One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[Scott Nelson]

What is your hard evidence against Eddie Lyons or any other electrician?

I don't think there's hard evidence against Lyons or any other electrician. But Lyons could have first met Barrett in the Saddle pub on March 9, 1992. They strike up a conversation and Barrett tells Lyons he was given the Diary of Jack the Ripper some time ago by a friend. He doesn't have it with him. But he describes the subject sufficiently for Lyons to tell him he has just come from doing work in, of all places, Battlecrease house, where floorboards were just lifted. Although nothing was apparently found, it plants the idea of a perfect provenance in Mike's head -- if he needs it. So meeting Lyons in the pub was fortuitous. If Mike knew that Lyons lived on Fountains Road, he could even use the "Eddie got it from Tony" bit if he needed to, but he sticks with "I got it from Tony" story for now.

I think a document was found in the house 1960s - 1980s, written by a near-contemporary of Maybrick, and it found it's way into the hands of Tony Devereux during that time. Workmen may have told Eddie that March day that something had been found in the house years earlier. Devereux, using his newspaper compositing skills and ready access to newspaper microfilm, rewrote this document as a cheesy melodrama with Hollywood influences and passed it to Mike. Mike kept it for a while and when it was apparent he couldn't come up with anything better, called the publisher on that March day, ready to hand over Tony's scrapbook if he could.

There, no statistics. Just, if all this speculation is even remotely correct, where is that original document? Maybe Janet Devereux would know if it exists or not.

[Iconoclast]

Didn't Devereux have a copy of Whittington-Egan's Liverpool Soundings published in the late 1960s? The Diarist described the 1889 Grand National horse race as the fastest ever, which could have been inferred from this book?

Just quickly flicked through the two Maybrick 'chapters' (they are barely that) and neither appears to reference the 1889 Grand National (I'm not sure if the 'Wirral races' are occasion for the National but either way no reference is made to it nor to relative speeds of the recent winners). I think there are more than enough books containing the running times that Feldman's claims that this was obscure information are quite inaccurate. Mrs Iconoclast was herself trained in animal husbandry and a few years ago I realised she had a book on the National in our bookshelves (published in the 1980s) and it contained a list of the winners, times, etc.. I doubt she was unusual amongst people interested in horse racing or for people living relatively close to Aintree.

Sorry Scott - just realised you weren't referring to Tales of Liverpool ...

[caz]

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.

Yeah, I notice you missed out the very real, very inconvenient Fountains Rd twosome - Eddie and Tony, the diary's very own chicken and egg - in your own desperate attempt to pretend they are not a problem for the Awesome Auction Fan Club.

I can be 100% certain that you don't like where Fountains Rd is leading.

[caz]

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

I merely copied your word, RJ.

My, my. For someone who supposedly just casually flipped through this booklet at W.H. Smith's

[caz]

Originally posted by caz View Post
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.

Oh dear is right.

Taking my words out of context is pretty desperate isn't it, RJ?

The argument made by Barrett hoax believers was that the book is evidence that Mike knew all about the Maybrick case when he lent it to Tony.

This was after Tony had fractured his hip and became housebound, which was around Christmas 1990. We now know that Janet Devereux borrowed the book in January 1991. This came from her own lips in 1993, but this wasn't available to us in 2003 when Ripper Diary was published.

Anne only said the book might have been a Christmas present, and she didn't specify a year. It was my speculation that it might have been Christmas 1990, in which case Mike would not have had it for long before lending it to Tony and Janet borrowing it in the New Year.

I have just been informed that the book Janet borrowed was published back in 1985, so if the Barretts had it from new, it could have been on their bookshelf for five years before Tony suddenly became housebound and Mike took the book round to him on a whim. No way of telling if Mike had actually read it, although if he did so, it seems more likely it was nearer to 1985 than 1990. Easy to see how it could have completely slipped Mike's memory after January 1991. It was gone from Tony's house and Mike never saw it again. Seven months later Tony died unexpectedly, and by the following March, when Mike was speaking to Doreen about JtR's diary, he had much bigger things on his mind.

[caz]

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).

Well obviously, if this is how he was able to identify the diary's supposed author as Maybrick. Why wouldn't he have pored over this booklet after it had solved the Battlecrease clue for him, right at the start of chapter 11?

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:

But after 9th March 1992, he'd have had a reason for the first time to flick through this booklet on Liverpool murders and mysteries, in search of clues. It's no mystery how he could have found what he was looking for, just by reading the first few lines of each chapter to get a rough idea of the story in each case. A very different situation from having had the same book at home in 1985 and reading it purely for pleasure - assuming he ever did so - from page one onwards, until he reached the end or got bored after three stories. Apples and oranges in fact. And context is everything.

