One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[rjpalmer]

RJ,

The issue - and you know it - was that you were using the Feldman clipping to argue that Anne was physically with Mike when he signed his April 26, 1993, affidavit.

Caz pointed-out that you had misunderstood this passage and she corrected you by explaining that it meant that Anne was still co-habiting pawith Mike on April 26, 1993. You then attempted a dodge having realised the unintended ambiguity in Feldman's statement which you had blindly fallen for and that dodge was frankly beneath you.

Enough of the denials. Own it, mate.

Ike

Ike-- I missed your post, so I must come back to give you a gentlemanly answer.

I ABSOLUTELY did not interpret Feldman's passage the way you do, and why would I? If these were secret affidavits, and Anne had no knowledge of them, it would make nonsense of Feldman's point, wouldn't it?

I assumed--and still assume--that Feldman meant she was physically in the chair next to him. 'the contracts and affidavits he signed when Anne was with him.'

But really, it doesn't matter, Ike. We all know she went along with the 'Devereux' provenance for two years without saying otherwise, and even stuck with it when quizzed by Harold Brough. So why are you so deeply concerned that she might have gone along with it when Mike signed an affidavit along the same lines? Would it somehow make it worse? What is your justification for this?

The near hysteria on this point strike me as odd, but then I am a stranger is this strange land.

RP

[rjpalmer]

And Ike--

In a way, if Mike did all this behind Anne's back, it would make Anne's behavior all the more nonsensical. There would even be less reason for her to take the Diary out of Mike's hands with the "I seen it since the 60s" story if Mike got it from Eddie Lyons without her knowledge and signed everything without her knowledge, and she kept herself out of legal trouble by not taking any royalty cheques.

You've left her without a coherent motive for walking into the eye of the storm, clothed in nothing but Ero's cloak of 'motives came in many ways.'

RP

[erobitha]

You've left her without a coherent motive for walking into the eye of the storm, clothed in nothing but Ero's cloak of 'motives came in many ways.'

RP

I'm not Bono, however some of his cash would be nice.

[PaulB]

I've never understood this, Paul. Why would this be suggestive of an old forgery, if that’s what you are implying?

Wouldn't it have been more likely that recreating convincing handwriting would have been a bigger issue for an 'old hoaxer'--ie., back when more examples of Maybrick's handwriting were available? And when people who knew Maybrick were still living?

If anything, the unconvincing handwriting suggests to me a modern forgery by a non-sophisticate. It wouldn't have flown in the 1890s or 1900s or even the 1920s. Yet, by the 1990s, people were willing to look past it, and some of this very thread still do.


Meanwhile, time has moved on. We now know things now that weren't available to you in the early 1990s. And some of them are quite damning to Barrett. If you want examples, I’m happy to supply them.

Roger,
Who does a fake or a forgery have to convince? How rigorously will that person test it? What kind of tests is the fake likely to face?

High up on the list of tests that will be done on a document is a handwriting comparison, and if the handwriting doesn’t match that of the supposed author, the fake is likely to fall at the first hurdle. A faker would have to have been impossibly naive not to have known this. The fact that no effort was made to imitate Maybrick’s handwriting suggests that the faker did not expect a handwriting comparison to be made.

One has a fairly simple choice, either the faker didn’t appreciate how important it was to fake Maybrick’s handwriting, or the faker did not think a handwriting comparison would be made. I would say that Mike wanted the diary to be accepted as genuine, and as he wasn't utterly stupid he would have anticipated that a handwriting comparison would be made. If Mike would have attempted to fake Mike's handwriting, the fact that there is no evidence that he did so indicates that neiterh Mike nor Ann penned the diary.

This line of reasoning did not completely take Mike and Anne out of the frame because there were several alternative possibilities (such as Mike failing to find an example of Maybrick’s handwriting, or being unable to copy it), but exploring that line a little further: if Mike and Anne didn’t pen it, and given that nobody could detect a Mr Big behind and manipulating them, it was possible that the diary had been created sometime before it came into their possession, perhaps some time before.

The initial problem still existed for an old forger, namely reproducing Maybrick’s handwriting. As you suggest, examples of Maybrick’s handwriting may have been more numerous back then, and one supposes, perhaps wrongly, that they were easier to locate and obtain than they are today, so it might have been easier to copy the handwriting. If so, one has to again ask, why didn’t the faker copy it?

My conclusion - and it was only a throw away suggestion - was that a less than scrupulous journalist wrote it with the intention of claiming that it had come into his possession and his investigation into it would make a gripping, circulation-boosting series of feature articles. It wasn’t necessary to prove the diary belonged to James Maybrick, just help to convince an editor that the idea had legs.

