One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[caz]

Yet here is indisputable proof the Barretts, or at least Barrett, did have the ability: he was the first to notice an 'M' on Kate Eddowes' cheek. So, if he did it once, he could have done it again with the Kelly photograph, seeing all sorts of initials in the photo, among the wounds, etc. He demonstrated his creative ability (or observational skills if you prefer) to Shirley Harrison privately.

No, RJ. No no no no no.

Read the bloody research notes and compare them directly with what Shirley wrote about Mike's observational skills concerning the possible M on Eddowes's cheeks.

It should be clear to you that Mike had no need to 'demonstrate' anything more to Shirley 'privately' in order for her to write what she wrote purely from those notes - which Anne typed up for Mike.

He could have done it again with the Kelly photograph, seeing 'all sorts of initials' there, among the wounds etc, but there is zero evidence that he did. The notes demonstrate that he puzzled just like everyone else over what the 'initial here and initial there' could refer to, and came up empty. He had to look back through the text to previous murders to find any references to a specific initial - M - after Chapman, and Maybrick's 'mark' after Eddowes. That's it. That's all you've got.

I'm assuming you need to read something several times before it finally sinks in, which would be preferable to wilful ignorance.

Do give me some credit, Old Boy.

This was to Ike, but from where I'm sitting your 'credit' rating is flirting dangerously with the floor, old sport.

[Iconoclast]

I have received this clarification from Keith Skinner via email (11.15am):

“We gave Simon Wood an individual entry in the first edition of the A To Z (1991) because of the work he had done investigating Stephen Knight’s theory. I cannot remember there being any discussion about including Simon’s observations about initials on the wall of Kelly’s room – although I have a clear recollection of Simon mentioning it to Martin Fido and myself circa 1988-1989 in the City Darts. I don’t think Paul was there on that specific occasion. What I do remember is not being all that interested because I thought it was fanciful and how could you prove it? Druitt was then (and remains to this day) my preferred suspect. Arguably had the initials been MJD I might have had second thoughts! Martin, as was customary, reacted to Simon’s suggestion with great enthusiasm, encouragement and was very attentive to what Simon had to say. Thereafter I forgot about it until very early 1993 Paul Feldman phoned and asked me what I thought about the ‘M’ on Kelly’s wall? That triggered off the memory with Simon and the City Darts. I could not remember ever having discussed it with either Martin or Paul and the only reason I suspect we never included it in Simon’s 1991 entry was because it didn’t loom large in our thinking and we had all forgotten about it. So I was surprised to learn that neither Paul nor Martin had rejected Simon’s observation and were still discussing it in 1993. Which suggests that neither of them were aware that Simon had admitted he was mistaken? We did include it under Simon’s entry in the 1994 edition because of its prominence in Paul Feldman’s video and we thought it only correct that Simon should be credited with the revelation. Had we been aware that Simon had previously admitted his error then we would have added that as the final sentence and probably referencing the date Simon had told us of his mistake for the historical record. Furthermore, I cannot recall Paul, Martin, or myself ever being contacted by Simon to say we were misrepresenting his position in the 1994 edition of the A To Z. Nor do I believe there was ever any approach from Simon to Shirley Harrison after her book was published in 1993 credited the observation to Simon.”

Cheers,

Ike

[rjpalmer]

The notes demonstrate that he puzzled just like everyone else over what the 'initial here and initial there' could refer to, and came up empty. He had to look back through the text to previous murders to find any references to a specific initial - M - after Chapman, and Maybrick's 'mark' after Eddowes. That's it. That's all you've got.

Have it your way, darlin'. We need to keep in mind that Mike's notes are the genuine musings of a man deeply confused about the diary...all compiled months before Dodd's floorboards were ever lifted. Be careful what you wish for.

[caz]

It might be worth noting, that if the arrangement that Mike Barrett had with Robert Smith was as described, then perhaps Mike thought he was being smart. As always in Bongo fashion, his wisdom was misplaced.

