One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[MrBarnett]

Would a doctor, a professional man - a gentleman - have entered through the tradesmen’s entrance? The butcher’s boy, the baker, the plumber etc, yes, but a doctor? I wouldn’t have thought so.

[caz]

My guess was that the house shown to the left of Battlecrease on the map was number 7 so Battlecrease had no option but to be numbered 6 & 6A once converted.
At one point the houses to the left of Battlecrease were demolished before the flats that stand today were built, which left the opportunity for 6A to be renumbered 7.


Also from Morland, this seems to confirm Battlecrease was two dwellings in 1888.

Hi Yabs,

I think it was Florie who named their rented home Battlecrease House, so I would have thought the name only applied to 6A, and not next door where the Steels were living at number 6, despite what Morland writes about the wall dividing Battlecrease into two houses?

By 1891, 6A had become number 7, so we can be sure there was no other number 7 by then, if one had ever existed.

When it was all one building, it was presumably number 6, but I'm not certain that the next residence further up the road was number 5. The cricket club and grounds were/are across the road, but if houses had been built on that land, would they have been allocated the odd numbers, with all the even numbers on the Battlecrease side?

If so, it would make sense if the next house down towards the Mersey had been number 8.

Anyway, I can certainly see how Mike could have got off the 82C bus one day in the early 1990s, walked down Riversdale Road and misidentified the imposing Victorian residence at No.6 as Battlecrease. Far more plausible than having found the number on page 54 of Ryan's book, after missing the date of birth given for Gladys on page 27!

For all the claims about Mike's freelance writing career from 1986, he was no professional researcher. In fact, RJ Palmer has argued that Mike was such an amateur in this game that he could have taken five of Ryan's words and had them coming straight out of Dr Fuller's mouth in the diary, without appreciating or caring about the dangers. But how many times could he have got away with such a practice before he made the one fatal mistake which would have proved beyond doubt that the diary could not have been written without reference to Ryan's book?

What RJ failed to appreciate or care about is the fact that if Mike had tried to do this, Ryan's words would only need to have differed by a single syllable from Dr Fuller's back in 1889, and the game would have been up as soon as anyone compared the two. But Mike wriggles off the hook again, because 'Sir Jim' plays the right five notes in the diary and, unlike Eric Morecambe, gets them all in the right order. I'm not sure how many aspiring literary hoaxers could have pulled off a trick like that, with just the one modern source.

But then Ryan is the gift that keeps on giving.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

I should have clarified that Ryan was paraphrasing, so there is no way to tell from his narrative if it contains any of Dr Fuller's own words, never mind an actual phrase he used back in 1889. Without an earlier source to hand, it would be anyone's guess what the doctor had actually told his patient, and not an assumption that can be made from what Ryan writes.

An example of what I mean would be this:

Modern source: The doctor told him to pull himself together.

Diary: The bumbling buffoon told me to pull myself together.

The doctor: I told him he was malingering.

Love,

Caz
X

[MrBarnett]

It’s a bit confusing, but looking at various censuses (1871/81/91) it would seem that the even numbers (2-12) in Riverside Road were in the ecclesiastical parish of St Anne’s whereas the odd numbers (1-3) and the cricket lodge/pavilion were in St. Mary’s.


Possibly the parish boundary ran along Riverside Road with St Anne’s to the N and St Mary’s to the S.

[caz]

That would make perfect sense to me, Gary, and might explain why Maybrick's abode had initially been 6A, conforming to the even number rule, and at some point after his death, was changed to number 7, which would normally have already existed across the road if it wasn't for the cricket grounds.

It's Riversdale Rd, but I assume that was a slip of the pen?

One can see why anyone would have wanted the name and number erased, in view of the notorious reputation Battlecrease had gained in 1889.

Love,

Caz
X

[rjpalmer]

I heard from 'Orsam' a few days ago and he already had it all worked out. A quick look at the 1881 Census would have revealed that there were only even numbers on the Maybrick side of the street. There was never any 'No 7' to demolish, nor was there a 'No 5' as Ike posited in an earlier message. Orsam has a post about it at his website.

Riversdale Road Mystery - Orsam Books

I never understood what Caz's 25-year obsession with Barrett pounding on the wrong door (or pretending to pound on the wrong door) is supposed to tell us. In fact, it doesn't tell us anything.

Even Dr. Canter was in a muddle over the house numbers. On pg. 415 of Shirley Harrison's 'American Connection,' he claims Maybrick lived in No. 7 and the house is now numbered No. 8.

And his Maybrickian speciality was geography, was it not?

[MrBarnett]

I heard from 'Orsam' a few days ago and he already had it all worked out. A quick look at the 1881 Census would have revealed that there were only even numbers on the Maybrick side of the street. There was never any 'No 7' to demolish, nor was there a 'No 5' as Ike posited in an earlier message. Orsam has a post about it at his website.

Riversdale Road Mystery - Orsam Books

I never understood what Caz's 25-year obsession with Barrett pounding on the wrong door (or pretending to pound on the wrong door) is supposed to tell us. In fact, it doesn't tell us anything.

Even Dr. Canter was in a muddle over the house numbers. On pg. 415 of Shirley Harrison's 'American Connection,' he claims Maybrick lived in No. 7 and the house is now numbered No. 8.

And his Maybrickian speciality was geography, was it not?

The same conclusion we had already come to.

[MrBarnett]

That would make perfect sense to me, Gary, and might explain why Maybrick's abode had initially been 6A, conforming to the even number rule, and at some point after his death, was changed to number 7, which would normally have already existed across the road if it wasn't for the cricket grounds.

