One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[rjpalmer]

Any news on the date of your sick pay form for Mike?

I remain puzzled by the diagnosis of renal failure on mine, just 5 days after the doctor who completed the questionnaire for Mike's disability living allowance claim could find no evidence for it.

Might one doctor's definition be different from the next? Can one non-functioning kidney be described as renal failure? The doctor who examined Mike on 28th February 1996 clearly thought not.

I'll tell you what. Upload the form and the 'short sick note' from the doctor who diagnosed Barrett with 'renal failure' in late February/early March 1996 and I will then upload the form I have. We can then compare handwriting and see if it is the same physician.

Frankly, I don't feel any crying need to jump to your beck and call considering the condescending tone of your posts. If you want to know what Orsam thinks about Barrett's research notes simply go to his website. He's written an entire article about it. I don't plan on playing the mailman for you...you must be confusing me with another poster.

On one hand you accuse me of being in league with Orsam and then turn around and try to create a self-fulfilling prophecy by having me tell you what he thinks. Do your own homework, Caz.

[Iconoclast]

Thanks, Ike. At least one person here has the sense to smell the coffee.

Yes, I have indeed, but evidently not in the way you smell it, RJ.

So, Ike, tell me this, because it’s the $1,000,000 question that Caz is so puzzled about.

How did Barrett know that three researchers sometime in the future would do their own independent comparison studies and discover that Barrett’s ‘Bernard Ryan’ comment would stand up to scrutiny? As far as I know, Keith Skinner, Shirley Harrison, Paul Feldman, Caz Morris, Seth Linder, Professor Rubenstein, and Carol Emmas never bothered to check. So how did Barrett just happen to settle on this one book—the same book that he and Anne (as you grudgingly admit) also used for the bogus research notes?

Why do you ask me these questions, RJ, when you know they are of zero consequence to my argument? You spend all your days trying to prove to those people who accept that the scrapbook is probably a hoax that it was highly likely that Mike and Anne Barrett were the hoaxers, and even twist my words so that a 'probably' on Ryan becomes a 'definite' on Ryan because it helps your case?

Let's be clear moving forwards, I believe the Maybrick scrapbook is authentic. This means that I have no need to answer questions which may be put to me which have no consequence on my argument. A very good example of this would be what source or sources 'the Barretts' (i.e., Mike) used to create what may well have been their/his pre-dated research notes (i.e., possibly written in the summer of 1992 as genuine attempts at research but pre-dated to August 1991 to protect the lie they/he were using to defend the Tony Devereux provenance which clearly at that point could not be questioned because Tony D was sadly dead).

If anyone failed to get the message there, I believe that the Maybrick scrapbook was James Maybrick's. Details around possible hoaxes - unless evidential of a hoax - are therefore of no interest or consequence to me.

We all need to move on from Mike Barrett.

Cheers,

Ike

[Iconoclast]

Mike was already alluding to two of the books that he refers in his notes on March 10th, 1992, during his first conversation with his literary agent. How did Mike do that if he had only gotten the diary from Eddie Lyons hours earlier?
Face it, Old Bean. The gig is up for anyone that wants to use their noggin.
RP

At the risk of being immediately sucked back into the very thing I've just said we need to move away from, the reason why this sort of argument is so frustrating, RJ, is because of the tone of certainty and thus finality you give to it, as if it would be madness itself for anyone to explore the notion beyond the limited scope of your highly-blinkered vision. What with your myopia and Lord Orsam's drainpipes, there's not a lot of wriggle room in the way you both view the world, is there?

People who actually use their noggins (rather than simply polishing them like you and Lord Orsam do - "Ooh, your noggin is looking very shiny today Lord Orsam", etc.) are likely to take a scenario like the one you cite, above, and say to themselves, Is it at all possible that on Monday, March 9, 1992 or during the time before the 'phone call to Rupert Crew on Tuesday, March 10, 1992, that a motivated and intrigued Mike Barrett could have gone into a book shop and checked out what books on Jack the Ripper were available and come across Wilson/Odell and Harrison, either to buy, steal, or simply to refer to later during his anticipated call to Rupert Crew?

Now, that possibility doesn't prove anything other than that you can't assume you're right until you've shown that all other possible solutions are evidentially incorrect, and that is a functionally critical perspective for all researchers to acquire though not all do it would appear - it's positively de rigueur, wouldn't you say, Old Fruit?

