One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[rjpalmer]

Good grief, why even bother?

If Mike had faked the diary using Ryan, however, it should have been child's play to pick any Maybrick source but Ryan for his bogus research notes

You really haven’t thought any of this through, have you Caz?

That’s what Barrett did!

In a fit of ‘child’s play’ he cited The Liverpool Echo as his source throughout his notes (without giving page numbers and dates, of course) even though the information isn’t in The Echo.

It is in Ryan.

Have you given up thinking before you write? Contemporary issues of the Liverpool Echo ARE a 'Maybrick' source. They covered the trial extensively, and every future author relied on the newspaper.

As I have noted several times, your explanation makes no sense.

If Shirley suggested to Mike that he consult Bernard Ryan, why is Mike hiding Ryan as his source? Your suggestion defies even the most basic logic.

But perhaps here is a question that might help rehabilitate your struggling theories:

Do you think Keith, writing in 2017, was wrong about Shirley having helped Mike by giving him 'tasks' and 'input' during the creation of these notes?

And since Shirley wasn’t helping or giving suggestions, this is what allowed Mike to ‘bluff’ her by claiming he was consulting the Liverpool Echo when he was using Ryan?

Is that the problem? Keith was wrong? After all, the notes are dated ‘since August 1991.’

I'm not trying to embarrass, Keith, but a straight answer would be helpful.

RP

[Observer]

Only ‘the great majority’ of his Maybrick work makes sense? That leaves a small minority that doesn’t?

Batten down the hatches, Observant one.

Two words Mr Garnett, sour grapes. And batten down the hatches? Anyone believing Maybrick penned the Dairy is surely deluded.

"Up the Ammers"

[rjpalmer]

One final thing.

I'll keep this really simple. Shirley asks Mike if he's read Bernard Ryan's book on Maybrick. Mike tells her he's never heard of it, so he gets himself a copy to get more acquainted with the Maybrick story - probably borrows it from the library to save dipping into the housekeeping or his beer tokens.

I'll keep it equally simple.

This is the 4th or 5th time you've made this unsubstantiated claim. You've been asked to provide your source and you have failed to do so. Why is that?

Even if Mike claimed he had never heard of Ryan, you obviously have no way of knowing if he wasn't merely playing dumb to hide his source. Thus, you are speculating—indeed, you couldn't be doing anything other than speculating.

And you still haven't answered why Mike didn't similarly fake his notes when it came to Odell and Wilson, or Paul Harrison, or Richard Whittington-Egan, if his aim was nothing more than to impress Shirley, why the selective deception?

Anyone who has followed this saga from the beginning is aware that Shirley Harrison has admitted more than once that she did not always keep detailed notes in the early months of her investigation, nor did she tape these conversations. Mike and Anne were her collaborators, after all, not the focus of her investigation. This is why Keith Skinner was left scrambling years later to try and recreate a detailed chronology.

If you have access to such detailed documentation that now allows you to claim when Shirley first discussed Bernard Ryan with Mike, why can't you even identify if it was July 1992 or August 1992 when Mike supposedly handed over his notes?

You don’t even know with certainty when the notes were handed over, but you know it was after she discussed Bernard Ryan?

That's a convenient belief, but you weren’t there, were you?

[rjpalmer]

One last bit of clarification:

Shirley has been led to believe Mike has been researching the diary since the summer of 1991. He could make excuses for not having taken any notes, or for Anne accidentally hoovering them up or throwing them away, but he doesn't do that. Instead, he sets about putting together a series of notes and asks Anne to tidy and type them up for him to give Shirley, as a sign of his good faith as her partner in research. Taking the easy route, he uses Shirley's tip and takes his Maybrick info from Ryan's book, but then can't name it for obvious reasons: Shirley would know he has done next to no Maybrick research in all those months before she gave him a source to work with. It was evidently beyond his wit to look for other books on Maybrick to use instead, or it simply didn't occur to him until after he'd done the work.

Yes, Caz. I get it. I understand what you are saying. (Accept that you haven't provided any evidence for Shirley telling Mike about Bernard Ryan).

But here's a complication. It's Keith Skinner's summary from the 25 YEARS OF JACK THE RIPPER'S DIARY thread, Post #530.

