One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[Iconoclast]

Hi Caz,

Excellent posts, as ever, and excellent challenges back to RJ on a theory which is so painfully full of holes one has to hope it ain't raining wherever he abides.

You don't think he might have involved Caroline in all this, along with Anne's recently deceased father, in an attempt to get to Anne and hurt her as much as she had hurt him?

Clearly, there's no way now to prove categorically what Mike's agenda was in those difficult days, but anyone who has heard the January 18, 1995 tape (or maybe seen a transcription of it) couldn't fail to suspect that the entire performance - the drinking, the newspaper claims in 1994, and the asinine affidavit of January 5, 1995 - was driven by a singular need to communicate with Anne. Caroline is often reduced to a substitute in his pleading - Mike wants Anne; he wants to speak with Anne and he wants to be with Anne, under any terms whatsoever.

If there was ever a way to answer the question of what his ultimate aim was and if I were a betting man, I'd undoubtedly put my money on Mike simply trying to get into the same room as Anne. Thus, the longer the absence from his life went on, the more ridiculous his attempts to force her to come and talk to him - even to the point of lying vindictively about her, as if that's going to be the way to negotiate with her!

Mike Barrett was a fool and by January 1995 he had become a desperate fool. He'd be prepared to rush in to absolutely any action which might - in his dark mind - give him five minutes with Anne again. A false affidavit? A crazy, contrived story which threatened to ruin the resolution of the most famous unsolved crimes in history? Not a problem to Mike Barrett. Nothing else mattered to him. A fool with a hand grenade who could never quite decide whether to throw it or hold onto it even when he'd removed the pin.

Cheers,

Ike

[rjpalmer]

Hi Caz,

Excellent posts, as ever, and excellent challenges back to RJ on a theory which is so painfully full of holes one has to hope it ain't raining wherever he abides.

Excellent posts, Ike?

You two make a powerful comedy team. The lady who insists she always knew the Diary was an obvious fake--even something of a joke-- and the guy who defends the diary as the true and convincing confessions of the Whitechapel Murderer; yet, despite their obvious differences, happily locked arm-in-arm, fighting all mutual foes. Well, if Stalin and Churchill could unite against a common enemy, I suppose you two odd ducklings can do the same. It's quite charming, really, and always good for a laugh.

Alas, rather than making 'excellent' points, Caz has been reduced to simply just making things up as she goes.
,
We've gone over this before, and all we've gotten was evasion and non-explanations from Caz Brown.

Shirley Harrison herself wrote that Mike's notes were created before Mike came to London.

But Caz, who wasn't there but always knows better than anyone else, simply makes up the wildly dubious and highly convenient claim that Harrison had mentioned Bernard Ryan to Mike very early on (and BEFORE these bogus notes were even compiled--- despite Shirley's own account) and then Mike simply fed Harrison's own suggestion back to her without her noticing it.

As I said before, if I was Shirley, I think I would be outraged at the suggestion. Caz must certainly take Harrison for a fool as well as someone whose own published account of these events cannot be trusted.

And asked for her source that Harrison had mentioned Bernard Ryan to Mike, all Caz could do was to cite an interview where Keith Skinner asked Mike Barrett about it (honest Mike of all people!) in late 1994--two years after Barrett gave his bogus notes to Harrison. Pardon me if I don't find this the least bit convincing.

Next, we have Keith's own strange and still unexplained notation on Mike's research notes that states that it was "apparently not" true that Harrison had played any role in the creation of the notes.

Rather than wait for Keith's explanation--if he plans on giving one--Caz jumps in and suggests that Keith wasn't actually referring to the very notes he was annotating, but to an alleged second copy of Mike's notes that were compiled at a later date on Mike's computer. What a load of imaginary gobbledygook.

What a waste of time.

This is Caz's M.O. If there is any conflict in the accounts we have been given--simply muddy the waters as much as possible, and if necessary, make up a second copy! Two copies of Tales of Liverpool, now two sets of Mike's notes, to go along with the two explanations for why Mike and Anne created a typescript of the diary. Feldman even told us there were two watches. People weren't lying or failing to get their stories straight--it can all be explained by two copies of everything!