It's like keeping your powder dry until you establish if it's worth firing the rifle.

Ike

[rjpalmer]

Is it at all possible that on Monday, March 9, 1992...

Alas, you fall at the first hurdle, Ike.

The only book that Mike mentions in his notes whose purchase date we have any knowledge of is Richard Whitting-Egan's Tales of Liverpool, and Mike obtained this particular book long before 9 March 1992. Months before.

All the other purchase dates are sheer guesswork. Thus, you are forced into the unenviable position of trading the known for the unknown and the strictly theoretical-- all to fulfill your desired outcome. Further, you are forced to squeeze a whirlwind of events into a highly implausible and thoroughly unproven 24 hours of activity by Bongo Barrett and Eddie Lyons.

This is the all-too-common error of allowing one's theory to create facts out of thin air, rather than allowing the actual proven facts to guide one's thinking.

[caz]

Hi Ike,

Without yet having read RJ's latest offerings [long experience tells me they won't be evidence of anything but more confirmation of his own entrenched position on what the Barretts were up to during March 1992] I must say your post above hits the nail on the jolly old h as far as I'm concerned.

Love,

Caz
X

[rjpalmer]

Moving on, while I appreciate how much the subject of Bongo Barrett pains you, Ike, I’d like to return to an earlier post of yours, where you wrote of the now infamous meeting of 25 January 1995:

When Shirley Harrison, Sally Evemy, and Kenneth Forshaw arrive, the atmosphere is friendly. Forshaw (I think he was a Liverpool ex-detective or something like that - intended to reassure Mike

Let's remind your readers that Keith Skinner was already there. So, it was a Committee of three who met with the lone Mike, armed with a tape deck and a bodyguard with 30+ years experience on the Liverpool Police.

For Gawd knows that blokes like Barrett are 'reassured' by unknown, stern-looking men that they can smell as 'the dibble’ from a mile away. Strangely, I don't recall ever hearing what Mr. Forshaw thought of Mike's heartfelt retraction, even though he was there to oversee the proceedings if there was any controversy—which, of course, there was.

We do, however, get your own 'take' on it, Ike, which I find most interesting:

I believe that our dear readers would think very differently about Barrett's various claims over the years if they were able to hear the source of at least one of his 'victim-claiming' statements. Indeed, it would be refreshing for our dear readers if they could hear Mike Barrett passionately and freely denying any involvement in the creation of the Maybrick scrapbook even though he is not being questioned about his involvement and no threats are being made

Ah, so is this how you interpret Barrett's retraction at this summit?

That on January 23, 1995, we are hearing the rare but 'honest' Mike Barrett--the man who is simply and 'passionately' telling the truth about what little he knew of this 'brilliant' document?

Is that what you are stating? Is that your spin?

Come on, Ike. If this is what you are implying, then you are deceiving your readers—because it is obvious that you don't believe this any more than I do.

Your theory is that Barrett was bamboozling Skinner, Evemy, Harrison, and Forshaw at this meeting. You have indirectly admitted this, no? Don't we have common ground on this point?

RP

[rjpalmer]

....and yet the ink was apparently still dripping off the page.

Unfortunately, this sarcastic yet naïve comment exposes your misunderstanding of the forensics.

Manuscript ink will dry in a few hours. There's no reason to think it would have been 'dripping off the page' even if very recent. It's a meaningless statement.

What won't happen can't be seen by the naked eye. It takes weeks or months for the ink to chemically bond with the fibers of the paper.

Any idea what this is? I'll give you a hint. It proves that Barrett wasn't lying.

--Have a good week.




By the way, I want to correct something that Caz Brown said that will be misinterpreted.

I don't think Graham was the 'brains' behind the diary. The 'talent' is a better word. I don't think she was a willing accomplice. I think she was coerced.

[Iconoclast]

Hi Ike,

Without yet having read RJ's latest offerings [long experience tells me they won't be evidence of anything but more confirmation of his own entrenched position on what the Barretts were up to during March 1992] I must say your post above hits the nail on the jolly old h as far as I'm concerned.

Love,

Caz
X

Thank you, Caz. I must admit, I was hoping for something better from RJ but that reply (#8434) has me completely perplexed!

Cheers,

Ike

[Iconoclast]

Moving on, while I appreciate how much the subject of Bongo Barrett pains you, Ike, I’d like to return to an earlier post of yours, where you wrote of the now infamous meeting of 25 January 1995:

Just for clarity for my dear readers, this meeting occurred on January 18, 1995. A small point but one well worth clarifying, I feel.

