One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[caz]

If Eddie had been a suspect first and then it was later learned that he lived near the Saddle, the coincidence would be far more startling.

You do grasp this point, yes?

This question was not directed at me, but yes, I grasp RJ's point. But we know Eddie was already a suspect by July 1992, from his own mouth, when he told Brian Rawes that he had found a book which could be "important" while working in Dodd's house. Nobody in London, who was involved with Mike's diary, would know Eddie even existed until April 1993, never mind that he had worked in Maybrick's old home and lived on Fountains Road, near the Saddle.

Does this not make the 'coincidence' far more startling? Why would Brian Rawes have gone on to give the same account of the conversation to the boys from Scotland Yard, including the actual date - Friday 17th July 1992 - if he was making it all up, or had any doubt about what Eddie had been telling him? Brian had assumed that Eddie had only just made this find, and advised him to tell the boss, which he obviously didn't do. It couldn't have been the diary if Brian's assumption was correct, which explains why it was considered to be a dead end at the time. But Eddie hadn't said when this find was made, and Brian was in a hurry to get away and had not thought to ask.

But because Lyons worked for Dodd and because he also lived near the Saddle, Feldman quizzed him. And according to Feldman, Eddie smelled a potential payday and took the opportunity of this questioning to ask Feldy what it would be worth to say he found the diary. It's not evidence that he actually did, and indeed Feldman concluded he was just an opportunist. Whatever the case, if Eddy had lived somewhere else, it is entirely possible that he wouldn't have been the one placed under the microscope, and so he wouldn't have had the opportunity to make this suspicious offer to Feldman.

This is another reason why Brian Rawes ought to be treated as an important witness. Feldman appears to have had no contact with him at all, so there was certainly no financial incentive for him to claim this conversation with Eddie took place when it did, or to make up any of the details when relating the incident to the police.

[caz]

Ike, Old Man,

Anyway, when quizzed many years later, Eddie admitted to being at Riversdale Road on the coincidental day, but why wouldn't he, considering he had been at Riversdale Road.....later that summer?

Can you tell me where you were at 11 a.m. on 9 March 1992?

Of course not, and neither could Eddie.

Well, I'm off.

RJ is right there. He is way off.

Eddie wasn't 'quizzed' about where he was on a certain date and what he was doing. This wasn't a police interview; it was an informal chat in the drive of Dodd's house. Eddie knew this was about the diary, so he could simply have asked what it had to do with him, or his memories of working in the house while employed by Portus & Rhodes. He could have said the diary's owner had admitted to faking it years ago, but he didn't. He could hardly have 'admitted' to being in the house on 'the coincidental day' when he had no awareness of there being one.

The work done on 9th and 10th March 1992 was very different from what was done in the July, in a different part of the house and with different crew members. With no access to any dates, or feats of memory required, Eddie simply recalled the job he was sent to work on, which involved a close encounter of the floorboards kind, and who was with him, and it became abundantly clear that he could only have been talking about 'the coincidental day' without yet knowing it, and not when he was there again 'later that summer', working alongside Colin Rhodes's son. Keith even told Eddie he couldn't have been on the job he was describing because his name wasn't down on the worksheet, but Eddie insisted that he was. No actual dates or times needed to be mentioned in order for Eddie to remember that job. What he didn't know when insisting he was there on Floorboards Day was that it was also Doreen Day for Mike Barrett, who had introduced Eddie in June 1993 to the diary's new owner, Robert Smith, in an Anfield pub.

Naturally enough, Eddie denied that particular encounter. Too close for comfort, apparently.

[caz]

So, Lyons didn't go to The Saddle to specifically peddle this 'old book' to the well-known and successful local writer for Celebrity Magazine? I guess that was Caz's theory and not your own.

No, it was another of RJ's funny little invented scenarios, designed to sound as implausible as possible to his impressionable but less attentive one-liner fans. He ought to be ashamed of treating his loyal support group like twits.