No folks, I am not 'reluctant' to give my reasons why Mike and Anne handed a set of bogus research notes to their own collaborator, but it's already been outlined in Orsam's article which can be found here:

The Secret Source - Orsam Books


Caz knows this. Her comments aren't made in good faith. Ike himself begrudgingly admitted (not wanting to give his old friend Orsam too much credit) that this was 'probably' the case. Playing the Devil's advocate, I even asked Ike how he came to his conclusion --but he never answered, happily waiting instead for Caz to bluster and bloviate so he could then cheer her on, despite his own beliefs to the contrary.

Can you see now why this is all such a waste of time?

And why should I even bother to give my own reasons for believing that Mike's bogus references to the Liverpool Echo really came from Ryan? Caz will just turn around and state that was because Shirley was basically writing Mike's notes for him--despite that Mike's own notes were to be handed over by a contractual agreement. I'm not fool enough to go down that road--it will simply lead to more evasions and more made-up explanations.

The saddest fact is this: the lack of coherent documentation by the early diary researchers is now being used as 'evidence' of what they supposedly did or did not say or do in reference to Mike and Anne. The early days and weeks were so poorly documented that Keith Skinner, to his credit, had to scramble to create a timeline at a much later date. But Keith's own annotations prove that he never did have a clear idea about the why and wherefores of these notes, so Caz is simply whistling past the proverbial graveyard and pretending otherwise.

Caz earlier went so far as to imply that a series of unrecorded phone calls (for which there is not a whiff of evidence about what was discussed)might be evidence that Shirley told this or that to Mike.

Ridiculous. As, I say, it's quite the comedy team. I think I'll pass the baton to someone else for a while. Any takers? Anyone else willing to give some resistance to those who are trying to slow walk this obvious fake as an important historical document?

I don't think so. Everyone else has moved on long ago.

[rjpalmer]

Only 'months' before, RJ?

The unblemished copy of Tales of Liverpool, which Tony's daughter Janet finally handed over in October 1993, had been borrowed by her nearly three years earlier, in January 1991, with a request by her father to return it by the weekend as it belonged to "Bongo".

You've got a bizarre way of counting and doing simple arithmetic, Caz. Are you attempting to confuse the few readers of this thread?

My post referred to the books Mike mentioned to Doreen Montgomer on 9/10 March 1992, along with those subsequently mentioned in his bogus research notes. What the heck does Janet handing over the book to Scotland Yard at a later date have to do with the price of tea in China?

Although you've given varying accounts over the years of when Janet received the book from Tony (no surprise--we get two explanations for everything) the safest conclusion is that Barrett owned a copy of Tales of Liverpool sometime before August 1991--the month of Tony's death. This is not in dispute.

Meanwhile, Mike's phone call was made to Doreen roughly seven months later, 9 March 1992. Not years, months.

The point is that Barrett owned one of the books in his 'pre August 1991' research notes in...wait for it...pre-August 1991. This is a fact. It's not a fact that you like, but it is a fact, nonetheless.

Another one of the books Mike mentions in his 'pre-August 1991' research notes Mike also mentioned to Doreen as early as either 9 or 10 March 1992--during what was evidently his first phone call to his literary agent. (We are told this was March 10th and not the 9th, but I am not sure I am entirely satisfied with this, but it doesn't much matter).

We know this because on March 10th, 1992 Doreen sent a letter to Shirley mentioning three books Mike had recommended for "background" on the diary: Wilson & Odell (Jack the Ripper Summing Up and Verdict), Murderers Who's Who and Famous Crimes. The first of those books is mentioned repeatedly in Mike and Anne's "pre-August 1991' notes.

The timing is awfully tight, but Ike has Mike receiving the "old book" from Eddie and then racing down within hours to buy and inhale the contents of Wilson & Odell's book before calling Doreen. That is, when Mike is not bargaining with Eddie, calling Pan Books, etc.

