One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[Iconoclast]

I think it's worth our thinking a little deeper about what Mike Barrett had to do to create a text on the scrapbook which would cause Diamine's research chemist Alec Voller to claim with confidence that it had been set down around eighty to ninety years earlier.

A) Prepare the text, using paper of the right sort of vintage and an ink of the appropriate type i.e. an ink which though of recent manufacture is chemically identical or near-identical to a genuine Victorian ink.

So Barrett has to to be clear that his recently purchased and recently manufactured ink "is chemically identical or near-identical to a genuine Victorian ink". Do we feel comfortable in asserting that this was within the powers of an unemployed ex-scrap metal dealer with no obvious background in chemistry and certainly none in ink chemistry? It's a question which you have to answer "Yes" if you want to pursue a belief that Mike Barrett created the Maybrick scrapbook. Just keep that in mind. You can't have it both ways. He either knew what sort of ink he needed therefore he knew exactly how a genuine Victorian ink would be constituted, or else he just got incredibly lucky, or else he did not instigate the text hitting the paper.

B) Wait for a few weeks …

What? Wait a few weeks? But Barrett is said to have purchased the scrapbook on March 31, 1992, at which point he soaked it in linseed oil to remove the manufacturer’s stamp, and two days later (after the linseed oil had completely dried in the gas oven) he started the process of writing in the scrapbook (in his wife’s hand, apparently) the text he was simultaneously creating on his word processor.

… then expose the text to the radiation of an accelerated fading apparatus for as long as may be necessary.

Whoa, hold on! An “accelerated fading apparatus for as long as may be necessary”? Who in 1990s working class Liverpool had access to an accelerated fading apparatus, and who had time to wait as long as may be necessary for the fading to appear given that the text had to be finalised on the word processor then transferred over to the scrapbook itself before April 13 and the meeting at Rupert Crew’s offices?

The apparatus mentioned above is widely used in industries such as ink, paint and textiles to reproduce quickly, the effects of long periods of natural fading.

Are we to believe – as Nick Warren doubtless persuaded himself – that apparatus such as this was routinely chucked-out fully-functioning and sent off to scrap metal dealers so that Barrett could reach out to his old contacts and acquire one? Is that what the Barrett Believer needs to tell themselves given that already they must have their hearts in the mouths realising how utterly implausible this challenge facing Barrett was?

Traditionally, it consisted of a big carbon-arc lamp enclosed within a metal drum, on the interior of which, the samples would be affixed.

Well it self-evidently wasn’t “a big carbon-arc lamp” as that would not permit the simultaneous fading of some sixty-plus pages of freshly written text still attached to the scrapbook.

In recent years, however, the carbon-arc lamp has been largely superseded by the xenon-arc lamp and more recently still, by the mercury-tungsten flurescent (MBTF) lamp.

These sound like they are what Barrett was searching for amongst the old Ford Escorts and the battered prams. How many he had to purchase before he found one that worked is obviously not available to us but maybe he was lucky and the first one was fully-functioning.

These are powerful tools; with samples of paint you can simulate effects say five years exposure to natural sunlight in just a matter of weeks.

Five years exposure to natural sunlight would take a matter of weeks. So how many weeks would it take to simulate Voller’s estimate of some 80-90 years since ink hit paper? Well, Voller attempts an answer.

How long it would take to produce an 80-90 years old effect with ferrogalic writing, I have no idea; as far as I am aware the experiment has never been tried.

Well that’s rather unfortunate as it really is rather the crux of his point. What factors might he (and therefore Barrett) have taken into account, though?

But it might well be possible, certainly the dyestuffs involved are not noted for great lightfastness, so the period of time might not be prohibitive.

Unfortunately, this is as ambiguous as it could possibly have got. Does ‘not prohibitive’ mean hours or days or does it mean weeks or months? Sadly, we don’t know. Nevertheless, and highly interestingly, Mike Barrett must have known because it seems that he must have committed himself to such a process in order to artificially age his text by eighty or ninety years in Alec Voller’s opinion. Voller himself had no idea but Mike Barrett knew that it could be done in that amazing eleven-day creation period.

I also have to say (ruefully) that as a method of forgery, the above technique would probably produce more convincing results in amateurish rather than professional hands because a person unused to the finer points of the operation of the equipment would probably obtain willy-nilly, exactly the sort of highly uneven fading that is very characteristic of the old documents.

Okay, that’s a shot in the arm for Barrett Believers the world over. Barrett – being an amateur – actually had a better chance of producing a realistically-faded document than a professional.

Of course, the above raises many questions and doubts.

I hope that this would have occurred to everyone whether Voller had stated it or not.

Would Barrett, in spite of your comments …

Here we see clear evidence that Nick Warren has described Mike Barrett to Alec Voller as someone with the mental competence to pull off a great hoax which is interesting. How did Warren know this, beyond knowing that some articles had been placed in Mike’s name in a trashy celebrity magazine some five years earlier?

… really be able to grasp the point?

