One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[Lombro2]

I don't have any issues with your stance. It's not one I'm sold on myself but as it stands there's much that hasn't been released and until such time as the full interviews are made available (and the Barrett/ Gray interview, the word processor typescript)….

Hi Al,

I have no problems with your stance either. It reminds me of my previous stance where I was waiting and looking for more data. In this case, it was genealogical data on Anne Graham related to her Family Provenance claim.

Asking for more data, when there was plenty already, should have been a signal to me that I was barking up the wrong family tree, and was working with the wrong Provenance theory.

Since you mentioned the Provenance, I hope you understand how the Lack of Provenance is as much a problem for you as it is for me, if not more so.

[Lombro2]

Here are some links for anyone who is confused about guard books. One is by Ken Burnett who was born in 1930, so going on a hundred, and the other is from a site selling Guard Books from Collins, the diary and stationery company going on 200.

https://sofii.org/article/bring-back-the-indispensable-guard-book

https://www.okschoolandoffice.com.au/Guard-Books-No.-903-In-Stock-Collins-300-page-Australia-Sydney-Brisbane-Melbourne

Guard books are for things like archival material and company advertisements along with information and commentary. It’s not a family photo album or scrap book. It’s a thing.

[Lombro2]

In the roughly thirty-year history of the Diary fiasco, I've only encountered one person who had the strange quirk of referring to the hoax as a 'stub book.'

Oops! I just realized I’ve been making a faux-pas all these years. Stub in stub books has nothing to do with a part of a check or receipt torn off for record keeping. A stub is a guard. I knew that but thought, or convinced myself, it had a double meaning. I guess I stubbed myself on the book too, trying too hard.

Thems the vagaries

[erobitha]

Hi Ero,
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I can't say who benefits, if anyone does. What I can say is Keith Skinner has said that certain material is witheld due to commercial interest, which he was pretty clear about in my conversations with him, which I'm fine with myself. I mean, if there's no conflict of information, then we'll get the electricians interviews and the typescript and the Barrett Gray tapes right? But we won't, because of commercial rights etc. Or am I wrong Ero? We won't get them, that's as sure as day follows night. Why? No one benefits from the restrictions, but there they are. Send them out mate, you have access to them.

I personally do not believe Keith has ever deliberately held back information for “commercial” reasons. There is often a good reason as to why he doesn’t want certain people accessing certain information. For example, I have never felt he has kept anything back from me.

You might argue but I am a Maybrickian so somehow it’s okay, That’s not true. If I was provided information that I believed seriously undermines my conviction, I would actually take it up privately with him and have those discussions. It would only be after those discussions would I feel compelled to change my viewpoint publicly, if the evidence was clearly compelling enough to do so. I can change my mind based on evidence. I would not instantly spin it publicly to a convoluted argument that suited my position without any opportunity for an open minded discussion. I can hear certain individuals voice already shouting things like “little red diary” but that is not compelling enough evidence of anything.

So here we have an impasse.

Certain individuals have no desire for an open minded discussion. They are pushing a modern hoax theory by the Barretts and nothing else shall pass. There is no actual evidence the Barretts hoaxed it. There never has been. These individuals also have never acknowledged the inconsistencies in their own arguments. To me, this is the problem. Insinuating commercial gain is somehow at play I feel is disrespectful to Keith in my opinion.

I believe there is an old Japanese proverb of “If all you have is a hammer then every problem looks like a nail”.

In my personal view, if Keith is cautious about sharing information with certain individuals, it probably is more to do with what those individuals than perhaps any “commercial” interests.

At the end of the day it is Keith’s material and he should have a say over he decides to share what with who and entirely for his own reasons. I just get a little irked by the insinuations that somehow Keith is deliberately somehow misleading people for commercial gain.

It simply is not true.

[Al Bundy's Eyes]

I personally do not believe Keith has ever deliberately held back information for “commercial� reasons. There is often a good reason as to why he doesn’t want certain people accessing certain information. For example, I have never felt he has kept anything back from me.