It's Riversdale Rd, but I assume that was a slip of the pen?

One can see why anyone would have wanted the name and number erased, in view of the notorious reputation Battlecrease had gained in 1889.

Love,

Caz
X

Yes it was a slip of the digit. :-)

[Iconoclast]

Remarkably clear Photo enhancement of Liz Stride - Casebook: Jack the Ripper Forums

Check out post #24, dear readers. Could those pesky initials of Florence Maybrick be made any clearer on Kelly's wall?

And utterly inadvertently too!

Ike

[MrBarnett]

The same conclusion we had already come to.

I can’t see where Lord O obtained the information that the odd numbers were on the south side.

We figured that out because they were in the same parish as the cricket lodge and pavilion - in Garston rather than Aigburth.

Kudos to his Lordship for the directory entries. Perhaps the south side appears in the same directory under Garston?

[Pcdunn]

Mr. Barnett's idea about the number 7 address seems sensible, given the notoriety the Maybricks had brought to the house, as well as the city itself. No way to be certain now, though.

[MrBarnett]

I hope this is legible, it’s from the Liverpool Mercury 21st December, 1891:

[rjpalmer]

In the context of Barrett's research notes (to use Yabs' phrase), the obvious source of everything for Mike would be one book, and Lord O has probably shown that that book would be Ryan. There is not a cat in Hell's chance that Barrett used MacDougall...

This is my favorite post on this entire thread.

If it was so bleedin' obvious, why didn't Shirley Harrison and Keith Skinner and Paul Feldman ever work it out and notice this 25 years ago?

Why did it take 29 1/2 years?

More interesting yet, why is Ike so suddenly eager to show that Mike and Anne only used one book to concoct their bogus notes?

And why is Ike suddenly so eager to (grudgingly) take Orsam's word for it?

Why couldn't Anne and Mike have read McDougall? And Moreland? And Christie?

What has convinced Ike that Ryan--and only Ryan-- was the one source for the Maybrick material in these bogus notes, and why is Ike now so obviously concerned there could be another answer?

Meanwhile, Caz is dancing all around the issue, evidently pretending that Ryan isn't the source, using an obviously faulty argument about Gladys.


RP

[rjpalmer]

Anyway, I can certainly see how Mike could have got off the 82C bus one day in the early 1990s, walked down Riversdale Road and misidentified the imposing Victorian residence at No.6 as Battlecrease. Far more plausible than having found the number on page 54 of Ryan's book, after missing the date of birth given for Gladys on page 27!

I have no immediate desire to return to these repetitive arguments, but I think it is important to point out the absurdity of Caz Brown’s reasoning about Mike and Anne’s bogus research notes.

That Mike “missed the date for Glady’s birth” is a ridiculous argument, and is not proven. It’s not in evidence. Why? Because the notes are fake. Has Caz already forgotten that part?

Remember, folks: THESE NOTES, TYPED UP BY ANNE GRAHAM, ARE BOGUS.

This is not in dispute. And because they are bogus, we can’t trust that Barrett and Graham didn’t readily know EXACTLY where they could find more information about Gladys. It’s a silly argument—a non-sequitur.

It is strange that this needs to be pointed out, but the purpose of Barrett and Graham faking the notes was two-fold:


1. They needed to demonstrate that they had ownership of the diary as far back as their bogus provenance—the living Tony Devereux. Since Devereux died in August 1991, they needed to show that Mike was allegedly conducting “research” over many months. The bogus notes were an easy way of doing this. Caz doesn’t even deny this fact—she embraces it.


2. Yet, at the same time, it is a balancing act. Anne and Mike also need to portray Barrett as a dense, clueless, salt-of-the-earth ‘scrap metal dealer’ who was incapable of hoaxing the diary but instead was merely incompetently researching it, while Anne herself is someone who didn’t care about Jack the Ripper. The last thing in the world the Barretts wanted to demonstrate was their ability to rattle off every known fact about Maybrick and Gladys, etc., and signal to Shirley Harrison and Company how easy it would have been to fake the diary. After all, it is an undeniable fact: all the ‘Maybrick’ information in the diary can be found in one book: Ryan’s. Thus, the notes also needed to hide the Barrett’s knowledge of the Maybrick case and their true source of information—Ryan. Thus, we get the bogus “Liverpool Echo” entries.

Yet, we also get entries along the lines of this: “Oh My! I’ve been digging for months to find out information about Gladys Maybrick. Oh dear me, where on earth could I possibly find it?!! It is such a mystery!! And my, oh my, I always thought the Maybricks were married in St. James Church Liverpool [Beep! Beep! Scam alert!] and now I see in Richard Whitting-Egan’s book that it was St. James’s London."

In brief, when the Barrett’s pretend ignorance in the notes, it is not proof they truly were ignorant—the notes are bogus. Remember?

It’s hard to believe that this needs to be pointed out, but such is the diary ‘debate.’


Folks, this is not evidence of Barrett’s ignorance of Ryan:




Folks, this IS evidence that Barrett knew Ryan's book and used it:

[MrBarnett]

Within seconds of my post 8365 appearing, Lord O added an 1894 directory page to his article, showing that nos 1&3 were indeed on the south side, as we’d already discovered. They were the only residences listed on the south side in 1894.

Thanks for that Lord O.

One word of caution, though. Such directories did not necessarily list every house in a given Street, they were intended for businesses and wealthy householders who could afford to pay for the entries.

There do seem to have been residences on the south side that did not make it into the directories. They seem to have been unnumbered, though, small working men’s cottages.