Mike might have had suspicions the diary was either stolen or forged and therefore if he sold the book itself for a large sum, and later it was proved to be fraud or nicked, he would be liable to a fraud or fencing stolen goods charge. This does not mean he KNEW is was faked or stolen, but merely suspected it. Royalties from a subsequent book that discusses the existence of the scrapbook might have seem less 'criminal' to Mike.

Him claiming to fake the diary was the only place his impetuousness could go. He could not claim it was stolen as that would have put him in the frame for a criminal charge for handling stolen goods. If he painted himself as the master forger and he sold "his work" for just a pound - what is the worse that could happen? The moment Robert Smith filed any form of complaint against Mike for deception / fraud would undoubtedly be seen as some kind of admission to what Mike was saying was true. I suspect Robert Smith may not have believed Mike and was more concerned with ensuring the diary was not lost to history because of one man's desire to burn down Rome as his life falls apart around him.

I stand by the fact I believe his purchase of the 1891 diary was to see how easy it would be to obtain a similar document as a starting point by Mike. He was curious. Turns out not it was not so easy.

Honestly, who knows what went on in Mike Barrett's head? Every time he thought he could get himself one step ahead he shot himself in the foot.

Hi erobitha,

Mike did claim later that he'd been highly sceptical when he first saw the old book signed Jack the Ripper, and thought someone was having a laugh, so he may have tried to find out how easy it would have been for some joker - or indeed a con artist - to obtain a book of the right age [1880s] with enough unused pages for the purpose. That could help explain why he still wanted to see the 1891 diary when it was located and described to him.

Mike would not yet have identified the diary's author as a real person who died in 1889, but his own 'wheeler-dealer' instincts would have put him on his guard against becoming the butt of an early April Fool involving Jack the Ripper.

But then it would also explain why the wording of Mike's advert looked so suggestive to Orsam and his not so merry men, and why they still cling to it like merry hell. Mike would have been going down the same road as his prospective prankster, to see if unused Victorian diaries were ten a penny.

That's why Barrett Believers [there's irony for you!] have to diminish Martin Earl's evidence that Mike knew what he was ordering, and it couldn't have been used for a diary by James Maybrick.

I suspect when Mike first saw 'Jack the Ripper' at the end of the last page of handwriting, he made the phone calls to Pan Books and then Doreen in a knee jerk reaction, before he had worked out how to get Eddie to part with the old book.

When he had time to think, and in light of his conversation with Doreen, he decided to request an 1880s diary with unused pages, just to see how easy it would have been for someone faking this thing in 1992.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Have it your way, darlin'. We need to keep in mind that Mike's notes are the genuine musings of a man deeply confused about the diary...all compiled months before Dodd's floorboards were ever lifted. Be careful what you wish for.

You don't think that looks even a wee bit contrived, RJ? Like both Barretts may have had a secret they needed to keep, concerning how and when the diary really arrived in Goldie Street, and had to be seen sticking to the Tony Devereux script, when the notes were finally typed up and handed over in July or August 1992?

Do you not see the significance of 'August 1991'?

[caz]

My own belief is that the reason Barrett didn’t sell the diary to anyone for a nice paycheck is because it would have put him at risk of going back to prison for fraud, because he damn well knew it was a hoax because he was involved in creating it. But if he *gives* it to Smith, who has no incentive to file a complaint for fraud, that risk evaporates. So you’re half right, Ike. Smith wasn’t “protecting” the diary, he was protecting an impetuous Mike from a possible fraud charge. This is the only answer that makes sense to me, because there were 101 other arrangements that could have protected the diary, but there was only one way to protect Barrett. If either participant thought the diary was genuine, this transaction would have been completely bizarre—that’s my opinion.

I suppose you could always have contacted Robert Smith before you opened your trap and risked putting your own foot in it, if you wanted to ask precisely why he did what he did, and on whose advice. You surely didn't imagine it would be the kind of thing any experienced businessman would enter into impetuously, without first consulting the right people - did you?

But you won't contact him, will you? I really don't think you would enjoy his response.

[caz]

Barrett 'cared deeply about the diary's authenticity' (except when he was calling it a fake, dear readers), and thus he sold it to Smith for £14,999 less than what Feldman had offered him.

