One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[caz]

Hi ero b,

Many thanks for the support. I don't even include myself in the pantheon of those who believe I am right, by the way (!) and am more than willing to concede that James played with his own name and no-one else's in the GSG, but there are some interesting points within it which do intrigue me:

• Why is it as long as it is? It doesn't make any sense, it seems to be fatally cluttered with a double- - even triple- - negative; so was its awkward verbosity simply a vehicle to create room for James to have even more fun?
• Why is the so-called 'B' in 'Blamed' so misshapen? It's almost as though it needed to be that way.
• When I first noticed the 'bigger picture', I was marvelling at the 'Juwes' morphing into 'James', and then 'The men' caught my eye and it occurred to me that if James had embedded 'James' into the GSG he might have intended 'The men' to morph into 'Thomas' (it's not entirely different to the morphing of 'Juwes' into 'James', I'd say). It then - immediately - occurred to me that I might find more 'morphing' so I looked for 'William' and there he was, hiding in plain sight, and then there was 'Ed' (I thought of the 'win' much later as I recall), so I looked for Michael and found 'MM' when you turn the 'W' in 'Will' around, so I looked for the last of the significant adults in Jame's life, his wife Florrie, and that's when I noticed the misshapen 'B' and it struck me that the first part was exactly the same as the 'f' in 'for' in the final line, and if you remove that element, you are left with an 'm' turned on its side.
• Then I wondered why there was such an unnatural space between the so-called 'B' in 'Blamed' and the 'lamed' which followed it and it immediately struck me that James had started the word too early on the wall and - for 'lam' to appear as 'iam' directly below the 'Will' above it - James had to leave a subtle space which (I assume) whoever copied the GSG down did so faithfully.
• Then I noticed that 'Juwes', 'The', and 'Will' were all unnecessarily capitalised. Whatever for?
• And all this happened in about two minutes - so no long convoluted, desperate straining to make James into Jack.
• 'Ed' became 'Edwin' when it occurred to me that 'for nothing' could also read '4-0' which would be a 'win' in the world's first-ever football league format (started three weeks before the GSG appeared) - Maybrick's local team Everton even lost by that score line not long before the GSG appeared.

Now, does this mean that any of this is actually what James Maybrick intended? Well, right now it seems to the majority that the answer is a resounding 'No!!!' because it sounds far-fetched, non-mainstream, not what we think the GSG is - but how much more credence would the theory gain if it were ever accepted that James Maybrick was Jack the Ripper? I venture it would be the interpretation of choice, the mainstream, middle-of-the-road, canonical truth.

Those who hold views which are not part of the mainstream inevitably will attract accusations of lunacy, and those who hold them even against stiff and hostile opposition will attract accusations of raving lunacy, but I content myself with the knowledge that others before me have - and others after me will - hold non-mainstream views and some will inevitably be proven right over time. If my non-mainstream meanderings are wrong, I'll cope with the opprobrium, but - until then - I'll keep a candle burning for the notion as you just never know what you don't currently know ...

Ike

Well at least if it is raving lunacy, Ike, it's the kind that doesn't really hurt anyone. Keyboard warriors can get as angry as they like, to the point of apoplexy, but that's up to them. It's not compulsory for anyone to come to this thread and go away seething. The fact that they do is a positive, because they would have to be raving loonies themselves to do the same if anyone started a thread making a case for Sooty or Queen Victoria as the ripper.

Real raving lunacy in my book is insisting Trump won the election; believing the pandemic is a hoax; claiming that vaccination is at best ineffective and at worst killing more people than the virus; arguing that Brexit was a really good idea; denying the effects of climate change. I'm sure there's another one but I'm not putin my finger on it.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Yes, the 'two of everything' is quite humorous, but especially so regarding Caz Brown's theory that Mike Barrett had two copies of RWE's Tales of Liverpool. Caz makes sport of other people allegedly being "Barrett Believers" but her own belief is based solely on a bogus account given by Mike Barrett --even though it can be proven beyond all reasonable doubt that Barrett was lying about it.

My commentary below was written in 2001 after hearing the tape of Mike's 18 January 1995 interrogation.

Wednesday, 22 August 2001 - 05:34 pm

The main feeling I was left with was that Mike Barrett was not being candid. So, all in all, the tape didn't strike me as a very believable recantation of his earlier confession. At several points Mike seemed to be evasive. At other times, he seemed to be making things up as he went along --- and this particularly seemed to get him into trouble; his story changed almost in mid-sentence at times. As much as Keith & Shirley tried to keep him on track, Mike drifted from point to point to point [Mike digressed so much that he made Lawrence Sterne's Tristram Shandy seem like a blunt & direct narrator] and he made such a strange confused web of tales that I started to suspect that it was all part of some 'act'. A case in point was Mike's discussion of Tony D's relationship to the diary.