Lyons had the opportunity, uniquely on 9th March 1992, thanks to a change in the firm's work schedule for that week only, to have slipped away from Dodd's house in good time to return to Anfield and order himself a pint in the same pub where Mike Barrett would be taking refreshment at some point during that Monday lunchtime session.

My theory - that is mine and which belongs to me [thank you, Anne Elk] - is that Eddie Lyons had with him the brown paper package, which would arrive in London with Mike exactly five weeks later, and which one of Eddie's fellow workers would recall seeing when speaking to Feldman the following Spring.

Removing the brown paper in a quiet corner, to reveal the old book inside, Eddie might have had the place more or less to himself if Mike hadn't come in and made himself at home. Knowing Mike, he'd have wasted no time in going over to Eddie with his pint and making conversation, his favourite subject being "Michael Barrett & What I Know". But what a conversation piece that old book would have made. If it had been a copy of The Sun, in post-Hillsborough Liverpool, Eddie would have had more reason to hide it from view, but if nobody else alive knew about this tatty old book, or where it had been at 8 o'clock that morning, where was the harm in showing it to this self-absorbed bore and get a change of subject.

Poor old Tony Devereux never had a chance to escape "Bongo" when he became housebound the previous year. He could hardly have pretended to be out hiking whenever The Saddle clown popped round to give him another update on "Mike's World". Even when Tony popped off, he had just a few months of peace before Mike disturbed his bones and made them dance to his diary tune. Sadly the dance goes on to this day, but if there is a God, I trust the two were separated in death so Tony isn't spending eternity listening out for the doorbell and swearing under his breath.

[caz]

This wasn't the original point, but according to Dodd--and he would know--there was no skip. One doesn't require a skip to install baseboard heaters--it's not like he was reroofing the house. Thus, Lyons introduced a falsehood into his narrative. The conclusion that many would draw is that he was describing an event that never happened.

But then why does RJ suppose Eddie agreed to go to The Saddle, when Robert Smith asked Mike if he could arrange an introduction, and then tell this daft "skip" story, if there was nothing in it [the skip or the story] and he had nothing to hide, nor indeed to gain, because he had taken nothing from Dodd's house at any time?

Barrett did not request a diary with blank pages "in the back." That is your own willful misreading of Earl's advertisement. There is not even the slightest hint that that was what Barrett was after.

He requested a blank or an almost blank Victorian diary, 1880-1890. Thus, he was not trying to replicate or replace another item. He would have been thrilled to have received an absolutely blank, undated book, provided it was from that decade.

Where does RJ suppose Mike imagined the unused pages would most likely be, if not following any used ones? Mike didn't ask for 'an absolutely blank, undated book'; he asked for a 'diary' dating from 1880-90, which could be unused or 'partly used'. How could a blank, undated book have been provably from the decade he specified? In fact, if Mike wasn't fussed about the diary having used pages, and gave no thought to where they might be in relation to the twenty plus unused pages, perhaps he should have done. Does RJ seriously think Mike would have been equally happy to create a hoax from a book with used pages that could all be at the front, or all at the back, or even scattered randomly among the unused ones? When the red 1891 diary arrived, Mike would have appreciated that the implications of 'partly used' were wider than they were for the scrapbook, with all its used pages at the front.

[caz]

I've seen an entire chart comparing the handwriting in the diary to Anne's so it wasn't only based on one or two letters. It's based on a number of weird idiosyncrasies that are evident in both her five paged letter and in the Diary. Have you ever seen anyone write the word "for" as fr? How about the weird capital M with one huge hump and one tiny hump? And then there's the double t.., etc. She also has certain spelling errors and uses malaprops and both of these make appearances in the Diary.

Barrat's point wasn't that this proves Anne was the penman. His point is that Barrett's supposedly false confession could have collapsed on the first hurdle if her handwriting was obviously and clearly different from the diarist's.

