One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[Iconoclast]

Underplayed by him?

Are you joking, Ike? Have you been asleep for the past 25 years or have you just so convinced yourself that Melvin was evil that you have simply ignored everything he has written?

Let me warn you that you are entering very dangerous territory because this will revive bad blood.

Here's my take.

Baxendale wrote two follow-up letters to Harrison insisting the diary's ink was not behaving like an old ink should.

That is hardly unplaying it.

The response is that Harrison and Smith "lost all confidence" in Baxendale and decided to suppress his damning report. He was their consultant, they paid the bills, so he agreed that the report would not be released.

Harrison admits this in her book.

It was only later that the Sunday Times found out about this earlier analysis by Baxendale. When quizzed about it, Robert Smith said something along the lines that he had shoved Baxendale's report in a bottom desk drawer and had "forgotten about it."

Quite convenient, no?

Of course, Melvin Harris was convinced that Smith had deliberately suppressed a report that was so deeply damaging, but no doubt you will call that suggestion "evil."

Yet now you, too, seem a little shocked by it.

I've been trying to tell you this for the better part of five years, Ike, but apparently you have simply scrolled past my posts.

Your friend Lord Orsam has discussed it on his website as well.

Have a good day.

RJ,

There was nothing in Baxendale's report which was damaging in the slightest regarding the solubility of the ink in the scrapbook because he didn't test for it. At least, if he tested for it, he singularly failed to mention this in his report. You know, the bit where he found that the scrapbook was definitely a hoax.

Smith and Harrison rejected Baxendale's report because it was inaccurate. For example, his claim regarding the use of nigrosine was patently incorrect. If he could be incorrect on this point, what other points could he be incorrect on (whether he bothered to mention them in his report or not)?

I think our dear readers are entitled to infer from all this that Baxendale misremembered his reference to 'free flowing', and then supplemented that newly-formed memory with elements form some other report he was writing for another client.

How else could you explain his remarkable omission in his original report. (Unless he often kept stuff back in case he got into protracted debates with clients and could then win the day with information he hadn't previously provided them with).

[rjpalmer]

OMG, I've just realised I've given Baxendale a huge service by suggesting that he ever mentioned the so-called free solubility of the ink in his original report. He didn't. Not a word about solubility (never mind free solubility).

His 'original report' (July 1st) dealt with the initial visual examination of the diary.

Get a grip, Ike.

You can't determine the ink is free flowing until you actually complete the solubility test, which came later.

It's like foolishly blaming a decathlete for not running the 1,500 meters on Day One of the competition!

The ink's free solubility is mentioned in the first line of the summary included in the letter to Smith when he sent him the full report on the 'chemical properties.'




Crazy stuff as always.

I've seen enough for one week, Ike. I'll try to check back before mid-September's great reveal.

[Iconoclast]

Baxendale wrote two follow-up letters to Harrison insisting the diary's ink was not behaving like an old ink should.
That is hardly unplaying it.

Oh I think you'll find it most certainly is, RJ!

Come on, man - face it, he only mentioned something he 'later relied on in court' well after the event having singularly skipped that rather critical detail in his actual report, and you think that's fine because he definitely mentioned it later. Hmmm. I might remember that Newcastle won the FA Cup last season but - sadly - it don't make it so.

[Iconoclast]

His 'original report' (July 1st) dealt with the initial visual examination of the diary.

Get a grip, Ike.

You can't determine the ink is free flowing until you actually complete the solubility test, which came later.

It's like foolishly blaming a decathlete for not running the 1,500 meters on Day One of the competition!

The ink's free solubility is mentioned in the first line of the summary included in the letter to Smith when he sent him the full report on the 'chemical properties.'




Crazy stuff as always.

I've seen enough for one week, Ike. I'll try to check back before mid-September's great reveal.

Thanks for posting the summary and conclusion of Baxendale's letter to Smith dated July 9. I love the way Baxendale never mentions in his July 1 report that his results are preliminary, but under the cosh three decades later you do a quick soft-shoe shuffle and reinterpret the July 1 report as a 'taster' and his July 9 letter as the real and final report. Clearly, he couldn't have just waited the eight days to send the client a full and proper report? It took a telephone conversation with Smith that morning to get him to complete the job?

Ike

[rjpalmer]

Thanks for posting the summary and conclusion of Baxendale's letter to Smith dated July 9.