How would Smith owning the diary instead of Feldman have made it more 'authentic'? It would only have remained authentic if Smith owned it? Am I reading that correctly? Is he implying that Feldman would have subjected it to further tests, thus perhaps disproving its authenticity?

Or is he suggesting that Mike, scared that placing alcohol next to his lips might make those lips loose, didn't want to be tempted by having £15,000?

If Mike was this terrified of having money in his pocket, and was so dedicated to the diary, why didn't he similarly sign over all his royalty rights to Smith, leaving him with utterly zero, because surely his royalties on a best seller also would have brought in revenue, no?

Mike Barrett never did make any sense where money was concerned, RJ. In case you hadn't noticed, he pissed all over the promise of further royalties when he told Harold Brough in June 1994 that he had faked the diary.

You swallowed his January 5th 1995 affidavit, in which he claimed he had been trying to expose the diary as a fraud since December 1993, within just weeks of the diary becoming a best seller. That ought to tell you how much he cared about the filthy lucre - unless you are willing to concede this was a lie, in which case he only stopped caring about the filthy lucre six months later.

As if that would be a whole different ball game.

[caz]

Further, Anne Graham wasn't going to place herself in the crosshairs by weaving her infamous 'in the family for years' story to save her soon-to-be ex-husband, who she was bitterly fighting with, nor some electrician she didn't know from Adam; on the other hand, one can readily imagine that she might well have dreamed up a story to save herself from Barrett's secret threats.

Or his empty public threats, RJ? Anne's story came in July 1994, after the papers had carried Mike's story that he had faked the diary. It wasn't to save Mike or Eddie. If she knew Mike didn't get the diary from Tony in 1991, she was complicit in that lie, so she incorporated it. She gambled on nobody being able or willing to prove it was nicked, and also gambled on nobody - not just Mike, but the historians, Scotland Yard's finest, the scientists, the language and handwriting experts - being able to prove it was created long after the 1960s. If Mike had proof, and she knew it, her story would have come crashing down around her ears so she, more than anyone, must have known he was a desperate man with a plan that could never work. She'd have been brought down with him if he could prove the diary was created in Goldie Street in the early 1990s, even if he had stuck to his claim that he was the one responsible. I doubt Anne could have passed herself off as the little woman kept in blissful ignorance, all the while her husband had been busy adding sugar to ink and baking old paper, in a secret bid to improve on the Hitler Diaries.

If your argument is that the trail was still warm enough in January 1995 for investigators to have dug up the goods, it would have been even warmer in July 1994, if Anne knew what goods Mike could put in the shop window at any moment.

Do not forget that she kept Mike's sworn affidavit from Keith's probing eyes for over two full years.

Apart from this not being an established fact as far as I can make out - more on this later - I am at a loss to know how you think Anne could possibly have prevented copies of the same affidavit being hand delivered, read out over the phone, posted on every wall in Liverpool, or sent by carrier pigeon to all and sundry.

If Barrett had bought stolen goods off of Eddie, he would still have committed a crime and his royalties would have gone to Dodd. He could have been prosecuted and Dodd himself could have complained and demanded prosecution. This is a different situation than Barrett giving away a hoax that he himself had created in a 'Spanish Prisoner'/Gold Brick scheme.

But what if Mike had nicked the stolen goods from Eddie, with no money changing hands? The only victim from Mike's point of view would then have been Eddie, and he could hardly complain, could he? Mike would have been ignorant of the fact that Dodd was the rightful owner, and if Dodd had been able to prove it had been in his house and was his property, he could have claimed the filthy lucre, but Eddie would have been the one facing prosecution. Mike may always have had his sights more on that best seller, with his name in it, than on making hard cash from the old book itself, which he had acquired from Eddie by fair means or foul. Mike was the one who turned the old book into a money spinner, not Eddie.

[caz]

You are correct. Mike was no criminal genius. He just knew handling stolen stuff would be bad for him. I doubt he actually thought through the full consequences of it all. He was not one for thorough reflection and measured contemplation. He reacted on emotion constantly. He talked himself into some absolute nonsense at times, but that is who he was. A man who's world was crumbling before him and he did not have the tools required to navigate himself through it adequately.