"The answer to David's query - as I think described by Shirley – is that the notes were given to Shirley by Mike Barrett when she paid her first visit to Liverpool in the Summer of 1992, soon after being commissioned to write the book.

But prior to Shirley's trip there had been, as I understand it, constant telephone calls from an excited Mike wanting to help and involve himself in the research – and so Shirley gave him little research tasks to undertake. Shirley has noted Mike didn't seem to be very good at this and often became frustrated and upset at not being able to find answers. So Shirley's input into these notes may have been the research she was suggesting to Mike he could do in Liverpool. I do distinctly recall showing the notes to Anne at a later date (1995?) and she confirmed that she had tidied them up. Mike wasn't too good on the word processor apparently. Without reference to my files I can't quite recall what put me on to the existence of these notes in 1994 which were faxed through to me, (either from Shirley or Sally), a couple of days before I went to see Mike in Liverpool on April 14th 1994. There was just a slim chance that Mike had kept his original handwritten notes or notebooks but he hadn't – so that was the end of that line of enquiry.

I did question Mike very carefully about his research methodology as I was interested to learn how he had gone about trying to make sense of the diary, starting from a position of – presumably – knowing very little about Jack The Ripper and virtually nothing about the Maybrick Case. I remember trying to tease out from Mike anything which would give independent corroboration that he had been given the diary by Tony Devereux and was disappointed when he could not provide one fact which could be substantiated. He said he had researched it night and day to the point that he had become a Ripper expert. But I just didn't feel that with Mike, and his knowledge around the Maybrick Case seemed to me equally negligible. For someone who claimed he had devoted around 10 months to studying both cases it just didn't ring true."

Which is it? Are these notes supposed to be to trick Shirley into thinking they were created between when Devereux handed the diary to Mike in 1991 and when Mike called Doreen in March 1992?

Or do they represent "research tasks in Liverpool" that Shirley had asked Mike to perform?

Keith claims it was the latter, but leaves unanswered why the document nonetheless refers to notes being transferred 'since August 1991' long before Shirley became involved.

Which is it? Why and when were these notes created?

Are you suggesting that Shirley's investigation was so muddled that Mike's original notes were garbled together with her request for Liverpool research between April and July 1992???

If such was the case, how could they represent proof of anything? And why would Mike disguise the source that Shirley, herself, suggested that he consult?

[Iconoclast]

We could argue these points until we are blue in the face but - in the absence of reliable evidence - we will never be 100% clear how Mike's research notes were compiled and why they consisted of what they did. In the absence of any additional evidence, however, we can say with some confidence that Mike created some research notes claiming they were from August 1991. The date here is not really an issue as he claimed he was "Transferring my notes from August 1991" (or words to that effect). This may have meant that his notes started in August 1991 (when Tony D died) or somewhat earlier than that (say, June or July 1991 giving him some time to start his research before Tony died) - the fact that Anne typed-up his notes for him twelve months or so later means that Mike's memory may have been faulty and he had Anne type "Transferring my notes from August 1991" rather than, say, "Transferring my notes from June 1991". Because it's just a title on the front page, it doesn't really signal too much either way.

Anyway, so we know that Mike created some research notes claiming they were from August 1991. Without additional evidence, we know no more than that, so - in the absence of additional evidence - we need to understand why Mike would use Ryan so extensively but claim it was the Liverpool Echo. Now, just like everyone else, I do not know the answer to that so I can only surmise, and here is my attempt to surmise:

1) Mike receives what is almost certainly stolen property in March 1992 - it's a confession purportedly written by Liverpool cotton merchant James Maybrick that he was Jack the Ripper;
2) Mike takes it to Rupert Crew because he senses fame and fortune;
3) In April 1993, Mike's meeting with Rupert Crew is positive and the project starts but he can't tell everyone that he's probably received stolen property (or, at least, he doesn't want to for fairly obvious reasons) so he tells Anne that he's going to say it came from Tony D in 1991 and she says "Fair enough - but try to keep me out of it".
4) Mike becomes a research collaborator (joint-author) with Shirley Harrison.
5) At some point in what appears to have been the summer of 1992, Mike has reason to provide his 'research notes' since 1991 which is a problem for him because they don't exist.
6) So Mike creates some false research notes and he's fundamentally a bit lazy so he uses only the Bernard Ryan book (he could have used Christie or Morland).
7) For some reason - currently uncertain - he doesn't want it to look like he's used Ryan so he plugs in the indeterminate Liverpool Echo.
8) No-one notices for thirty years.

