One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[caz]

I'll try not to keep you waiting much longer, Scotty.

If just one regular visitor to this thread is genuinely interested in learning more, as I believe you are, it will be worth my while posting it.

Love,

Caz
X

[Pcdunn]

I'll try not to keep you waiting much longer, Scotty.

If just one regular visitor to this thread is genuinely interested in learning more, as I believe you are, it will be worth my while posting it.

Love,

Caz
X

I would like to see more, Caz. After all, I picked "Unsure / Need more information " in the poll about who wrote the Diary. Thank you! I'm a regular lurker, though, but I did get caught on reading recent posts yesterday.

[caz]

Lovely, Pat. Thanks for regularly lurking and popping up to say hello!

I have no clue who authored/penned the diary, and nothing I have seen or heard over the last twenty years suggests to me that the Barretts had a clue either. So treat with caution anyone's claim to know for certain. They are either talking out of their bottom, or should be elevated to prime suspect.

Love,

Caz
X

[Iconoclast]

Lovely, Pat. Thanks for regularly lurking and popping up to say hello!

I have no clue who authored/penned the diary, and nothing I have seen or heard over the last twenty years suggests to me that the Barretts had a clue either. So treat with caution anyone's claim to know for certain. They are either talking out of their bottom, or should be elevated to prime suspect.

Love,

Caz
X

Cough cough!

Does 99.9% count as 'certain'?

Ike
Parp
Primo Suspecto
Parp

[caz]

Not on my watch, Ike. [She said 'watch' ]

But fear not, as I don't think you have ever claimed to 'know damn well' who wrote it - as in being 100% certain - so you are not under suspicion and you are free to believe whatever you like.

My favourite suspect for penman is currently Sooty, aided and abetted by Soo. They are far better bets than either a Barrett or a Barrat.

Love,

Caz
X

[StevenOwl]

I'll try not to keep you waiting much longer, Scotty.

If just one regular visitor to this thread is genuinely interested in learning more, as I believe you are, it will be worth my while posting it.

Love,

Caz
X

I loved The Inside Story, so any updates on your findings would be fantastic and much appreciated.

[caz]

Cheers, Steven.

Many updates have been posted over the years since Inside Story was published in 2003, but that would still be only a tiny percentage of the material Keith and others have assembled.

The housekeeping post I'm planning merely addresses a couple of aspects raised recently by the usual suspects: whether Mike was 'reminded' in July 1995 that the diary was not in his handwriting; and how 'consistently' since 1994 he remembered to claim it was in Anne's handwriting.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

I post these extracts with no further comment:

Note handwritten by Mike Barrett for Shirley Harrison, on reverse of proof cover of her September 1994 paperback:
‘Then from there to Robert.
I Reckon I owE him a lot as well
This is from my hart, I am so sorry I Let everyone down.’


Wednesday 18th January 1995
From a summary of a recorded interview with Mike at Goldie Street, by Keith, Shirley, Sally Evemy and an independent witness:
Mike says: “This is what it’s all about”. Keith asks what he means.
Mike says he made a false statement to Brough to “get back at Anne” for not speaking to him or letting him see Caroline from January to May 1994.

Mike says he knows the diary is genuine and made up the stuff about forging the diary and watch just to “kick up the sh..”. He still says Tony Devereux gave him the diary.

Mike says he believes Anne’s story but keeps asking: “Why didn’t she tell me?”
He is bitter about his efforts to work out the diary author’s identity “night in, night out”, hour after hour, while Anne was upstairs. He confirms the “bloody great big blazing argument” with Anne over getting the diary published, not understanding why she was so against it if it was genuine, as he believed it to be, after all his efforts night after night.

Mike says he wants to prove diary a forgery to “get back at Anne”, but is frustrated that he can’t do so.

Mike says he made up the story about Outhwaite & Litherland while drunk, but is still prepared to “kick up the sh..” and swear the diary is a forgery until he can see Anne. He sees it as his only way to achieve this.

Mike talks about his kidney problems, low self-esteem, role-reversal with Anne working, all pre-diary. He wanted a bash at writing through the enterprise allowance scheme, but felt Anne was taking something away from him by having to step in and tidy up his interview articles. He “failed miserably” doing it by himself and ended up even more frustrated.