What point is Voller uncertain that Barrett would grasp? Is Voller meaning to imply (as he does imply) that this process was in reality beyond the ken of the ordinary man in the street? Certainly, it feels instinctively implausible that Barrett had the good fortune to find a suitable piece of kit and the knowledge to be able to use it to artificially fade sixty-odd pages of still-being-written handwriting all still bound together in a scrapbook and all in an eleven-day period between purchase at Outhwaite and Litherland auctioneers and presentation at the offices of Rupert Crew. But was it impossible? Well, that’s down to the individual reader to decide but my money is very firmly on the side of impossible because I’m a pragmatist and I can immediately see the foolishness of the argument here in favour of Barrett’s authorship of the great hoax as – indeed – I strongly suspect did Alec Voller back in 1996.

Could he conceivably have access to such apparatus either personally or through some confederate? Could his reputed scrapyard connections have enabled him to get hold of an obsolete but still workable carbon-arc lamp?

Again, being a pragmatist, I find this notion a non-starter, but I well understand that if you are desperate to make an argument ‘attach’ (rather than ever ‘stick’), you might be inclined to tell yourself that this was perfectly normal and perfectly likely to have happened to a scrap metal dealer who had been away from his trade for around a decade.

If so, could he afford to use it. Arc lamps use really prodigious amounts of current, although the objection would not apply to the MBTF lamp which usually requires no more than 0.5kw per hour. If he could obtain a carbon-arc lamp, could he also obtain the necessary electrodes, which have to be replaced after about 36 hours running time.

We have already established that Barrett can’t have used a carbon-arc lamp as – given Voller’s description of the methodology – it would require loose sheets of paper and Barrett’s scrapbook was transparently not loose. So he must have used the xenon-arc lamp (at prodigious cost, but this would be a necessary commitment given what he was creating) or perhaps more likely the MBTF which he could have run comfortably off his solar panels.

So, two questions emerge for me here which I would ask my dear readers to ponder possible answers to:

1. How plausible does any of this sound, especially given Barrett’s impossibly-tight timeframe of just eleven-days (thirteen if the aging process was going on simultaneously with the linseed oil and the gas oven)?
2. Why – if, as he claimed, Barrett had been attempting to reveal the hoax since December 1993, and he was last interviewed on the subject in 2002 or 2003, during which time he gave many interviews and signed many affidavits – did he never once describe in any way whatsoever any of these activities in which he successfully faded the newly-written text in his newly-acquired scrapbook to the point where research chemist Alec Voller could be fooled into claiming that the text had first hit the paper some eighty to ninety years earlier?

As a pragmatist, and applying Soothsayer’s Razor, I put it to you all that there is a far simpler explanation available to us here but one which utterly negates any possibility that Mike Barrett had any hand whatsoever in the creation of the text of the Maybrick scrapbook.

[Iconoclast]

Apropos my previous post, I am struck by some serious linguistic skulduggery by Mr. Nick Warren which my dear readers will certainly want to digest. In the April 1997 issue of Ripperana, Warren published an article on nigrosine and made reference to Alec Voller's examination of the diary on October 20, 1995:

"When he [Voller] saw the "Diary" for the first time he gave two opinions. Firstly, that the ink used was not one of Diamine's. Secondly, that the ink had been applied to the paper roughly 100 years ago. Later, it has to be said, he modified the second opinion, saying that artificial ageing of the ink was quite possible, by exposing it to strong light.

Of his first opinion, we can only add that Mike Barrett has long claimed that he added certain ingrediants (notably sugar and water) to the purchased ink, in order to alter its appearance on the page. Of his second, we can only observe that he is the only person on this planet who claims such near-psychical powers of historical divination."

Warren's two opinions read to me as if he is attempting to diminish and negate Alec Voller's powers of 1) discrimination and 2) evaluation. That's the polite interpretation, of course, and it is perhaps revealing how Warren reduces Voller's detailed and technical description of how a document could be treated by a forger to simulate an old appearance to just six words, "by exposing it to strong light".

Slightly more straightforwrad than Voller's actual description to Voller of February 1996, I'd say.

Now, why on earth would Nick Warren - a man loud and passionate in his disbelief that the Maybrick scrapbook was written by James Maybrick - write so dismissively and contrivingly?

I'm beat, but perhaps one or two of my more perspicacious readers could elucidate for me and the rest of us?

[Iconoclast]

Well, I made a right arse of that first time around so let's try again ...