Ike doesn't really know any of this, of course--he's just trying to explain away Mike's reference to the book and keep his faith in the Eddie Lyons provenance alive and safe. But that still doesn't explain Barrett's prior ownership of Tales of Liverpool, which is also mentioned in the 'pre-August 1991' notes.

Trying to confuse your readers by bringing up what happened in October 1993 is really quite beneath you, Caz. More confusion for the sake of confusion?

As for Mike's January 1995 one-man summit with Shirley, Sally, Keith, and Kevin, what Ike failed to tell his readers is that during Mike's "passionate" retraction of his confession, he stated that he had received the diary from Tony Devereux! That is, pre-August 1991.

Thus, if Mike was being truthful with Shirley, Sally, Keith, and Kevin, this would place the diary in Mike's hands long before Dodd had the electricians come in. And that makes Eddie Lyons entirely irrelevant.

I thought it was highly insincere of Ike to pull this stunt. Mike was reverting back to a lie that Ike himself doesn't believe, but the recording of this summit was marketed as Barrett truthfully retracting his confession. Indeed, back in the day, this recording was used as evidence of the truthfulness of Anne Graham's account. It is now being recycled to support the Eddie Lyons provenance, even though it directly contradicts it.

Ciao.

[MrBarnett]

Excellent posts, Ike?

You two make a powerful comedy team. The lady who insists she always knew the Diary was an obvious fake--even something of a joke-- and the guy who defends the diary as the true and convincing confessions of the Whitechapel Murderer; yet, despite their obvious differences, happily locked arm-in-arm, fighting all mutual foes. Well, if Stalin and Churchill could unite against a common enemy, I suppose you two odd ducklings can do the same. It's quite charming, really, and always good for a laugh.

Alas, rather than making 'excellent' points, Caz has been reduced to simply just making things up as she goes.
,
We've gone over this before, and all we've gotten was evasion and non-explanations from Caz Brown.

Shirley Harrison herself wrote that Mike's notes were created before Mike came to London.

But Caz, who wasn't there but always knows better than anyone else, simply makes up the wildly dubious and highly convenient claim that Harrison had mentioned Bernard Ryan to Mike very early on (and BEFORE these bogus notes were even compiled--- despite Shirley's own account) and then Mike simply fed Harrison's own suggestion back to her without her noticing it.

As I said before, if I was Shirley, I think I would be outraged at the suggestion. Caz must certainly take Harrison for a fool as well as someone whose own published account of these events cannot be trusted.

And asked for her source that Harrison had mentioned Bernard Ryan to Mike, all Caz could do was to cite an interview where Keith Skinner asked Mike Barrett about it (honest Mike of all people!) in late 1994--two years after Barrett gave his bogus notes to Harrison. Pardon me if I don't find this the least bit convincing.

Next, we have Keith's own strange and still unexplained notation on Mike's research notes that states that it was "apparently not" true that Harrison had played any role in the creation of the notes.

Rather than wait for Keith's explanation--if he plans on giving one--Caz jumps in and suggests that Keith wasn't actually referring to the very notes he was annotating, but to an alleged second copy of Mike's notes that were compiled at a later date on Mike's computer. What a load of imaginary gobbledygook.

What a waste of time.

This is Caz's M.O. If there is any conflict in the accounts we have been given--simply muddy the waters as much as possible, and if necessary, make up a second copy! Two copies of Tales of Liverpool, now two sets of Mike's notes, to go along with the two explanations for why Mike and Anne created a typescript of the diary. Feldman even told us there were two watches. People weren't lying or failing to get their stories straight--it can all be explained by two copies of everything!

No folks, I am not 'reluctant' to give my reasons why Mike and Anne handed a set of bogus research notes to their own collaborator, but it's already been outlined in Orsam's article which can be found here:

The Secret Source - Orsam Books


Caz knows this. Her comments aren't made in good faith. Ike himself begrudgingly admitted (not wanting to give his old friend Orsam too much credit) that this was 'probably' the case. Playing the Devil's advocate, I even asked Ike how he came to his conclusion --but he never answered, happily waiting instead for Caz to bluster and bloviate so he could then cheer her on, despite his own beliefs to the contrary.

