One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[caz]

Straight forward enough question, but I'm struggling to pin down the specifics.

Feldman gives a presentation to the C+D club, with Anne Graham, on Jan 7th 1995, two days after Mike "Bongo" Barratt signs his affidavit.

Mike's affidavit wasn't known about at this point, or certainly wasn't common knowledge.

Working on the assumption that the Graham family provenance story was about reclaiming control of the diary ( in a genuine belief that it came from Deveraux ) from Mike's attempt to destroy it, at what point did each of these stories start to surface? Who's first on record, Mike or Anne? When did each party start to formulate their plans? For Feldman to initiate the Graham provenance, he must have known Mike had an intention to claim that he himself hoaxed it, furthermore, Mike couldn't have given away the Battlecrease provenance, even in an act of drunken spite because any mention of it around 1994 would mean that Feldman's defence would have to nail any claims of the diary coming from Battlecrease, which as has been proved since, an investigator / detective would link Portus + Rhodes, Battlecrease, The Saddle and 9th March.

So I think what I'm asking is was Feldman aware of Mike's intention to claim the hoax in Jan '95 when he publicly presented Anne Graham to the C+D club, and if so, for how long had the possibility of Mike blowing the game been a serious concern?

Sorry, I realised I said "question" implying one but I didn't not know I wasn't going to not get to the point. Or not.
( There you go Ike, just for you!)

Hi Al,

Mike first claimed he had forged the diary in June 1994. It was front page news in the local press. There is nothing I have seen to suggest anyone knew he was intending to do so, until about the day before, when Shirley visited him and he was in a right old state, threatening to go to the papers. Anne had apparently accused him of sleeping with a new lady friend and he was beyond livid.

Feldman had given up on the Battlecrease electricians months before, but was 100% convinced that the diary was genuine. That never changed until his dying day. We interviewed him for Inside Story, and I found him to be a man possessed. He couldn't get his head round the fact that others - including myself - did not see things the same way he did. By the time of Mike's 'confession' story in June 1994, Feldman had already convinced himself that the diary must have been passed down somehow from the Maybricks to the Barretts, and even that Mike and Anne's identities had been changed! It was midsummer madness everywhere Shirley et al looked. Anne then came out with her 'in the family' story towards the end of July 1994, aiming to kill two birds with one stone. She claimed to know Mike hadn't forged the diary because she had given it to Tony Devereux herself, to give to Mike. This kept Tony 'Lazarus' Devereux alive, to protect herself because she had gone along with Mike's story of bringing the diary home in the Spring of 1991. She had even typed up his research notes, transferred from 'August 1991', which would have made her complicit with Mike, either in theft or forgery, if the scrapbook had not arrived in Goldie Street until the Spring of 1992, whether it was from Battlecrease House or Orsam's awesome auction. And keeping the 1991 Devereux story intact also kept Feldman's dreams intact. He never had any reason to link the diary, or the electricians, with 9th March 1992, because he always had Devereux, who died in August 1991, as a link in the chain. He gave up on any link back to Battlecrease because Eddie Lyons only joined Portus & Rhodes at the end of 1991, too late to have found the diary and passed it on to Devereux to pass on to Mike. The only electrical work done in the house by P&R before March 1992 was back in 1989, and Feldman naturally couldn't make any of the details correspond with what he had been told.

When you think about it, if the Battlecrease rumours only began under Feldman's influence, and came out of fresh air, you wouldn't expect there to have been any connection between the electrical work and Mike's diary waiting in the wings, to be revealed over time. You could put it down to an odd coincidence that Eddie and Mike both used the Saddle, and Eddie lived in the same road as Devereux, which is what we all did. But nobody then had any idea - or the right to suppose - that there was a double event on 9th March 1992, which would one day spring up and provide a connection from Battlecrease to Eddie, and Eddie to the Saddle, and the Saddle to Mike, and Mike to Doreen.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Really, Caz? This is your answer?