Posted May 4, 2018 before his sensational and controversial resignation from the Casebook:

Originally posted by David Orsam View Post
I'll quote the full paragraph from Voller's letter relating to the sunlamp in a moment but a reminder of what I said about this originally so the purpose for which I was originally quoting from his correspondence, and the full context in which I was doing so, can be seen:

START ############
Originally posted by David Orsam View Post
It's a little known fact that Voller qualified his opinion on this subject in a letter to Dr Nick Warren dated 8th February 1996, as follows:

"It was an honest opinion, taking into account all the known facts and making due allowance for the various unknowns and purely on the basis of appearances, I can see no reason to change that opinion. What you may not be aware of however, is that having expressed this opinion, I was asked whether I could think of any way in which such an appearance could be simulated by a forger and the gist of my reply was that I could not think of any method which would not be unmasked by chemical analysis. In the light of your comments about Mike Barrett [that he had once been a freelance writer], I rather regret making that statement because even at the time, I knew it not to be entirely true. There is in fact such a method but I did not think it even worth mentioning because it seemed to me that a complete idiot such as I assumed Mike Barrett to be, could not possibly comprehend the details."

He then sets out a possible method of forgery which might have fooled him, involving the use of a modern ink chemically identical or near chemically identical to a genuine Victorian ink, an accelerated fading apparatus (which could either be a big carbon arc lamp within a metal drum, a xenon arc lamp or a mercury-tungsten fluorescent lamp) and an exposure of the text to the radiation from one of these lamps a few weeks after it was written. He says he does not know how long it would take to produce an 80-90 year old fading effect because no experiment had ever been conducted.

He goes on:

"I also have to say (ruefully) that as a method of forgery, the above technique would probably produce more convincing results in amateurish rather than professional hands because a person unused to the finer points of the operation of the equipment would probably obtain willy-nilly, exactly the sort of uneven fading that is characteristic of old documents."

Voller was sufficiently uncertain about the age of the Diary to say to Dr Warren in a subsequent letter dated 13 February 1996 that, "your remarks about the text actually having been written by some nameless confederate (I have always thought that Anne Barrett was the favourite suspect) have given me food for thought."

Perhaps most importantly he concedes in this letter that, "at least some of the effects of an accelerated fading apparatus could be duplicated" by the use of "no more than an ordinary sunlamp".
END ############

Now here is the full unexpurgated paragraph from Voller's letter of 13 Feb 1996 subject to one line at the bottom of the first page of the letter which is virtually cut off in the photocopy I have seen:

"I suppose that it is going too far to speculate that Barrett [here is cut off but he probably says something like: had access to an] accelerated fading apparatus (which is designed to produce an emission spectrum similar to that of the sun), but your remarks about the text having been actually written by some nameless confederate (I always thought that Anne Barrett was the favourite suspect) have given me food for thought. I wonder if he might have done more than just set pen to paper? I wonder if someone knew enough to realise that at least some of the effects of an accelerated fading apparatus could be duplicated by using no more than an ordinary sunlamp? There would presumably be no problem of access there."

There is nothing else in the letter relevant to this issue. There are three paragraphs in the letter. The previous paragraph discusses the possibility of fading being caused by the Diary having been photographed and/or photocopied. The subsequent, and final, paragraph discusses a point of naval history with Warren.

I submit that Voller is CLEARLY saying in the above-quoted paragraph that the effects of an ordinary sunlamp could have been similar to the effects of an accelerated fading apparatus, otherwise the entire paragraph is both pointless and meaningless. What would even be the point of him referring to "no problem of access"? If the effects of a UV sunlamp were not sufficiently similar to create the fading, which he expressly admitted in a previous letter would have fooled him, what would have been the point of the entire paragraph? Because surely he would just said, "yes, Barrett's confederate might have had access to a sunlamp but that wouldn't have helped him because the effects of a sunlamp wouldn't have been similar to those of an accelerated fading apparatus and thus wouldn't have been able to fool me."

Unless that point is specifically addressed and answered we can certainly take it that Voller was saying that the effects of a sunlamp were similar to those of an accelerated fading apparatus, which he has already admitted to Warren in express terms could have simulated the appearance of the Diary. My interpretation and summary of Voller was therefore entirely reasonable, proper and appropriate while the use of the word "Naughty" to describe it was wholly illegitimate.

I assume it is okay to quote Lord Orsam from his extant posts here on Casebook?

Assuming that to be the case, my dear readers should note that - in the interest of balance - Orsam did counter here (back in the day) in quoting Alex Voller's February 13, 1996, letter to Warren in which he implies that some of the aging effects could have been produced by use of an ordinary sunlamp. The individual reader needs to decide for themselves what those aging effects would have looked like and to what extent they would be sufficient to fool Voller and quite how long Barrett would have had to place each individual page underneath said sunlamp; but I would certainly draw my dear readers attention to the bit where Orsam claims "and an exposure of the text to the radiation from one of these lamps a few weeks after it was written". Now, quoting Orsam in the Casebook may very well survive any censorship, but this blatant cake-and-eat-it moment should not survive my dear readers' personal censorship: you cannot buy a scrapbook on March 31 of any given year, write up a faked text in ink you have somehow managed to ensure mirrored Victorian ink, and then have taken that scrapbook to Landarn by April 13 and still have exposed the 63 pages of text to 'a few weeks' of radiation from one of those lamps'. Surely? Surely no-one is going to grant Orsam and RJ and all of their ilk the special pleading to end all special pleading in which Mike Barrett betters God and re-writes the first few verses of Genesis?