Of course I fully understand that time has moved on and I’d love to know what damning things have emerged about Mike and Anne as the years have rolled by, although I wouldn’t want to put you to any trouble, you already look to be busy enough without me adding to your load. Do those who don’t the diary was penned by Mike and Anne know about this information? Do they accept it? Am I about to start paddling in these waters rather then just dipping in my toe?

[erobitha]

Am I about to start paddling in these waters rather then just dipping in my toe?

[PaulB]

Well, Feldman said she was 'with' him, if you want to quibble and suggest she was sitting in the corner, I guess I can't prove otherwise. Couples usually sit next to each other when the affidavits and contracts are signed.

My evidence, such as it is, is Feldman. I am attempting to understand his reasoning.

Feldman wrote that Anne was with Mike when he signed "the contracts and affidavits". It would certainly have been a strange thing to write had she been up on the roof or in the parking lot.

And that's the word he uses: affidavits. They were still together in April 1993 when Barrett signed the affidavit in question. If he's not referring to the April 1993 affidavit, what affidavit is he referring to?

I'm assuming Feldman had reason to write this, so I turn the tables. Do you have evidence that Feldman was wrong and Anne wasn't there? Or that she was sitting in the parking lot and Feldman was writing nonsense?

It doesn't mean that much to me, I'll drop it if you like. RP

I read that extract from Feldy's book. I noted the plural "documents and affidavits", but I thought it was pretty clear that "with him" meant when Mike and Anne were still married, not that she was in the same room.

[caz]

I assumed--and still assume--that Feldman meant she was physically in the chair next to him. 'the contracts and affidavits he signed when Anne was with him.'

And your assumption would be wrong. I've checked the timeline and there is no indication whatsoever that Feldman could have meant anything other than the fact that Mike made all his forgery claims after Anne had left him and taken their daughter with her, unlike Mike's affidavit of 26th April 1993 - which Feldy clearly accepted as true - which was obviously signed while they were still living under the same roof and the marriage was surviving - just. Feldy's whole point was that it was Anne's continued absence from Mike's life that led to him making what Feldy was certain were false forgery claims. Mike hadn't suddenly turned into an honest man because he'd lost her.

If your utterly contemptible Broadmoor comment was an attempt at gaslighting, it failed miserably. Your most recent posts have only served to convince me I have never been more sane in my life.

I suspect Anne went along with Mike's provenance because she felt she had no choice when she found out what he'd been telling Doreen. The first time there was any communication between Anne and Doreen was on 21st April 1992 when they spoke over the phone. Mike had been in communication with Doreen since 9th March, so Anne had to rely on him keeping his Devereux story straight if she knew it was one of his lies. If telling the truth to Doreen about how and when he really got the old book was not an option for Mike, it wouldn't have taken a lot of figuring out on Anne's part to imagine why that might be.

You cannot grasp why Anne would have been adversely affected by Mike's claim in June 1994 to have faked the diary, because she was out of his life by then and could have left him to take the consequences. But she'd have been under the same roof while he was meant to be faking it, if the newspaper readers believed his story. I don't understand why you can't see the obvious implications for Anne and her family and friends - especially given that if you'd been around at the time, we now know you'd have happily had her 'physically in the chair next to him' while he was creating the text of the diary on his word processor!

The truth of relatively minor details, such as whether Anne was sitting next to Mike as he signed the April 1993 affidavit, or you got the wrong end of the stick, may not matter to you. But being so wrong about the small stuff should be a warning sign that you may also be wrong about the bigger picture.

[Iconoclast]

The truth of relatively minor details, such as whether Anne was sitting next to Mike as he signed the April 1993 affidavit, or you got the wrong end of the stick, may not matter to you. But being so wrong about the small stuff should be a warning sign that you may also be wrong about the bigger picture.

Honestly, it's like watching a master chefess at work - not the cooking bit but the slicing and dicing part!

It's an education every time, Switchy ...

[caz]

Strange inference, RJ. My inference was that Anne - like the rest of us - was intrigued by the possibility that the scrapbook was authentic and therefore did not want to allow Mike (who she knew didn't create it) destroying it with his utter mince.

Hi Ike,

Everyone has different views on this one, and mine can change on a fairly regular basis because I don't have a season ticket into Anne's head so I have to admit I don't actually know.

Would it have been so very surprising if Anne, in July 1994, had been swayed by Feldy's talk of making her a millionaire, with the added bonus of clearing her of any association with Mike's effed up forgery claims, which were bound to affect her if believed?

If she didn't know where the diary came from, but suspected it was nicked from Dodd's house shortly before Mike brought it home, her story would simply have shifted its removal back a century. Dodd was no longer interested in contesting ownership, and the thing would appear to be genuinely old, so why not? Would she have been distorting the truth of where the diary was found - Battlecrease House - any more than RJ did over where she could be found [sitting right next to Mike, my arse] when he was swearing his April 1993 affidavit?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

I meant to add that if Anne knew Mike had that auction ticket for 31st March 1992, as Orsam believes he did, then her "I seen it in the 60s" story would have been toast the instant he produced it. Where would she have begun to explain that one away?

