not years. His track record for keeping the diary secret once the genie was out of the bottle was woeful. He was meant to say nothing to anyone, but blabbed on the train back to Liverpool in June 1992 to a complete stranger, who turned out to be a journalist of all people!

Nor is any nonsense rhyme about 'Bumbledom' convincing. At most, it is a one-off (sorry!) piece of word play, written in an age that was fond of word play. (And no, please avoid the entirely circular reasoning that because the diary implies that it is Victorian, that it IS Victorian, and thus written by a contemporary of Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear).

I just find it too much of a stretch to expect the Barretts to have put a bumbling buffoon in a diary they were creating for Maybrick in 1888/89, without any of Dr. Flint's 'feel' for the language and then, blow me down, a bounding buffoon of Bumbledom pops up in print just two years later, in 1891. If anyone was fond of word play, it was Sir Jim, as portrayed in the diary. This isn't circular reasoning. It's what you expect people to believe, and it's simply not believable. Not even close.

As for Dr. Flint, that's a discussion you need to have with someone else. This is another example where you actually partially agree with me, but one would never guess it by your tone. GB is the one who suggested that n-grams were for those who don't have a 'feel' for language. I suggested that we need objective tools for analyzing language. Vast newspaper archives are one such tool, as is the OED, as are n-grams. Those tools combined leave the diary's text floundering, and its defenders jumping over obvious explanations in search of dubious ones that will keep their subjective beliefs safe and warm and cozy.

RP and Out!

Well you brought Dr. Flint into it, with your 'gathering momentum' post, demonstrating how even an expert with a 'feel' for language can be completely wrong. I thought the least you could do for her was to provide a link to where we can all read her full report. But that's fine if you can't do that small thing. I do find it slightly comical that where Dr. Flint's 'feel' let her down, the Barretts of Goldie Street just went for it and crossed their inky fingers, with not even a dictionary - old or new - as their guide.

But as I've said on numerous occasions now, I would be perfectly happy if the diary author was an anonymous prankster from the 20th century, who never set out to see their handiwork get into Mike Barrett's hands, but either died without knowing its fate or could do nothing about it. I can't wish away March 9 1992, as you have done so easily, because I don't share your faith in Mike Barrett's claim to inside knowledge.

[caz]

And now for something completely different...

Here is a response from Robert Smith to RJ's allegations in relation to the Sunday Times:

'RJ Palmer was incorrect to allege: "The Maybrick Hoax was ruled a fraud in a court of law nearly 3 decades ago". He now tries to justify this statement by proposing it is equivalent to Justice Lindsey's actual and far more muted statement: "[There is] a real possibility that for a period in October, if nothing is done, the public or some of its members may be deceived."

Palmer persists: "It's clear that Lyndsey thought there was sufficient evidence of fraud…" Clear to Palmer maybe, but other less prejudiced observers might infer that Lyndsey was saying, on the contrary, that there was insufficient evidence of fraud, but the possibility that the public might be deceived.

The case rested solely on whether the Sunday Times could cast enough doubt on the diary's authenticity for the court to overrule the formal terms of the serialisation agreement between the newspaper and Smith Gryphon Limited.

Palmer compounds his deception by proposing that my company must have been guilty of fraud by reason of being ordered to pay the "plaintiff's costs". There was, in fact, only a token award of £6,500. The Sunday Times were left to pay all of their very expensive legal costs, certainly well in excess of £100,000.

Its costly three-month legal action was a pointless waste of its money. It resulted in the Sunday Times being not permitted to publish their article until 19th September 1993, just two weeks before the book was published. It was far too late to inflict the damage they intended, in the belief it would mitigate the Sunday Times's decision to proceed with its disastrous serialisation ten years earlier of the fake Hitler diaries, despite its own historical adviser warning the editor that they had been forged. The Diary of Jack the Ripper on the other hand went straight into the Sunday Times's own bestseller list at No. 6.

28 years later, there still is no irrefutable proof of a forger's identity, or of how and when a forgery was produced.'

[caz]

I do find it slightly comical that where Dr. Flint's 'feel' let her down, the Barretts of Goldie Street just went for it and crossed their inky fingers, with not even a dictionary - old or new - as their guide.

This got me thinking again - I know, not always a good thing.

Why didn't the diary author use a dictionary, at least to get their spellings right?

Musing over Mike's library miracle once more, I recalled that when he first phoned Shirley to say he had found the quote, he couldn't have had the right book in front of him because he thought it was in Vol 6, which is in fact the Victorians.

This is particularly telling to my mind, because it would have been a perfectly natural mistake to make, if that was the first volume he had reached for in the library, because Maybrick himself was a Victorian. Getting home again, without the book, or even having made a note of it, he might reasonably have forgotten that the quote was in Vol 2.

My hunch is that he naturally looked through Vol 6 first, then drawing a blank he started again with Vol 1, before seeing the words appear before his very eyes in Vol 2, and being struck dumb for once in his life - but not for long. He would have been able to eliminate certain volumes for being too modern.

So when you come to think of it, it wasn't such a feat if he homed in on the Victorians, before going through the other volumes in turn, from Vol 1. After all, the set was sitting there in a neat row in front of him on the shelf.