(No, it’s not just Feldman, Mr. Owl)

The same basic account is also given by Shirley Harrison...and…wait for it...by Skinner, Morris, and Linder! Refer to their book, especially page 256. Nowhere do they voice a single utterance of doubt that Barrett owned this book and was familiar with it. Indeed, they spend considerable effort placing his copy in the hands of Devereux’s daughter in the summer of 1991, when she was pregnant. They even inform us that Nancy Steele’s views have changed, and she now (at the time of the writing) accepts that Barrett got the diary from her father, through Anne Graham.

All of which is given to lend support to Anne Graham’s version of events.

Now put your thinking cap on. Recall: Barrett mentioned his ownership of this book months BEFORE anyone knew it was now in the possession of Devereux’s daughter, Janet. He mentioned it even before its existence was particularly relevant.

And we know that Barrett did not actually have access to his copy of this book between August 1991 and 1993, when he was discussing the diary with Harrison & Feldman, etc. He was going by memory. And yet, Mike was familiar enough with its contents to ACCURATELY state that it contained a reference to the name “Battlecrease.” Which it does. (Which is not true of every account of the Maybrick case).

Months later, Janet—without being prompted---produces the book, gives it to Scotland Yard, and confirms that her father had received the copy from Barrett sometime around June or July 1991.

By all appearances, Mike had been discussing the Diary with Devereux long before Dodd had any work done on his house. Q.E.D.

P.S. It is my opinion that Barrett mentioned Tales of Liverpool because he hadn't used it as a source for the Maybrick hoax. It would have been fairly worthless for his purposes, as it doesn't give much detail of Maybrick's day-to-day life. When Mike went into "confession" mode, he mentions Bernard Ryan's books as his main source, and a careful study of that book does indeed confirm that it contains everything needed to produce the 'Maybrick' material in the diary, with the exception of the 1889 Grand National time having been fast.

I agree entirely with your last opinion, RJ. Mike didn't use TALES OF LIVERPOOL as a source for the Maybrick hoax. He used it to identify its supposed author.

Our book came out in 2003. Seventeen years ago. Funnily enough, we know more now than we did then, but I don't think you'll find us stating categorically that Anne's story, or anyone else's, proved the origins of the diary. It was written to give as accurate an account as possible, with the information available at the time, of the chronology of the first ten years of the diary's public life, and who said what about it and when.

The irony is that you pick us up on what we wrote back in 2003, as if I have no right to an opinion or interpretation of my own today, based on more information and my current understanding of it. And yet you don't stick to your claim, that you have finished discussing the diary, from one day to the next!

Have a good weekend. See you on Monday.

Love,

Caz
X

[rjpalmer]

There is utterly nothing wrong with someone changing their opinion. If the facts warrant it, it is even commendable.

There is, however, something decidedly wrong with trying to alter or undermine previously accepted facts because they don't fit a new theory.

No one denied Barrett owned this book---and was familiar with it--until the Eddy Lyons provenance emerged.

The facts aren't altering the opinions; the opinions are altering the facts.

[Al Bundy's Eyes]

Hi Caz,
Thanks for the info, I was trying to figure out who acted first and how they came about concocting their stories so you've cleared that up a bit.

And like you say, Inside Story is dated now and new info comes about. I find it hard to keep track of who said what, to whom, when they said it, when they backtracked, when they contradicted themselves and when something else came to light that caused a re-think of all of the above. Luckily, I can always just ask, so thanks.

[caz]

Hi Caz,
Thanks for the info, I was trying to figure out who acted first and how they came about concocting their stories so you've cleared that up a bit.

And like you say, Inside Story is dated now and new info comes about. I find it hard to keep track of who said what, to whom, when they said it, when they backtracked, when they contradicted themselves and when something else came to light that caused a re-think of all of the above. Luckily, I can always just ask, so thanks.

Thank you, Al. Your understanding does you credit.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

There is utterly nothing wrong with someone changing their opinion. If the facts warrant it, it is even commendable.

There is, however, something decidedly wrong with trying to alter or undermine previously accepted facts because they don't fit a new theory.

No one denied Barrett owned this book---and was familiar with it--until the Eddy Lyons provenance emerged.

