One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[Soothsayer]

Sorry Sooth, but the diary has no provenence. A series of chaning claims from Anne Graham with the late entry of her father does not constitute a provenence. It's simply not verifiable and considering the earlier tales it's not credible either.

You really disappoint me, John. To say that "the diary has no provenence" is a classic technique employed by The Cult to undermine anything which supports the journal. Other obvious examples would certainly include denying that Florrie's initials are on Kelly's wall (using utterly bombastic statements like "You have already been told that the letters aren't there" as though a 'telling' should quieten the children in class). Just to be absolutely clear, a lady and her father with no criminal record, against whom there are simply no grounds for slander, provide a provenance for the journal which goes all the way back to Battlecrease House in 1889, and you consider that that's not good enough? I am inclined to think, John, that you simply aren't trying hard enough. Why do you think these two decent, hardworking people were inexplicably lying all of a sudden? Are you trying to say that they forged this journal? A man in his late seventies who worked all his days at Dunlop, and a secretary with a child to raise and a husband to support? Remember, Anne Graham wasn't lying when Mike Barrett first brought the journal to our attention - for reasons inspired mainly by her deteriorating marriage to Mike, she simply said nothing. The only provenance provided by Mike (he had got it from Tony D), was true (as far as Anne's subsequent provenance). So Mike's provenance is true if Anne's provenance is true (we just didn't realise that Anne had created that first provenance). Anne had reason to say nothing of the first provenance, given that she was attempting to give Mike something of worth that was not underpinned by her. So why do you think you have grounds for slandering Anne and Billy Graham in clearly implying that they must have been lying?

I think you'll find most of the active people on this board are more than familiar with the Ripper case in general, the works published on the diary, the interviews, dissertations, arguments and speculations. I've been following the diary and related subjects for 15 years or so now and it hasn't gotten better with time. None of the fundamental objections to it's authenticity have been resolved and nothing significant has been uncovered that adds anything to support it. Maybe it will change someday, but for the moment we're just rehashing the same points over and over. It's fun sometimes, but not particularly productive.

Your final point is certainly true, it is indeed a slow re-hash of yesterday's tea at the end of Groundhog Day.

Your first point is way off the mark, however. Very very few participants on this Casebook appear to have read anything at all about the journal. Some freely admit to never having even seen a facsimile of it, nor having even read something as core or basic as Harrison I. I am currently re-reading Caz Linder-Skinner's summary on the journal, and it is evident that when you do read enough, you recognise the strength of the argument in favour of authenticity. Let me make a prediction (it will either apply to you and/or many people who post on or view this Casebook). You read something in the early to mid nineties, and felt fairly convinced (as many Casebookers will happily admit to) that the journal must be authentic, but since then have only read what is posted on the Casebook? In that event then of course you will lose confidence and your belief will easily evaporate and you will gradually believe all the Naysaying nonesense from The Cult of 'We-Don't-Want-The-Quest-Ended' and the blatant disregard for the evidence. Quite that it would push you into the very dangerous arms of slander, I frankly do find surprising. If you have evidence against Anne and Billy Graham, let's hear it, or else stop maligning them!

[Chris]

I am currently re-reading Caz Linder-Skinner's summary on the journal ...

"Caz Linder-Skinner"?

This really is all just a leg-pull, isn't it?

[Soothsayer]

"Caz Linder-Skinner"?

This really is all just a leg-pull, isn't it?

It was a lot quicker than the alternative. If Caz if offended, I'll happily apologise and type out the long version (although I imagine she'll be more grateful to me for having bought and read the book than she will be to the majority here who wouldn't recognise the thing if Caz herself gave them a copy). Do you never use shortcuts, Chris? And when you do, are you as a result therefore inherently insincere - pulling your listener's or your reader's legs? Do you never write 'etc' when you mean et cetera? Or 'TV' when you mean 'television'?

Posting on this Casebook having never read anything about the subject of it. Pontificating, proselytising, disparaging, discounting, and generally being thoroughly ill-informed - now that's a real leg-pull. May not be true of you, but certainly is of 90% of people who post here. 90% is a lot, and they create the cooling background radiation of mistrust and doubt which is no more than the nebulous shadow left after the journal's Big Bang of 1993. Mere shadows of what inspired them. Distorted silhouettes of something far greater. Dabbling, misunderstanding, destructive hearts.

