One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[Jonathan H]

Obviously I was not there and can contribute nothing at first hand.

I have read a few articles and yet that is enough to argue that a previous poster's timeline is hopelessly flawed and unconvincing.

For example it relies on the veracity of the Barretts about who gave what to whom, exactly what I am scolded for doing.

Don't you see that? You're relying on their testimony.

Of course the 'Diary' has no credible provenance, and has nothing to do with the original Jack the Ripper.

Please read the three stages of hoax resistance, as you are at 3 pal.

[Gladiator]

Please read the three stages of hoax resistance, as you are at 3 pal.

Happily, pal.

If you would read even one page of any of the four published diary books.

Gladiator

[Gladiator]

I have read a few articles and yet that is enough to argue that a previous poster's timeline is hopelessly flawed and unconvincing.

Flawed and unconvincing? Do you see conspiracy in everything?

There can be little debate that the diary found its way to Mike Barrett, and that his wife later added more to the provenance (without changing Mike's story in the slightest detail), and that years later Mike 'confessed'. That's a known and unquestionable timeline, and was designed to clarify your confused claims which seemed to imply that the order was Mike produces book, Mike confesses, Anne changes provenance story. That would have poisoned many a well if people didn't know better.

Obviously, you genuinely believed that to be true but then I would expect that because you clearly have effectively no idea what you're talking about because - and I quote - "I have read a few articles".

Once again you look utterly foolish.

Gladiator

[caz]

No you are not invisible. I did read it but apparently retained nothing. Blaming sickness and fatigue. If you would be so kind.

He pretended he wrote the diary because the alternative was worse? What alternative? Why could he not tell the truth? I have no idea about this. Thank you ahead of time for the crash course.

Hi Diggy,

Not a problem.

Yes, at the time of Mike's first confession, his life had been all but destroyed by the diary and Feldy's relentless (but naturally hopeless) mission to prove it genuine. So the alternative to volunteering a false confession (I say 'volunteering' because nobody had thus far suggested he had forged it, as far as I am aware, or was putting the least pressure on him to say so), which effectively got the damned thing and Feldy off his back in one fell swoop, must have seemed a good deal worse than risking prosecution and losing future book royalties.

What I know for sure is that he has not yet been willing or able to tell "the God's honest truth" (one of his famous expressions, bless him, no doubt handwritten along the lines of: THe goDs HoNisT TrooF) about when or how he really came by the diary. He has consistently rejected the perfect provenance (Battlecrease) which could have been handed to him on a plate, and though he has long since given up on his phoney forgery claims he has reverted to the equally silly and unbelievable "got it from a dead pal" story.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

It is a fact that I say the 'diary' is a fake.

Hi Stewart,

Of course it's a fact that you say this. It's a fact that you have been saying it from day one.

Good to see you on the boards again.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

The main issue for me is that the diary presents a very 1980's view of the killings and that the information about the murders strangely parallels available sources from a few years before the diary's release. The author may have well had a super-encyclopedic knowledge of James Maybrick, but his knowledge of the Whitechapel murders (not to mention how actual human beings write about things) seems elementary.

Now that is an interesting observation, Damaso. My own theory is that the diary is a much older hoax, composed by someone who used a friend - the unsuspecting "five victims" Macnaghten springs to mind - as an inside ripper source. Macnaghten could have supplied details from the Bond report and the full Eddowes list, not published until the late 80s, and also the MJK photos. What surfaced in the 80s was only new information to the great unwashed, it had always been there on a need to know basis.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

No, it's not a 'deep-rooted' need to not believe.

It's right there on the surface.

Unlike the Swanson Marginalia or the Littlechild Letter or the 'Aberconway' version, the 'Diary' does not have a reliable provenance.

Hi Jonathan,

Just because you haven't seen the evidence for it yet, because it's not right there on the surface for you, tied up in a neat pink ribbon, does not mean there isn't a reliable provenance just itching to jump up and say "boo".

One last thing. I have seen it written several times that Mike Barrett did not have the smarts to make the 'Diary'.

Really? How so? Because he didn't go to Oxford, or forgery school?

This strikes me as cliche snobbery.

There are arguably three stages as to how the hoodwinked react to, and ferociously resist, the unraveling of a hoax:

1) Hey, they would not be morally capable of doing such a thing as hustling a fake! I've met them! Have you met them? They've looked me in the eye, and assured me it's real and could not be lying!

This is usually followed by stage 2) ok, they're liars but they did not have the brains and/or skills to actually make the damn thing!

Followed by 3) those low-lives, forget them, they are nothing because provenance lies elsewhere and we will divulge the big story, soon, but not just yet ...

Wow, you really are out of your depth here.

I'm afraid you are just one more victim of Mike Barrett's battle with the truth if you need to believe he was telling it when confessing to forgery. Yet you appear to acknowledge that he has no credibility. That doesn't add up.

Blessed are they who don't need to believe a single word Mike has ever said about the diary.

Love,

Caz
X

[Bridewell]

Just because you haven't seen the evidence for it yet, because it's not right there on the surface for you, tied up in a neat pink ribbon, does not mean there isn't a reliable provenance just itching to jump up and say "boo".

Hi Caz,

It's unusual for an artefact to acquire provenance later in the piece though, isn't it? They either have it or they don't, surely?