There is still much to lose RJ. If the scrapbook is proven to be stolen from Battlecrease, Robert Smith and Ann Barrett might well have to forfeit their royalty earnings to Paul Dodd, who as you rightly say, in the eyes of the law, is the rightful owner.

But don't forget the earnings were from books written based on the diary and its publication in facsimile and transcript form. Very early on, Paul Dodd decided not to claim ownership of the scrapbook, as he never knew about it and doubted it was ever in his house. How much could he expect to sell it for today, even if it was returned to him?

I suspect it will be down to the balance of probabilities in the end, when all the existing material is safely gathered in, in one place, and eventually reaches the public domain. Even a credible admission to taking the diary from the house back in 1992, supported by one or more witnesses, would not necessarily prove it to some people's satisfaction. It should have been far easier to prove that a Barrett wrote it if that had been the case.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Barrett never claimed he & Anne 'concocted' the diary in 11 days. In fact, he states that Tony Devereux helped with the inception, and since Devereux died in August 1991 (and still had one of the books Mike mentions in his research notes in the possession of his estate) the typescript was evidently created over a period of months or weeks.

Which typescript, RJ? You scoffed at my speculation that there were two Tales of Liverpool in this story, but you now want two typescripts: one that was supposedly completed by early 1990, and sitting on Mike's word processor waiting for Tony Devereux to die suddenly and unexpectedly, and to donate himself as the provenance; or the one sent to Doreen in April 1992, which was typed up from the physical diary? No evidence that the former ever existed, unlike the latter.

Same story with Mike's Sphere Volume 2: no evidence that the one he claimed Sphere sent him in 1989 ever existed, unlike the second hand copy he finally tracked down to give Alan Gray in December 1994.

Also, be careful not to change what the affidavit actually claims. Mike claimed Devereux died in 1990, and that this was after the 11 days Anne supposedly spent handwriting the diary into the scrapbook, which Mike claimed he had obtained more than two years before you believe he actually did so. It's the mother of all muddles and would be funny if you weren't taking it seriously.

Barrett only said the physical diary was created once he had a fish (a literary agent) on the line.

But does he claim this in the affidavit? That he had Doreen 'on the line' before Anne's 11 days, and therefore while Tony Devereux was alive?

Don't forget - because Mike certainly hadn't forgotten by January 1995 - that Doreen first saw the diary on Monday 13th April 1992. He first had this fish on the line on Monday 9th March 1992. So the last of Anne's 11 days would have been just one or two days before Mike's unforgettable trip to London, and yet he has Devereux conveniently popping his clogs in that tiny interval between Anne blotting the ink on the final entry, and Mike wrapping the thing in brown paper for the train journey south. I don't think so, do you?

[caz]

Ike— what evidence can you produce to show that Alan Gray was working “at the direction” of Melvin Harris? This is quite the allegation. Who told you this or is it your own invention?

If Gray was working for Harris, why did he complain that Barrett wasn’t paying his fees? Doesn't that suggest this was merely an arrangement between Barrett and Gray, and you’re just weaving more paranoid conjectures, having misunderstood what was really going on?

It’s odd, Ike. You never seem to be bothered by the internal inconsistencies in your theories.

May I be of assistance here, RJ? It's odd, but you never seem able to retain information or material which has already been provided to you in more than one form and on more than one occasion, but it might be useful for anyone who has not seen it before.

Below please find an extract from one of the tapes which you once had, but returned to sender. I have also posted it in the recent past, in response to a similar question posed by yourself. Some might wonder why I bother to keep cleaning up after you like this, and sometimes I wonder myself.

