One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[StevenOwl]

I'm on nobody's 'side', Abby. I'm on the side of letting the evidence do the talking, and I am further today from believing the accumulated evidence indicates a Barrett hoax than I have ever been. I still have no idea who authored the diary, and all those on the 'side' of the Barrett hoax believers have done nothing to enlighten me.

I don't wear a football scarf and I don't wave a flag. Maybe you mistook me for someone who does both.

Love,

Caz
X

What, the Bongo believers still haven't managed to convince you that Barrett attended an auction in March 1992 (despite no actual evidence he did) and purchased the scrapbook there (despite no evidence that it was ever being sold there)?!?! I think you need to open your mind a bit more Caz...

[caz]

If Keith wants to repeat Anne Graham's accounts of when these documents were created, who am I to complain?

Here's some more of her work:




Seven months before Dodd's electrical work.

By all means, let's accept Anne's account. Count me in.

R P

If you believe that repeating Anne's accounts equates to accepting Anne's accounts, you have just counted yourself in - to the tune of one.

Priceless.

[caz]

What, the Bongo believers still haven't managed to convince you that Barrett attended an auction in March 1992 (despite no actual evidence he did) and purchased the scrapbook there (despite no evidence that it was ever being sold there)?!?! I think you need to open your mind a bit more Caz...

Yes, Steven, but not so wide open that my brains fall out. I can safely leave that to the Awesome auction faithful.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

I think I'm going mad.

The comments circled in red referred to Mike, did they not (not to Anne, who had not claimed to have done any research prior to or indeed after March 9, 1992)?

Ike

You're not going mad, Ike. I can read RJ like a book and this was a typical distraction tactic, when his swipe at Keith backfired. He wasted space by posting something that has been thrashed out a hundred times and was, ironically, provided by Keith, who can't do right for doing wrong. It was a despicable way to thank anyone for the information supplied, and not relevant to the word processor/typescript discussion we were having.

When Anne and Mike made conflicting claims, one or both must not have been true. Independent evidence can sometimes - but not always - help to refute or confirm what has been said at various times, but the Barretts were never the best indicators of what was true and what wasn't.

The one claim they never deviated from was that the diary - regardless of who may have written it - was in Goldie Street, in Mike's possession, before Tony Devereux died. Anne typed up Mike's research notes, but they were Mike's words. If he was transferring his handwritten notes made 'since' [as in after] August 1991, that would be literally true, if intentionally misleading, if he didn't start making those notes for another seven months.

If RJ once believed the diary was in Goldie Street before Tony died, he no longer believes it.

I don't believe it either.

RJ knows I don't believe it.

We both believe that the diary was not in Mike's possession before March 1992.

But RJ has blank Victorian papered himself into Lord Orsam's corner, and there's no way out now. He can see there is no way out, because the only key - placing Mike and the scrapbook in that auction house on 31st March 1992 - doesn't exist outside of Orsam's imagination.

No wonder RJ gets agitated whenever Orsam is mentioned. He has joined himself to him by the head, and it's a tricky old operation to separate Siamese twins who have just the one brain between them, and that one slammed shut years ago.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Anne's the one who took credit for typing the notes. Are you suggesting that she typed the date August 1991 by accident?




Another gem from this same document:




Tales of Liverpool! The same booklet that police successfully traced to Tony Devereux, who had had it by at least July 1991, now mentioned again in Mike & Anne's notes, dated from August 1991.

My, my. For someone who supposedly just casually flipped through this booklet at W.H. Smith's, Mike sure seems familiar with its contents. And as Caz tells us in Post #6801, this is the same booklet that Anne admitted giving to Mike for Christmas in 1990.

All of this dating to well before Dodd's floorboards were lifted.

But I know, I know. Nothing strange about any of it. ;-)

What is so sinister about this, RJ?

Mike flips through a copy of this book, and the connection is there in black and white, between the Battlecrease of the diary and James Maybrick. Why would he not use it for his subsequent research into the man? His notes would not be seen by anyone until months after the typescript was distributed. Why do you suppose that was?

Why is it so hard to imagine that Mike simply forgot that Anne gave him the same book at Christmas 1990, because he lent it straight to Tony, who had fractured his hip and was confined to the house? Mike never saw the book again, because Tony's daughter borrowed it in the New Year and never returned it.

Why would two copies of the very popular Tales of Liverpool - one given away unread at the end of 1990, and the other pored over in 1992 - be one too many for you to deal with, but you can put one Fountains Rd resident too many down to just one of those things?

[rjpalmer]

Why would two copies of the very popular Tales of Liverpool - one given away unread at the end of 1990, and the other pored over in 1992 - be one too many for you to deal with

I love this. A Journey into the Heart of Feldmanism.

Two of everything. Two diaries, two watches, two Mike Barretts, two provenances tales--now two copies of Tales of Liverpool--all in a desperate attempt to keep the mystery afloat.