It was more than a letter, Old Man. It is a cover letter for the full report of July 9th, which was enclosed.

Could you kindly upload page one of that report for the benefit of your readers?

You're not holding back on us, are you?

[Iconoclast]

It was more than a letter, Old Man. It is a cover letter for the full report of July 9th, which was enclosed.

Could you kindly upload page one of that report for the benefit of your readers?

You're not holding back on us, are you?

I think you have misread Baxendale's comment as "I am now getting around to sending you my full report after that preliminary one I fired off over a week ago".

Quite clearly, Baxendale and Smith have had a discussion over the telephone in the morning and Smith has asked him to send him a complete report of the chemical properties of the ink because he hasn't trusted the lightweight version he got on July 1. He also must have asked Baxendale to expand on his handwriting claims as he covers this also. But let's not attempt to convert this hastily-contrived 'report' by Baxendale as the completion of the 'full' report. It quite clearly isn't. Smith has pushed him, and he has had to respond with more.

If anything else were true, his report of July 1, 1992, would have clearly stated something along the lines of "This is a preliminary report with a full report to follow when all analysis has been conducted".

But you'll spin it that way anyway, of course.

[Iconoclast]

Oh - and still he fails to mention how critical the freely-soluble ink is in terms of authenticity!

[Iconoclast]

RJ,

Please don't forget to let us all know where this detail came from:

Originally posted by rjpalmer
Back on July 1, 1992, Dr. David Baxendale had already tested the ink’s solubility. He had placed an identical sample of the diary’s ink and paper into a diluted, unheated solution of acetone and water and watched as it quickly dissolved, so much so that left almost no ink on the paper.

[rjpalmer]

RJ,

Please don't forget to let us all know where this detail came from:

Originally posted by rjpalmer
Back on July 1, 1992, Dr. David Baxendale had already tested the ink’s solubility. He had placed an identical sample of the diary’s ink and paper into a diluted, unheated solution of acetone and water and watched as it quickly dissolved, so much so that left almost no ink on the paper.

That was my mistake, Ike. Don't read too much into it.

The details of Baxendale's reports in Harrison's various books are short and vague, so I assumed the date was July 1, 1992--the date she mentioned in The American Connection--and for my immediate purposes it didn't particularly matter.

The point being that Baxendale tested the ink's solubility some 28 months before Leeds conducted their own experiments. What difference does another day or two make?

You appear to have taken this slight discrepancy and turned it into a full-blow conspiracy theory.

Your friend Lord Orsam believes that the ink solubility test was conducted on or after July 3rd, but before July 9th (the date of the letter to Smith) which seems to make sense. I don't think the date of the actual test is anywhere given.

Perhaps if you uploaded Page One of Baxendales 'chemical analysis' of July 9, 1992, it would clarify matters.

Can you confirm that you have this page?

It appears that Keith or someone else has been supplying you with documents.

Can you upload this report, or at least the initial page of it, or are you going to continue to pretend that Baxendale didn't find the ink readily soluble?

[Iconoclast]

By the way, Ike -- we know the diary is an iron-based ink because of Dr. Eastaugh's findings. Are the diary folk now going to throw their own expert under the bus?

And nigrosine and iron gall ink are not mutually exclusive.

Pure Iron Gall Ink looks very watery and light when first applied. It only turns a rich blue-black as it hardens and oxidizes.

Thus, ink manufacturers started adding other dyes to it so it would look blackish "out of the gate," while waiting for the base ink to fully harden and oxidize.

One of these common dyes (sometime called 'sighting agents') was nigrosine.

Baxendale suspected the diary's ink had nigrosine from the beginning. Alex Voller also thought so when he did a visual examination. The only entity to cast doubt on this was Leeds, because they failed to find sodium, and nigrosine has lots of sodium.

When Eastaugh's report was finally made available (or at least PARTS of it), it revealed that he found sodium in the ink in six different tests, which supports the presence of nigrosine--thus confirming both Baxendale and Voller.

This also suggests just how flawed the Leeds examination was when it came to identifying chemicals in the ink. Voller had warned Harrison (as had Harris) but she had the tests done anyway.

Do you have the dates for when Voller and Harris warned Shirley Harrison about Leeds - advice which apparently Shirley ignored by going ahead and having the tests done?