The irony here is that the Barretts, particularly Anne, would have been painfully aware that Maybrick's 63-page 'false confession' was in a handwriting that was 'obviously and clearly different' from Maybrick's if they had created it, and absolutely astonished that it hadn't 'collapsed on the first hurdle'.

The double irony is that Doreen, Shirley and Robert have all been heavily criticised - and reasonably so IMHO - over the handwriting issue, by the same people who have no difficulty in 'seeing' Anne's hand there - or even Mike's in the case of some Barrett fantasists.

The slant in the diary is the main difference, but this could be explained by someone writing with their other hand. I had an aunt that could do this because often lefties were taught to write with their right hand in the 40s and 50s. I've read that people forced to do this tend to have rounder writing, but I'm obviously no expert.

My better half was educated in the 1960s and was naturally left-handed, but was made to write with his right. The result was that his handwriting is appalling and very hard to read, which he readily admits. But he is unable to write with his other hand, so everyone is probably different. In order to make allegations of this nature about Anne or any other named individual, RJ would therefore need more than an anecdote about his aunt - or would that be an 'auntydote'?

PS. If, for the sake of argument, Anne turned out to be the pen person, it doesn't necessarily prove that she was involved in the hoax. Does that sound crazy? I don't think so.

David Barrat wrote an article along the lines of 'how the diary could have been legal.' The idea is that the fictional text was written in the scrapbook as a marketing ploy to sell the idea to potential publishers. I don't know if that was Barrett's plan, and I have my doubts, but I have long wondered if that is what he had told Anne. He could have told her it was just a marketing gimmick for the sake of his agent and the publishers, but once he got to London, he would make sure they understood it was a work of fiction. Only when Barrett did show up in London, he didn't tell them this. To his surprise, they took it seriously. And it is possible that when he got back to Liverpool and Anne figured this out, this was when they physically fought over the diary on the kitchen floor, as reported by their daughter to Paul Begg. Clearly, there was some sort of blow-up behind the scenes.

One question here: if Anne thought she was just helping Mike to produce an innocent marketing gimmick for Doreen, which nobody would be mistaking for a genuine Victorian artefact, why does RJ suppose that she would have taken the time and the care, between 31st March and 13th April 1992, to disguise her own handwriting, to the point where it can't be positively identified as her own? Why not plan to take the credit for a neat piece of graphic art, if that's what she thought she was creating? Why would it matter if this marketing gimmick was clearly the work of the wife? It had to be someone's.

[caz]

Just to add...

If Anne had thought she was just creating a marketing gimmick for a work of fiction, between 31st March and 13th April 1992, she must have had no idea about the letter Doreen had sent Mike on 10th March, which included the following extract:

'Dear Mike Williams
Thank you for phoning yesterday - and today - and for letting me know
about the intriguing Diary which is in your possession, which appears to
be by the real Jack the Ripper.
I can well understand how this diary and its import has affected your
lives. Finds of the kind do not grow on trees!'

How would Mike have explained any of this to Anne if she got to read the letter?

Why the false name?

Why tell Doreen it's in his possession and appears to be real, when he hasn't even found a book yet for this 'gimmick'?

Why describe it as a 'find' that has affected their lives?

Mike presumably would have had to secrete this letter away as soon as it arrived, and look out for any others, until the finished 'gimmick' was safely on its way to London.

[caz]

The whole point of a 'doppelganger' is that it is a twin. A naked red dwarf is not the twin of blue-black giant in a suit.

Too funny. Now RJ is suggesting that Mike would have asked for a tiny red 1891 diary, if he had wanted 'a twin' for Eddie's big old book.

Yet RJ's theory appears to be that Mike ordered the tiny red 1891 diary, thinking he could cram all those lovely dated pages with Maybrick's undated musings, currently on his word processor.

