One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[caz]

I think Caz must imagine that the O & L auction house employed an in-house paper and bookbinding expert, warning any potential forgers or hoaxers the danger of using a 1909 photo album to create a 'Victorian' relic, because the forensics might be off.

I rather think such was not the case.

An increasingly eager Barrett took a chance, and, as I wrote earlier, nothing succeeds like success. Smith & Co. accepted it hook, line, and sinker. And then there's Tom.

Let me also remind the small number of people still reading this sub-forum that in the 1790s a man called William Henry Ireland hoaxed dozens of documents, including an entire play, purportedly written by William Shakespeare.

He didn't bother imitating the handwriting, assuming that no hidden trove of genuine Shakespeare documents would pop up, biting him in the backside.

Hoaxers take risks.

Seems like a rather obvious concept, no?

But while some willingly turned a blind-eye to the bogus handwriting, I still can't imagine that they would have accepted a spiral notebook from the 1960s.

I would think the Maybricknicks would be insulted by Caz's line of argument, but instead they seem to embrace it!

While Palmer's 'line of argument' seeks to make some kind of comparison between the Barretts of Goldie Street and a man who hoaxed 'dozens of documents' two hundred years earlier, including 'an entire play, purportedly written by William Shakespeare'.

Yes, hoaxers obviously take risks, if they create one and take it to market themselves. Anonymous hoaxers, doing their thing for other motives, don't take the same risks.

One can only imagine Mike Barrett trying his hand at an undiscovered Shakespeare play:

OUt, OUt DAmneD SPot. I tHOUgHt yOU WeRe A gOOD DOg, bUt yOU ARe nOt.

[rjpalmer]

Dear me, the diary must be the most wrapped and unwrapped brown paper parcel in the history of the planet.

Eddie finds it wrapped but unwraps it to show to Mike down the boozer, then rewraps it. Why he didn't just chuck the paper is beyond me. Later, the diary is shoved under a car seat, still wrapped, where it is taken to Liverpool University where it is presumably again unwrapped, but rewrapped after the appropriate, but alas unrecorded, examination.

By now it is getting quite tattered, but the Liverpool stationary stories are having a heck of a run on Scotch tape. Ultimately, Eddie wraps it again to sell to Mike, who unwraps it for Little Caroline, before rewrapping it again for Anne.

Who unwraps it with Mike while sitting on the sofa.

This must be a UK thing---to pointlessly wrap and unwrap and rewrap books in brown paper.

Personally, I've never heard of such a bizarre and useless exercise outside of the mini-series comedy Forging Hitler, where the hoaxed goods always showed up wrapped in brown paper.

[Iconoclast]

Dear me, the diary must be the most wrapped and unwrapped brown paper parcel in the history of the planet.

Eddie finds it wrapped but unwraps it to show to Mike down the boozer, then rewraps it. Why he didn't just chuck the paper is beyond me. Later, the diary is shoved under a car seat, still wrapped, where it is taken to Liverpool University where it is presumably again unwrapped, but rewrapped after the appropriate, but alas unrecorded, examination.

By now it is getting quite tattered, but the Liverpool stationary stories are having a heck of a run on Scotch tape. Ultimately, Eddie wraps it again to sell to Mike, who unwraps it for Little Caroline, before rewrapping it again for Anne.

Who unwraps it with Mike while sitting on the sofa.

This must be a UK thing---to pointlessly wrap and unwrap and rewrap books in brown paper.

Personally, I've never heard of such a bizarre and useless exercise outside of the mini-series comedy Forging Hitler, where the hoaxed goods always showed up wrapped in brown paper.

Ah ha - I was wondering what the but-don't-worry-dear-readers-it's-obviously-a-forgery angle was going to be this time, RJ, and bish, bash, bosh, there it was!

[rjpalmer]

at which point her worst fears are confirmed - she knows Mike has handled stolen goods. At the thought of him (or even both of them) getting into trouble with the polis, she tries to destroy the scrapbook and they have an almighty scrap which (as an ex-scrap dealer) Mike naturally wins.