Didn't Baxendale also fail to notice the presence of iron in the ink?

[Iconoclast]

That was my mistake, Ike. Don't read too much into it.

I wasn't, RJ - that wasn't the issue I was touching upon. I was asking you to clarify your source for the claim that "He had placed an identical sample of the diary’s ink and paper into a diluted, unheated solution of acetone and water and watched as it quickly dissolved, so much so that left almost no ink on the paper".

I wasn't questioning its veracity, merely asking for its source as I didn't have it.

...

You appear to have taken this slight discrepancy and turned it into a full-blow conspiracy theory.

Honestly, RJ, I sometimes think you actively go looking for them in others.

Perhaps if you uploaded Page One of Baxendales 'chemical analysis' of July 9, 1992, it would clarify matters.

I assume that this is the answer to my question?

Can you confirm that you have this page?

I can confirm that I do not - all I have is the page with Baxendale's summary and conclusion on.

It appears that Keith or someone else has been supplying you with documents.

I think I got them off Amazon, RJ.

Can you upload this report, or at least the initial page of it, or are you going to continue to pretend that Baxendale didn't find the ink readily soluble?

I clearly can't upload it as I don't have it. It sounds like you do, though?

Ike

PS Does the July 9 report make a huge deal about the solubility (and the fact that that should have killed the hoax stone-dead)? And does it clarify why the July 1 preliminary report was sent to the client with no clues whatsoever that that wasn't the end of it? If I had done that with one of my clients - sent out a broader report because I'd been challenged on the inadequacies of my original report - I'd have been sent packing, but maybe it works differently in the world of independent chemical analysis (or did thirty years ago)?

[rjpalmer]

[I]PS Does the July 9 report make a huge deal about the solubility (and the fact that that should have killed the hoax stone-dead)?

Of course it should have killed the diary stone-dead!

Why are you blaming Baxendale? Should he have pulled a revolver and placed it to the publisher's head and demanded that he not publish it?

All he can do is tell Smith that the diary was not written in 1888-89 and the ink was too soluble and had completely separated itself from the paper--unlike how a Victorian document should have behaved.

After that, the ball was in Smith's court.

Similarly, the handwriting should have killed the diary stone-dead.

The idiotic provenance supplied by "Mr. Williams" aka Mike Barrett should have killed the diary stone-dead.

The text should have killed the diary stone-dead.

And indeed, publishers did pull out of their contracts and wouldn't publish the diary.

Correct me if I misunderstand, but all you seem to be saying is that if a flimsy and wildly suspicious documents is published, it can't be flimsy and wildly suspicious, because someone published it! For whom on earth would do such a thing, if his forensic examiners were warning him in a series of reports and letters?

Is that what you are suggesting? If so, isn't that a question for the publisher?

[rjpalmer]

WHAT BAXENDALE MEANT BY NO OBVIOUS EVIDENCE OF IRON


Extract from Fax to Robert Smith, Fax No. 071-278-1677

from Document Evidence, Independent Forensic Document Examiners, 230 Broad Street, Birmingham B15 1AY.
Ref: 107/92-3. 1 July 1992
Report by David Baxendale
pp.2-3

“The ink is generally dark grey in colour and is not obviously an iron-based ink. Most inks used in the late nineteenth century were based on iron as a main ingredient, and such inks tend to change to a brown colour with age. There is no sign of such a brown colour.”


Baxendale’s statement has been widely misconstrued and misreported, particularly by Robert Smith, Shirley Harrison, and Caroline Brown, but even by Chris Jones in his short entry in The Maybrick A-Z. They all have claimed at one time or other that Baxendale said there was no iron in the ink.

What he actually wrote was that there was no obvious sign of iron, and he said this because he could find no evidence that the ink had browned (what Ero calls ‘bronzing’) which one would expect to find in an old document using iron gall ink, which was the common manuscript ink of the Victorians.

Martin Fido once made a very plausible suggestion that someone (Smith or Harrison?) had misread the relevant line in Baxendale’s report, wrongly believing that he meant “obviously not iron” when he actually wrote “not obviously iron.”

We can see what Baxendale meant because he also wrote in his report “"There is nothing to suggest the presence of iron,” which is not the same as saying there is no iron.