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.

You have no evidence that it didn't happen, RJ. You just wish that it didn't. Again, two very different things. Apples and oranges.

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?

Creative writing with no evidence, RJ. No evidence that Mike ever discussed Maybrick in 1991, with Tony or Anne or anyone else.

Yes, the 1985 copy was gone and forgotten long before March 1992. But might seeing the book in Smiths not have jogged a memory of once having the same book indoors? Did he go home and try to find it? When he couldn't put his hand on it, and couldn't recall what he'd done with it, did he get a copy out of his local library and make handwritten notes from it, before returning it? Is that why he was left again without a copy to call his own? Is that why the notes were not available until a year after he had supposedly begun making them? Because they were all made after 9th March and Anne eventually typed them up?

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.

Exactly. Mike searched the house and still failed to find his own copy. He had no memory of lending it to Tony, or he'd have known it wouldn't still be in his house. The police discovered that it had been in Janet's possession since the January of 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.

So smug, RJ.

And so completely lacking in evidence that Mike and his scrapbook were first united at that O&L auction sale at the end of March 1992.

And you still have no idea what to do about Fountains Road.

Here's a clue: don't try flushing that down the lavatory. It won't end well for you.

[caz]

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?

Up to a point, Lord Copper. [A little literary reference there for you, Harry. ]

But we do still have the Poste House and the one off instance, either of which has the potential to rule out a much older hoax, and we still have the handwriting not resembling any of Maybrick's.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

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

Well you are the Ripperologist here, RJ. I came very late to the subject, via Feldman, in 1998. So perhaps you could explain why you are so eager to fantasise in this way? I can't speak for Keith, whose preferred ripper suspect when I last heard was still Druitt, but why would I want Maybrick anywhere near my 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?

Yes, it's certainly b.s. that I want anyone to believe anything about the real Maybrick, never mind desperately.

The 'circumstantial' evidence against Mike and Anne boils down to adapting Mike's proven lies and unsupportable claims until they fit an auction hypothesis for which there is not a shred of any kind of evidence. But apparently that's the kind of reality that real Ripperologists should be going for.

My back passage.

[caz]

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

POT KETTLE, WITH GREAT HAIRY KNOBS ON.

In your previous post, you wrote:

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

So kindly stop telling people what Keith and I want them to 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.

So you always maintained from your very first message board post that the physical diary did not yet exist when Mike called Doreen? Well I'm so sorry to have misrepresented you if that is the case, RJ. I thought that was Orsam's theory, based on the information posted subsequently about the advert for the 1891 diary - before it became evident that Mike knew it was for that year when he ordered it.

[caz]

Serial hoax believers don't just stop, until they are commited to an asylum. or throw themselves in a river




The Baron

How dare you, The Baron?

I am a hoax believer, in that I believe the diary to be one. Hoax that is.

Am I to be sent to the funny farm with Orsam, RJ and Kattrup, or is it the river for me?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

No, Caz has me convinced.

Eddie lived on Fountains Road and Tony D lived on Fountains Road that PROVES to any honest, rational person that Tony was connected to the Diary--wasn't that her convoluted, circular argument? Or does it only work in reverse?

Oh come on, RJ. It was Mike who connected Tony to the Maybrick diary when he gave it a Fountains Rd provenance in 1992. Proved and on the record - a year before another Fountains Rd resident was found to have worked in Maybrick's house. Do try to keep up.

The evidence of Devereux's involvement is not strong...

It doesn't exist, RJ, except in your own mind.

[caz]

His alleged victim in Manchester, where is the first letter of her name on the faked watch?!


He he, the hoaxer forgot completely about her!
To be expected, its all hallucinations.



The Baron

And what would that initial have been, The Baron? A for Alleged? P for Psychic? Q for Queer arguments?

Your watch faker would have had no idea there was any alleged victim in Manchester, never mind what her name was, as the diary had yet to be published.

Same applies to Jack if he killed anyone and never knew her name.

Love,

Caz
X

[The Baron]

Same applies to Jack if he killed anyone and never knew her name.

You can forget this.

He knew the name of all the victims that we know and didn't know the name of the only victim that we don't know!!


Let's keep it with the hoaxer.

Point proved



The Baron

[caz]

He identified an unknown passage in the Diary when no one else could--not Shirley Harrison, not Keith Skinner, not Paul Feldman, not Melvin Harris.