RJ also forgets that he has previously argued that Dundas serviced the Maybrick watch, despite the description he gave not matching. Not even a brother from another mother, let alone a twin or a double for Albert's timepiece. It was a member of the watch family but there the similarity ended. But that doesn't bother RJ in the slightest.

[Pcdunn]

My better half was educated in the 1960s and was naturally left-handed, but was made to write with his right. The result was that his handwriting is appalling and very hard to read, which he readily admits. But he is unable to write with his other hand, so everyone is probably different. In order to make allegations of this nature about Anne or any other named individual, RJ would therefore need more than an anecdote about his aunt - or would that be an 'auntydote'?

Handeness does seem to be different from person to person. My father, born 1917 and Catholic educated, learned to write with either hand, being ambidextrous. (This was fortunate after one hand had some fingers injured in a push lawn-mower accident at a neighbor's house.)

I was born in 1955 with a left dominance noted in both hand and foot. My Catholic nun teacher encouraged me to try writing with my right hand, but the results were unsuccssful to the extent that she told me to keep the writing instrument in my left hand. I doubt I could have signed my name with my right hand, the control was so difficult. Even with digital typing, I mostly used the left hand today.

[caz]

Many thanks, Pat, for posting your personal experiences. Maybe someone who is arguing for Anne Graham being ambidextrous, either naturally or as a result of the way she was taught to write, could send her a letter via Chris Jones, asking the relevant questions. If they get no reply, or not the one they wanted, they can form their own conclusions. But at least they would have made the effort, which they always criticise others for not apparently making.

Chris Jones had the woman there to ask, when working on his book, but evidently she had made it clear that discussing the diary was out of bounds. What is less clear is that asking about her education would have been equally verboten, if it was in the context of her later research into Florence Maybrick.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Martin Earl's advertisement for a blank diary wasn't published until 19 March--ten days after Mr. Williams's phone call. Commentators on the old message boards (including I believe, Keith Skinner) commented on the delay between Barrett's initial phone call to Doreen and his eventual arrival in London with the hoax. We have limited information, but Barrett seems to have been using delay tactics, including what might have been an entirely bogus claim that he needed to go to York. What was there, a Richard III festival that week? Or was it more along the lines of "Doreen, I'd love to meet with you this week as promised, but the ol' kidney is acting up again."

I did get a kick out of a comment made by your old friend, Lord Orsam. He noted that between you and Caz, one of you have argued that 11 days was too long to have written down the diary--the other that 11 days was too short. Let's play Goldilocks (or should that be Goldie Street Locks?) I'm thinking 11 days was just right.

Yeah, I did notice that Ike had a different viewpoint from myself regarding the 11-day creation theory. So glad it gave RJ a 'kick' when someone else alerted him to the fact that Ike and I are not joined at the hip. In case he really hasn't been paying attention, Ike and I can and do disagree about many aspects of the diary without being disagreeable. But we do agree that the Barrett creation theory is beyond bonkers, whichever way RJ or anyone else has tried and failed to make it work.

I'm thinking 11 days were just about right for making the typed transcript of the scrapbook's contents, as no doubt witnessed by young Caroline, assuming this was begun by 3rd April, when Doreen wrote to Shirley about the arrangements being made with Michael Barrett to bring his diary to London. He must have got back in touch after his almost certainly bogus trip to York, and admitted that Williams was a false name, so his earlier delay tactics could not have been due to the diary not yet existing, if he ended those tactics himself just a couple of days into the supposed creation process, or even before he could have found the book to put it in.

Think.

Mike's delay tactics before calling Doreen again, this time using his real name, were almost certainly connected with his successful possession of the existing diary and his efforts to identify Jack the Ripper from its contents - because it simply makes no sense that he would not have continued to delay calling if the diary had not even been created by 3rd April 1992.

[caz]

It is not pedantic nor irrelevant for me to point out that what Rawes said was that Lyons was 'smiling'. He didn't say 'grinning', so why did you? 'Running' instead of walking. Barrett 'frantic' at the arrival of Billy Graham instead of quite calm. Now 'grinning' instead of 'smiling'. Why do you feel the need to use terminology which is designed to sound more convincing for your implied argument?