Come on, people - use your freaking brains here!

[Iconoclast]

You should digest this post by Caz, dear readers, before the Voller-got-it-wrong brigade respond to my previous posts:

https://forum.casebook.org/forum/ripper-discussions/suspects/maybrick-james/11199-a-very-inky-question?p=794279#post794279

and also reflect on her following post:

https://forum.casebook.org/forum/ripper-discussions/suspects/maybrick-james/11199-a-very-inky-question?p=794283#post794283

Ike

[Iconoclast]

Assuming that to be the case, my dear readers should note that - in the interest of balance - Orsam did counter here (back in the day) in quoting Alex Voller's February 13, 1996, letter to Warren in which he implies that some of the aging effects could have been produced by use of an ordinary sunlamp. The individual reader needs to decide for themselves what those aging effects would have looked like and to what extent they would be sufficient to fool Voller and quite how long Barrett would have had to place each individual page underneath said sunlamp; but I would certainly draw my dear readers attention to the bit where Orsam claims "and an exposure of the text to the radiation from one of these lamps a few weeks after it was written". Now, quoting Orsam in the Casebook may very well survive any censorship, but this blatant cake-and-eat-it moment should not survive my dear readers' personal censorship: you cannot buy a scrapbook on March 31 of any given year, write up a faked text in ink you have somehow managed to ensure mirrored Victorian ink, and then have taken that scrapbook to Landarn by April 13 and still have exposed the 63 pages of text to 'a few weeks' of radiation from one of those lamps'. Surely? Surely no-one is going to grant Orsam and RJ and all of their ilk the special pleading to end all special pleading in which Mike Barrett betters God and re-writes the first few verses of Genesis?
Come on, people - use your freaking brains here!

I guess I might do well to take some of my own advice. Orsam clearly stated that the radiation occurred a few weeks after the text was written not - as I inadvisably claimed - that the radiation was applied for a few weeks. For the record, how long the radiation had to be applied is unknown.

[caz]

Barrett, knowing that he now had a Victorian diary, would cut out the inappropriate pages (just as he did with the Edwardian photo album) confident that the paper would pass any forensic testing. The name 'Jack the Ripper' and the date '3 May 1889' would signal to the gullible that the diary was Victorian, and no forensic examination of the paper would give the game away as it did in the Hitler Diary fiasco.

Sorry, but this paragraph is just too delicious not to bring up again, in case some of the thicker readers missed the howler first time round. Or should I say, the big ol' Edwardian elephant in the room? Got it now, everyone? Good.

Mike Barrett, whose only object in asking Martin Earl in early March 1992 for paper dating from the 1880s is, according to Palmer, so that, when the yet-to-be created hoax goes off to London, no forensic examination of the paper will 'give the game away as it did in the Hitler Diary fiasco'.

Let that sink in, folks.

A decade earlier, Konnie Kujau was churning out fake diary after fake diary, and the paper alone was more than enough to prove his undoing, because it was shown to be post-1955 under forensic testing. Never mind that he stained it with tea to simulate age, IIRC, and stuck modern plastic initials on the cover, sourced from the far east, mistaking the gothic style F for an H. The bumbling buffoon never stood an earthly because the paper he used was not manufactured until at least ten years after Hitler's death.

Let that sink in too.

Fast forward to late March 1992, when in Palmer's strange world we will find Mike Barrett, who naturally has to reject the tiny 1891 diary, with its 365 printed dates, which he ordered from Martin Earl more in desperation than hope, trotting off to an auction sale on the last day of March, to continue his search for paper that will definitely not let him down as Kujau was let down before him, by being manufactured years after Maybrick's death. And what does Barrett do next, according to Palmer? He bags himself an Edwardian photo album, totally forgetting why he needed Victorian paper that would pass the test that failed Kujau. But God forbid that anyone should describe this as the behaviour of a near moron, or 'mental vegetable'.

What you are doing here is the same thing that the early Diary researchers did--finding it to your advantage to portray Barrett as a 'mental vegetable' (the phrase someone evidently used when describing Barrett to the chemist Alex Voller)--in order to quickly brush aside any chance that he hoaxed the diary.

Methinks that any intellectually honest detective would balk at a such methods, but here we are.

If you and your comrades continually see fit to portray Barrett and/or Graham as mental vegetables (or some other strange personality type) then it is little wonder that you have "eliminated them from your inquiries."

But have you done so using legitimate arguments and analysis, or merely out of desire and self-deception?

I know Palmer was not addressing me personally, but I suspect he counts me as one of the 'comrades', so I feel it is only fair to point out that he is doing a rather good job here all by himself, of portraying Mike Barrett as a dumb animal who would have grasped the need for Victorian paper in order to create a Victorian hoax, but then went out and bought 20th century paper for it, when, according to Palmer's bestie, he was under no pressure because no date had yet been set to show anyone the finished fake.