Mike denies the ability to write the diary. He says he made up the story of which ink he used, again to “get back at Anne”, saying he chose Bluecoat Chambers for convenience, simply because of the one-way system.

Mike says he did wonder at one point if Tony or someone else forged the diary.


Thursday 20th July 1995
From a day-long meeting with Mike, Paul Feldman, Keith and Martin Howells in Baker Street:
Mike: “The diary is a forgery, that is a fact. I wrote the diary, that is a fact. You can all come at me left, right and centre, but I wrote that bloody diary.”
Feldman: “Let’s see the handwriting. Just like you did when you wrote it.”
Mike: “Ah, I don’t suppose you’ve got a little pen with a little gold nib, have you? Just for the record.”
Feldman: “What is it you actually want?”
Mike: “Blotting paper. And a proper nib with an ink, please.”
Feldman: “Which one actually wrote it? Whose handwriting is it, yours or Anne’s?”
Mike: “Anne’s.”
Feldman: “Oh, it’s Anne’s writing? Why do you want a fountain pen then?”
Mike: “Hang on, hang on - bear with me, just bear with me. Just bear with me. Just bear with me, please Paul and I ask you to bear with me.”
[Martine Rooney enters and speaks to Feldman about Mike’s request for a pen.]
Feldman: “It doesn’t matter now. He didn’t write it now so we don’t need the fountain pen.”
Mike: “I did write it.”
Feldman: “Who wrote it, you or Anne? Whose handwriting is it, yours or Anne’s?”
Mike: “Anne’s”
Feldman: “You just said you wrote it. Why did you want an ink and fountain pen, what for?”
Mike: “It’s so simple it’s untrue. Jesus Christ, it’s so simple it’s untrue.”

Mike: “While you’re here, in this office now, I’ll tell you this now - I will go through a lie detector test. I will do everything that you want from me to prove that the diary is genuine.”

Mike: “The whole point is nobody can prove I wrote it.”
Feldman: “No one has to prove it, you’re the one who has to prove it.”
Mike: “Oh, I can prove it and I’ll tell you the whole story. I’ll tell you the whole story, I can prove it.”
Feldman: “Then you were lying when you said you got it from Tony Devereux?”
Mike: “Yeah, he was dead.”

Mike [addressing Anne via the recording]: “It’s too important. I love you, girl. I make no bloody well bones about that, I’m crying my bloody eyes out. I love you. I miss you so much it’s untrue. God girl, I miss you so much and you keep thinking I’m trying to destroy the diary. I’m not.”
Feldman: “Tell her what Tony told you, Mike.”
Mike: “Do you think she’ll come back to me?”
Feldman: “I don’t think anything about anything. Your relationship is not my business.”

Mike: “Do you realise though, I’m telling the truth so help me God.”
Feldman: “No, Mike, it doesn’t mean a thing. I’ve heard you lie three times today swearing on the Bible.”

Feldman [looking at the April 1993 affidavit Mike has brought with him as evidence]: “This says that Tony gave you the diary?”
Mike: “Yes. Yes. What is Tony’s words?”
Feldman: “I’m going to quote you. When he gave you the diary, you asked him: ‘Who else knows about this?’ and he said: ‘Absolutely no f...ing bugger alive.’ I perfectly believe that, Mike. That was on day one. You worked with Tony on this, he helped you.”
Mike: “No he didn’t, because he didn’t know the diary existed.”
Feldman: “Mike – “
Mike: “I’ve got to be honest, if I retract – ”
Feldman: “I don’t ask you to retract. I’m asking you to just – ”
Mike: “Look, I have asked Tony Devereux a thousand bloody questions.”

Feldman: “I saw your statement, Mike, and I do not deny for one minute that on the day that he gave it to you, you asked him: ‘Who else knows about it?’, and he said those precise words. I don’t dispute it. I believe it, totally. I know that is probably what he said.”
Mike: “That’s exactly what he said. I wouldn’t go on an affidavit otherwise. I asked him: ‘Who knows about the diary?’
Feldman: “And he said: ‘Absolutely no f...ing bugger alive.”
Mike: “And that really is the truth.”