Did anyone try searching through actual books for the Crashaw quote? Or did they try - and fail - to identify the poet by other means, in a pre-internet age? Who else but Mike would have had the idea or the time or the motivation to go to the Liverpool Central Library and do the only thing he could do: physically look in book after book after book after book, hoping to get lucky, like infinite monkeys tapping away at infinite typewriters to come up with "Out damned spot!"? We know the right books were there - three of them together on a shelf in the History of English Literature section - so it would only have been a matter of time, however long it took, before anyone would have found the quote in one of them. Could anyone have done it in a long week spent looking specifically for those words?

Yes, they could. And Mike stupidly went and rang his solicitor's office and told the assistant that he had found it in the library - four months into his quest to prove he had written the diary himself.

So that's one coincidence that needs to be put to bed.

The alternative is that Mike added the quote to the diary text and Anne was happy with it.

"Don't you think it might catch us out, Mike? After all, why would Maybrick be quoting Crashaw of all people? Yes, Crashaw was mentioned alongside Michael Maybrick's lyricist in The Times on Christmas Day, 1884. Yes, Crashaw's Dad was the vicar of the original White Chapel in London. And yes, Crashaw's Complete Works were published in Liverpool, close to Maybrick's boyhood home, several years before 1888. But what else have you got?"

"Nothing, Anne. I just thought the words 'Oh sweet costly intercourse of death' sounded quite appropriate."

"Go for it then, Mike. And on your head be it."

[rjpalmer]

Oh come on, RJ. It was Mike who connected Tony to the Maybrick diary when he gave it a Fountains Rd provenance in 1992. Proved and on the record - a year before another Fountains Rd resident was found to have worked in Maybrick's house. Do try to keep up.

The logic in these parts has grown too crazy for me.

We are told that that Eddie Lyons living on Fountains Road in 1992 is startling evidence of his connection to the Maybrick Hoax because Tony Devereux also lived on Fountains Road. That this is a coincidence too big to ignore.

But this comes from the same people who believe that Devereux has no actual connection to the diary, so how does this ‘coincidence’ make sense? How exactly?

Think about it. The man who has no connection to the diary is the 'connective tissue' that makes the Battlecrease provenance true. This is incomprehensible.

For obvious reasons, it is common for forgers and hoaxers to use the ‘dead guy’ provenance. “Dead men tell no tales,” is how Mike Barrett put it.

And this is true. The infamous American forger Mark Hoffman used this excuse more than once, claiming to have obtained this or that document from a collector who had recently died. The art forgers who scammed an American collector a few years back by selling him several fake paintings attributed to the artist Leon Golub insisted that they had been friends of Golub’s widow who…you guessed it…had recently died and couldn't dispute their story.

Even the ‘old hoax’ theorists admit this is why Mike Barrett used Tony Devereux as his provenance. He was dead. They deny there was any other connection.

So how was his address relevant?

As I say, think it through.

In their version of events, Eddie Lyons, an electrician who just happened to be living on Fountains Road, found the Maybrick Hoax in Battlecrease and sold it to Mike Barrett in a pub.

Barrett quickly—almost instantly--tries to peddle the diary in London, and uses his dead pal, Tony Devereux, as the provenance.

Is Caz honestly suggesting that having bought the diary from Eddie Lyons, who lived on Fountains Road, Mike then had to come up with someone else who lived on Fountains Road as his bogus provenance? It’s an absurdity. If anything, Mike would want to distance himself from Fountains Road as much as possible, if Eddie had been the ‘fence.’

But this is not what Caz is suggesting—I hope!—because, remember, in her version of events, Tony Devereux, who had died in 1991, had no actual connection to the diary.

Mike only chose Devereux—not because of his address—but because he was (to use Caz’s charming phrase) “brown bread.” And Mike had very limited choices for a bogus provenance, because Tony, we are told, was basically Mike’s only friend in the world.

Thus, even in the framework of their own theory, Devereux living on Fountains Road WAS a coincidence. It couldn’t be otherwise.

But I suppose by now it is evident that the old hoax theory is for those who don’t mind twisting simple logic into pretzel shapes.

In reality, the ‘Fountains Road’ coincidence is circular reasoning. It was the fact that Eddy lived in Barrett’s neighborhood that led to his suspicion in the first place. He was the one electrician among 9 or 10 possible suspects who lived near Barrett, so he was set aside for suspicion. Fountains Road is simply a prominent street in the neighborhood with many residential homes. That Devereux lived there is nothing unusual, unless Caz wants to suggest that Eddie and Devereux were bosom buddies long before March 1992 and I somehow doubt that she does!

In short, this Fountains Road double event makes no sense whatsoever, unless one is easily fooled by rhetoric. Barrett and Lyons living in the same neighborhood has already been addressed in a previous post. Lyons was simply the right push-pin in Ike's map.