So now Palmer has his Edwardian elephant to muck out, in addition to his:

Brian Rawes elephant

Tim Martin-Wright elephant

The brown paper elephant

The auction ticket elephant

At this rate, he'll soon have his own politically incorrect circus to keep him occupied, while his one-liner clowns juggle with trying to unicycle on a tightrope.

Before I go, I'd like to reintroduce the baby elephant in the room: the Victorian newspaper that was found in a room in Paul Dodd's house no less, by one of Colin Rhodes's electricians no less. Paul Dodd never knew it was there until his permission was sought - and granted - to keep it.

Now wouldn't it be a sweet little baby elephant if the electrician found it under a floorboard, cuddling up to the mother of all elephants? When the electrician asked if he could keep the baby, was he testing the bath water to see if Dodd knew anything was in it?

[rjpalmer]

How far down the rabbit-hole would someone need to crawl to convince herself that a hoaxer wouldn't seek paper from the correct period?

Fast forward to late March 1992, when in Palmer's strange world we will find Mike Barrett, who naturally has to reject the tiny 1891 diary, with its 365 printed dates, which he ordered from Martin Earl more in desperation than hope, trotting off to an auction sale on the last day of March, to continue his search for paper that will definitely not let him down as Kujau was let down before him, by being manufactured years after Maybrick's death. And what does Barrett do next, according to Palmer? He bags himself an Edwardian photo album, totally forgetting why he needed Victorian paper that would pass the test that failed Kujau. But God forbid that anyone should describe this as the behaviour of a near moron, or 'mental vegetable'.

Please describe to your readers (do we even have readers on the Maybrick threads?) the advancements in paper production and/or bookbinding techniques that took place between 1889 and 1908/9 that would allow an expert to differentiate between a Victorian album from an Edwardian one.

I'll check back in a few hours to note your progress.

The fact that Kenneth Rendell's team described the album as 'Victorian or Edwardian' would suggest to even a mental vegetable that it must be difficult to make such determinations, and who knows what Barrett himself would have assumed?

And, as previously stated in English, my reference to the photo album being 'Edwardian' is largely used as a counterbalance to your optimistic insistence that it is Victorian--which has not been proven.

And perhaps your readers would like to learn your source for any of the electricians describing brown paper.

[rjpalmer]

I apologize for the grammatical error in my previous post, but I really can't be bothered.

On the subject of bronzing, I'd also be interested in learning Caz's source for the following extraordinary statement. I've asked before, and received no answer.

Robert Smith would testify to the fact that the 'very slight', 'barely visible' bronzing in 'one or two places', as observed by Voller in 1995, was already there when he first examined it in 1992 and had not increased by 1995, or increased since then, remaining the same 'very slight' bronzing today.

Where and when did Robert Smith 'testify to the fact' that the Diary’s ink was already bronzed in 1992?

Where is this documented?

[caz]

I only have a minute before I must leave my desk.

Regarding Martin-Wright, from what I've read, he didn't inform Paul Feldman of this alleged incident (some bloke attempting to sell the diary) until June 1994. Yet, extensive news of the Maybrick Hoax had already been published in the Liverpool Post in April 1993---some fourteen months earlier, so this is hardly newsworthy.

Yet, as I understand it, you are claiming that Martin-Wright had already documented this conversation prior to April 1993, but is that strictly accurate?

You and Ike tend to speak in riddles, but from what I gather all Martin-Wright really did is to try to remember when he heard about this incident and for some reason he connected it to the purchase of a hat rack or a coat rack or some other unexplained transaction, and from this Martin-Wright thought it had occurred sometime in December 1992.

What exactly did he document in December 1992?

And why on earth did he date the proposed sale to 1991, which obviously means that whatever he had heard about was unrelated to the electrical work Dodd had done in March 1992?

Ciao.

Regarding Tim Martin-Wright, the difference is that Feldy didn't know the man from Adam in 1994, and it was Tim [Nice-But-NOT-so-Dim - thank you, Harry Enfield] who was put in contact with Feldy, not the other way round, when Tim happened to be speaking to a lawyer friend and mentioned seeing Shirley's book and recognising the diary he remembered being offered shortly after his shop, APS, was opened. APS stood for Alan and Paul's Shop, because Tim had engaged an Alan [Dodgson, not Davies] and a Paul [too many Pauls - Ed] to run it.

The lawyer friend stopped Tim dead, because he already knew about the diary from one of his legal colleagues, who just happened to be working for Feldy at the time [too many coincidences now. It's getting silly - Ed], and was worried about a conflict of interests.

Busy people like Tim don't always have time to read the local papers, so it's entirely plausible that he forgot all about the conversation he'd had about Jack the Ripper's diary until he saw Shirley's book in 1994 - unless Palmer wants to include Tim in his ever busier nest of liars, which is also entirely plausible. I never heard about Jack the Ripper's diary until I saw Feldy's book in the London Dungeon shop in October 1998, so I too missed all the early hoo-ha about it in all the newspapers.