You might argue but I am a Maybrickian so somehow it’s okay, That’s not true. If I was provided information that I believed seriously undermines my conviction, I would actually take it up privately with him and have those discussions. It would only be after those discussions would I feel compelled to change my viewpoint publicly, if the evidence was clearly compelling enough to do so. I can change my mind based on evidence. I would not instantly spin it publicly to a convoluted argument that suited my position without any opportunity for an open minded discussion. I can hear certain individuals voice already shouting things like “little red diary� but that is not compelling enough evidence of anything.

So here we have an impasse.

Certain individuals have no desire for an open minded discussion. They are pushing a modern hoax theory by the Barretts and nothing else shall pass. There is no actual evidence the Barretts hoaxed it. There never has been. These individuals also have never acknowledged the inconsistencies in their own arguments. To me, this is the problem. Insinuating commercial gain is somehow at play I feel is disrespectful to Keith in my opinion.

I believe there is an old Japanese proverb of “If all you have is a hammer then every problem looks like a nail�.

In my personal view, if Keith is cautious about sharing information with certain individuals, it probably is more to do with what those individuals than perhaps any “commercial� interests.

At the end of the day it is Keith’s material and he should have a say over he decides to share what with who and entirely for his own reasons. I just get a little irked by the insinuations that somehow Keith is deliberately somehow misleading people for commercial gain.

It simply is not true.

Hi Ero,

I'm not insinuating that Keith is withholding anything for his own commercial gain, I'm stating that he doesn't have the right or permission to release it. The commercial interests or 'rights' are in the hands of others.
The questioned documents are being shared though, that's undeniable, but shared exclusively with like minded individuals, and that I can't get on board with. That myself or others can't access material because we would use it "to push a Barrett hoax" is nonsense. If your case is good it should resist any pushing, if the pushing is sheer bloody mindedness you should be able to rise above it. I can't take part in a debate in which I'm wearing a blindfold and relying on whatever snippets are thrown to me.
Please don't accuse me of being disrespectful to Keith, as you are well aware my discourse with him was entirely honest and respectful. The situation is what it is. He didn't create it, and he might not have the ability to resolve it, but it's there none the less. For the time being, I'm happy to duck out of the diary thread.

[Lombro2]

Hi ero,

Let me guess! There’s no mention of guard books on the tapes.

That by itself would or should settle it.

Anyway, all one has to do is ask if what you need to be there IS there.

[Lombro2]

Let me explain what I mean about Lack of Provenance! It’s not the problem about where the written document came from. It’s the problem of where the guard book itself came from or where it’s been before March 1992.

A simple guard book might have been forgotten somewhere. But one used as a photo album, then sold or given and put up for auction and auctioned off?

The same would go for the gold watch—where has it been? RP has intuitively and logically put the watch in a sock drawer where it was forgotten.

I also did something similar, putting the Diary in a chest in the Graham household where it was left for years. We consciously or unconsciously knew we had to put the watch and the diary respectively in a hidey-hole.

I know I was wrong about the Diary’s Provenance or Lack thereof. But I had a reasonable explanation for the latter. Are we understanding each other now?

[Iconoclast]

I think I must be getting too old for this game - I'm clearly not keeping-up with how important it is that we call James Maybrick's scrapbook a stub book, guard book, photograph album, notebook, diary, journal, et cetera.

And then the whole thing about 'provenance'! Between 1889 and 1943 (or so), there are no first-hand claims of provenance - and even for this we have to trust that Billy Graham was not simply contriving one for the benefit of backing-up his daughter's potentially-not-kosher claim that the scrapbook was in his possession from that time; and - if we do that - we may as well believe that it was previously in the possession of old 'Ganny' Formby who had possibly acted as a fence for the nimble-fingered and highly viperous Alice Yapp. That's everyone's right if you want to seize it: it's a provenance of sorts.

Then again, we can just look at the evidence and note the staggering coincidence that Michael Barrett's sort-of drinking buddy down The Saddle was working on the floorboards of James Maybrick's home on the morning that he (Michael) suddenly rang a literary agent with the claim that he thought he might have the diary of Jack the Ripper.