(We get their type occasionally at our door, telling us to convert to blah blah blah because if we don't we'll miss out on eternal Paradise. I love their faces when I tell them that they're scaring me because the last thing I want is eternal Paradise - I can't imagine anything more hellish! They just haven't got an argument after that - nails 'em stone dead!)

[The Good Michael]

Posting on this Casebook having never read anything about the subject of it. Pontificating, proselytising, disparaging, discounting, and generally being thoroughly ill-informed - now that's a real leg-pull. May not be true of you, but certainly is of 90% of people who post here. [/I]

Show me how you came up with 90%. Some of us have read all the diary books including the absolutely retarded Annie Graham garbage. You pulled this 90% from where? Possibly from the same place you got the FM initials. A dark, smelly place, if I'm not mistaken.

Mike

[Soothsayer]

Show me how you came up with 90%. Some of us have read all the diary books including the absolutely retarded Annie Graham garbage. You pulled this 90% from where? Possibly from the same place you got the FM initials. A dark, smelly place, if I'm not mistaken.

Mike

The great and The Good - a friend after all!

"Some of us have read ...". The per centage, of course, is based on the number of people who post here who know nothing about the journal. You can argue over the actual number, but at best it truly is no better than some of us.

Thanks for the confirmation.

[Soothsayer]

The great and The Good - a friend after all!

"Some of us have read ...". The per centage, of course, is based on the number of people who post here who know nothing about the journal. You can argue over the actual number, but at best it truly is no better than some of us.

Thanks for the confirmation.

For the record, I meant 'some of us' not 'some of us'.

[Jane Welland]

Souper Blooper?

Ah, would it were so, Mr. Soothsayer! I rather suspect, however, that 'Waterloo' would be more fitting? Jane x

[John Hacker]

against whom there are simply no grounds for slander[/B], provide a provenance for the journal which goes all the way back to Battlecrease House in 1889, and you consider that that's not good enough? I am inclined to think, John, that you simply aren't trying hard enough. Why do you think these two decent, hardworking people were inexplicably lying all of a sudden?

Once more Sooth, they've provided a story, not a provenance. And one that stops far short of Battlecrease house. There is no documentary evidence to support the existence of the diary prior to it's public appearance. And even if we take them at their word there's no history there before it was allegedly given to Billy in 1950 or so. There's some unsupported speculation about how it might have ended up in "Granny"s posession, but that's it.

But as far as believing them...? No, I don't. The balance of the evidence, particularly the presence of chloracetamaide in the ink samples strongly suggests a more recent origin for the diary text.

And let's be realistic about this. Anne's story on it's face doesn't exactly paint the picture of a trustworthy person. Her current tale (unless there's been a new one in the past couple of years) has her passing it to her husband through a third party in a plot reminscent of an old Flintstones episode. (That Wilma sure knew how to manipulate her husband!)

So to make myself clear, I doubt their tale because the evidence is against them at this point. If something new pops up I'll gladly evaluate it, but as it stands now there is no reason to accept the story at face value. Any serious historian would do the same in this circumstance.

I think you're offbase on the idea that there's a lack of knowledge on these boards. Especially in the notion that one must read everything on the subject to be able to make an informed opinion. Very litle of substance was added after the initial release of Harrison's book. There was a lot of smoke, but not much in the way of significant evidence.

For my part, I had little doubt that the thing was fake from the begining. It's what I would have expected in a fake. Lot's of blood and melodrama, very little substance. When you add in a suspect that allegedly behaves in a way that is completely inconsistent with how real SKs behave, with blatent errors in the text and the diary was in trouble on it's own before Rendell and co got ahold of it. Everything you need to make an informed judgement was in Shirley's original work.