Palmer asks why on earth Tim thought the conversation might have taken place in 1991, at a time when it could not possibly have been connected with the electrical work Dodd had done in March 1992? The answer, if Palmer could bear to engage his brain, is simplicity itself. But he seems to imagine this as one giant conspiracy of lies, in which everyone concerned - including Tim - would have known one another's business, and therefore should have been able to get their stories straight. Thus, Palmer imagines that Tim would have known all the Battlecrease electricians personally [how and why??]; Tim would have known when Paul Dodd had the rewiring for the storage heaters done [how and why??]; and Tim would therefore have known when the diary - according to the 'script' - was meant to have been found and sold to a bloke in an Anfield pub [how and why??]. But none of that is true and there was never a 'script'. Tim only needed to know his two employees at APS and whatever they had heard about Jack the Ripper's diary. The two Alans, Dodgson and Davies, independently confirmed Tim's recollections, but none of the three had anything to do with the storage heater work in Dodd's house, and no accurate dates for it were mentioned by anyone to my knowledge until Keith Skinner was shown the worksheets by Colin Rhodes after Ripper Diary was published in 2003, and those dates were finally established beyond all doubt.

I'm hoping Tim will stick by his promise to cook me a lobster thermidor one day, or I may have to concede that Palmer is right if he thinks the man is another dirty rotten scoundrel who tells lies about the diary to whoever will listen.

[caz]

How far down the rabbit-hole would someone need to crawl to convince herself that a hoaxer wouldn't seek paper from the correct period?

Eh? What? Seriously?

What is Palmer on about now?

Absolutely any hoaxer who wasn't a mental vegetable would have sought paper from 'the correct period'. Isn't that exactly what I've been saying?

Palmer argued, quite rightly, that anyone attempting this in 1992 would have recalled the Hitler Diary fiasco of the previous decade, when it was proved that Adolf had been dead for at least ten years before the paper used was manufactured. In order to avoid the forger's fate, the next hoaxer would need to do better, much better. He would need to make sure the paper was of the correct period this time.

Palmer also argued, in the same breath, that the paper Mike Barrett actually chose for his hoax was not manufactured until twenty years after Maybrick's death.

Anyone apart from Palmer still not seeing how one argument makes the other fall apart like a cheap suit?

Please describe to your readers (do we even have readers on the Maybrick threads?) the advancements in paper production and/or bookbinding techniques that took place between 1889 and 1908/9 that would allow an expert to differentiate between a Victorian album from an Edwardian one.

I'll check back in a few hours to note your progress.

Not my problem. I'll check back to see Palmer's evidence for Mike Barrett knowing there were no advancements in the twenty years between 1888 and 1908 that could have caught him out, just like Kujau was caught out. It doesn't look like Mike did know this, or he could have asked Martin Earl for any book with unused pages dating from, say, 1870 to 1910, to give him what he needed to pass any forensic tests on the paper as well as the binding. If he was playing safe when he specified the 1880s, what changed between then and the auction, within the same month? Did he pick up the knowledge from somewhere that he could afford to forget what had cooked Kujau's goose and stretch this period way beyond Maybrick's lifetime, because there was no expert on the planet who could differentiate between 1888 and 1908?

Or is Palmer going to fall back on the dumb luck and random guesswork that always seems to get his hoaxers off the hook with a forensic free pass? He long ago decided that the Johnsons and the Barretts were guilty, ergo Turgoose, Wild and Voller must all have been gulled by people who needed no expertise or previous experience, and faked the watch and the diary easily and quickly, without any multi-stage processes or expensive equipment, and with no waiting for weeks to see the effects that might simulate many decades of age. Whatever the Johnsons and Barretts managed to achieve with their limited resources was more down to beginner's luck than anything else.

If Palmer has no equivalent expertise in metal or ink, or personal experience in how to detect fakery, and if he hasn't peered down a microscope or examined the original artefacts up close, how can he know better than these three specialists in metal and ink chemistry? Surely he doesn't think they were hand picked for their incompetence and gullibility by the 'greedy and dishonest' Diary Crowd, and then groomed to make all the right noises?

The fact that Kenneth Rendell's team described the album as 'Victorian or Edwardian' would suggest to even a mental vegetable that it must be difficult to make such determinations, and who knows what Barrett himself would have assumed?

And there we have it. If Mike plumped for Edwardian, he very obviously didn't get the tip from Rendell, so it was dumb luck or guesswork, and it still contradicts the argument that he based his request to Martin Earl on the need for paper that Maybrick could have used, unlike the paper that Hitler could not.

And, as previously stated in English, my reference to the photo album being 'Edwardian' is largely used as a counterbalance to your optimistic insistence that it is Victorian--which has not been proven.

Yes, and we can all see how thoroughly it buggered up Palmer's explanation for Mike's Victorian diary request.

