One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[caz]

I get that, Scotty.

And I really believe in everything I write about the diary not originating with the Barretts of Goldie Street.

Apart from that, I'm not too bothered about where it did originate or with whom. For me, it's not really about ripperology, but I do like to explore why people are so heavily invested in believing anything Mike Barrett claimed about the diary.

Love,

Caz
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[rjpalmer]

But I really believe in everything I write about origins of the Maybrick diaries.

Hi Scott - How many "diaries" are we up to now? The one written by Maybrick; the knock-off 'spoof' by Weedon Grossmith/Harry Dam; Tony Devereux's own version; the one that Mike Barrett tried to write but abandoned.

Are there any others?

I must say, seeing your respect for the theories of Martin Fido, I'm a little surprised that you have rejected his solution to the authorship question.

[Scott Nelson]

Just two as far as I can envisage, RJ. The Dam knock-off, written with George Grossmith (actor) and Michael Maybrick (organist) -- the two guys Dam worked with on his long-running play, The Shop Girl. Then came Devereux's rewrite of that spoof, sometime after 1988.

Mike Barrett tried to write his own version from Devereux's version of the diary, but he gave up. Devereux's version is the existing diary that Robert Smith has.

[Iconoclast]

I think it is potentially helpful here for me to remind everyone - my dear readers and my undear ones - that there was only one Maybrick 'diary' and it came in the form of his scrapbook which was retrieved from under the floorboards in Battlecrease House on the morning of March 9, 1992, handed to the blowhard Mike Barrett, and the rest is his story ...

No, honestly, I don't do it for the praise, but thank you anyway.

Ike

[rjpalmer]

Just two as far as I can envisage, RJ. The Dam knock-off, written with George Grossmith (actor) and Michael Maybrick (organist) -- the two guys Dam worked with on his long-running play, The Shop Girl. Then came Devereux's rewrite of that spoof, sometime after 1988.

Mike Barrett tried to write his own version from Devereux's version of the diary, but he gave up. Devereux's version is the existing diary that Robert Smith has.

Okay, Scott. Thanks.

It sounds like your theory could benefit from a nice, sharp shave with Occam's Razor.

As for me, I'm sticking with Martin Fido's version of events, which I think is probably about 80-90% correct.

[Scott Nelson]

Okay, Scott. Thanks.

It sounds like your theory could benefit from a nice, sharp shave with Occam's Razor.

No doubt, RJ.

Sorry for the periodic hijacking of your thread, Ike.

[Iconoclast]

Sorry for the periodic hijacking of your thread, Ike.

Welcome, one and all, say I - this is not The Greatest Thread of All for no reason and we should all revel in its collective glories!

Your posts are always slightly left-field (given the available evidence) but we all have to make assumptions to explain the gaps in our knowledge, Scotty, so make-away - it all helps to keep the business alive until that momentous moment when the remarkable Society's Pillar 2025 is shared with the world in 2026 (allegedly)!

Cheers,

Ike

[caz]

Just two as far as I can envisage, RJ. The Dam knock-off, written with George Grossmith (actor) and Michael Maybrick (organist) -- the two guys Dam worked with on his long-running play, The Shop Girl. Then came Devereux's rewrite of that spoof, sometime after 1988.

Mike Barrett tried to write his own version from Devereux's version of the diary, but he gave up. Devereux's version is the existing diary that Robert Smith has.

Well I have to say, Scotty, that your theory is head and shoulders above the one based - more loosely than my great grannie's open-crutch drawers - on Mike Barrett's various claims to inside knowledge of the existing diary's creation process.

Love,

Caz
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[caz]

Revisiting the childishly implausible tale told to Robert by Eddie Lyons in June 1993, about finding a book in Dodd's house and chucking it away in a skip, my interpretation is that this was an inept attempt to explain away the recent rumours that he had found Jack the Ripper's diary in the house and it had ended up with Mike. This was a different book that Eddie found, which really was a worthless bit of old tat [no jokes at the back there!], only good for the local tip. Naturally, when Maybrick's diary hit the headlines, it was wrongly assumed to be the book Eddie had found and the rumours grew from there.

Now, I don't believe for a second that Eddie's skip story was true, but it did introduce the idea of a second book, allegedly found by Eddie in Dodd's house.

To me, this would not be a million miles away from Mike thinking it might be a good idea to try and obtain a second diary from the LVP if he was going to handle and place the one signed by Jack the Ripper, which Eddie had taken down his local boozer on the Monday. He didn't need to have a specific purpose in mind for this second book, but it might come in handy if there was any trouble over the first, before he could get his diary ducks in a row.

Love,

Caz
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[Scott Nelson]

Caroline, wasn't this second diary already suggested as a 'surrogate' Mike attempted to acquire? Could the second book Eddie possibly found be a diary with handwriting or was it blank?

If Eddie knew Tony, he may have been aware that Tony gave the Smith version to Mike many months prior to their meeting in the pub on March 9th. So the purpose of Mike's meeting with Eddie may have just been to acquire the surrogate book, which Eddie had just found....

No???

[Scott Nelson]

Oops! What was I on when I wrote the post above??? Nevermind.

[Lombro2]

It was a valiant effort nonetheless, Scott, to help Caz with an alternate theory. You’re offering an old document with a revision which I think you might need especially if you go with old hoax.

I’m not sure if Caz realizes that old might mean real for a Ripperologist. That’s forgivable since she’s not a Ripperologist by admission, anymore than she is a Maybrickian.

So her “stance” can’t be “an embarrassment to Ripperology”. You have to be IN Ripperology and have a stance first, like we do, before your stance can be an embarrassment to Ripperology!

[caz]

Thank you, Lombro.

I see the diary as a curiosity first and foremost, which had Maybrick as its primary focus, and was written at some as yet unestablished date prior to 9th March 1992, when Mike Barrett first saw its potential from the name Jack the Ripper on the last page of writing [before Maybrick was identified from internal clues] and immediately got in contact with a London literary agent to claim it as his own. Had the old book been signed instead: James Maybrick, Liverpool, May 1889, I doubt Mike would have become so animated about it on that first day.

The actual age of the contents is not as interesting to me as the state some 'ripperologists' get themselves into whenever it's argued that the proven liar Mike Barrett had no provable inside knowledge of the diary's creation, but was motivated to claim otherwise after his wife and daughter had abandoned him and gone over to 'the dark side' of Paul Feldman's influence.

Love,

Caz
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[Lombro2]

You’re welcome, Caz.

After 15 years here, you shouldn’t have to explain your position to people who wildly misrepresent it. I understood it exactly as you explained it.

As I understand the opposing view, Barrett got a stub book at the end of March and in 2 weeks he was able to find out what a stub book was and incorporate it into the final draft of his diary.

That is the position of people who, having been told for 30 years what a stub book is, still don’t know what it is!

[caz]

Just to clarify, Lombro, by stub-book, do you mean a scrap or guard book, with room between each page so that items such as business or calling cards, photos or greetings cards, could be pasted in or mounted without damaging the book by making it too bulky?

Mike Barrett's claim was that it had been an intact album with many pages of photos in January 1990, when he saw it in an auction sale and bought it for the purpose of turning it into JtR's diary. He said he had removed all the photos along with the pages that had housed them, which left his wife with enough unused pages to write on.

Mike's choice of book would have been a lucky one for any beginner, regardless of when it might have been acquired, because with any other type of book - an actual diary being the obvious example - an ESDA test could have been conducted on the pages of handwriting in order to detect a recent faker's work.

Love,

Caz
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