Now, that - to me - is a provenance by huge implication (if not confirmation) but I know that others disagree, seeing coincidence all-too quickly in the the most staggeringly-implausible combination of otherwise obviously linked events in the entire history of human existence. If I'm right, then the timing (pardon the pun) of the Maybrick watch's appearance at the jewellers Stewarts dovetails beautifully with the reasonable suspicion that the scrapbook and the watch had lain together somehow under Maybrick's floorboards for 103 years.

No other explanation can adequately account for these events bar the rather convoluted musings of those who will believe absolutely anything (however implausible) other than that the mystery of Jack the Ripper's identity has long since been answered.

Ike

[caz]

I suspect that those who push the Barrett hoax most forcefully are relying on the fact that there is a lot more information not yet available to them, but are living more in hope than expectation that the smoking gun they need to be proven right is in there somewhere, and has been missed, misunderstood or misinterpreted by well-meaning eyes and ears, or wilfully ignored or held back by anyone protecting their own vested interests.

The problem is that anyone in the latter category would in turn have been relying on everyone else with access to the same damning material to keep their own silence, or not to have appreciated its true significance. And there is not even a consensus of opinion among those of us who have had, at one time or another, more 'privileged' access to material than most, and nobody I know with such access would put a vested interest above exposing a smoking gun, whatever its nature. In fact I'd go further than that and say that any smoking gun in 2023 would provide more of a commercial opportunity for anyone in that line than where we are now, in limbo. Chris Jones thought he had one, yet the debate continues.

In short, it smacks of conspiracy thinking to suppose that a smoking gun has been lurking there without a collective will or ability to bring it into the open.

One thing that has been forgotten here is that nobody who has ever been privy to the Gray/Barrett tapes - from Gray himself to Melvin Harris, Roger Palmer, Keith Skinner and others - has claimed to find anything definitive that would have ended the debate many years ago. And that's despite some strong conflicting beliefs and scepticism.

Personally, I'm looking forward to a time when everything is made available, and I hope I'll still be around by then! But I've seen how arguments can be made to explain away the most awkward evidence [such as that contained in a couple of police statements, and the witness testimony of Tim Martin-Wright, Alan and Margaret Davies among others] or to excuse the very lack of it [such as nobody recalling a guard book used as a WWI photo album being put up for auction in the early 1990s], so I doubt there would be any major breakthrough either way.

Love,

Caz
X

[Lombro2]

It looks like Roger and Al need a little help finding pearls in a basket of cherries:

Okay, Keith, is there a part in the tapes where Barrett talks about how he was inspired by Scrooge and Cratchitt for the part about Maybrick and Lowry and the guard book?

Come on Keith! We know it’s in there! Fess up! Don’t worry! I promise! No more cherry pies for Caz! Only pearl necklaces!

[Iconoclast]

Okay, Keith, is there a part in the tapes where Barrett talks about how he was inspired by Scrooge and Cratchitt for the part about Maybrick and Lowry and the guard book?

It's slice-of-Victorian-office-life moments like this in the scrapbook which I implore my dear readers to stop and reflect upon. These are not the scribblings of a cunning hoaxer who made no money, and certainly not one inside 12 Goldie Street, Liverpool, who made a shedload and deposited it up various walls on his way home from the pub far too often and for far too long. They are the recollections of James Maybrick himself. They are the thoughts of Jack the Ripper speaking to us from way beyond the grave (how far Hell is away, I'm not sure, and I'm not planning on checking any day soon) answering for us the question that has been asked a million times around the world. A simple Liverpool businessman who took an old company scrapbook one evening and started to write about his wife's perceived infidelity, a cuckold's tale which morphed into a murderer's. The introduction of Lowry into the story and the clear reference to the scrapbook is an exquisite detail of a moment in 1888 captured like a photograph for all to marvel over.

Of course, countless posters will think it was just part of that 13-year old's bored musings one wet weekend in 1991 or 1992 and they are - of course - entitled to their view; but the contextual evidence which underpins this narrative makes it old - not new - and makes it real - not false - and makes it the answer to that question which has sat on the lips of everyone who has ever been interested in the unpleasantness within the human psyche which emerges from the pages of every book on true crime.

Ike
Saying It Like It Is

[erobitha]

Lowry was a witness in the trial of Florence Maybrick, and there were a couple of books on the trial that detail that fact. It’s not beyond the realms of possibility that a potential hoaxer created a bit of friction fiction from this.