Can you see now why this is all such a waste of time?

And why should I even bother to give my own reasons for believing that Mike's bogus references to the Liverpool Echo really came from Ryan? Caz will just turn around and state that was because Shirley was basically writing Mike's notes for him--despite that Mike's own notes were to be handed over by a contractual agreement. I'm not fool enough to go down that road--it will simply lead to more evasions and more made-up explanations.

The saddest fact is this: the lack of coherent documentation by the early diary researchers is now being used as 'evidence' of what they supposedly did or did not say or do in reference to Mike and Anne. The early days and weeks were so poorly documented that Keith Skinner, to his credit, had to scramble to create a timeline at a much later date. But Keith's own annotations prove that he never did have a clear idea about the why and wherefores of these notes, so Caz is simply whistling past the proverbial graveyard and pretending otherwise.

Caz earlier went so far as to imply that a series of unrecorded phone calls (for which there is not a whiff of evidence about what was discussed)might be evidence that Shirley told this or that to Mike.

Ridiculous. As, I say, it's quite the comedy team. I think I'll pass the baton to someone else for a while. Any takers? Anyone else willing to give some resistance to those who are trying to slow walk this obvious fake as an important historical document?

I don't think so. Everyone else has moved on long ago.

RJ,

Every time you provide a link to Orsam’s site you are promoting his personal attacks on researchers who question his research or disagree with his conclusions.

Nice.

Gary

[rjpalmer]

RJ,

Every time you provide a link to Orsam’s site you are promoting his personal attacks on researchers who question his research or disagree with his conclusions.

Nice.

Gary

Hi Gary.

Not at all true.

Caz wanted to know the reason for Orsam's belief that Barrett's research notes were bogus and appear to be based on Bernard Ryan's book. I proved the link that explains his reasoning.

Please point me to any personal attacks against you or anyone else in the link I provided. There aren't any--it's an objective analysis of Barrett's notes. By contrast, your own response to this article was to inject and air a number of old grievances that were irrelevant to the matter at hand.

Nor have you even begun to prove that the information in Barrett's notes could be found in Liverpool Echo.

The only thing that can be called an 'attack' is Orsam's reference to Mike Barrett as a 'master scammer,' but Caz Brown and Tom Mitchell have called Barrett much worse on many, many occasions.

I've tried to steer clear of your ongoing grudge with Orsam and will continue to do so. It doesn't interest me, and I don't condone it.

[caz]

Excellent posts, Ike?

You two make a powerful comedy team. The lady who insists she always knew the Diary was an obvious fake--even something of a joke-- and the guy who defends the diary as the true and convincing confessions of the Whitechapel Murderer; yet, despite their obvious differences, happily locked arm-in-arm, fighting all mutual foes. Well, if Stalin and Churchill could unite against a common enemy, I suppose you two odd ducklings can do the same. It's quite charming, really, and always good for a laugh.

Alas, rather than making 'excellent' points, Caz has been reduced to simply just making things up as she goes.
,
We've gone over this before, and all we've gotten was evasion and non-explanations from Caz Brown.

Shirley Harrison herself wrote that Mike's notes were created before Mike came to London.

And how the effing hell do you imagine Shirley could have known that? Was she psychic? She didn't know Mike from a bar of soap before 13th April 1992, and his notes were not handed over to her until the July or August. It would have been an assumption at best on her part, that the notes had been compiled between August 1991 and 13th April 1992, or at worst based on whatever Mike - your lying faker - had tried to claim.

But Caz, who wasn't there but always knows better than anyone else, simply makes up the wildly dubious and highly convenient claim that Harrison had mentioned Bernard Ryan to Mike very early on (and BEFORE these bogus notes were even compiled--- despite Shirley's own account) and then Mike simply fed Harrison's own suggestion back to her without her noticing it.

As I said before, if I was Shirley, I think I would be outraged at the suggestion. Caz must certainly take Harrison for a fool as well as someone whose own published account of these events cannot be trusted.