When a person is forced to resort to convoluted explanations, you can be confident that they don't like where the evidence is leading them.

[rjpalmer]

Mike flips through a copy of this book

“Flipped,” Caz? Frankly, I think you’ve flipped.

One thing I will say---you are far more skilled at using language than you are at using math, which evidently explains why you so eagerly accepted Ike’s junk statistics.

Here’s what you wrote about this same booklet as recently as July 7th (Post #6530). It was such a classic that I remember it well:

Tales of Liverpool wasn't even a Maybrick book, but just had two brief chapters on the case, tucked away towards the end, with the first called simply 'Motif in Fly-papers' and the second 'How Death Came to Florence Maybrick'. It doesn't follow that Mike would have read those chapters, or known about the case...

Oh dear.

The obvious insinuation is that even though Mike owned this booklet for a year-and-a-half, Mike was evidently unware of its Maybrick chapters. You further inform us, evidently without irony, that it was given to him by Anne, the future biographer of Florence Maybrick, in December 1990, who was also no doubt unaware of its later usefulness. Indeed, even when Mike loaned the booklet to Tony Devereux around July 1991 (no evidence it was earlier) Mike was still blissfully unaware that this was a ‘Maybrick’ book, because, of course, it would really wouldn’t do to have Mike researching the cotton broker seven months before Dodd’s electrical work.

"Tucked away" is particularly creative because it suggests the Maybrick material could have been easily overlooked, as if this booklet was some huge volume like the abridged version of the OED.

But, dear readers, Tales of Liverpool is only 64 pages in length. Two of the twelve “stories” (that’s 1/6th to you, Ike) were on the Maybrick case (and “stories” is precisely the word Mike used when describing the booklet to Martin Howells; Mike even correctly referred to the booklet as having a chapter on Spring-Heeled Jack—it is called 'When Spring-heeled Jack Visited Everton’---so despite all the desperate bluster, Mike was obviously familiar with its contents).

Yet, note the creative use of language. When Mike supposedly found this book again after March 1992 (again, there is no evidence this happened) the same chapters that were previously ‘tucked away’ suddenly jumped out at him:

at some point after 9th March 1992. He saw - as he thought, for the first time - a book called Tales of Liverpool, in the library or W.H. Smith, and flicking through the chapters his eye fell on a reference to Battlecrease, right near the top of one of them.

There you have it, Dear Readers.

When Mike actually owned the 64 page booklet, the Maybrick material was ‘tucked away,’ but now standing in the aisle at W.H. Smith’s, the same material flashes like a neon light with a few simply 'flicks,' emblazoning itself so deeply in Mike’s consciousness that he is now able to describe details of it in his ‘notes,’ including the name of the London church where Maybrick was married.

This is creative writing of the highest order, but none of it happened.

And one thing to keep in mind is that when Mike and Anne typed up these notes and presented them to Shirley Harrison in July/August 1992, the couple no longer owned a copy of Tales of Liverpool. It was in the possession of Tony Devereux’s daughter. So how did they know enough about its contents to refer to it in the 1991/1992 “research” notes? By standing in an aisle at W.H. Smith’s? Or is it more reasonable to conclude that the above is just another bogus story told by Bongo and foolishly accepted, and that he did in fact have a series of scribblings dating back to when he and Tony were discussing Maybrick in 1991?

And--this is highly relevant---we know Mike didn’t own a second copy of Tales of Liverpool. When the police came calling, Mike was asked to retrieve the book. This is on record. He searched his house and could not find it. Why? Because the police already discovered it was in the possession of Devereux’s daughter and had been since June or July 1991.

No, folks, I think we can safely assume that Barrett and Devereux weren’t discussing the chapter on Lock Ah Tam, the Gentle Chinaman back in July 1991. Nor the Wallace case. They were discussing Maybrick.

And that alone places the 37,557 to 1 “miracle” in the toilet, which is hardly surprising since Mike’s diary didn’t even pass an ink solubility test and uses modern phrases.

[Harry D]

I'm on nobody's 'side', Abby. I'm on the side of letting the evidence do the talking, and I am further today from believing the accumulated evidence indicates a Barrett hoax than I have ever been. I still have no idea who authored the diary, and all those on the 'side' of the Barrett hoax believers have done nothing to enlighten me.

I don't wear a football scarf and I don't wave a flag. Maybe you mistook me for someone who does both.

Love,

Caz
X

Seeing as Ripper hoaxes were also a contemporary phenomena, it is possible that someone took a cause célèbre of the time and wove a fictitious Ripper narrative into it. Heck, you could go one step further and say the diary was the arsenic-addicted ramblings of a delusional fantasist. That still wouldn't make Maybrick the killer. Would you agree, Caz?