So Anne just has to run with Mike's ****-and-bull story and does so until the moment Mike has a meltdown and threatens the sales of the book and the proposed film. Anne knows that the scrapbook is almost certainly the real deal so she wants to protect the book (and the film as a favour to Feldman) so she comes up with her ****-and-bull+plus version of Mike's ****-and-bull story, and - once she's done that - she's locked-in to the lie and has to carry it off to the best of her considerable ability.

Thanks, Ike. So, there we have it.

In the past 22 years, Anne has gone from a woman whose provenance tale was believable and consistent, to a woman who knows her husband has received stolen goods but nonetheless became an accessory after-the-fact, telling lies to the early diary researchers and even helping Mike produce both a bogus provenance and bogus research notes, backdated to Tony's lifetime.

And even after she became 'free and clear' of Mike in 1994, and had refused her royalty checks (thus mitigating any involvement she would have had in Mike's reception of stolen goods), she decided to resurface and again lie repeatedly to friends and strangers alike, including to her own coauthor--this time claiming she had seen the diary in 1968, and had hid it from her husband since around 1988.

And she did this because she knew the diary was authentic. For as everyone knows, the best way to authenticate a document is to tell a pack of lies about it.

Caz's response to me has always been that Anne would have to have been 'stupid' to go along with Mike creating a hoax, but here you describe her stupidly going along with Mike peddling stolen goods.

I think your scenario is dead wrong, Tom, but you've undercut Caz's argument admirably. One need not be stupid to be pulled into an alcoholic's scheme--just compromised and worn down from years of abuse.

[rjpalmer]

And of course, I think the real reason Anne humored Mike is because she thought (reasonably enough) that the London literati would easily see through the hoax and (in Anne's own words) 'Doreen would just send Mike packing.'

I suspect, Tom, that the episode of Anne trying to destroy the diary dates to April 1992, when Mike returned from London and it suddenly dawned on Anne that Mike's scheme was actually going forward, and she was going to be dragged down with him.

[caz]

I dare say you have.

In a nutshell, she's arguing that it is ludicrous for me to think that Barrett would have gone to the trouble of seeking 'at least twenty blank pages' of Victorian paper (or settle for what might well be Edwardian paper three weeks later) to create a hoax when he and Anne didn't not bother to imitate Maybrick's handwriting.

After all, any fool can see that the handwriting isn't Maybrick's. Why bother with period paper, when the handwriting is such an obvious giveaway that any fool would have turned their noise up just as quickly had the diary been written in a spiral notebook with green ballpoint pen.

What makes it such an embarrassing argument, old boy, (and I would think an insulting argument from your perspective) is that you, Robert Smith, Shirley Harrison, and others weren't bothered in the least that the handwriting was quickly rejected by the best handwriting experts on either side of the Atlantic.

But, I get it. You've admitted many times that you are 'scared' of Caz, so I can see why you would pretend that her line of argument doesn't represent a rather vicious, obvious, and embarrassing kick to the groin of your own credulity.

This would be funny if I didn't think Palmer was actually trying to be serious.

It's Palmer's embarrassingly unlikely theory that Mike Barrett took his own hoax to market, based on the specific claims made by a bitter man in his affidavit shortly after his wife had divorced him. If any of this had been true, Palmer could then have worked out what thought - if any - Mike had put into its creation.

As it is, if we leave Mike's claims out of the equation, because nothing he came out with can be trusted, we are left with an old book, that may or may not be Victorian, in which the ink and handwriting have not been conclusively identified or dated.

That's it.

As long as Palmer tries to palm the scrapbook off as Mike and Anne's handiwork, all his related arguments will forever be tainted by association with Mike's unproven claims for its purpose, its acquisition and its creation. It's therefore a bogus line of argument to claim that Doreen, Shirley and Robert were all taken in by whatever efforts Palmer thinks Mike took to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. It's a circular argument, that only applies if the Barretts had truly been behind the diary's creation - which is as far from being proved as it ever was.

[Iconoclast]

I suspect, Tom, that the episode of Anne trying to destroy the diary dates to April 1992, when Mike returned from London and it suddenly dawned on Anne that Mike's scheme was actually going forward, and she was going to be dragged down with him.

Well, at last we have something to agree on!