Baxendale was asked for clarification, as reported on these boards back in 2001 by Karoline Leech:

“Baxendale subsequently wrote to [Melvin] Harris to make it clear that he made this above statement on an optical examination alone, based on the absence of bronzing, and stated that the first line quoted above should have read:

"There is nothing to suggest the presence of oxidised iron"

Baxendale further wrote:

"The omission of that one word ['oxidised'] caused some misunderstanding".

It is commonplace in science for further tests to give us further information. That’s why more tests are conducted!

Dr. Eastaugh subsequently detected the presence of iron in the ink, showing it was ink-based. Baxendale never disputed this, and his belief that the ink contained nigrosine was supported by Eastaugh finding sodium, and also by the chemist Voller of Diamine Ink, who believed the same thing--all put together, we can know with confidence that the diary's ink was iron gall, with nigrosine as a sighting agent.

Dr. Robert Kuranz, the American chemist on Rendell’s team, also detected iron.

So did the scientists at Leeds
.
All the evidence points to the Maybrick Diary having been written with an iron gall ink with nigrosine as a sighting agent.

Do Mitchell, Owl, and Hartley dispute this?

If so, you are wasting my time.

Karoline L. also made the very astute comment that rather than conflicting one another (which is what the diary-friendly folks want us to believe), when properly understood, the forensic reports complement one another. There is agreement that the ink contains iron. Baxendale and Voller’s beliefs that the ink also contains nigrosine is supported Eastaugh’s findings.

The only staggering difference notices is that Baxendale found the ink “easily” dissolvable in July 1992, free flowing in the solvent, and completely separated from the paper been soaked in the solution.
This is in stark contrast to what Leeds found 28 months later, and there is no rational explanation, nor any credible reason why Baxendale would have lied about it.

Obviously, the diary faithful want Baxendale to go away. What he observed the ink doing destroys their faith in the diary. It is necessary to sweep him under the rug, but the attempts to do so lack all credibility—there is no reason he would have lied.

[rjpalmer]

I notice that an error has crept into my previous post.

"Dr. Eastaugh subsequently detected the presence of iron in the ink, showing it was ink-based."

I obviously meant iron-based.

Eastaugh, Kuranz, and the scientists at Leeds all confirmed the diary's ink contained iron.

A number of questions remain unanswered. Why did Baxendale notice no bronzing in 1992, and it also not mentioned anywhere by Eastaugh, Kuranz, Rendell, etc?

The most obvious answer is because it wasn't there.

[Iconoclast]

This is in stark contrast to what Leeds found 28 months later, and there is no rational explanation, nor any credible reason why Baxendale would have lied about it.

Baxendale does not need to have lied about it to have got confused about it. If he had confused free-flowing with freely-soluble then this would be obvious from the lack of analytical data to support the claim-from-nowhere on July 9. Please don't say that a professional chemist would never make such a mistake. Busy people make mistakes, and he makes it very clear in his letter to Montgomery that Smith has employed a worryingly busy man. If there is data to support his claim-from-nowhere, where is it? Show us the clipping if not the full July 9 report.

Obviously, the diary faithful want Baxendale to go away. What he observed the ink doing destroys their faith in the diary. It is necessary to sweep him under the rug, but the attempts to do so lack all credibility—there is no reason he would have lied.

As I say, an extremely busy, pressurised person does not need to have lied to have got confused. If he provided the data behind the delayed analysis (which he completely neglected to mention to Smith in his original report on July 1, perhaps precisely because he was so very busy) then you will surely show it to us all so that we can all agree that Baxendale definitely did solubility tests which he forgot to mention first time around and only mentioned once Smith had telephoned him on the morning of July 9 and suddenly a new report was issued. I don't think this is too much to ask, RJ.

The irony about your comment about 'the diary faithful' wanting Baxendale to go away is that it was quite the opposite originally: Baxendale wanted Baxendale to go away! He realised that his commentary regarding nigrosine was badly inaccurate and he was therefore at pains to forego his payment on the condition that his original report of July 1 (and indeed his out-of-the-blue follow-up on July 9) was not published or used in any way. Not the mark - I put it to you - of a man free-flowing in confidence about the work he had done for Robert Smith in between his other pressurised responsibilities. Baxendale can stay as long as Baxendale wants so long as no-one puts words into his typewriter which we haven't been privy to. The danger of not clarifying this for us is that we might start to wonder if Baxendale had ever been privy to his own thoughts too.