The only reasonable explanation for her story is that she knew Mike's was total rubbish and had nothing to fear from any attempts he might make to support it.

Love,

Caz
X

[rjpalmer]

Roger,

My conclusion - and it was only a throw away suggestion - was that a less than scrupulous journalist wrote it with the intention of claiming that it had come into his possession and his investigation into it would make a gripping, circulation-boosting series of feature articles. It wasn’t necessary to prove the diary belonged to James Maybrick, just help to convince an editor that the idea had legs.

Hi Paul,

Haven’t you hit the nail squarely on the head? And isn’t that exactly what happened?

A ‘less than scrupulous journalist’—Mike Barrett—took the Maybrick hoax--not to an auction house or a museum where it would need to be authenticated—but to a literary agency. It was subsequently marketed as an ‘investigation’ into its authenticity (your word and the exact word that appeared on the dustcover of Shirley’s book). Robert Smith had previously attempted to sell the alleged diary to The Sunday Times as a ‘circulation boosting’ series of articles.

Everything that happened is exactly as you posited all those years ago. You absolutely nailed it.

And no, it was not necessary for Mike to prove the diary belonged to James Maybrick—just as you say—it was only necessary for Mike to convince Doreen Montgomery and Robert Smith that the idea ‘had legs.’

Your theory is precisely the same conclusion that we ‘modern hoax’ cynics have arrived at—but we have the added benefit of having identified your ‘less than scrupulous journalist’: Mike Barrett.

Let me just remind you that when the diary first emerged, Barrett marketed himself as an ‘ex scrap metal dealer’ and a ‘merchant marine’ and ‘a cook,’ admitting, at most, that he sent occasional word puzzles to children’s magazines. It was reported by Shirley Harrison (in print) that Barrett had bought a word processor—but this was only to research the Maybrick Diary.

We now know this was a lie by Barrett. Mike bought the word processor on April 3, 1986 and used it in his career as a freelance journalist.
The author/researcher David Barrett has, in recent years, compiled an impressive back catalogue of Mike Barrett’s published articles, mostly from various magazines in the late 1980s (ie., before he came forward with the Diary) including the following feature, among many others:





Others include “Emmerdale Stephen's Naughty Mail,” about the fan mail received by Emmerdale actor Stephen Marchant, which appeared in the 24 May 1986 issue of Chat; “We Need Sex, Drugs and Violence on the Box,” about the views of TV producer, Phil Redmond in the 31 May 1986 issue; and “Fighting Prejudice with a Laugh,” about Britain's first thalidomide comedian, Gary Skyner, in the 16 August 1986 issue”.

One can see other examples at the Orsam Books website.

In short, why should I not conclude that your ‘throw away’ suggestion wasn’t 100% correct?

For the sake of clarification, if you are still suggesting that Mike & Anne couldn’t have written the diary, do you merely mean the handwriting, or are you seeing an inherent sophistication in the text that you believe was beyond their abilities? Didn’t Anne go on to co-write a reasonably well-received biography of Florence Maybrick, and didn’t Keith report that she was researching a second book on Victorian “baby farmers”? Didn’t your friend Martin Fido praise a report she had written, concluding that she could have written the diary with ‘one hand tied behind her back?’ We’ve seen Barrett’s published articles. I could be missing it—maybe you could point out examples—but I see little evidence of sophistication in the Maybrick Hoax—‘with the key I did flee’ in regards to the Kelly murder; the murderer fantasizing about cutting off the ‘pony’s head’ in the Stride murder; Fred Abberline investigating the City of London’s Eddowes investigation—these all seem like rather amateurish flourishes with little or no detail and with considerable errors, consistent with someone who hasn’t done much original research. I don’t see the writing as particularly good, either, and there are even clumsy malaprops: “gorge out an eye.” Is it possible that diary researchers have simply over-estimated the skill of the hoaxer?

In short, why shouldn’t I simply conclude that your original theory is correct, and the ‘less than scrupulous’ journalists are staring us in the face?

All the best,

Roger P

The receipt for Barrett’s word processor, showing Mike's account, as reported by Shirley Harrison, was a deliberate lie:

[Kattrup]

High up on the list of tests that will be done on a document is a handwriting comparison, and if the handwriting doesn’t match that of the supposed author, the fake is likely to fall at the first hurdle.

That seems a very idealistic view of how things ought to work, would you not agree? I mean, we know the handwriting does not match yet the diary did not actually "fall". It still got published and generated income and status for people, some of whom continue to participate in propagating the charade to this day.