Nothing to see here, let's all move on.

Ike

[rjpalmer]

Just for clarity for my dear readers, this meeting occurred on January 18, 1995. A small point but one well worth clarifying, I feel.

Nothing to see here, let's all move on.

Ike

Yes, Ike, I did indeed miswrite. January 25th was the date that Barrett went right back to confessing once Forshaw was out of earshot.

Why is there nothing to see here?

You were clearing implying that Barrett retracted his confession in a 'passionate' and unforced denial, yet you failed to tell your readers that you, yourself, do not believe what Mike told Keith, Sally, Shirley, and Kevin at that January 18th meeting.

That's not worth clarifying, but a small error about the date is?

[caz]

Thanks, Ike. At least one person here has the sense to smell the coffee.

Alas, I don't think Caz’s nose will ever get there; she's lost in a drafty air castle of her own making, unable to pick up the scent.

Imagine the staggering odds that a historian would accurately refer to the same wording of the source materials he was using! The odds must be all of 80/20 that he would do so, or perhaps even as unlikely as 70/30! The mind boggles!

Meanwhile, as you also admitted in Post #8335 in reference to the bogus research notes (“the obvious source of everything for Mike would be one book, and Lord O has probably shown that that book would be Ryan”) we are faced with a "double event." The Barretts used the same book as the modern hoaxer to conjure up their bogus research notes. Quite a coincidence. What are the odds of that one?

Now ask yourself the next obvious question.

How did Mike Barrett come to name Bernard Ryan’s book as his primary ‘Maybrick’ source during the Cloak and Dagger interview on 10 April 1999? No one seems to have thought much of it at the time—they just ignored it as another tall tale from Mike. Yet, as your friend Orsam notes, on one occasion Barrett even admitted that it was the only ‘Maybrick’ book he had ever read, and Mike also cited this book during his rambling confessions to Gray.

Tipsy Mike Barrett came up with this. Amazing, no? Mike couldn’t have gotten the idea from Melvin Harris—Harris had suggested Moreland’s This Friendless Lady as the hoaxer’s source.

You see, the thing is, Barrett revealed his source before anyone suggested it. As far as I know, the first person other than Barrett to actually name Bernard Ryan as the hoaxer’s source was a bloke named RJPalmer on these very message boards back around 2003 or 2004, when he posted his study.

Independently, Lord Orsam did a far more elaborate analysis than mine, and came up with the same answer. And Orsam, to his credit, thought of something that hadn’t occurred to me: he also compiled a list of important Maybrick ‘facts’ from 1888-1889 that AREN’T in the diary. Important events, like Maybrick having his portrait painted, and Maybrick going on a walking tour in Wales, etc. All things a person would normally allude to in their diary. But—nada! Zilch. Not only does the Diary use the exact same material as Ryan, but the diary also shares the same ‘blind spots’ as Ryan (with one solitary exception). The correlation is nearly perfect.

Next came Chris Jones—once again, he determined that Bernard Ryan’s book filled the bill.

So, Ike, tell me this, because it’s the $1,000,000 question that Caz is so puzzled about.

How did Barrett know that three researchers sometime in the future would do their own independent comparison studies and discover that Barrett’s ‘Bernard Ryan’ comment would stand up to scrutiny? As far as I know, Keith Skinner, Shirley Harrison, Paul Feldman, Caz Morris, Seth Linder, Professor Rubenstein, and Carol Emmas never bothered to check. So how did Barrett just happen to settle on this one book—the same book that he and Anne (as you grudgingly admit) also used for the bogus research notes?

Sheer luck? Blind, drunken chance?

Or do you envision Mike stumbling down to the Central Liverpool Library, perhaps in another one his famous week-long efforts, to run an elaborate cross-comparison analysis of Macdougall, Moreland, Densmore, Irving, Levy, Christie, etc. before settling on Ryan?

Do you really see Mike doing that—and to such little purpose--or was his knowledge of a more first-hand, “organic” nature? Seeing the book, for instance, on his own living room table?

And consider this, as well. Since we already know that Mike didn’t really hobble down to the Central Library to create his bogus research notes using the microfilm readers, how did Mike happen to have a copy of Ryan’s book sitting in his lap when compiling these bogus notes, since Caz assures us, he had told Shirley Harrison that he had never heard of it?