[Graham]

The thing about the whole 'Diary' experience is that right from the start it was polarised. On the one hand, Paul Feldman who was totally 100% convinced that the 'Diary' was the handiwork of Jack the Ripper, and on the other Melvin Harris who was convinced it was a modern fake by a 'nest of forgers' whose identity he claimed to know, but never revealed. That there was, and is, a possible middle road seems not to have occurred to many people who take an interest in this thing.

Science has so far not been able to prove that the physical 'Diary' is a modern fake. Unlike the Hitler Diaries, which were easily exposed when it was shown that the paper on which they were written contained an additive not used at a time when Adolf could have written the thing (or was it the ink? One or the other). The Ripper 'Diary' has so far not yielded to scientific scrutiny to prove its supposed modern origin. That is a fact - full stop. Given this, it is therefore very possible that the 'Diary', even though it might be a fake and not actually the handiwork of Jack The Ripper, is an old production, not something that was cobbled together in the early 1990's. If this is the case, then as I've said before it remains to demonstrate [I]why[I] it was produced, for [I]what[I] purpose, and by [I]whom[I]. Can this still, at this distance, be acheived? Can Keith Skinner be persuaded to reveal his 'proof' that the 'Diary' came out of Battlecrease? The whole 'Diary' scene is much more complex than simply an argument about whether Mike Barrett wrote it, or was capable of writing it; or that it had been in his wife's family for many years; or that a bunch of Scousers knocked it up over a few drunken nights.

It is, of course, very possible, given that its possible modern origine has yet to be proven, that the 'Diary' was, as has been suggested, produced years ago for nothing more than a giggle...and frankly, I don't think that this scenario is too far from the truth.

G

[Gladiator]

It is, of course, very possible, given that its possible modern origina has yet to be proven, that the 'Diary' was, as has been suggested, produced years ago for nothing more than a giggle...and frankly, I don't think that this scenario is too far from the truth.
G

Hi Graham,

Your comments barring the above were very fair and balanced - somethings [sic] we see so little of on the Casebook.

I can't subscribe to your final thought, though (above) as there is too much effort in the much lamented pages for it to have been too casual a concoction. Real deal or very clever piece of skullduggery, I'd say.

Gladiator

[Scott Nelson]

Or, the thing is old. It was found in modern times and a forger added the bits of information supposedly only rediscovered in the latter part of the last century. The way the entries in those sections look may provide clues.

[Cogidubnus]

Don't know about that Scott...only what I've read in the various books, but most especially Linder, Morris and Skinner...from which reading I conclude it's a forgery, and quite possibly an old one (I don't think either of the possible discoverers are capable, and the fact that the scientific analyses are so ambivalent...just two factors)...

Out of pure interest alone, I'd like to encounter the real thing...but don't suppose it'd ever make me any the wiser

All the best

Dave

[Stephen Thomas]

Some people want to believe and, furthermore, they have a need to believe. They invest years in stuff that is not real

Yes indeed. Some people even want to believe that an upper middle class English gent would wander around the very worst part of London disembowelling prostitutes.

[Graham]

Another odd thing about the 'Diary' is that while it mentions Battlecrease House and (by name) members of the Maybrick family and their friends and their doings, the actual name 'Maybrick' is never mentioned. If, as he would have us believe, Mike Barratt cracked it in next to no time, why wouldn't the writer of the 'Diary' add his name to the production? To my mind, there is something almost quintessentially Victorian, Gilbertian almost, in this. That is: Here's a puzzle for you, here is 99% of what you need to know in order to come up with the answer, but the last remaining 1% is down to you, and it's a hard 1%.

Had the 'Diary' been modern, then I'd have expected its writer to have selected a 'suspect' already known to Ripperology. Druitt, for example. But no - the writer chose as his 'suspect' a real-life person of some notoriety in the LVP, but whose name had never, ever, been linked with the Whitechapel murders. Odd. Even odder is the fact that the historical James Maybrick was the supposed victim, not the perpetrator, of murder.

There's much more to this than meets the eye....

G

[Jonathan H]

To Stephen Thomas

I was expecting somebody to write that, which is fair enough.

Though, no offence, but you've buggered it up a little.

It's that I love Mac, not the Druitt solution, and so--assuming I am so hopelessly needing to believe--if this chief had said it was 'Kosminski' then it's the Polish lunatic, and so on down the list.

Caz, you are out of your depth on all this because you do not understand provenance and are entrenched at stage 3.

Oh well, it's not a crime to be out of your depth (unlike passing off a fraudulent document for profit as those who fool you, to this day, tried to do).

To Graham

No Druitt would not work for the modern hoaxers--give them some credit.

It had to be somebody new to create the big bang scoop. To maximize profit, the reason for the document's existence.

That the hoaxers fell out, that there were ugly recriminations and reversals, tales changed to stay a step ahead of the law, that early advocates of the hoax-as-real have hung on for dear life that they were not misled by working class get-rich-quick schemers, well, so what else is new under the Sun?

I want to ask a question of the 'Diary' advocates: yes or no.

Is it just a coincidence--and, yes, coincidences do happen--that the Maybrick 'Diary' emerged about a decade after the exposure of the Hitler 'Diaries' hoax, an hoax that acts as a [potential] blueprint of what not to do forensically speaking?