Of course, my library contains at least 3 different printings of Shirley's book, the "Anerican Connection", Paul Feldman's rather optomistically named "The Final Chapter", Linder/Morris/Skinner's "The Ripper Diary". Douglas's "The Cases that Haunt Us". Anne Graham's "The Last Victim", "The Poisened Life of Mrs. Maybrick". a transcript of Florrie's trial for murder published in 1912, Rendell's "Forging History", copies of all the scientific tests performed so far from Rendell and Co forward and some audio tapes of interviews with Mik Barrett, plus an assortment of articles written on the diary and Maybrick. Not to mention the bulk of my JtR works and background information on crime in general and victorian London.

I am always open to new information and if it could be proved that Maybrick wrote the thing I would happy to see it happen. It would solve one of the greatest mysteries of our time and would uncover a killer that was truly unique. But at the moment I feel no strong need to take him seriously. When you distill the arguments for the diary down to their core you get something remarkably like the diary itself. 10% substance and 90% fluff. I have no problem with anyone who disagrees and believe James is the man, but in my view the evidence is quite clear.

[Graham]

The provenance related by Paul Feldman in his book - i.e., that the Diary was with Billy Graham's family and that he first saw it in 1943 - is fascinating, but sadly unsupportable. If you read Feldman's book, you'll be aware that Billy Graham was elderly, ill, and probably in the early stages of Alzheimer's, and he was being interviewed by someone (Feldman) who had little or no experience of how to interview anyone. I wouldn't entirely rule it out that the Diary is older than 1992-ish - for example, it's never been established beyond doubt that the ink did/didn't contain chloroacetamide, and of course there is very definite evidence that the use of chloroacetamide in ink dates back into the latter half of the 19th century. And an American 'ink expert' (Rod McNeill) dated the ink to 1920 +/- a dozen years. And the Chief Chemist of Diamine Inks Ltd stated categorically that the ink was (a) old and (b) not Diamine.

But you're right, John - documentary evidence of the Diary's existence prior to when Barrett brought it to Doreen Montgomery simply doesn't exist.

Ever since I first read a transcript of the Diary, I felt it didn't quite ring true as the last testimony of a serial killer, never mind the real and imagined anachronisms, and there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Maybrick never wrote it.

However, I would have to say that there remains a slight - extremely slight - possibility that it is an old forgery written to assist in getting Florie out of clink by showing the world that he old man was an absolute rotter who deserved to die in agony, etc. Yet if this is the case, where is there any tangible link between Maybrick and the Whitechapel Murders, other than an odd statement by Florie that James divulged a terrible secret to her shortly before his death, and the fact that Maybrick did have some East End of London connections? Or was that secret the fact that he'd been having it off with Sarah Robertson for however many years? Paul Feldman would have had us believe that within the Maybrick family there was some kind of legend that James had done something rotten, but bumping off East End whores seems not to have been specifically mentioned by the modern Maybricks.

What I amconfident of is that Bongo Barrett never wrote the thing.

What I am less confident of is that Anne Barrett had nothing to do with it, either, although that is not to suggest that she manufactured it. Odd it is that she's kept completely quiet about it for at least the past 10 years.

And all of this, of course, leaves us with The Watch...

Cheers,

Graham

[John Hacker]

I wouldn't entirely rule it out that the Diary is older than 1992-ish - for example, it's never been established beyond doubt that the ink did/didn't contain chloroacetamide, and of course there is very definite evidence that the use of chloroacetamide in ink dates back into the latter half of the 19th century. And an American 'ink expert' (Rod McNeill) dated the ink to 1920 +/- a dozen years. And the Chief Chemist of Diamine Inks Ltd stated categorically that the ink was (a) old and (b) not Diamine.

I quite agree that we can't rule out an older origen for the diary. I am not aware of any evidence that suggests a 19th century use of chloracetamaide in ink. Can you provide some details of when that claim was made?

The existnce of chloracetamaide in the ink is open for debate at this point, but I find it extremely long odds that when tested the diary was found to contain a rather unusual compound that should not have been there which coincidentally matched what we'd expect given Barrett's statement.

Voller's assertion that is not Diamine is certainly problematic, however it's possible that Diamine was used as a component in whatever formulation eventually ended up on the diary pages.