The facts aren't altering the opinions; the opinions are altering the facts.

There is also something decidedly wrong with you, RJ, trying to alter or undermine what I have written, to mislead people into thinking I have been altering or undermining any 'previously accepted facts'.

Read my latest TALES OF LIVERPOOL posts again and remind everyone which 'accepted facts' I have altered from pages 255-6 of Inside Story.

We didn't even mention Feldman's claim about Mike's name being in the book - probably because we couldn't establish that it was, or where he got the idea from. The book was handed over to Bonesy by Janet Devereux, so nobody else to my knowledge ever saw it, and Bonesy himself confirmed to Keith [presumably after our book came out] that there was nothing in the book to suggest it belonged to Mike. So Feldman got his wires crossed somehow, but he wasn't good at keeping a written record of what he was hearing and relied on his memory too much, so I suspect he was making an assumption based on what Tony told Janet about it belonging to Bongo. I have no other explanation, and I did say I accepted Janet's account.

I did nothing to alter any 'accepted facts'. We wrote:

'It had been Murder, Mayhem and Mystery, Barrett claimed, which first alerted him to the Maybrick connection in the Diary. Hoax theorists suggested the book had, instead, provided valuable material for a forgery. Again timing was important. Barrett had claimed he bought the book in WH Smith's just prior to commencing his research on the Diary, which by his own account is likely to have begun after Tony Devereux's death on 8 August 1991.'

I have no problem with any of this. My personal interpretation today takes on board the 9th March double event, as you would expect, so now I find it even more likely that Mike's research did indeed begin after Tony's death - not immediately afterwards, but a few months down the line. I suggest he did see the book in Smith's and may or may not have remembered having had a copy of his own - the one Tony's daughter now had. He only had to flick through each chapter, reading the first couple of lines, and on reaching chapter 11, he'd have seen at the start of the second line: 'Battlecrease House...'.

So perhaps you'd like to explain which 'accepted fact' you think I have altered or undermined here, which you would like to see restored for the record. I'm all ears, as Prince Charles would say.

I'm quite stunned that you now say you don't think Mike did use TALES OF LIVERPOOL as a source for the Maybrick hoax. If it played no part in the diary's creation, it can't be held up as evidence of anything at all, apart from the 'accepted fact' that this little book was very popular, with copies being bought, read, lent, borrowed and read again, all over Liverpool and beyond.

I have a nice surprise for you concerning Bernard Ryan's book. If you believe the Barretts used it for their hoax [despite Ryan himself not believing it - a recurring theme], Anne must have checked Mike's wording against a much earlier Maybrick source, to make sure he didn't make a fatal mistake when writing:

'Fuller believes there is very little the matter with me.' [Page 60 of the diary]

Ryan puts it like this on page 42 of the paperback, The Poisoned Life of Mrs Maybrick:

'At last he told his patient that he could find very little the matter with him...'

Now at first glance this looks like Mike f***ed up royally by copying Ryan's words, which could have been very different from Dr. Fuller's. Ryan is not quoting Fuller, so there is no way of telling that he is not paraphrasing throughout. He could have written, for instance: 'He told Jim there was nothing much wrong with him', which would have adhered to the facts without using a direct quote.

But the Barretts didn't screw up, because Fuller himself put it like this, in his evidence for the prosecution on Thursday 1st August 1889:

'I found there was nothing the matter with him. I told him there was very little the matter with him.' [Page 83 of The Trial of Mrs. Maybrick, edited by H.B. Irving.]

If Fuller's words had differed in any respect from Ryan's, I would have accepted that Ryan was a source for the Maybrick hoax.

Ditto if Ryan's words had differed in any respect from Fuller's, and the diary author had used Ryan's version verbatim.

As it is, the Barretts dodged a bullet. The diary and Ryan used a common source: Dr. Fuller himself, who was the only one to know precisely what he had told James.

See you on Monday.