In theory, if we were to believe AG's story, she merely handed Tony the diary wrapped up in brown paper while on his doorstep. Tony then gave the diary to Mike, still wrapped up. So, in other words, Tony was an ignorant middle-man. But as Mike now tells it on this tape, things suddenly get a little strange. Now we have Tony D. [or so Mike claims] owning his own private copy of RWE's Liverpool Tales and refusing to lend it out. This makes Mike so curious that he goes out and buys his own copy, wherein he finds out the diary's author is Maybrick. [This was news to me!] This seems riddled with problems. First, this is in direct conflict with Mike's earlier story. Second, it tends to conflict with Anne's claim that TD was nothing but a clueless handler of the diary [if Tony wasn't aware of the diary's content why would he refuse to lend Mike the book? Why would he anyway? Weren't we told TD 'wasn't a reader'?] Third, it goes against the supposed physical evidence--viz: Paul Feldman has stated TD's copy of RWE's book had Mike's signature in it. So here, at least, it seems that Mike is caught in a blatant dishonesty, which would, to my mind, suggests that his claims on this tape should be looked at with suspicion. I would suggest that Mike may have had an agenda of his own for these statements, and might even hazard a few guesses as to what that agenda was... but not in public.


We now know that two trustworthy witnesses--Tony Devereux's own daughters--confirmed that this was Mike Barrett's person copy of Tales of Liverpool. So Barrett's claim that this was Tony's copy and that he wouldn't share it is totally false. And the account that Barrett was thus forced to go and buy a new copy at Smith's bookstore must also be false.

Yet we are told by Caz Brown that this account is believable.

The only reason anyone would accept this ludicrous and unconfirmed claim by Barret is to 'explain away' that Barrett and Devereux were already discussing the Maybrick case (RWE's book has two chapters on Maybrick) prior to August 1991---long before Dodd had his floorboards lifted.

The diary did not come from Battlecrease, and in order to argue that it did, they've already kicked the wheels off Anne Graham's "in the family" story.

I see no road back. The golden goose has been strangled--by the Diary's own faithful.

Well done, RJ. You've cracked it. Mike told a stupid lie because Tony did not refuse to lend him his ToL. I agree.

Tony was dead when Mike used the same book to connect Maybrick with the diary, so he had to buy one of his own. He let that slip when asked if Tony was still alive when the connection was made. Mike was clearly struggling to keep his story straight about getting the diary from Tony in 1991, which you and I both believe was another of his lies.

Feldman never saw the copy of ToL which Janet Devereux handed over to Scotland Yard in October 1993, so he must have been mistaken. It did not have Mike's name in it, nor any other distinguishing features.

[caz]

Let us remind your readers what you claimed. You claimed that before Mike turned over his notes to Shirley (by contractual agreement) she asked him about Bernard Ryan's book.

Direct quote please. I don't recall making that claim. I don't recall saying anything about a contractual agreement to make or turn over any notes, and it was clearly my speculation, based on all the available evidence and a good dollop of common sense, that Shirley didn't ask Mike if he'd ever heard of Ryan's book after looking through a whole series of notes taken from that very book!

Further, your depiction flies directly in the face of the description and the spirit of what Harrison wrote in her own books--that these notes where Barrett's own solo attempts to research and understand the diary. If they weren't, her descriptions and conclusions would have made no sense.

Do you think Shirley was right to believe that the notes were Mike's solo attempts to research and understand the diary?

Thought not.

Could this not have been what Mike claimed when finally handing them over to Shirley in July/August 1992, because he didn't want to admit getting the tip about Ryan from her, and couldn't admit that he'd done no research at all until 9th March 1992? If Shirley had to accept that Mike got the diary from Tony in 1991, because there was no better explanation at the time, she had no reason to think he was lying about when he began researching it.

I went back to the Casebook CD-Rom to see what I had written in 2001 after hearing the January 18, 1995 interrogation of Mike Barrett by Keith, Sally, Shirley, and the ex-CID detective Kevin Forshaw. I noticed something interesting:


Author: R.J.P.