Oh, do listen to yourself, RJ. Nobody, until Orsam did his recent study on it, had been bothered enough to look into where Mike took his notes from, and Shirley clearly didn't notice it, if he had used a book which he later blatantly denied to her face ever having heard of! You must be taking Shirley for the bigger fool, if she needed to ask if he had heard of Ryan's book, after going through all those Ryan based notes, and believing his denial. It's either/or, isn't it? I'm giving Shirley the benefit of the doubt that she simply pointed Mike in Ryan's direction when she had more pressing things to occupy her mind, and would not have instantly recognised the author's work when going through Mike's notes and queried when exactly he had made them. Why would she, if he didn't name the book and she wasn't expecting to see Ryan's influence in the notes? She'd have needed to be an expert on all Maybrick sources herself, to recognise where Ryan's information differed from other sources.

And asked for her source that Harrison had mentioned Bernard Ryan to Mike, all Caz could do was to cite an interview where Keith Skinner asked Mike Barrett about it (honest Mike of all people!) in late 1994--two years after Barrett gave his bogus notes to Harrison. Pardon me if I don't find this the least bit convincing.

No, Mike first told Keith in April 1994, that he had never heard of Ryan before Shirley told him, after his own research had begun. He repeated this claim to Keith and Shirley, on 18th January 1995, giving her the perfect opportunity to catch him out in a lie, if he had denied all knowledge of the book after handing her a series of notes he had based on it.

Can you see now why this is all such a waste of time?

Why do you continue to waste your own time on it then?

The saddest fact is this: the lack of coherent documentation by the early diary researchers is now being used as 'evidence' of what they supposedly did or did not say or do in reference to Mike and Anne. The early days and weeks were so poorly documented that Keith Skinner, to his credit, had to scramble to create a timeline at a much later date. But Keith's own annotations prove that he never did have a clear idea about the why and wherefores of these notes, so Caz is simply whistling past the proverbial graveyard and pretending otherwise.

Caz earlier went so far as to imply that a series of unrecorded phone calls (for which there is not a whiff of evidence about what was discussed)might be evidence that Shirley told this or that to Mike.

I agree that we could all have done with more surviving documentation from the earliest days, before Keith got involved. I was the one who created a timeline when I became involved at the turn of the 21st century, from anything Keith had managed to get his paws on, and it remains a work in progress.

None of Doreen's early phone calls with Mike were recorded, but there is written evidence alluding to them, before Mike received his written confirmation of the time and place for the meeting on 13th April 1992, right at the start of Caroline Barrett's Easter holidays. That must have been discussed over the phone beforehand, to ascertain Mike's availability to come down to London. Perhaps he could say nothing about the physical book because it was still being put together, following Orsam's Awesome Auction on 31st March, and perhaps Doreen didn't have the curiosity to ask a single question about it, or was happy to accept that Mike wanted her to "wait and see", without having any clues in advance. It's a gap in the evidence for you to be grateful for, instead of smugly implying incompetence.

On 18th January 1995, Melvin Harris wrote to Shirley, smugly claiming there were papers dealing with the forgers' identities in police hands, and he was therefore not entitled to say or write anything more on this matter.

What does that tell you, if not that Melvin knew all about Mike's affidavit of 5th January but was deliberately keeping it from Shirley so she couldn't investigate the latest claims while the trail was still warm? Did the police have the affidavit and decide not to act on it? Or was it an excuse, because Melvin recognised it for the utter mince it was [to pinch Ike's expression], but wanted to imply he had something Shirley didn't? All she got around that time were little hints from Mike that he had again been claiming to have faked the diary - and now the watch scratches too - to "kick up the sh*t". But she got nothing of any substance to work with, unlike Alan Gray and Melvin, who could have contacted O&L with all the details. What was stopping them?

[caz]

You've got a bizarre way of counting and doing simple arithmetic, Caz. Are you attempting to confuse the few readers of this thread?

My post referred to the books Mike mentioned to Doreen Montgomer on 9/10 March 1992, along with those subsequently mentioned in his bogus research notes. What the heck does Janet handing over the book to Scotland Yard at a later date have to do with the price of tea in China?