Palmer needs Mike to have been telling the truth about the auction and the scrapbook's vintage in his affidavit of 5th January 1995, to keep his explanation for the red diary on life support. My 'optimistic insistence' that the scrapbook is Victorian translates as 'not giving two hoots either way'. Mike's lies don't make it Edwardian or Victorian, but if Mike says 'white' about the diary, I tend to think 'black'. It's an occupational hazard that habitual liars like Mike have to bear. He could have been lying through his teeth about the scrapbook and where he got it, and it could still be Edwardian for all I care, but it would take the Barretts out of the faking equation.

It's interesting though, to see Palmer claiming to be 'largely' using Mike's Edwardian claim as a 'counterbalance', as if he's not 100% sold on this being the only possibility. If it's Victorian, Palmer would have a better argument for Mike seeking and getting 'paper from the correct period' in order to fake Maybrick's diary, but telling stupid lies about it in his affidavit, due to the alcohol and his devil-may-care relationship with the truth.

It would also be interesting to know which elements of the affidavit impress Palmer, and which give him most cause for concern. How much of it would he disregard or rewrite, in order to make it read like a genuine and credible confession?

[caz]

I guess I might do well to take some of my own advice. Orsam clearly stated that the radiation occurred a few weeks after the text was written not - as I inadvisably claimed - that the radiation was applied for a few weeks. For the record, how long the radiation had to be applied is unknown.

I don't think you need to beat yourself up over this, your Ikiness. It was but a small thing compared with Palmer's circus elephants.

The idea was that Mike, as an amateur have-a-go hoaxer, could have fooled Voller by waiting a few weeks after Anne had completed the handwriting around the second week of April 1992 and then exposing the 63 pages to the rays of an ordinary sun lamp in a bit of a haphazard manner for however long it took to achieve the effects that Diamine Man would eventually observe in October 1995.

Voller said that 'at least some of the effects of an accelerated fading apparatus could be duplicated' using this piece of kit.

Some of the reasons why everyone, including Palmer, struggles with this are fairly obvious and raise more questions than answers:

A) How did Mike know that an ordinary sun lamp could be used in this way to duplicate at least some of the effects of an accelerated fading apparatus, let alone that it might be good enough to fool the chemist who had formulated the ink?

B) How would Mike have recognised the effects needed to simulate a century's worth of ageing, in order to know when the sun lamp could finally be switched off?

C) What would the writing have looked like on 13th April 1992, 'a few weeks' before the sun lamp was plugged in?

D) Did Mike even have any free, uninterrupted access to the diary 'a few weeks' after returning with it from London?

By 18th May 1992, Shirley has received a photocopy of the diary from Mike. She sends a copy to Doreen, saying that the order of the pages 'can be quickly checked against the transcript'.

On 4th June 1992, Mike is back in London to show the diary to Robert Smith. This is now roughly eight weeks after ink supposedly met paper.

On 12th June 1992, Doreen writes to Lloyds Bank, Liverpool, outlining developments, including the proposed transfer of the diary from the bank's vaults to the Borough High Street Branch. On the same day, she writes to Mike to say that arrangements are being made to transfer the original diary from his Liverpool branch to Shirley's local branch.

On 22nd June 1992, Shirley and Mike are in Birmingham, where he hands over the diary to David Baxendale.

That appears to be the last time Mike will ever see it.

In short, no sun lamp was used and the effects Voller observed could only have been down to beginner's luck and random guesswork, which would account for Palmer's weird suggestion that Anne or Mike may have 'randomly' dipped the nib in water from time-to-time - as you do.

Either that, or the writing was ageing nicely all by itself, before Mike came along to disturb its peace.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

On the subject of bronzing, I'd also be interested in learning Caz's source for the following extraordinary statement. I've asked before, and received no answer.

Originally posted by caz View Post
Robert Smith would testify to the fact that the 'very slight', 'barely visible' bronzing in 'one or two places', as observed by Voller in 1995, was already there when he first examined it in 1992 and had not increased by 1995, or increased since then, remaining the same 'very slight' bronzing today.

Where and when did Robert Smith 'testify to the fact' that the Diary’s ink was already bronzed in 1992?

Where is this documented?

Where did Palmer find this quote of mine?

The two posts which Ike directed the readers to, only contained this statement by me:

Robert Smith maintains that the writing has not changed in colour or appearance from the day he first saw it.

That one speaks for itself, and it's simply what Robert has said to me face to face and no doubt also repeated in various email communications over the years. It's up to Palmer whether to believe it or not, and that applies to my observation as well as Robert's.

As for the post which Palmer quoted from, I'd need to see the whole post it comes from to be sure of the context, but 'Robert Smith would testify to the fact...' is not the same as 'Robert Smith did testify to the fact...' and I would not normally phrase it that way if I meant that Robert Smith would 'go on to' testify to the fact on record at some point. I don't personally care for that usage because it is ambiguous and I have seen it being misinterpreted when others have used 'would' for 'did'. So for now I will assume that I merely meant that Robert Smith 'would' testify to the fact if asked, because he 'did' so in private when I asked.

If Palmer wants to dispute this further, he can either quote my post in full, along with where and when I posted it, or write to Robert Smith to get the answer directly from the only person who knows for sure what he observed for himself on 4th June 1992, and again on 20th October 1995, and what he would observe today.