I have another hunch that IF Mike obtained some of these volumes back in 1989, they were probably a bit like RJ's incomplete set of Barrett & Gray tapes, and the crucial Vol 2 - arguably less appealing than others to Scousers supporting the Hillsborough cause - was not among them when he tried to retrieve it from his new friend Jenny, which would explain why he had to track down the second-hand copy he eventually handed to Alan Gray in the December of 1994.

I may be misremembering, but didn't Melvin Harris admit that Jenny never actually claimed to see this particular volume?

Interestingly, if Mike did have some of these books at home between 1989 and 1992, I note from my own Vol 2 that Vol 11 is on The English Language, while Vol 12 is A Dictionary of English Literature, and if Mike was wondering what words and phrases Maybrick might have picked up on his travels across the pond, Vol 8 is on American Literature To 1900!

I might well have found all three far more useful than the one on 16th and 17th century poetry and prose if I had wanted to hoax that diary. Here was another opportunity for Mike to support his claims if more than one of these books had provided material.

I do wonder what could have possessed the Barretts to think they could write like a Victorian, without even consulting the most basic of dictionaries.

Most people would have more luck if they wanted to walk like an Egyptian.

Love,

Caz
X

[rjpalmer]

From Keith Skinner (unprompted this time):

Martin [Fido], Paul Begg and I were commissioned by Shirley Harrison and Robert Smith to act as consultants for The Diary of Jack The Ripper in the summer of 1992. It was agreed that rather than having 3 JTR consultants I would help Shirley with the Maybrick research. Paul and Martin's detailed internal reports, compiled before Paul Feldman joined the project, make it quite clear they are referring to and discussing initials on the wall of Kelly's room. Martin makes an annotated footnote (124) after An initial here and an initial there...

"MF - I can make out a quite definite M above Mary's right arm in the photo of her corpse, and could persuade myself that the preceding smudge was an F if pushed. Though I'd also suspect something like an A above what I take to be her liver."

"PB - I, too, can see the M. Also at the top of the picture above the M there seems to be the word George. Also, up and to the left of the M I can see a very clear 4 followed by what could be 8 or 0. I believe Kelly was murdered 40 days after the double event. I don't know whether to attach any significance to the latter, but it does suggest that the murderer wrote on Kelly's unit. A George features in the Journal as JM's dearest friend."

In 'The Final Chapter' pp 63-64 Paul Feldman refers to a visit he made to Direct Communication Designs in Chiswick in 1993 taking with him the original MJK photograph(s) loaned to him by Bill Waddell, the then Curator of Scotland Yard's Crime Museum and which had been returned to Scotland Yard circa 1987-1988.

The essential point for Roger Palmer to understand is that if he is correct and Barrett [or whoever wrote the scrapbook] wasn't referring to non existent marks on the back wall of Kelly's room, then not only did Paul Feldman incorrectly assume he was but so too did Martin Fido and Paul Begg.

Hi Keith.

I just read with great interest 'Lord Orsam's' article addressing your above analysis, now available on his website, Orsam Books.

Alas, you appear to be in error.

The transcript of this conversation between Paul Begg & Martin Fido, etc. that you quote is dated 19 January 1993.

Paul Feldman joined the team in December 1992. (This is Feldman's own admission, but it is confirmed elsewhere, see below). Thus, it is not accurate to state that these observations were "compiled before Feldman joined the project."

More astounding yet, Paul Feldman's theories about the alleged writings on the wall are actually referenced in this same transcript:

From Paul Begg's footnotes:

'There is also Paul Feldman's suggestion that the heart was used to write with and that minced heart was then splattered on the walls'.

This is important. It shows that previous suggestions made by Paul Feldman DID hang over this discussion.

Thus, we must dismiss the claim that Martin Fido and Paul Begg noticed the 'FM' on the wall, independently of Paul Feldman, as not proven. Rather, MF and PB seem to be directly responding to theories already put into motion by Feldy, who came up with the bizarre notion (or at least it is bizarre to me) that Maybrick used Kelly's heart as a sort of giant felt pen, writing large initials on the back wall. It is sometime during these musings that Martin recalls a previous conversation with Simon Wood.

To me, Martin's comment about 'if pushed' now becomes clear: he was thinking about what he might say about the initials 'FM' if Paul Feldman grabbed him by the throat and threatened to throw him off the balcony!

Finally, Simon Wood has already told us that Martin couldn't discern what the alleged writing was supposed to represent back in 1989.

Thus, Ike's ongoing claim that several people independently notice the initials "FM" does not appear to be accurate, and there is no "essential point" for me to understand.

Thanks for listening,

RP

P.S. I strongly recommend that you bite the bullet and read his articles, if you haven't already.

[The Baron]

Martin Fido:


"I have to say I doubt whether the forger had any awareness of the supposed initials on the wall at all. They were first pointed out to me before the emergence of the diary by Simon Wood, who saw completely different letters and thought a completely different name was being started. (I don't say what, in case Simon ever wishes to publish). In the earlyish days of my acting as 'advisor' to Shirley, I mentioned Simon's observation to her, since I knew that 'an initial here an initial there' and such things were proving puzzling. I also remarked that I couldn't myself detect the letters Simon saw (which may have been in a different position) but I did think I could see an M and an E. Before long the E was an F - and whaddya know: even John Omlor missed the fact that I'd doctored the photo to identify myself before embarking on forgery. 'Dayspring Mishandled' always was one of my favourite Kipling stories.

MF"



The Baron