Personally, I wouldn't call it 'Mike's scheme', but you are welcome to call it what you want. What is critical, of course, is that Mike must have come home and told Anne that he had said that he had received the scrapbook from Tony Devereux "to protect his source" at which point Anne knew exactly what Mike had - stolen goods - and had a blind panic at what might unfold. She saw the threat to herself and to her daughter Caroline and she attempted to eradicate the threat at source. Most sensible people would.

Over two years later, when Mike melted-down, the die was cast and the book was published so Anne protected what she knew deep down was almost certainly the actual journal of Jack the Ripper and also protected her friend Feldman's film project (as she understood it).

As I said earlier, once she was committed to that convenient lie, she had to then live it. Her silence these last twenty years is so telling ...

[rjpalmer]

Over two years later, when Mike melted-down, the die was cast and the book was published so Anne protected what she knew deep down was almost certainly the actual journal of Jack the Ripper and also protected her friend Feldman's film project (as she understood it).

It's all very unconvincing, Tom. And it's a pity, because you do try so hard...

All Anne had to say is that her estranged husband got the diary from Devereux and that's all she knew. In fact, that's exactly what she did say.

Devereux was dead and couldn't dispute this, and Barrett had already signed an affidavit claiming that he got the diary from Tony. The law couldn't prove otherwise, so she was "free and clear." The CPS had already signaled that they weren't interested in anyone but Smith, because The Sunday Times had lodged a complaint.

Her provenance tale had sod-all to do with Eddie Lyons--that's clear enough.

Of course, it's entirely possible that if she had helped Barrett create the hoax, and he was now mouthing off about it, that all those old fears resurfaced and led to a rash act...

[Iconoclast]

It's all very unconvincing, Tom. And it's a pity, because you do try so hard...

All Anne had to say is that her estranged husband got the diary from Devereux and that's all she knew. In fact, that's exactly what she did say.

Devereux was dead and couldn't dispute this, and Barrett had already signed an affidavit claiming that he got the diary from Tony. The law couldn't prove otherwise, so she was "free and clear." The CPS had already signaled that they weren't interested in anyone but Smith, because The Sunday Times had lodged a complaint.

Her provenance tale had sod-all to do with Eddie Lyons--that's clear enough.

Of course, it's entirely possible that if she had helped Barrett create the hoax, and he was now mouthing off about it, that all those old fears resurfaced and led to a rash act...

Oh dear dear dear, Roger, your muddy muddy muddy instincts just won't let go of a good distraction technique, will it?

Nobody - to my knowledge - was posting here to the effect that Anne required a "free and clear" Get-Out-of-the-Possibility-of-Jail card in the middle of 1994, were they? But you just can't bring yourself to address the actual issue being discussed - that Anne was seeking to take Mike Barrett's forgery claims irreversibly off the table (please read my last post before you decide to misunderstand this too). If she had stuck with Mike's Tony Devereux story then Mike was "free and clear" to argue whatever he wanted regarding the scrapbook. He could have simply denied that he got the scrapbook off Tony Devereux for starters (his January 5, 1995, affidavit that Melvin Harris got Alan Gray to get Mike Barrett to say he wrote was not yet created and his 1993 affidavit could have been as easily contradicted in July 1994 as it was in January 1995, couldn't it?). Anne clearly had a bit more guile than you, Roger (you'd make a **** criminal, mate): she presented a provenance which she knew was false but which she also knew would take Mike Barrett completely out of the scrapbook-origin tale (far from being the source, he just becomes a carrier). Clever stuff. So clever you don't appear to have understood it.

Either that or you just cannot focus on the point unless you think you're winning it ...

PS I was not suggesting that Anne was a criminal there, by the way - I was simply suggesting that your lack of guile would have made you a **** one. I know you don't always keep up and many of your responses just don't make sense in the context of the discussion, and yet invariably result in some kind of tenuous attempt to affirm the Barretts' guilt, so I thought I'd better get in there quick in case you attempted to do it again.

[Iconoclast]

Her provenance tale had sod-all to do with Eddie Lyons--that's clear enough.