'Grinning' smacks of showing-off. 'Smiling' smacks of potential discomfort. Neither of these is what you want to convey so you move the 'smiling' up a couple of gears and - before you know it - it's little short of arrogant smirking. See how easily I did it there, to illustrate my point?

Muddy the Mud Boy making mud at every turn ...

Well it's a step up from RJ trying to claim that the incident in the drive of Battlecrease on Friday 17th July 1992 was more a figment of Rawes's imagination than based on an actual find in the house that was mentioned by Lyons.

If Rawes remembered Lyons "smiling" when mentioning this potentially "important" find, it could have been because he had just learned that Mike was about to hit the big time with his "old book" and there might be something in it for the finder after all. It could have been more of a 'grin' in this case, or even a sheepish, or guilty grin at this private knowledge. So if RJ wants Lyons to have been 'grinning', during this conversation, as opposed to 'smiling' - or secretly worried to death - I say let him go for it. Didn't Lyons himself suggest he may simply have mentioned to Rawes that Dodd had a load of old books in his house? I'm not sure what RJ's explanation would be for Lyons 'grinning' at Rawes while volunteering this fascinating Friday afternoon factoid, but it sounds more like a load of old bo..oks to me.

Love,

Cazzie the Mud-resistant Gal
X

[Iconoclast]

... but it sounds more like a load of old bo..oks to me.

Now that was clever!

[caz]

And who said Lyon's "mulled" over anything? Mulling requires the passing of time. Rawes's own impression is that Lyons was referring to something he had found recently--ie., that day. Which means that he didn't mull over anything.

So in RJ's world, Rawes's 'impression' suddenly counts as solid evidence for Lyons having found something potentially "important" somewhere in Dodd's house, but on 'that day': Friday 17th July 1992?

Interesting. I suppose this is one up on RJ's previous theory that Lyons never mentioned to Rawes that he had found anything at any time, and that Rawes must therefore have come away with entirely the wrong impression.

Bit of a coincidence if RJ now concedes that Lyons did indeed find something in Battlecrease, and did indeed mention to Rawes that it could be "important", but is theorising that this was around the same time as Mike - whose local was the Saddle, like Lyons - had landed a publisher for another potentially important book, which just happened to contain a Battlecrease diary.

The mental gymnastics needed for RJ to convince himself that this one has legs must be quite something.

And that this item was discovered that day was Shirley Harrison's impression, too, which is why she dismissed this exchange as irrelevant, since the diary was already safe and sound in London.

Yeah, and since when did RJ become a slave to Shirley's impressions?

I'll stick with my own interpretation of grin.

So what reason does RJ suppose Lyons would have had to 'grin' at Rawes? What does RJ suppose he found 'that day'? A signed first edition of John Wheat's One-Liners for Dummies? I guess he was just having a laugh when he said it could be "important".

[caz]

Wow RJ. I will simplify for readers as often your muddying can murky the facts.

1) Eddie, by his own admission, was at Battlecrease on March 9th 1992. He was pulled onto the job in between jobs. A fact he himself acknowledged
2) Eddie was raised on Howley Street, which was close to The Saddle. He went to St Joseph’s beside The Saddle
3) Eddie lived on Fountains Road in March 1992
4) He went into The Saddle regularly and described Bob Lee and his family in detail
5) Mike drank in The Saddle on his way to collect his daughter from school every day
6) On occasion he would be seen drinking with Tony D and sometimes with Stan, Mike’s father
7) Tony D died in 1991
8) On 9th March 1992 Mike under the alias Williams phones Doreen Montgomery claiming to have the diary of Jack the Ripper

So, Liverpool has lots of workmen. It also has lots of pubs. Yet we have these incredible coincidences above where these events are all connected to same pub.