I also wonder if this sounds to anyone, apart from you, like the purpose of the proposed affidavit was for it to be delivered for Anne's eyes only:

Monday 12th December 1994
Extract from a recorded conversation between Alan Gray and Mike Barrett, during a visit by Alan Gray to Mike Barrett at Liverpool Royal Infirmary.
AG: What he [Melvin Harris] was saying to me was as soon as Mike comes out, it's in the best interest of everyone to take a concise statement and all the newspapers will [take it] and at the end of it we go down together and swear it as an affidavit and that will be it nailed down, right. It will take a few hours.
MB: I'll get nicked then.
AG: No, you won't, because this statement will safeguard you is what Melvin tells me.
MB: Yeah, yeah.
AG: Just stay as you have been and let the others handle it. Let everyone get on with it and that's it. You know the saying, 'every dog has its day'...
Before the conversation concluded, Barrett informed Gray that he wished to meet Melvin Harris personally:
MB: As I say, one of the things I'm really concentrating on is Melvin Harris. I think that's important, that I do get to see him.
AG: Well, he did impress me by his honesty, and you know Feldman's been onto him too... You know what, when we get to write this affidavit, we'll need a lot of detail you know. Then we'll sign it and swear it before a solicitor. That's what we'll do.

[caz]

Trevor,

He's 'The Baron'. He's an Orsam acolyte. He 'knows' it is a fake!

Ike

Bloody hell, Ike. How have you not lost the will to live, with The Baron and Trevor giving such a good impression of not knowing what the hell is going on?

I tell you, it's comedy gold when they are active at the same time, even funnier than the double act Barrett and Gray, or Orsam and RJ.

I doubt RJ can see the joke though. He'll be the one looking like he's sucking on a lemon.

Love,

Caz
X

[Iconoclast]

Bloody hell, Ike. How have you not lost the will to live, with The Baron and Trevor giving such a good impression of not knowing what the hell is going on?

Caz
X

Honestly, Caz, sometimes I'm just a victim of my own generosity of spirit.

[Iconoclast]

Monday 12th December 1994
Extract from a recorded conversation between Alan Gray and Mike Barrett, during a visit by Alan Gray to Mike Barrett at Liverpool Royal Infirmary.
AG: What he [Melvin Harris] was saying to me was as soon as Mike comes out, it's in the best interest of everyone to take a concise statement and all the newspapers will [take it] and at the end of it we go down together and swear it as an affidavit and that will be it nailed down, right. It will take a few hours.
MB: I'll get nicked then.
AG: No, you won't, because this statement will safeguard you is what Melvin tells me.
MB: Yeah, yeah.
AG: Just stay as you have been and let the others handle it. Let everyone get on with it and that's it. You know the saying, 'every dog has its day'...
Before the conversation concluded, Barrett informed Gray that he wished to meet Melvin Harris personally:
MB: As I say, one of the things I'm really concentrating on is Melvin Harris. I think that's important, that I do get to see him.
AG: Well, he did impress me by his honesty, and you know Feldman's been onto him too... You know what, when we get to write this affidavit, we'll need a lot of detail you know. Then we'll sign it and swear it before a solicitor. That's what we'll do.

You know, Caz, I read all this and I wonder if there is any possibility at all that Alan Gray and Melvin Harris were conniving to get Mike to confess to something in an affidavit.

Am I reading this wrongly, dear readers?

Ike

[caz]

The last refuge of denial would be to finally admit it was a hoax, but still cling to the bogus idea that the hoax is somehow based on reality.

We see this thinking in one of this thread's most active contributors; this person readily admits the diary is a hoax, yet nonetheless make a series of arguments that can only be interpreted as a belief that the hoax is accurate. There really was a murder in Manchester; Maybrick really did visit Thomas at Christmas; he really did refer to his wife's godmother as her auntie; he really did own editions of Crashaw; etc.

I'm obviously missing a huge chunk of this thread, because I have no idea who this active contributor is meant to be, who has only 'finally' admitted the diary is a hoax, but clings to an idea that it was based on reality.

There were probably many murders in Manchester, but who has claimed to find the one referred to in the diary? Who has claimed that the real JM referred to his wife's godmother as her aunt? Who has claimed that the real JM owned any edition of Crashaw's work?

You're not making this up, are you, RJ? There really is a real person who has been posting this stuff for real?

Or is this your attempt at creating your very own hoax? A poster who doesn't actually exist?

If so, I'd give it up if I were you. Even Mike Barrett would have done a better job.