Now, point 7) becomes our issue: why did Mike not just note that he was getting his source material from Ryan?

Well, your guess is as good as mine in the absence of additional evidence but the fact that we don't know the reason for point 7) doesn't mean that it is suspicious. It just means that it is currently unknown. Caz must have her reasons for the claims that Shirley asked Mike if he knew of the Ryan book. If Shirley did so, then that answers the question. If Caz is able to prove that, then that answer is backed-up with the evidence. If Caz only has a reference to it in her historical record, then she can still back it up but obviously not conclusively.

We can argue this until we are blue in the face, but Mike using Ryan for his research notes and attempting to hide the fact is an interesting discovery but does not really move the discussion on one iota without further evidence. If that applies to Caz's suggestions about Shirley mentioning Ryan to Mike and his not wanting to then make it obvious he's used Ryan as pretty much his only Maybrick source then that also applies to Lord Orsam's claim that this proves that Mike wrote the diary and was seeking to hide the fact that he had used Ryan to do so.

Ike

[caz]

Hi Tom,

I have yet to read many of RJ's latest posts and have better things to do right now, but the problem as I see it with the Barrett hoax faithful, is that every argument using speculation, because the evidence is patchy, or can be read in more than one way, will inevitably be based on their professed certainty that they are correct, and that Mike faked this diary.

As such, it's a pointless and boringly predictable exercise on their part, and a rather pointless one on ours too, to do anything but pity a mind that can never be changed. Orsam and RJ are openly and effectively admitting that their arguments will all be circular, and fatally infected with confirmation bias, to lead them right back round to where they started, with a conclusion they reached years ago.

We do have recorded conversations, between Mike, Shirley and Keith, on separate occasions, confirming that when Shirley first mentioned Ryan's book to Mike, he said [I won't do an RJ and use the loaded word 'admitted'] he'd not heard of it. Yes, of course he could have been lying, but even liars occasionally let a truth slip out, as RJ himself pointed out a while back. What Orsam needs to do is to demonstrate that Shirley had the Ryan conversation with Mike after the notes were delivered to her in July/August 1992. Otherwise, the possibility remains that Mike was only led to Ryan by Shirley, and used the book when compiling his notes on Maybrick, at some point between April and July 1992.

And now, I'm going to listen to PMQs...

Love,

Caz
X

[rjpalmer]

What Orsam needs to do is to demonstrate that Shirley had the Ryan conversation with Mike after the notes were delivered to her in July/August 1992. Otherwise, the possibility remains that Mike was only led to Ryan by Shirley, and used the book when compiling his notes on Maybrick, at some point between April and July 1992.

So now it is just a "possibility" that Shirley mentioned the book to Mike before he handed over his notes?

You've been telling us that she did mention the book to Mike.

And even though it is your claim, the onus is now on Lord Orsam to show that you didn't simply make up this 'fact'?

You're right, Caz. This conversation is boring. Carry on without me, because you are clearly making it up as you go along and neither have the ability nor the desire to reveal your source for this 'fact' that has now become a 'possibility.'

RP

[caz]

You really haven’t thought any of this through, have you Caz?

That’s what Barrett did!

In a fit of ‘child’s play’ he cited The Liverpool Echo as his source throughout his notes (without giving page numbers and dates, of course) even though the information isn’t in The Echo.

It is in Ryan.

Have you given up thinking before you write? Contemporary issues of the Liverpool Echo ARE a 'Maybrick' source. They covered the trial extensively, and every future author relied on the newspaper.

Have you given up reading what I wrote? By 'child's play', I thought it would have been obvious to a child what I meant: that, as with Martin Fido's complete absence from Mike's ripper notes, he could have done the same with Ryan, simply by taking his Maybrick notes from other sources and naming those sources. He didn't need to use Ryan's book at all, for any of his notes, if he thought it would give the game away to admit this was his source. Naming the Liverpool Echo proves he was aware of alternative sources he could have used just for these notes, to avoid Ryan entirely.