Although you've given varying accounts over the years of when Janet received the book from Tony (no surprise--we get two explanations for everything) the safest conclusion is that Barrett owned a copy of Tales of Liverpool sometime before August 1991--the month of Tony's death. This is not in dispute.

Meanwhile, Mike's phone call was made to Doreen roughly seven months later, 9 March 1992. Not years, months.

The point is that Barrett owned one of the books in his 'pre August 1991' research notes in...wait for it...pre-August 1991. This is a fact. It's not a fact that you like, but it is a fact, nonetheless.

Another one of the books Mike mentions in his 'pre-August 1991' research notes Mike also mentioned to Doreen as early as either 9 or 10 March 1992--during what was evidently his first phone call to his literary agent. (We are told this was March 10th and not the 9th, but I am not sure I am entirely satisfied with this, but it doesn't much matter).

We know this because on March 10th, 1992 Doreen sent a letter to Shirley mentioning three books Mike had recommended for "background" on the diary: Wilson & Odell (Jack the Ripper Summing Up and Verdict), Murderers Who's Who and Famous Crimes. The first of those books is mentioned repeatedly in Mike and Anne's "pre-August 1991' notes.

The timing is awfully tight, but Ike has Mike receiving the "old book" from Eddie and then racing down within hours to buy and inhale the contents of Wilson & Odell's book before calling Doreen. That is, when Mike is not bargaining with Eddie, calling Pan Books, etc.

Ike doesn't really know any of this, of course--he's just trying to explain away Mike's reference to the book and keep his faith in the Eddie Lyons provenance alive and safe. But that still doesn't explain Barrett's prior ownership of Tales of Liverpool, which is also mentioned in the 'pre-August 1991' notes.

Trying to confuse your readers by bringing up what happened in October 1993 is really quite beneath you, Caz. More confusion for the sake of confusion?

As for Mike's January 1995 one-man summit with Shirley, Sally, Keith, and Kevin, what Ike failed to tell his readers is that during Mike's "passionate" retraction of his confession, he stated that he had received the diary from Tony Devereux! That is, pre-August 1991.

Thus, if Mike was being truthful with Shirley, Sally, Keith, and Kevin, this would place the diary in Mike's hands long before Dodd had the electricians come in. And that makes Eddie Lyons entirely irrelevant.

I thought it was highly insincere of Ike to pull this stunt. Mike was reverting back to a lie that Ike himself doesn't believe, but the recording of this summit was marketed as Barrett truthfully retracting his confession. Indeed, back in the day, this recording was used as evidence of the truthfulness of Anne Graham's account. It is now being recycled to support the Eddie Lyons provenance, even though it directly contradicts it.

Ciao.

And you have the sauce to accuse me of trying to confuse the readers??

You demonstrate in this post just how utterly confused you are yourself over the events you attempt to discuss and dissect, so how were you hoping to provide any clarity for the readers?

Au revoir.

[caz]

Hi Gary.

Not at all true.

Caz wanted to know the reason for Orsam's belief that Barrett's research notes were bogus and appear to be based on Bernard Ryan's book. I proved the link that explains his reasoning.

Please point me to any personal attacks against you or anyone else in the link I provided. There aren't any--it's an objective analysis of Barrett's notes. By contrast, your own response to this article was to inject and air a number of old grievances that were irrelevant to the matter at hand.

Nor have you even begun to prove that the information in Barrett's notes could be found in Liverpool Echo.

The only thing that can be called an 'attack' is Orsam's reference to Mike Barrett as a 'master scammer,' but Caz Brown and Tom Mitchell have called Barrett much worse on many, many occasions.

I've tried to steer clear of your ongoing grudge with Orsam and will continue to do so. It doesn't interest me, and I don't condone it.

Oh I love this. All RJ can do is refer to Orsam's belief that Mike's notes were bogus, because they appear to be based on Ryan's book - as if it would have been a mortal sin for Mike to have used this Maybrick source when researching the diary.

And I assume RJ means he 'provided' the link, not 'proved' one.

As I said, if he can't use Barrat's research to prove anything about Barrett's research, he can't, and that should now be an end to it.