This is a classic example of why I call you Muddy the Mud Boy, Muddy. My post to which you were replying was entirely devoid of the need to invoke Eddie Lyons. And yet still you did so. Apropos of absolutely nothing whatsoever other than yet another desperate attempt to deflect away from an argument you don’t like and can’t deal with.

Do you even know that you do it?

Ike

[rjpalmer]

Anne clearly had a bit more guile than you, Roger (you'd make a **** criminal, mate): she presented a provenance which she knew was false but which she also knew would take Mike Barrett completely out of the scrapbook-origin tale (far from being the source, he just becomes a carrier). Clever stuff. So clever you don't appear to have understood it.

Jumping Jack Flash, Ike!

This is brilliant!.

And it is EXACTLY THE SAME THING I've been telling Caz, Keith Skinner and everyone else for the last 20 + years.

Anne invented the 'in the family story' (the story that Keith and Shirley and others accepted) in order to undermine Barrett's confession.

It really is a joy to see you reinventing the wheel, Old Boy, it really is, even if you're twenty years late to the party.

Where did you find this, in one of my old posts from twenty years ago?

Had you only been there to inform Team Diary of this, Tom, I suspect that you'd have been given the same reception that I got: that Anne's tale was entirely compelling, and since I never met the woman, I had no reason or right to suggest such a thing.

RP

[FISHY1118]

Now approaching 10,000 post on the Fake Diary and watch thread .....

Astonishing!!! .

Only about 9997 too many

[Iconoclast]

Anne invented the 'in the family story' (the story that Keith and Shirley and others accepted) in order to undermine Barrett's confession.
RP

You know full well that Anne’s provenance was believed over Barrett’s because she had more credibility and her’s was the only credible provenance in town until 2004 when Colin Rhodes showed Keith Skinner the timesheets from March 9, 1992, and Keith realised the inescapable significance of this fact. Yes, that leaves us with two provenances but one of them is clearly more likely to be true than the other.

I'm not sure why you're getting yourself so excited - Anne's story (was it August 1994? I forget) - was clearly an attempt to protect the sales of the book and the likelihood (as she understood it) of her new protector Paul Feldman securing his film deal. As Anne knew that the scrapbook was 99.99% stolen property, she also knew for more or less certainty that it was very probably authentic. Protecting it from her spiralling husband was a clever move and one which she has had to maintain ever since, which totally explains why she refuses to talk about it.

[Iconoclast]

Now approaching 10,000 post on the Fake Diary and watch thread .....

Astonishing!!! .

Only about 9997 too many

I guess that's what that elusive thing 'evidence' does for an argument, eh, Fishy?

[Iconoclast]

I received a message from the Dark Lord Himself last evening, sent via one of his pernicious elves, wishing to set the record straight in reference to my very occasional and easily founded allegation that he relies on the word of Mike Barrett despite everyone knowing what a pathological liar he was (Mike Barrett, obviously, not the Dark Lord).

It would appear that his (the Dark Lord's) belief that Mike was involved in the forgery of the diary is not based in any way on anything Mike ever said, so that he doesn't rely on him at all, but rather on Mike's proven secret and urgent attempts to acquire a genuine Victorian diary with a significant number of blank pages in March 1992 for which I have been unable to think of an alternative explanation consistent with non-forgery during the past seven years.

Now, the sharp-eyed amongst us (and, actually, the congenitally stupid too) will have spotted that this is not entirely the vérité, is it? His Most Royal Darkness has endlessly cited Barrett's January 5, 1995, affidavit as a basis for first creating and then worshipping at the altar of the Eleven-Day Evangelism story. Without Bongo's rather inept affy David, His Supreme Master of the Dark Arts would have no support for those magic days of creativity between purchasing the scrapbook at Outhwaite & Litherland (more Barrett 'words' He relies upon) and visiting Rupert Crew's office on April 13, 1992. Indeed, in so eagerly accepting Bongo's fantastic tale, His Most Dark-Drainpiped Highness has even gone to the lengths of claiming that the purchase of the scrapbook was made on March 31, 1992 - a claim he could not substantiate without reference to Bongo's extraordinary claim in January 1995.