Love,

Caz
X

[Iconoclast]

I have a nice surprise for you concerning Bernard Ryan's book. If you believe the Barretts used it for their hoax [despite Ryan himself not believing it - a recurring theme], Anne must have checked Mike's wording against a much earlier Maybrick source, to make sure he didn't make a fatal mistake when writing:
'Fuller believes there is very little the matter with me.' [Page 60 of the diary]
Ryan puts it like this on page 42 of the paperback, The Poisoned Life of Mrs Maybrick:
'At last he told his patient that he could find very little the matter with him...'
Now at first glance this looks like Mike f***ed up royally by copying Ryan's words, which could have been very different from Dr. Fuller's. Ryan is not quoting Fuller, so there is no way of telling that he is not paraphrasing throughout. He could have written, for instance: 'He told Jim there was nothing much wrong with him', which would have adhered to the facts without using a direct quote.
But the Barretts didn't screw up, because Fuller himself put it like this, in his evidence for the prosecution on Thursday 1st August 1889:
'I found there was nothing the matter with him. I told him there was very little the matter with him.' [Page 83 of The Trial of Mrs. Maybrick, edited by H.B. Irving.]
If Fuller's words had differed in any respect from Ryan's, I would have accepted that Ryan was a source for the Maybrick hoax.
Ditto if Ryan's words had differed in any respect from Fuller's, and the diary author had used Ryan's version verbatim.
As it is, the Barretts dodged a bullet. The diary and Ryan used a common source: Dr. Fuller himself, who was the only one to know precisely what he had told James.

I think that - on first reading - the profound significance of this might have escaped some of our more casual readers so allow me to iterate.

If Barrett wrote the scrapbook, he appeared to have quoted verbatim from Ryan when Ryan himself wrote'... at last he told his patient that he could find very little the matter with him...'. Now, if Barrett were hoaxing the scrapbook (and unless his research then also included the profoundly more obscure The Trial of Mrs. Maybrick, which I think we should exclude as a reasonable possibility) one would have expected him to have been more circumspect by avoiding a literal iteration of what Ryan had written. You would expect Barrett or - as Caz points out - Anne to have said:

Anne: "Hold on, we can't write that - it's clearly a direct quotation from Ryan."
Mike: "Why does that matter - it doesn't mean that Ryan himself wrote it correctly."
Anne: "That doesn't matter - the mere fact that we are quoting word-for-word from Ryan will open-up huge concerns. People will know that we copied straight out of Ryan's book. No, we should write it differently."
Mike: "Such as?"
Anne: "Well, how about we write 'Fuller said I was fine and that there was nothing to worry about'?
Mike: "Sounds good to me, let's do that."
Anne: "Good. We should be really careful never to quote directly from any of the seemingly-endless pile of books we might be accused of referring to."
Mike: "So, avoid quoting directly from loads of books we haven't even read and don't even know about, you mean?"
Anne: "Exactly."
Mike: "Good thinking, Anne."

But, strangely, they ploughed on and appeared to quote directly from Ryan regardless. Word for word. Just as well the whole exercise has the superficial appearance of a sloppy game dreamed-up one wet weekend by a much younger Lord Orsam giving thought to a career as a twisted but brilliant criminal genius - such rookie errors could simply be ascribed to the hoaxer's foolhardiness rather than a sign that something else might be at play here.

Ordinarily, one would have to conclude that Mike and Anne's (or a much younger Lord Orsam's) error gave us a glimpse into the hoaxing process; however, there is another way of looking at this: we know that Ryan was actually quoting directly from The Trial of Mrs. Maybrick because he quoted word-for-word what the good Dr Fuller himself claimed to have said to James Maybrick. Now, the writer of the scrapbook also knew word-for-word what Fuller said to Maybrick. Was it because a hoaxer gaffed and quoted directly from Ryan, or was it that he didn't gaff at all, and that he was simply quoting the exact words that he had heard Dr Fuller speak in the privacy of a consultation (and not the crowd of Florence's trial)?