[MrBarnett]

Hi Gary.

Not at all true.

Caz wanted to know the reason for Orsam's belief that Barrett's research notes were bogus and appear to be based on Bernard Ryan's book. I proved the link that explains his reasoning.

Please point me to any personal attacks against you or anyone else in the link I provided. There aren't any--it's an objective analysis of Barrett's notes. By contrast, your own response to this article was to inject and air a number of old grievances that were irrelevant to the matter at hand.

Nor have you even begun to prove that the information in Barrett's notes could be found in Liverpool Echo.

The only thing that can be called an 'attack' is Orsam's reference to Mike Barrett as a 'master scammer,' but Caz Brown and Tom Mitchell have called Barrett much worse on many, many occasions.

I've tried to steer clear of your ongoing grudge with Orsam and will continue to do so. It doesn't interest me, and I don't condone it.

You’ve proved my point, RJ by the absence of any criticism of Orsam’s ongoing grudges against all and sundry. The obvious assumption has to be that you condone his behaviour. You certainly give the impression of being his uncritical cheerleader.

[caz]

Thanks, Ike. At least one person here has the sense to smell the coffee.

Alas, I don't think Caz’s nose will ever get there; she's lost in a drafty air castle of her own making, unable to pick up the scent.

Imagine the staggering odds that a historian would accurately refer to the same wording of the source materials he was using! The odds must be all of 80/20 that he would do so, or perhaps even as unlikely as 70/30! The mind boggles!

Before I get ready for the weekly trek to the supermarket, I must just address this extraordinary piece of creative accounting and deduction, wrapped in yellowing brown paper and tied up with unwarranted sarcasm.

The theory goes that the Barretts used just one modern book for every thought they put in Maybrick's head.

I wonder how Bernard Ryan became their historian of choice, if they had no way to judge the quality of his work compared with any other Maybrick sources?

If RJ ever thought of creating a literary hoax based on a real Victorian, how far does he think he would get, if he was relying on a single modern author to give him an 80/20 or even 70/30 chance of each detail he chose to lift from the narrative being not merely accurate, but transcribed pretty much verbatim from the primary source concerned?

It was RJ who told us that Ryan 'evidently' uses guesswork for his incorrect Britannic detail, and I pointed out that Ryan also gets Gladys's date of birth wrong, using guesswork to presume his own source for this was accurate.

So Mike [or Anne, depending on the argument of the day] evidently had a 'talent' for spotting Ryan's dodgy guesswork and avoiding the duds: no reference in the diary to Jim having met his beloved Bunny on Bernard Ryan's Britannic; no reference to the family celebrating Gladys's third birthday a month too early, thanks to Bernard Ryan's error.

The Barretts [take your pick which one, frankly] were also better at guesswork than their chosen historian, managing to pick a golden nugget from Ryan's description of Dr Fuller's consultation with Maybrick on 14th April 1889.

Remember, according to RJ, the odds were always going to be something like 80/20 or 70/30 in a hoaxer's favour that any modern historian would use 'the same wording' in their narrative as the primary source had used in their testimony back in 1889. So it's probably just as well that he wasn't around to give this helpful advice to the Barretts when they set about creating the text. They'd have imagined they could take their pick from any of Ryan's words and have a 70 to 80% chance of ending up with something Dr Fuller actually said to James Maybrick during his consultation.

The problem here is that RJ has plucked odd odds out of thin air when he had no need and no business doing so. Why? Because we can make a direct comparison between the words Dr Fuller stated on oath about his consultation with Maybrick in 1889, and the words Ryan chose to use when writing about it in modern times.

Fuller uses a total of 201 words to describe this event.

Ryan uses a total of 137 words to describe the same event and none of them are in the form of a direct quote by Fuller. Ryan changes nearly all of it into his own words, while including the salient facts from Fuller's testimony, and hardly copies anything verbatim from Fuller.

The wording is broadly similar, but a 70% chance of anyone lifting 5 words from Ryan's 137 and getting 5 that Fuller used himself when speaking to his patient? I don't think that can be right.