No, there has to be a better explanation RJ. He used Ryan to compile his Maybrick notes, after Shirley gave him the tip, but didn't want to admit it. We know he told Shirley that he had 'spent hours sifting through microfilm newspaper reports in the library'. She writes this on page 7 of the first edition of her book, and implies this was meant to have been in the wake of Tony's death and before Mike first contacted Pan Books and Rupert Crew. It would have looked more suspicious if the notes he eventually handed over in the summer of 1992 had not reflected a single one of those hours.

As I have noted several times, your explanation makes no sense.

How could it, to a man obsessed with being right about Mike faking the diary using Ryan, and not having the wit to avoid Ryan like the plague when compiling his bogus set of notes?

Do you think Keith, writing in 2017, was wrong about Shirley having helped Mike by giving him 'tasks' and 'input' during the creation of these notes?

Why not ask him?

She could have done, and that's when she could have told Mike about Ryan's book, but he still had to justify his claim to have spent hours poring over those newspaper reports between August 1991 and March 1992.

I'm not trying to embarrass, Keith, but a straight answer would be helpful.

And I wasn't trying to embarrass you, when I asked for a straight answer here:

I meant to add, Mike would also 'admit' to Alan Gray that he faked the scratches in Albert Johnson's watch.

Would you at least concede that the loaded word 'admit' has no place in the above sentence, and that Mike was talking the most desperate nonsense at this point? And can I expect a straight answer to this question or another load of waffle?

While I doubt any answer would be 'helpful' in this case, RJ, you can only embarrass yourself by waffling on, while wishing Mike's claim about the watch scratches would go away.

[rjpalmer]

we can say with some confidence that Mike created some research notes claiming they were from August 1991

I agree with you, Ike, these notes ostensibly represent Mike's research 'since August 1991.'

Emphasis on Mike's research.

If I had joined in a collaboration with another person and was trying to get up to speed (whereas they had been working on the project for months), I would want to see their notes--not the joint notes we made together after I joined the project. That only makes sense.

And indeed, this is what Shirley Harrison herself reported in 'The American Connection'(2002) page 298:




Mike's research "BEFORE he brought the Diary to London." Before 13 April 1992. BEFORE Shirley may or may not have mentioned Bernard Ryan to Mike.

Now, Ike, while I appreciate that these small details are boring to you (despite your enthusiasm for other obscure facts associated with the diary) I am not sure they would bore Keith Skinner, who seems to take pride in ironing out these small details and contradictions.

Because, as I already posted, Keith said in 2017 that these weren't Mike's notes from before he brought the diary to London (despite Shirley's statement) but represented notes tidied up by Anne supposedly before July or August 1992 with contributions by Shirley Harrison.

Can't you see why this contradiction is important?

If they DON'T represent additions by Shirley Harrison--but are solely Mike's notes--then Caz's suggestion crumbles into a heap of nonsense.

Let me cut to the chase, and I will then withdraw from the conversation until when--or if--Keith wishes to clarify things. Because as I said earlier, Keith is the only one who can answer the following.

Here is what is bothering me.

1. Shirley says the notes were made before Mike came to London.

2. Keith tell us in 2017 that this isn't entirely true, since Mike added to the notes with Shirley's input. This is the same thing Keith stated when he wrote a cover letter for the notes back in the 1990s:





But here's the deal. Here are Keith's own handwritten annotations to Mike's notes:





Note the annotation in Keith's handwriting dating to 19 April 1999 under the bit about Shirley's contributions:

"APPARENTLY NOT"


Who in April 1999 told Keith that the notes were "not" made with Shirley's input?

Was it Shirley herself who was now giving a different version?

Or was it Anne Graham who denied these notes were made after Shirley started giving suggestions?

Why are we told two different versions of how and why the notes were made? And why didn't KS discuss this in 2017? Had he forgotten about his own annotation?


This reminds me of the infamous 'typescript' created by Mike and Anne.