MacNeil's ion migration test was never a particularly sound one unfortunately. It was a clever new idea but all it can provide (at best) is a "not earlier than this date" mark for when the ink hit the paper. Part of the problem there in my mind is that it doesn't take into account one of the more popular methods of artificially aging documents which is to bake them. Indeed, Mike Barrett claimed that had been done to the diary. When an object is heated the atoms move much faster than they would under ordinary conditions. This would definately have an impact on both appearance as well MacNeill's test. The amount it would affect it is unclear and hasn't been explored scientifically so the bet we can say about MacNeill's test is that it could be as old as 1921, but it could be much earlier.

Mike Barrett's statement is troublesome in a lot of ways and I wouldn't put a huge amount of weight on it. He's certainly not the most reliable of witnesses. But the verifiable provenance of the diary begins with him and Anne and he is definately in a position to know something about it. The possible presence of chloracetamaide bears this out.

[Christine]

As far as I know, there is no way of telling that an ink is old. You tell whether or not an ink's recipe is old. There are tests that can date organic compounds, but these are not of much use for ink, unless it's an odd case like writing in blood.

Since actual old ink powder is readily for sale on e-bay (and before that in antique stores) and old ink recipes are also easy to find, there's not much that can be said about the ink if it turns out not be a modern recipe.

Not that I necessarily give much credit to Barrett, but he did say that he used Diamine and diluted it to make it look aged. Diamine is an ink formulated to match old ink recipes, although it contains a preservative.

[cappuccina]

Wasn't the damned thing written on fairly modern scrapbook paper??

[John Hacker]

The "diary" itself is written in what appears to be a geniune victorian book. The paper is more consistent with a scrapbook than what would be typically used for a diary. Impressions on the inner cover make it appear that it once held photographs. The beginning pages were torn out and the text written after the removed pages.

So there is nothing inherently "modern" about the book itself, although it has been suggested that if someone wanted to create such a thing finding a geniune book that was used and removing the used pages would be a much simpler task than a geniune victorian diary that had never been used.

[Graham]

Hi John,

According to Anne Barrett, Mike did actually buy a genuine un-used Victorian diary by mail-order, but it was apparently (a) too small for use as a 'journal' and (b) the wrong year anyway (!)

If you really want to find out more about the various tests by various persons that the Diary was subjected to, I strongly suggest you read the book that our own dear Caz had a hand in writing (if you haven't read it already). I ain't going down that road myself....

Hi Christine,

Voller definitely stated categorically that ink isn't Diamine. He also said that in certain cases ink 'bronzes' with age. But as for me, I know zip about the subject of ink, so I'm shutting up right now.

As it goes, I deal with the 'new' Diamine company and they were kind enough to give me a bottle of one of their current inks. If only my handwriting was up to snuff I'd be tempted to have a shot at forging something myself - something like saucy letters written between Queen Victoria and Albert!

Cheers,

Graham

[John Hacker]

Caz's book is a good source on the tests, but to really understand what was done and the limitations and implications you need to really dig deep and do your own research.

The testing so far has led to a lot of bad assumptions about what has actually been demonstrated.

We've got unqualified people providing "expert" opnions .This is rampant in regards to the diary. A good example is asking Wild (a metallurgist) to "date" the scratches in Albert's watch.

We've got a general misunderstanding of what the tests actually show, such as the cloracetamaide count. Cloracetamaide is NOT a stable compund and breaks down over time. Without knowing the rate at which it decays the amount doesn't tell us anything but whether it's present or not. No other conclusions can safely be drawn.

There's junk science as well. MacNeill's ion migraton test and Wild's "encrichment" tests are worthless. There's no benchmarks established for the actual conditions so there's no solid conclusion that can be drawn.

Many of the tests were not made under opimal conditions as well due to poor sample control and/or monetary issues.

In general the state of science on the diary has been faiirly poor and the "experts" employed to examine it were anything but. (In my opinion when you're bringing in a graphologist to try to make your case you're in serious trouble) The only thing we can say for expert analysis of the diary is when a team was put together of actual experts in detecting forgery they called it a fake. But even in that case there was flaws in testing (MacNeill again) as well as obvious flaws (the style of the handwriting should not be late victorian) that were overlooked.

But it's still fun to sort through.