Out of Fuller's 201 words, just 5 appear in the diary, but they are Fuller's words. They make up less than 4% of Ryan's paraphrased version, and just 2.5% of Fuller's.

[Iconoclast]

Out of Fuller's 201 words, just 5 appear in the diary, but they are Fuller's words. They make up less than 4% of Ryan's paraphrased version, and just 2.5% of Fuller's.

Hi Caz,

I hope your trip to the supermarket was as successful as your demolition of RJ's rampant nonsense. Mince in the one and mince in the other, I venture!

What is actually remarkable about Fuller's magic five words is not that James Maybrick - who literally stood next to him and heard them spoken - should report him felicitously in his scrapbook, but rather that Bernard Ryan would come along numerous decades later and cite only those five words as literally as Maybrick heard them. There doesn't seem to be any obvious reason why he chose those five words as if he was paraphrasing Fuller when in fact he was quoting him but we can rest assured that none of it was at Fuller nor Maybrick's prompting. Yet another juicy coincidence which this case seems to be dripping with, but this one undoubtedly a true coincidence indeed.

Anyway, did you remember the Greek yoghurt and the Fairy Liquid?

Cheers,

Ike

[Iconoclast]

So Mike [or Anne, depending on the argument of the day] evidently had a 'talent' for spotting Ryan's dodgy guesswork and avoiding the duds: no reference in the diary to Jim having met his beloved Bunny on Bernard Ryan's Britannic; no reference to the family celebrating Gladys's third birthday a month too early, thanks to Bernard Ryan's error.

Genius, Caz - how clever of you to have spotted what the real Mike Barrett could not have, but which the David Barrat version equally-skilfully noted (without any evidence to do so) that there were errors in Ryan which needed to be ignored.

Did Mike skip the obvious temptation to mention the Brittanic and/or Gladys' birthday in his nascent scrapbook or are we living in the real world for a moment and recognising that you can't have it both ways where Mike only uses Ryan for Maybrick content but inexplicably avoids the errors in Ryan which would have manifestly buggered-up his greatest work of hoaxing genius?

In fairness, Mike could have mentioned the Brittanic in error and it would not have proven the scrapbook to be a hoax as James Maybrick could have genuinely misremembered which of his many steamer journeys he had met Florrie on; but getting Gladys' birthday wrong would have been about as implausible as spelling her middle name incorrectly in a Will purportedly written in his own hand, so well done Mike on avoiding that little sink hole.

Speaking of which, did you remember the bright yellow marigolds - I'm sure, like I, that hubby does not like his hands to burn whilst he's whisking-up the bubbles?

Cheers,

Ike

[rjpalmer]

You’ve proved my point, RJ by the absence of any criticism of Orsam’s ongoing grudges against all and sundry. The obvious assumption has to be that you condone his behaviour. You certainly give the impression of being his uncritical cheerleader.

My apologies, Gary--it won't happen again.

Mark it down as a "one-year-old-horse instance," to use a phrase of a certain uncritical critic of the critics.

[rjpalmer]

I find it interesting, to say the least, that I am being chastised for not condemning Orsam (when I simply supplied a link to his strictly objective analysis of Barrett's research notes) by the very group of people who are busy calling me a fool, a liar, and an "uncritical cheerleader."

Irony intended?

I take a hardline on the Maybrick Hoax because it is a fraud. Any other field of historic inquiry would have drummed this fraud out years ago with one united voice, but there is a certain type of Ripperologist who holds these frauds closely to his or her bosom. Strange.

[erobitha]

I take a hardline on the Maybrick Hoax because it is a fraud. Any other field of historic inquiry would have drummed this fraud out years ago with one united voice, but there is a certain type of Ripperologist who holds these frauds closely to his or her bosom. Strange.

Despite the bull and bluster RJ there has been no definitive "smoking gun". Just lots of nuance that should be debated and understood.

I want to know the truth. Anne and Mike did not fake this document and they certainly had no hand in the watch. So how did either of these actually come to be?

The fact you seem to cling on to the answers which make no sense I find rather strange.