Wednesday 13th September 1995
Mike interviewed on BBC Radio Merseyside:
Mike denies writing the diary and claims to have been drunk when he made his previous confessions. He reverts to his original story that he obtained the diary from Tony Devereux.
Mike gives an account of not having the knowledge to forge the diary, but takes it as a compliment that others think him capable.


Wednesday 20th September 1995
Second interview with Mike on BBC Radio Merseyside:
Mike repeats his belief that the diary was in Knowsley Buildings until 1969 and thence to Tony.
Mike apologises for saying that Anne did not have the capability to write the diary.
Mike starts denying the signed confession statements from January. When pushed to explain this, he becomes slightly agitated, and claims he thought he had simply signed a retraction of his previous confession, but did not read the statement before signing.
He acknowledges this was pretty stupid, but suggests they could have been “tampered with” after he’d signed them.
He now claims to think the diary is genuine, but does not believe anything will be found to connect it to Anne.


Tuesday 27th February 1996
Extracts with Mike’s own spelling and emphasis from a typed letter to Paul Feldman:
‘For just over a year, Iv’e been deliberately allowing people to believe what they
wish to believe of me.
WHY?
To buy time. In fact, I was almost sure that someone in your ‘camp’ found out
what I was up to. However, I need not have worried. It turn out not so...’

‘After a tremendous amount of research
I succeed in contacting one of Florence Chandler’s distant relative’s. The
person in question allowed me a sample of there hair. CAN YOU GUESS WHAT
NEXT? I had it DNA tested.
Are you being to catch on?
Well let me tell you! What a bloody job I had getting hold of a sample of
either Anne’s hair or Caroline’s. It took me bloody months. So much so I
almost gave up in the end. I say only this! After countless hours of standing
around in all sorts of weather. In my view ‘Hairdresser’s’ are OK!
MARVELLOUS THING, IS A WOMEN VANITY.
Well, once I had what I wanted, off I pop to get the samples compared.
GUESS BLOODY WHAT? WHICH I ALREADY KNEW, BUT HAD TO PROVE IT.
THEY DID NOT MATCH...’

Love,

Caz
X

[Iconoclast]

Hi Caz,

I think you have chosen these samples extremely well. This is the guy who we are to believe wrote the Maybrick scrapbook, who confessed to Anne 'privately' to blackmail her, but who - we are told - publicly maintained the lie about Tony Devereux in order to keep the gravy train on the right tracks; who signed an affidavit in January 1995 but later said he thought he was confirming that week's shopping list; who was pissed for most of the second half of the 1990s and yet performed the astonishing feat of research in tracking down a distant relative of Florrie before having an extremely expensive DNA test done (unless - like his creative treatment of the scrapbook with the linseed oil in the library with Professor Plum - he simply did the DNA DIY ... it certainly wouldn't have surprised me had he claimed it was so); who was willing to prove to Feldman with quill and ink that he himself had handwritten the text of his finest hoax into the scrapbook before bear-withing a thousand times as his brain attempted to buy time for the next Aldridge Prior reconciliation of the utterly irreconcilable given that he'd just said it was in Anne's hand; the man who literally could tell neither lie nor truth anyone could split the difference over and then remember he had told it even though everyone around him was racking them up on an abacus as he spoke.

I think it is fair to say that it was not simply the DNA of the mythical distant relative of Florrie and Anne and Caroline which did not match but - rather - more or less every tortured, futile, wasteful, destructive, angry, stupid sentence he ever spoke, at least during those highly blended Glenaddled years ...

On that note, we should raise our glasses to 2022 and a Barrett-free analysis of the Maybrick scrapbook, whatever the outcome. If there is enough left in the glass, would it be too much to hope for a Barrat-free one also, I wonder?

Sláinte!

Ike

[rjpalmer]

Sláinte, Ike. But do we have to pretend for an entire year that Mike and Anne didn't know exactly where the diary came from and who wrote it?