However, as someone who dabbles in crime friction himself, I find this detail, like the Mrs Hammersmith references, rather specific to be just random musings. Often breadcrumbs like these are written to guide the reader subconsciously to a destination of discovery.

So why on the face of it use a real person like Lowry and take such care in using that minute detail, then to only come up with the perceived randomness of an apparently non-existent Mrs Hammersmith? Why be so thorough and then so careless?

Would the writer not just use a real person there as well? It’s odd writing behaviour.

[Iconoclast]

Lowry was a witness in the trial of Florence Maybrick, and there were a couple of books on the trial that detail that fact. It’s not beyond the realms of possibility that a potential hoaxer created a bit of friction fiction from this.
However, as someone who dabbles in crime friction himself, I find this detail, like the Mrs Hammersmith references, rather specific to be just random musings. Often breadcrumbs like these are written to guide the reader subconsciously to a destination of discovery.
So why on the face of it use a real person like Lowry and take such care in using that minute detail, then to only come up with the perceived randomness of an apparently non-existent Mrs Hammersmith? Why be so thorough and then so careless?
Would the writer not just use a real person there as well? It’s odd writing behaviour.

Well, you're the writer ero b, so who am I to argue (I know, I know, obviously, there's my brilliant Society's Pillar but most of that is more reporting than writing) and argue I will not be doing as I clearly agree. Absolutely, some cunning Dick Dastardly could have spirited the real Thomas Lowry into the tale (apparently it's all in Ryan so that's no challenge), but the author totally understood Lowry's place in Maybrick's world which is a sweeter trick by half again; and then he (the mooted hoaxer) - as you say - chucks in some old trout strolling 'round 'the drive' and seems for all the world to have made her up! It's quite the provocative trick, isn't it? Reel us in with a real 'un, then reel us out again with an unreal 'un. You want to say, "Make your mind up, FFS, you cunning old fox, you!".

Ike

[caz]

How many of us have nicknames for people we know, for reasons that might make little sense to anyone else who knows that person, and are therefore not voiced outside the home, if at all?

Mister Brown's latest nickname for me is Mrs Snips - which may or may not be a real surname, and I would challenge anyone to guess where it came from. [Go on, you know you want to - the switchblade is having a day off.]

While a creative imagination might decide to introduce a real or invented person by a nickname in someone's private diary, because it's compatible with what real people might do, some would argue that Mrs Hammersmith is merely the product of a mischievous mind giving modern researchers a puzzle that will prove impossible to solve. But I would then have to ask if Mike or Anne Barrett would have done any research of their own back in the dark ages of the early 1990s, into people with the surname Hammersmith a century earlier, to see what might pop up, or whether they could have settled on a near 'pointless' answer [thank you, Alexander Armstrong] by sheer chance.

'Sir Jim' is another minor mystery, if the Barretts had no expectation that the nobody who was James Maybrick, until his death gave him 'famous victim' status, might have been referred to as "Sir James" in his home environment.

One thing that strikes me is that the only reason to call for more material to be made available would be if what is already in the public domain has not quite hit the bullseye [thank you, Jim Bowen] of a Barrett hoax. It does feel like an admission of sorts that even Mike's advert, which yielded his tiny 1891 'opposite of a guard book' diary, and has been known about for many years, leaves some lingering doubt in the mind of the prosecution. If this counted as proof positive that Mike could only have been intending to create the diary he took to London in April 1992, what could the Gray/Barrett conversations bring to the party - apart from their comedy value to put icing on the cake and a cherry on top? If the prosecution is already claiming to have the equivalent of DNA putting their prime suspect at the crime scene, handling his weapons, what more do they require to hear from him?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Is Mike's advert as good as it gets?

Discuss.

Nothing I have personally seen or heard in Keith Skinner's vast 'Barrett archive' gives me any reason to suppose there will ever be anything better in terms of evidence for the prosecution, and plenty to suggest that the little red diary is a little red herring, which Mike, cat-like, pounced on to make the rest of his affidavit less whiffy.

Love,

Caz
X