Ike

[Iconoclast]

[FEW MINUTES LATER]

Mike: “Are you sure it doesn’t matter we haven’t a clue what James Maybrick’s handwriting looks like?
Anne: “Nobody is going to ask questions like that. What’s important is they don’t suspect either you, me, my father or Tony Devereux of writing it. Why would anyone ever associate them with the hoax anyway? It won’t be difficult to for me to disguise my handwriting over 63 pages with all the forging we've done over the years. Besides, even if there is some of his authenticated handwriting around, somebody is bound to point out that Maybrick was a junkie so you’d expect his handwriting to alter."
Mike: “Good thinking, Anne.”

[FEW MINUTES LATER]

Mike: “Won’t people want to know where I got the diary from? We’ve agreed to keep Tony and your dad’s name out of this. It was good of Tony to agree to help us with this fraud incidentally - especially as I hadn’t known him all that long. After a blemish-free career, the old boy has been surprisingly willing to engage in criminal activity like this".
Anne: “I’ll pretend to be disinterested and say I didn’t know anything about it. In fact, to be honest, our marriage isn’t all that good at the moment and we both know we’re only really staying together for the sake of our beloved daughter who clearly will be well provided for and looked-after by the local council children's' home where there's no possibility of psychological damage or even physical abuse if you and me get nicked for this. So that just leaves you to make up a story of who gave you the diary. Ask Tony next time you meet him at the Saddle and see if he has any ideas."
Mike: "Good thinking Anne.”

It all just seems so obvious now you think about it ...

[Al Bundy's Eyes]

Anyone fancy a flutter on what will happen first: 500 pages, or 10,000 posts?

Ike, are you planning the festivities already? If so, can I be your "plus one"? I'll sit between you and Lord O, to keep the peace. Just try not to let it clash with the Villa / Newcastle Champions League final which is inevitably around the corner.

[Iconoclast]

Anyone fancy a flutter on what will happen first: 500 pages, or 10,000 posts?

Ike, are you planning the festivities already? If so, can I be your "plus one"? I'll sit between you and Lord O, to keep the peace. Just try not to let it clash with the Villa / Newcastle Champions League final which is inevitably around the corner.

Why does it need to be either/or, Abe?

I'm off down the bookies this morning (on the 'phone, obviously) to put a thick wedge on 500 pages and 10,000 posts and 2,000,000 views all happening on the same day - March 9, 2022.

With the level of understanding of basic statistical theory demonstrated routinely on this Casebook, I suspect that many may follow so - please - it's a joke, it's an impossibility, please don't put your hard earned cash on this one, I'm not really going to do it. These things will not align on the same day, ever, ever, ever, unless there is a reason for their happening on the same day.

Unless Eddie Lyons has got himself a part-time job as Admin on this site, it ain't gonna happen, folks. Bank your cash or put it all on a Newcastle-Villa Champions League Final played on a brisk December evening in twenty-twenty-whenever - it's far more likely to happen.

Ike
When the Fun Stops, Stop

[caz]

[FEW MINUTES LATER]

Mike: “Are you sure it doesn’t matter we haven’t a clue what James Maybrick’s handwriting looks like?
Anne: “Nobody is going to ask questions like that. What’s important is they don’t suspect either you, me, my father or Tony Devereux of writing it. Why would anyone ever associate them with the hoax anyway? It won’t be difficult to for me to disguise my handwriting over 63 pages with all the forging we've done over the years. Besides, even if there is some of his authenticated handwriting around, somebody is bound to point out that Maybrick was a junkie so you’d expect his handwriting to alter."
Mike: “Good thinking, Anne.”

[FEW MINUTES LATER]

Mike: “Won’t people want to know where I got the diary from? We’ve agreed to keep Tony and your dad’s name out of this. It was good of Tony to agree to help us with this fraud incidentally - especially as I hadn’t known him all that long. After a blemish-free career, the old boy has been surprisingly willing to engage in criminal activity like this".
Anne: “I’ll pretend to be disinterested and say I didn’t know anything about it. In fact, to be honest, our marriage isn’t all that good at the moment and we both know we’re only really staying together for the sake of our beloved daughter who clearly will be well provided for and looked-after by the local council children's' home where there's no possibility of psychological damage or even physical abuse if you and me get nicked for this. So that just leaves you to make up a story of who gave you the diary. Ask Tony next time you meet him at the Saddle and see if he has any ideas."
Mike: "Good thinking Anne.”