[rjpalmer]

Seeing as Ripper hoaxes were also a contemporary phenomena, it is possible that someone took a cause célèbre of the time and wove a fictitious Ripper narrative into it. Heck, you could go one step further and say the diary was the arsenic-addicted ramblings of a delusional fantasist. That still wouldn't make Maybrick the killer. Would you agree, Caz?

Yes, that's what Keith and Caz desperately want you to believe, since it gets Maybrick in through the back kitchen.

But we know this is b.s. because of the modern elements in the diary, the failure of an ink solubility test, and the circumstantial evidence against Mike and Anne.

Why are Ripperologists so eager to pretend, rather than to face reality?

[Iconoclast]

Seeing as Ripper hoaxes were also a contemporary phenomena, it is possible that someone took a cause célèbre of the time and wove a fictitious Ripper narrative into it. Heck, you could go one step further and say the diary was the arsenic-addicted ramblings of a delusional fantasist. That still wouldn't make Maybrick the killer. Would you agree, Caz?

If someone did this, I think they might need to explain to their dumbfounded readers how they managed to include details known only to the killer himself (and a small group of officials) in 1888. Would you agree, Harry?

[rjpalmer]

If RJ once believed the diary was in Goldie Street before Tony died, he no longer believes it.

Caz---friendly advice. Stop being deceptive, and stop telling people what I believe.

You know damn well that I believe that it is entirely possible, perhaps even likely, that Devereux may have helped the Barretts create the idea of Maybrick-as-Ripper, and possibly even the rough outline of the 'story.'

Naturally, this would have occurred many months before Mike called a literary agent in London.

The text of the diary is one thing; the physical artifact that Barrett slapped together is another. Hell, the ink was too unbonded to the paper for Devereux to have been involved, so he is exonerated of any wrong doing.

[Abby Normal]

Seeing as Ripper hoaxes were also a contemporary phenomena, it is possible that someone took a cause célèbre of the time and wove a fictitious Ripper narrative into it. Heck, you could go one step further and say the diary was the arsenic-addicted ramblings of a delusional fantasist. That still wouldn't make Maybrick the killer. Would you agree, Caz?

cmon harry

[rjpalmer]

If someone did this, I think they might need to explain to their dumbfounded readers how they managed to include details known only to the killer himself (and a small group of officials) in 1888. Would you agree, Harry?

Yes, Maybrick's inside knowledge of the case was so overwhelming that he could even quote directly from an internal police inventory list—even mentioning three items in the exact order in which they appeared in that list--despite the document being locked in the bowels of the City of London archives until the mid-1980s.

It was this very fact, pointed out by John Omlor, that forced one former poster named Tom Mitchell to concede the diary was a modern fake clear back in posts #56 and #64 of this thread:

I'm struggling with this critical 'three items in a row' thing - this is a big deal-breaker!

And

Ouch - no need to shout, Stewart (even by proxy)!

Hey, I'm done here. I have accepted that three-in-a-row is a fatal mistake. The duck is dead in the water. Long live some other duck.

Cheers,

Tom.
Defeated, crestfallen, unlikely to fight another day ...

Alas, ultimately, this didn’t dissuade Tom. Even though he was stumped, he struggled on for a few days, still arguing for the diary’s authenticity, almost like a wind-up artist might do, leading Ally Ryder to finally comment:

Tom,

As you have already conceded the diary is a fraud, what are you still here arguing for?

6,000 posts later, no one knows.

Does anyone know what happened to Tom? Does anyone know?

I do enjoy these walks down Memory Lane.

[StevenOwl]

Caz---friendly advice. Stop being deceptive, and stop telling people what I believe.

You know damn well that I believe that it is entirely possible, perhaps even likely, that Devereux may have helped the Barretts create the idea of Maybrick-as-Ripper, and possibly even the rough outline of the 'story.'

Naturally, this would have occurred many months before Mike called a literary agent in London.

The text of the diary is one thing; the physical artifact that Barrett slapped together is another. Hell, the ink was too unbonded to the paper for Devereux to have been involved, so he is exonerated of any wrong doing.

Remind me - what's the hard evidence against Devereux that makes him such a likely player in your nest of forgers?

[Yabs]

Yes, Maybrick's inside knowledge of the case was so overwhelming that he could even quote directly from an internal police inventory list—even mentioning three items in the exact order in which they appeared in that list--despite the document being locked in the bowels of the City of London archives until the mid-1980s.

That’s very true RJ.

Aside from that I also wonder why the Maybrick of the diary doesn’t express an opinion about being blamed for two other murders he didn’t commit.
A few times Maybrick alludes to reading about himself in various publications.
After murdering an anonymous Manchester victim and polly Nichols,
he states.. “they have written well”
yet the reports at that point had Nichols as the third victim of the Whitechapel murderer, or the latest in a series of Whitechapel murderer victims.
The Maybrick of the Diary gets a lot of amusement reading about incompetent police and that he is being reported as a doctor, or a Jew but has no opinion at all about having two earlier murders attributed to him.