A faker would have to have been impossibly naive not to have known this. The fact that no effort was made to imitate Maybrick’s handwriting suggests that the faker did not expect a handwriting comparison to be made.

That is not the only inference to draw: the fact that no effort was made to imitate Maybrick's handwriting suggests that the faker did not expect a handwriting comparison to be conclusive or even important for the scam to pay off. And in fact that is exactly what has happened, is it not? The handwriting does not match, but we still have people unwilling to accept that it is a modern fake, or even that it is a fake.

One has a fairly simple choice, either the faker didn’t appreciate how important it was to fake Maybrick’s handwriting, or the faker did not think a handwriting comparison would be made. I would say that Mike wanted the diary to be accepted as genuine, and as he wasn't utterly stupid he would have anticipated that a handwriting comparison would be made. If Mike would have attempted to fake Mike's handwriting, the fact that there is no evidence that he did so indicates that neiterh Mike nor Ann penned the diary.

As mentioned there's at least a third choice: the faker did not think the handwriting comparison would mean much. And I'm unsure how you can say that Mike not attempting to fake Maybrick's handwriting would indicate that Ann did not attempt it? Keeping in mind, of course, that Mike consistently claimed that it's her handwriting and indeed there are many similarities between her handwriting and the handwriting found in the diary.

This line of reasoning did not completely take Mike and Anne out of the frame because there were several alternative possibilities (such as Mike failing to find an example of Maybrick’s handwriting, or being unable to copy it), but exploring that line a little further: if Mike and Anne didn’t pen it, and given that nobody could detect a Mr Big behind and manipulating them, it was possible that the diary had been created sometime before it came into their possession, perhaps some time before.

But given that there's no particular reason why Mike and Anne could not have penned it, and given that nobody can detect anyone else who could have done so without resorting to exceptionally silly arguments with no factual basis, why should this theoretical line of reasoning be explored or given any creedence?

[rjpalmer]

Let me anticipate two objections to the above: we will be told, for the hundreth time, that Barrett was an ilLiteRate. His published articles stand in stark contrast to that unfounded allegation, and it has been suggested that Barrett had suffered a recent stroke (around1982) that could have hindered his abilities. One can hardly argue the author of The Last Victim was an illiterate.

The other objection will be that the diary shows forensic skill beyond the ability of the Barretts. Yet two independent teams of forensic examiners quicky dismissed the diary as an amateurish hoax.

Q.E.D.

[rjpalmer]

And your assumption would be wrong. I've checked the timeline and there is no indication whatsoever that Feldman could have meant anything other than the fact that Mike made all his forgery claims after Anne had left him and taken their daughter with her, unlike Mike's affidavit of 26th April 1993 - which Feldy clearly accepted as true - which was obviously signed while they were still living under the same roof and the marriage was surviving - just. Feldy's whole point was that it was Anne's continued absence from Mike's life that led to him making what Feldy was certain were false forgery claims. Mike hadn't suddenly turned into an honest man because he'd lost her.

This will be my last post of the day, but I find your outrage at my suggestion exceedingly curious. Feldman said Anne was 'with him,' and I took Feldman at his word, but it hardly matters, does it?

Anne had two years to say something other than that the diary came from Devereux. She didn't. And in the summer of 1994, when Harold Brough asked her about it, she still insisted that the diary came from Devereux---something that you now believe to have been a lie, though this was not always the case.

Yet you are somehow outraged at the idea that she would sit idly by when Barrett signed an affidavit, stating that he received the diary from Devereux? Why the hair splitting? She told Brough the same thing.

Your relationship to Anne Graham (I speak only metaphorically) is a strange one, and it is not hard to understand why. A strange juggling act has to be maintained--she's a deceitful liar, but just not enough of a deceitful liar to have helped Barrett.

RP

[caz]

To the contrary, Old Boy, among the rational, the implication of Baxendale's solubility test has just as much traction now as it did when it finally found its way out of the safety of Robert Smith's bottom desk drawer.

You have no explanation for Baxendale's results, other than to ignore them with a jocular wave of the hand, as you do all other blatant indications of a hoax, including the handwriting not being Maybrick's. This wind-up act is growing stale, Old Boy.

The only person who has attempted to explain away Baxendale's findings is Caz, who posited that keeping a diary in an enclosed biscuit tin under floorboards for 110 years might keep the ink in a state of suspended animation.

....an idea that doesn't appear to have gained "much traction."

Kindest regards.

Do stop lying about me, RJ, or people will think you are attacking me for the diary's existence, forgetting it's the diary you need to attack and its author - when you have identified who that was.

I have never 'posited' that a biscuit tin was home to the diary at any point.

I think Mike once claimed - or was it Anne - that their piano was home to it.

Whether that explains why Mike knew all the right notes to draw you in, but could not play them in the right order to save his life, I leave to your vivid imagination.