It all just seems so obvious now you think about it ...

Move along, Ike. We don't need no psychology 'ere. It only complicates things. Nor do we need smart-arse fly-on-the-wall accounts of how Anne may have gone about helping her hubby to create a hoax that they might get away with for just long enough to keep him in his shiny new greenhouse and out of the pub for a few weeks.

Love,

Caz
X

[Iconoclast]

Move along, Ike. We don't need no psychology 'ere. It only complicates things. Nor do we need smart-arse fly-on-the-wall accounts of how Anne may have gone about helping her hubby to create a hoax that they might get away with for just long enough to keep him in his shiny new greenhouse and out of the pub for a few weeks.

Love,

Caz
X

Truth is, young Caz, I rather enjoy creating these little slice-of-Bongo-life scenarios because 1) they make me chuckle, 2) they make me chuckle some more, and 3) because they illustrate rather neatly (in my mind) how truly stupid the case against the Barretts is.

I think there will be more not less.

Naturally, I say this behind two feet of reinforced concrete. The switchblade is never far from my thoughts …

Ike

[caz]

Truth is, young Caz, I rather enjoy creating these little slice-of-Bongo-life scenarios because 1) they make me chuckle, 2) they make me chuckle some more, and 3) because they illustrate rather neatly (in my mind) how truly stupid the case against the Barretts is.

I think there will be more not less.

Naturally, I say this behind two feet of reinforced concrete. The switchblade is never far from my thoughts …

Ike

What I don't need, even younger Ike, is a change of drawers from laughing so much, when I read another slice-of-life episode of the Barretts of Goldie Street.

Mind you, real life can be even funnier - like Bongo telling an ever more frustrated Alan Gray that the stain on the inside cover of the scrapbook was not old glue, as Alec Voller supposed, or linseed oil, as others have suggested, but a consequence of Anne dropping a kidney on it.

I expect they were having cold kidney for supper, between the end of March 1992 and 13th April, and Bongo had his 'DAiry' propped up on the kitchen work surface at the time, so Anne could multi-task and cook their offal while writing another page in a cunningly disguised hand, that looked nothing like her own or Maybrick's.

Seriously though, I don't think the Barrett Bashers should be able to pick and choose which of Bongo's daft forgery claims to accept at face value, and which to reject as the tales of a compulsive fibber. If just one is a daft fib - like the kidney story - then everything else must be tossed in the bin if it similarly has no visible means of support.

The argument that there is, today, enough 'circumstantial evidence' to back up Bongo's forgery claims is simply not sustainable.

Gone is Bongo's reason for ordering a tiny 1891 diary. [This one spawned Orsam's awesome auction.]

Gone is Bongos's auction ticket. [See above, although to be fair, there was never any evidence he had one.]

Gone is Bongo's Sphere Volume 2. [Lost or destroyed at best, but certainly not in his possession when it mattered.]

Gone is Bongo's TALES OF LIVERPOOL. [He didn't use it to create the diary.]

Gone is Ryan's book, as the only source Bongo would have needed, regarding what 'Sir Jim' was told by Dr Fuller.

Who is going to believe Bongo now, when he lied compulsively and wasn't able to support a single, solitary forgery claim?

Love,

Caz
X

[Scott Nelson]

If just one is a daft fib - like the kidney story - then everything else must be tossed in the bin if it similarly has no visible means of support.

It came out of a skip, right Caroline?

[Observer]

It came out of a skip, right Caroline?

Yes, thrown out of an upstairs window apparently, perhaps the stain was the result of landing on a half eaten bacon butty smothered in tomato sauce discarded in said skip. Then, at some point someone realised it might be worth a few bob, and it was sighted wrapped in brown paper under the front seat of a car, and subsequently took to Liverpool University. Also, get this, Bard Barrett, not only sees the Diary on the day it was found, but low and behold without actually owning it, or fully realising what the hell it was, within a few short hours he phones a literary agent, asking if she's interested in the Diary. Put that sink down Chief.