We were told two different stories of when and why the typescript was created, too. One that Mike made it before he came to London; one that he made it at the bidding of Doreen Montgomery.

Ditto with the notes.

That's all from me for a good long while. I'll let Keith sort it out and explain it.

RP

[rjpalmer]

By the way: to the Administration. When I try to log on directly to casebook.org (instead of to the forums) I am now getting a message that the site is not safe and the connection is no longer private, having been hacked. I am leery about going to anywhere else on the site to see if this has already been addressed. Cheers.

[caz]

Nobody knows when any of Mike's undated notes were first taken down. We do know from Shirley herself that she asked Mike if he had heard of Ryan's book and he said no. If he used Ryan when compiling the notes, it follows that he hadn't 'spent hours sifting through microfilm newspaper reports in the library' as he had told Shirley. But the notes, when they were finally produced, conveniently gave The Liverpool Echo as his source, which served to support his claim to Shirley, while not actually reflecting the work this would have involved. A simple case of cause and effect, to keep the Devereux story straight. It doesn't even depend on when Shirley mentioned Ryan's book to Mike. He could have found it in the library for himself at any time after identifying Maybrick as the diary's supposed author, and seen an easy way out of having to pore through all those newspaper reports to justify his claim.

So absolutely the onus is on Orsam, if he wants to claim that Mike only didn't name Ryan's book in the notes because he had previously used it when faking the diary.

It would be a bonus if anyone wants to explain why on earth Mike didn't simply avoid Ryan completely, as he managed to do with Martin Fido.

[StevenOwl]

Morning Ike,

I have a feeling poor RJ will have to put up with us a while longer. He's either been swallowing Orsam's Kool-Aid again, or they have both been swallowing Mike's, six years after his death.

It took me all of five minutes last night to check what must have taken Orsam quite a long time and effort to compile and write up, and for the bleedin' obvious to smack me round the chops.

I'll be brief.

There are reasons why Mike didn't hand over his research notes until July/August 1992, having made only vague references to his sources, and not dating the notes themselves. He wanted Shirley to believe he had been researching what was in the diary since the previous August, when Tony Devereux died and gave him a provenance he could stick with. He had to have something to show for all those months of hard work, which he hadn't actually done because he didn't know the diary existed before March 9 1992, and didn't know Bernard Ryan's book from a bar of soap before Shirley mentioned it to him, at some point after April 13 1992. He couldn't then name Ryan as his source for the Maybrick research, or Shirley would have instantly rumbled that his notes had not been compiled over several months, but only after she herself had made him aware of Ryan's book.

I can picture him now, sitting in the library in the early summer of 1992, scribbling down notes from Ryan's book to impress Shirley with knowledge he would then claim to have acquired unaided from the Liverpool Echo, before she even became involved.

But then, some of us can read Mike like a book.

Sorry, RJ. You've been had - again.

Love,

Caz
X

PS Orsam might have had himself an argument, if only 'Sir Jim' had mentioned in the diary that he had met Bunny on the Britannic.

Mike mentioning the good ship lollipop in his rushed research notes from mid 1992 doesn't cut the mustard.

Great post Caz, and thanks for saving me the bother of reading the latest dribble from Arse-um. Final nail - what a joke.

[Abby Normal]

By the way: to the Administration. When I try to log on directly to casebook.org (instead of to the forums) I am now getting a message that the site is not safe and the connection is no longer private, having been hacked. I am leery about going to anywhere else on the site to see if this has already been addressed. Cheers.

yeah im getting it too

[Iconoclast]

Who in April 1999 told Keith that the notes were "not" made with Shirley's input?

RP

Just in the interests of balance, RJ, April 1999 may have been when Keith finally got around to recording the fact that Anne had told him (in 1995?) that she had typed-up Mike's research notes for him, so Keith's 'Apparently not' may have referred to the bit where he had originally written 'They have, however, been updated by Mike, on his word processor ...' [which they had not] and not been a reference to whether or not they contained any of Shirley's input [which they may well have done].

Ike

[Iconoclast]

yeah im getting it too

And me - but not on direct shortcuts to the James Maybrick pages (forum.casebook.org/forum/ripper-discussions/suspects/maybrick-james) which I always use anyway.