[Iconoclast]

Sláinte, Ike. But do we have to pretend for an entire year that Mike and Anne didn't know exactly where the diary came from and who wrote it?

Morning RJ,

Yes please. Twelve whole months where we don't discuss the most asinine theory in Ripperology. As I said the other day, there are three sides to this fence and I think the other two deserve a voice for a while, don't you?

So twelve months where we talk only of how the scrapbook could be authentic or - if inauthentic - how it could realistically have been constructed and realistically by whom.

If that's okay with you and certain aristocratic observers who climb drainpipes in order to peer into our windows with ill-disguised envy, that is ...

Cheers,

Ike

[Pcdunn]

Very interesting, thanks Caz. The bit about Mike having supposedly had a DNA test done on Anne's hair was new to me!

Question: What is the meaning of the phrase Mike used frequently, "it's untrue"? Is that a local idiom meaning something other than the obvious? "I love you so much, it's untrue" is a puzzling sentence to me.

I did notice his spelling in the 27th February 1996 sample text was considerably better than elsewhere, with only two minor punctuation errors. I can here see a glimpse of the Mike who *might have* concocted the diary hoax, and the addled desperate Mike seen elsewhere was a role he played.

[Iconoclast]

Very interesting, thanks Caz. The bit about Mike having supposedly had a DNA test done on Anne's hair was new to me!

Question: What is the meaning of the phrase Mike used frequently, "it's untrue"? Is that a local idiom meaning something other than the obvious? "I love you so much, it's untrue" is a puzzling sentence to me.

I did notice his spelling in the 27th February 1996 sample text was considerably better than elsewhere, with only two minor punctuation errors. I can here see a glimpse of the Mike who *might have* concocted the diary hoax, and the addled desperate Mike seen elsewhere was a role he played.

Hi Pat,

It means the equivalent of 'it's ridiculous' - so, "I love you so much, it's ridiculous" (or "it's beyond believability" which might be more suitable for Mike, on reflection). It's a national idiom, I would say, as it is used so commonly in my experience. 'Professional Scousers' (Scousers who go on and on about being Scouse like it's some big deal or somehow special), of which Mike Barrett was very firmly a member, might try to claim it is a local idiom, but it's very much a national one: you'll hear it used from Land's End to John O'Groats, and presumably over the various waters to the many islands.

The February 27 1996 text is so literate, I have to assume that Caz either corrected it or else she received it already corrected*. Mike was incapable of writing a sentence without a typo or two (again, in my experience). I'm happy to be corrected myself, but I'm feeling reasonably confident I'm right. If I'm wrong, then your point is obviously extremely interesting.

Cheers,

Ike

* I've just been reminded privately that Caz states:

Tuesday 27th February 1996
Extracts with Mike’s own spelling and emphasis from a typed letter to Paul Feldman:

I guess that means that the extracts from Mike's letter to Feldman were all verbatim. Hopefully Caz will be able to confirm or deny that one for us, although that will of course require us to continue focussing on Mike Barrett and not the issue of authenticity vs inauthenticity which is exactly what I was hoping we wouldn't be doing in 2022.

[Pcdunn]

Ike,

Ah, okay! Thank you for the lesson in British slang, it is much appreciated! Now "it's untrue" makes sense in that context.

Yes, the un-misspelled note is yet another mysterious thing about the Maybrick Diary (or "Diary") controversy.

Is it real? It exists, someone wrote it, we know that much. I know your viewpoint is the simplest. I keep going back and forth.

I can remember when the story about its discovery first broke, and how the papers scrambled to find information on James Maybrick to explain who he was to us ignorant readers.. . And then, just as suddenly, how the hoax revelation news broke. So I shrugged, dropped the idea, and thought no more about it for years, until discovering Casebook and the info stored here and this thread. I even got a copy of the Diary to read for myself. It is an extraordinary document, it came about in some fashion, that's about all we know for sure.

[Iconoclast]

I even got a copy of the Diary to read for myself. It is an extraordinary document ...

It most certainly is, Pat - a work of genius by our erstwhile 13-year old, to create so superficially inept a document which still enthrals, intrigues, and inspires ...

Ike