Mike was already alluding to two of the books that he refers in his notes on March 10th, 1992, during his first conversation with his literary agent. How did Mike do that if he had only gotten the diary from Eddie Lyons hours earlier?

Face it, Old Bean. The gig is up for anyone that wants to use their noggin.

RP

What a pile of self-serving piffle. You have it all arse about face.

Mike's 'research' began on 9th March 1992, when he first saw the diary and made contact with Doreen's literary agency. There is not a shred of evidence that the diary was even a figment of Mike or Anne's imagination before that date - and not long after it they both had cause to regret it coming into their lives.

Shirley Harrison asked Mike, when he had worked out the diary author's supposed identity, if he had come across Bernard Ryan's book on Maybrick, and he had not. He soon remedied this, and the book provided him with much useful information to include in the notes he didn't hand over to Shirley until he'd had the diary for four or five months.

When Alan Gray came on the scene in 1994, and Mike was meant to be giving him chapter and verse on how the diary was faked, what did he say about Ryan's book in relation to the diary? You had the tapes once, so you ought to know. Mike described where Maybrick had written stuff in the diary, which Ryan's book had confirmed. He forgot that his story was meant to be that he [with or without Anne's help] had taken what Ryan wrote and put it in his fake diary. He was bragging about the fact that he had compared what was in Ryan's book with Maybrick's words in his diary, and found common ground.

This wasn't a lie told for the 'Diary Faithful'. He slipped up when talking to Alan Gray, and reverted to his belief that he was the one to unmask Maybrick as the ripper. Why would have done that, if he had been trying since December 1993 to expose the diary as a fraud of his own and Anne's making, as he claimed in the affidavit of 5th January 1995?

I see you are reluctant to answer my very simple questions regarding what we can conclude from Mike's research notes, but I won't let this drop.

1) Which of the notes could only have come from Ryan's book, but are wrongly attributed to another source? Have you or Orsam managed to identify any at all?

2) How many of the unattributed notes cannot be found anywhere but in Ryan's book? All of them? Or just the Britannic detail?

Why did you single out the unattributed Britannic detail as a supposed 'death-blow', if there are more and better examples in Orsam's arsenal?

[caz]

Yup, she's still alive. So is Eddie Lyons.

And?

You have no evidence that Anne is the 'brains', or the 'talent', or the unwilling, coerced 'accomplice' behind the diary's creation. None whatsoever. You got your green light from Mike's own dodgy claims, when he was willing to try anything, if he thought it might get some reaction out of the woman who had let him down and left him flat.

Mike made up the auction and dated it to early 1990, probably because it never dawned on him that anyone would believe it in a million years if he tried to date it to late March 1992, to tie in with the arrival of the red diary he was trying to use as evidence.

It's kids' stuff, RJ.

Eddie Lyons may still be with us, but I'm not the one accusing him of anything. That comes from the evidence of several others, independently of one another. You know - actual evidence, which I don't believe you have.

[caz]

I'll tell you what. Upload the form and the 'short sick note' from the doctor who diagnosed Barrett with 'renal failure' in late February/early March 1996 and I will then upload the form I have. We can then compare handwriting and see if it is the same physician.

Frankly, I don't feel any crying need to jump to your beck and call considering the condescending tone of your posts. If you want to know what Orsam thinks about Barrett's research notes simply go to his website. He's written an entire article about it. I don't plan on playing the mailman for you...you must be confusing me with another poster.

On one hand you accuse me of being in league with Orsam and then turn around and try to create a self-fulfilling prophecy by having me tell you what he thinks. Do your own homework, Caz.

You'll show me yours if I show you Keith's?

How childish.

I was merely curious about the date on your sick note, as Keith's is dated 4th March 1996 and signs Mike off for twelve months. No mention of dialysis.

You said you could upload the whole form, but I can see why you might be reluctant, now you know it's a different one.

I don't know how our welfare system worked back then, as I've been fortunate enough never to have claimed unemployment or sickness benefit. I'm assuming Mike had no employer at the time, so I don't know if or how he'd have qualified for statutory sick pay. It may be that in order to claim unemployment benefit you were supposed to be available for work, so a sick note would be proof of your unavailability and you'd get some form of cash benefit as a result. I just don't know, but I'm sure someone out there does.