Anyway, all that aside (and it's a lot to set aside, I agree, dear readers), let us just reflect upon the claim that Voldemort's belief that it was Mike all along is solely based upon his half-hearted attempt to secure an 1880-1890 Victorian diary a few days after Eddie Lyons was working in Maybrick's old house in early March 1992, and let us address the extraordinary suggestion that a fair and valid reason has never been forthcoming for this act, thereby apparently giving credence to the belief that it was an attempt to secure a vehicle to write his hoax into (or get his wife to). The Good Lord has been away from the Casebook for some years now and He clearly doesn't keep up with it otherwise he wouldn't have made his seven years claim on that burning parchment which arrived in my begloved hands last night. Of course, all of you, my dear readers, know that I have addressed this a number of times. Not only does the narrative for a hoax not make sense of a request for an 1890 diary (and certainly not the eventual purchase of a totally inappropriate 1891 one) but the narrative for the scrapbook being authentic comfortably deals with all of the many criticisms thrown at it. Let me summarise:

March 9, 1992, Eddie Lyons finds an old scrapbook under James Maybrick's floorboard (he can't read its cramped writing so he filches it for later)
Around lunchtime, he meets Mike Barrett in The Saddle and shows him the scrapbook
Barrett sits there - possibly away from Lyons - turning the enigmatic pages
He turns to the final written page and sees 'Jack the Ripper'
He immediately knows he needs to acquire this document
So he offers Lyons £20 (or whatever) for the document
Lyons has absolutely no idea what he's about to give up but he is drawn to the thought of making a quick buck so he accepts
Mike takes the scrapbook home
He rings Rupert Crew to see if they'd be interested in what he thinks is Jack the Ripper's 'diary'
They are
Mike suspects that he has stolen goods on his hands and he's terrified of losing ownership of it
So he rings Martin Earl in a desperate search for a valid Victorian diary which he can say is the one he got from Eddie Lyons if anyone asks
He doesn't care too much about the suitability of the diary he's asked for because he's going to say that "this was the diary I paid Lyons £20 for" which explains why he'd be happy with an 1890 diary even if he's worked out that Jack the Ripper died in May 1889 (based on the final entry)
Mike has no idea who the author is supposed to be
Anne comes home from work
Caroline goes to bed
Mike produces the scrapbook and says "I got this from a mate" but doesn't say which mate
Anne is not stupid - she's immediately suspicious but there's not much she can do
Mike researches the scrapbook and somehow uncovers that it is meant to be James Maybrick's
He takes the scrapbook to London and he's delighted that it passes muster
He comes home and tells Anne that he said he'd got it from Tony Devereux
Anne's alarm bells are ringing big style - she now knows for certain it's hookey
In a blind, maternal panic, she tries to throw the scrapbook on the fire but Mike stops her
She gives up - she knows Mike is peddling stolen goods but there's nothing she can do other than hope that it comes to nothing
It comes to something
It gets published
Anne walks out on Mike when he hits her in January 1994
Mike is desperate to see her and Caroline
By June 1994, he hears tales of Paul Feldman and Anne spending time together
He's absolutely insane with jealousy and rage
In an attempt to break them up, he makes his first 'forgery' claim
Anne knows that Mike did not forge the scrapbook and she suspects it is authentic
So she removes Mike completely from his own provenance story by supporting it - she says she gave Devereux the scrapbook
What's good for the goose is good for the gander - now Mike can't disprove either his provenance nor Anne's extended version!
Mike has been cooked by his own goose
Anne has to back up her provenance and does so unwillingly
As soon as the heat goes off, by the early 2000s, she never again speaks about the scrapbook because it is a reminder of a terrible time in her and Caroline's lives, and because she doesn't want to perpetuate that convenient, clever lie any further
Sensible girl.

So, there you go. There's your answer to every question you'll ever have about the origins of the Maybrick scrapbook. It's almost certainly authentic and you lot have the answer in front of you but there's none as blind as will not see so you carry on arguing about the colour of Mrs Doughty's socks the night before the first murder, et cetera.

I haven't solved the Jack the Ripper case for you, but I have protected the answer for longer than anyone else. And not a word of thanks from any one of you. You should be ashamed.