I'm done with doing Palmer any more favours until he mucks out his elephants one by one, giving a satisfactory reason why each should pack their trunk and say goodbye to the Barrett Hoax Circus.

Brian Rawes.

Tim Martin-Wright.

The brown paper.

The missing auction ticket.

The Victorian newspaper.

[rjpalmer]

What is all this bizarre talk about elephants?

What troublesome elephants are supposed to be in hiding in plain sight?

Keith Skinner, who is apparently the chief investigator of the 'Eddie Lyons stole the Diary in 1992' provenance, was quoted on this forum as recently as three weeks ago stating that"like it or not, Anne Graham's provenance still stands." In other words, in his view, there is not yet enough compelling evidence to conclusively dismiss the idea that Anne Graham had seen the diary as early as 1968/9 and had given it to Tony Devereux sometime around July 1991. All of which would render the 'Eddie did it' theory bogus and irrelevant.

Now, I personally don't believe Anne Graham, but that's not the point. I am merely questioning the strength of the evidence that Caz thinks is so wildly compelling.

If it is so strong, why does Keith seem to be unconvinced? In other words, if Caroline's laundry list of elephants--'Martin-Wright', brown paper, etc--hasn't even convince Keith Skinner to finally and conclusively dismiss Anne Graham's account, why on earth does she think this same laundry list of vague claims will somehow convince those who believe the diary is an obvious enough modern hoax?

Maybe she should expend her efforts trying to convince Keith first, and then work her way up to convincing the rest of the world.

Personally, I don't find any of it compelling, and she seems unwilling or unable to even give her source for an electrician describing "brown paper."

[rjpalmer]

As for the post which Palmer quoted from, I'd need to see the whole post it comes from to be sure of the context, but 'Robert Smith would testify to the fact...' is not the same as 'Robert Smith did testify to the fact...' and I would not normally phrase it that way if I meant that Robert Smith would 'go on to' testify to the fact on record at some point. I don't personally care for that usage because it is ambiguous and I have seen it being misinterpreted when others have used 'would' for 'did'. So for now I will assume that I merely meant that Robert Smith 'would' testify to the fact if asked, because he 'did' so in private when I asked.

That's quite an exercise in hairsplitting and semantical juggling.

Back to the original question. Did or did not Robert Smith see bronzing in 1992?

If he did, it would have been an extremely relevant observation, which leaves one wondering why on earth he didn't mention this important fact in his own 2017 book, or why he didn't report this extremely relevant fact to Shirley Harrison when he published her books. She specifically discussed bronzing, but Smith didn't feel the need to reveal this? Why not?

Here is the full context of your statement:

Acquiring A Victorian Diary - Casebook: Jack the Ripper Forums

Post #295.

You now suggest that the onus is on me to find a source for your claim. I don't think that is how things normally operate on a public forum. I could, I suppose, email every one of the dozens of Robert Smiths in London hoping to hit on the right person, but fortunately I don't need to. I already have a statement from Robert Smith himself, dating to the early 1990s, that demonstrates beyond all reasonable doubt that he hadn't noticed any bronzing in the diary before Voller's examination and even argued that the diary's lack of bronzing wasn't proof of its modernity.

As such, I obviously dismiss your statement as inaccurate, unsourced, and misleading.

[caz]

That's quite an exercise in hairsplitting and semantical juggling.

Back to the original question. Did or did not Robert Smith see bronzing in 1992?

If he did, it would have been an extremely relevant observation, which leaves one wondering why on earth he didn't mention this important fact in his own 2017 book, or why he didn't report this extremely relevant fact to Shirley Harrison when he published her books. She specifically discussed bronzing, but Smith didn't feel the need to reveal this? Why not?

Here is the full context of your statement:

Acquiring A Victorian Diary - Casebook: Jack the Ripper Forums

Post #295.

You now suggest that the onus is on me to find a source for your claim. I don't think that is how things normally operate on a public forum. I could, I suppose, email every one of the dozens of Robert Smiths in London hoping to hit on the right person, but fortunately I don't need to. I already have a statement from Robert Smith himself, dating to the early 1990s, that demonstrates beyond all reasonable doubt that he hadn't noticed any bronzing in the diary before Voller's examination and even argued that the diary's lack of bronzing wasn't proof of its modernity.

As such, I obviously dismiss your statement as inaccurate, unsourced, and misleading.

Palmer can do what he likes with it. I never intended to mislead anyone, and I apologise if Palmer was misled at the time of posting. I do know that Voller had to hold the open diary up to a window in October 1995, in order to see the very faint bronzing on certain words on certain pages, and I would be interested in Palmer's source for any previous examiner claiming on record to have scoured all 63 pages, specifically looking for the faintest hint of bronzing anywhere in the diary and finding none.

Obviously I would dismiss any such claim, either made or implied by Palmer, as inaccurate, unsourced and misleading, if he can't locate a source.