The likes of RJ believes it is just that - coincidence. I don’t believe in this many coincidences.

Afternoon ero,

This is where we part company. I don't think RJ does believe any of this is just 'concidence', or he would not have spent the best part of the last sixteen years doing his utmost to play it down and make it one.

If there is nothing in the fact that two of the Portus & Rhodes crew from 1992 just happened to drink in the Saddle, where Mike Barrett also just happened to drink of a lunchtime, why have people tried to imagine scenarios in which all three were there at the same time, and Mike overheard the others talking about the history of Battlecrease? It's because they can't unsee what's staring them in the face, that they have to try and explain it to themselves in terms of cause and effect. So Mike has been planning for some time to fake Maybrick's diary from early 1888 to May 1889, when he just happens to bump into two electricians in his local pub, who are talking about their work in Maybrick's old home, and the charm is somehow wound up - whether or not the evidence plays ball. [Clue: it doesn't.]

This magically makes the other coincidences more bearable. Without the imagined Maybrick chit-chat, inspiring Mike to get on with it and finally call London about his yet-to-be-created Maybrick hoax, it's all just a bit too much.

I do like a bit of cause and effect, but the evidence has to play ball every bit as well as I hope the Lionesses will.

What was Mike doing in the Spring of 1993, fishing for information from Colin Rhodes about his crew and the work done in Battlecrease, if he'd overheard the salient details back in March 1992? What was he fishing for anyway, if he already knew there was no possible connection between anyone at Portus & Rhodes and his diary because he and Anne had created it together, weeks after the Battlecrease floorboards were raised and lowered again?

Where was the cause and effect here? What was Mike planning to do with the information, had Colin Rhodes played ball and given it to him, chapter and verse?

Why did Mike take Robert Smith to meet Eddie Lyons in the Saddle on 26th June 1993? What were the two Saddle men playing at? [Clue: it wasn't bar billiards.]

Love,

Caz
X

[rjpalmer]

Interesting. I suppose this is one up on RJ's previous theory that Lyons never mentioned to Rawes that he had found anything at any time, and that Rawes must therefore have come away with entirely the wrong impression.

Bit of a coincidence if RJ now concedes that Lyons did indeed find something in Battlecrease...

This is why I choose to no longer engage with you, Caroline.

If one simply punches the words "Rawes" and "rjpalmer" into the Search Engine, it will become abundantly obvious that I have mentioned Rawes a total of 9 times in the history of these message boards.

In none of those 9 posts did I ever say anything even remotely similar to what you are now claiming. You have a very bad habit of putting words in the mouths of others.

Either your reading comprehension skills are truly in tatters, or you are confusing me with someone else (highly unlikely considering your obsession), or you're deliberately deceiving this forum.

All I ever pointed out is that the event described by Rawes took place in the Summer of 1992--after the Diary had already been brought to London.

That's it. I have never denied this conversation took place, or that Rawes recalled Eddie saying that he "found something important" in July. I simply voiced my skepticism that this vague statement could have been a reference to finding THE DIARY OF JACK THE RIPPER four months earlier.

The only other time I mentioned Rawes is in this post from 2021:

"Alan Davies told James Johnston in an interview on 15 February 2016, 'Yeah, I remember a gold watch I think, I never seen anything, but I remember it was Brian or someone telling me that it was in a tin under the floor'. As Johnston confirms, Brian - who was Brian Rawes - had no memory of this and no electrician was EVER found who knew anything about it. It's why I'm confident it came from Feldman and subsequently contaminated the mind of Alan Davies who remembers 'someone' TELLING him about a tin, even though he had no first-hand knowledge of any such discovery."

I was quoting David Barrat back when this was allowed.

Perhaps this is what you are misremembering. I don't particularly care--I just wanted to warn future readers of this forum (God help them!) not to assume that you are giving an accurate and faithful account of the commentary of those who believe the diary is a modern (1990s) hoax. You aren't.