In case you needed to be reminded, you brought up the Britannic detail here on casebook, claiming it was a 'death-blow' for the Barretts. That's why I'm asking you to clarify what you meant by this, if you had any other, better examples you could have used. Maybe it wasn't such a good idea for you to post on the subject of Orsam's research into Mike's research, if you can't or won't do a better job of propping it up here.

But if you can't, you can't. And there's an end to it.

[caz]

Alas, you fall at the first hurdle, Ike.

The only book that Mike mentions in his notes whose purchase date we have any knowledge of is Richard Whitting-Egan's Tales of Liverpool, and Mike obtained this particular book long before 9 March 1992. Months before.

All the other purchase dates are sheer guesswork. Thus, you are forced into the unenviable position of trading the known for the unknown and the strictly theoretical-- all to fulfill your desired outcome. Further, you are forced to squeeze a whirlwind of events into a highly implausible and thoroughly unproven 24 hours of activity by Bongo Barrett and Eddie Lyons.

This is the all-too-common error of allowing one's theory to create facts out of thin air, rather than allowing the actual proven facts to guide one's thinking.

Only 'months' before, RJ?

The unblemished copy of Tales of Liverpool, which Tony's daughter Janet finally handed over in October 1993, had been borrowed by her nearly three years earlier, in January 1991, with a request by her father to return it by the weekend as it belonged to "Bongo". That was a bloody long weekend! So long that Mike clean forgot about ever lending the book, never mind asking for it back after they had supposedly discussed the idea of identifying Jack the Ripper as James Maybrick in a faked diary, and they had sworn each other to absolute secrecy, 'til death did they part. The book was not new in January 1991, so it must have sat on a bookshelf for a good long while before that.

I'll see your 'whirlwind of events' concerning Bongo and Eddie over 24 hours, and raise it to the 'tsunami' level required to have the Barretts, with no evidence of any experience or expertise in creating a handwritten literary hoax, contact Doreen on 9th March to see if there was any interest in such a thing, then obtain a suitable book to put it in by the end of the month, get the thing prepared and handwritten, blotted, baked or sunbathed, over the next few days, then whizzed off to London to be pored over by the people at Jarndyce and the British Museum.

If anyone has allowed their theory to create 'facts' out of thin air, which are not even based on anything Mike claimed when in or out of his cups, it's Orsam, for putting all his rotten eggs in the one basket and relying on the scrapbook having come from an auction held on a specific date. That's about as far from a 'fact' as anyone could get, and I suspect you know, at some deeper level, just how precarious it is as a theory.

[caz]

Yes, Ike, I did indeed miswrite. January 25th was the date that Barrett went right back to confessing once Forshaw was out of earshot.

Why is there nothing to see here?

You were clearing implying that Barrett retracted his confession in a 'passionate' and unforced denial, yet you failed to tell your readers that you, yourself, do not believe what Mike told Keith, Sally, Shirley, and Kevin at that January 18th meeting.

That's not worth clarifying, but a small error about the date is?

Remind me, RJ, is the 18th January 1995 meeting with Mike at Goldie Street not the one which you listened to yourself back in the day?

I ask because Mike is clearly fixated on Anne's departure from his life, having taken their daughter with her. He recalls the exact date he was left on his own to stew in his own juice: it was 2nd January 1994 when Anne "walked out" on him. He also recalls going to Brough with his first forgery claims after not being able to see Caroline "for five months". He was dwelling on the loss and it was destroying him.

So presumably you think this was all an act for Forshaw's benefit, and Mike didn't actually give a stuff about losing his daughter?

And presumably when he swore his affidavit 13 days earlier, you think he was not putting on an act, for Anne, or Alan Gray, or Melvin Harris, or Nick Warren, but genuinely believed he and Anne had been beavering away, obtaining all the raw materials and writing the diary, with Caroline there to witness its creation, in early 1990, a year and a half before Tony died, and a full two years before he had actually ordered the 1891 diary and had taken the Maybrick diary to London?

You don't think he might have involved Caroline in all this, along with Anne's recently deceased father, in an attempt to get to Anne and hurt her as much as she had hurt him?

I won't ask you the obvious question, because it's none of my business and of a personal nature.

But any father who has ever been involved in a custody battle over his children, or could even imagine it, would surely not lightly dismiss Mike's evident distress as crocodile tears, in order to claim that affidavit as evidence of a reformed hoaxer, who wanted more than anything to get his past sins off his chest?