Wednesday, 22 August 2001 - 09:17 pm

[Excerpt]:

Why did Mike evidently try to 'set up' Anne Graham by giving her the description to the inside of Tony Devereux's house? Does this imply anything about what Mike knows or doesn't know? In the tape Mike also protests (too much, methinks) that he had never heard of the Bernard Ryan book. I am curious why Shirley asked about this particular book. When asked about the Blue Coat Art shop & Harold Brough, Mike became particularly digressive. We are given a long ramble about Liverpool geography and one-way streets. When the Crashaw quote comes up we are suddenly (abruptly, I thought) given a long ramble about scotch. I find no fault in the interviewers, they tried their damnedest to keep Mike on-track. But, at the end of the day, to use a familiar phrase, I felt MB was utterly down-playing his earlier confessions. It would be most instructive, I think, to compare this tape to some of the tapes of Mike's conversations with Gray. Perhaps Mike didn't give too much useful information there, either. Some, quite understandably, might come to the conclusion that Mike knows nothing. Others might even come to the conclusion that MB, through some quirk in his personality, is unable to be candid. Others might suggest that he knows, but has never given a completely true account. My hunch is that it is a combination of the last two suggestions.

Based on this excerpt, it sounds to me as if it was Shirely Harrison herself who was asking Mike if he had heard of or had read Bernard Ryan's book. This was in January 1995.

Why in the blazes would she have asked Mike about Ryan if she had already pointed the book out to him nearly 3 years earlier?

Feel free to prove me wrong, but I am increasingly convinced that you have no source for Harrison asking Mike about this book back in 1992 and are merely misremembering Shirley's query during this 1995 interview and then teleporting it back to 1992 to suit your immediate purpose. I'd be interested in rehearing the entire context and Shirley's verbatim question.

Mike said to Keith, for what it's worth, on 14th April 1994:

MB: Ehm going right back, you know the 'The Poisoned Life of Mrs Maybrick' I didn’t know that existed until after Shirley, until after I met Doreen. Many months afterwards Shirley Harrison said to me over the phone one day, “Have I ever heard of the book called The Poisoned Life of Mrs Maybrick?” I said, “No I hadn’t.” So I went to the library and got it and read it then and what have you. I also read the ‘Fifteen Years’, which you can’t take out. So that was well after the research had actually commenced.

And this was said on 18th January 1995:

SH: And when did you start looking at other books? What other sourcebooks did you use for checking out the Diary’s history?
MB: After that, the only other books I used were after you mentioned – you mentioned, you mentioned, straight from the horse’s mouth, you mentioned ‘The Poisoned Life of Mrs Maybrick’.
SH: Yes.
MB: Now, I didn’t know anything about that.
SH: No.
MB: You mentioned that and then obviously I went and got ‘The Poisoned Life of Mrs Maybrick’, which even confirmed even more.
KS: This was after Tony’s death?
MB: Oh this was after I spoke to Shirley, this was well after.
KS: Yeah.
MB: This was well after. I mean, I didn’t know ‘The Poisoned Life of Mrs Maybrick’ even existed. It was only Shirley that told me about that.

Oh, and you're welcome.

[Iconoclast]

Mike said to Keith, for what it's worth, on 14th April 1994:

MB: Ehm going right back, you know the 'The Poisoned Life of Mrs Maybrick' I didn’t know that existed until after Shirley, until after I met Doreen. Many months afterwards Shirley Harrison said to me over the phone one day, “Have I ever heard of the book called The Poisoned Life of Mrs Maybrick?” I said, “No I hadn’t.” So I went to the library and got it and read it then and what have you. I also read the ‘Fifteen Years’, which you can’t take out. So that was well after the research had actually commenced.

And this was said on 18th January 1995:

SH: And when did you start looking at other books? What other sourcebooks did you use for checking out the Diary’s history?
MB: After that, the only other books I used were after you mentioned – you mentioned, you mentioned, straight from the horse’s mouth, you mentioned ‘The Poisoned Life of Mrs Maybrick’.
SH: Yes.
MB: Now, I didn’t know anything about that.
SH: No.
MB: You mentioned that and then obviously I went and got ‘The Poisoned Life of Mrs Maybrick’, which even confirmed even more.
KS: This was after Tony’s death?
MB: Oh this was after I spoke to Shirley, this was well after.
KS: Yeah.
MB: This was well after. I mean, I didn’t know ‘The Poisoned Life of Mrs Maybrick’ even existed. It was only Shirley that told me about that.

Oh, and you're welcome.

Now, Caz, I need to inform you that this really does very little for RJ/Orsam's ridiculous Barrett scenario so please prepare yourself to be informed that you are wrong, quite wrong.

I always think forewarned is forearmed, don't you?

Ike

[caz]

Just to add...

So if Shirley had done what Orsam did only recently, and concluded that Mike had taken one or more of his notes from Ryan's book without naming it, she'd have appreciated that he was either still adding to his notes after April 1992, to hand over to her when he thought he'd done enough work, or he had lied when he told her he'd never heard of the book - and repeated the same lie in 1994 and 1995.

It would be interesting to know exactly when Shirley asked him about the book, but we can't have everything. Clearly, if it was only after the notes were handed over, Mike told yet another of his stupid lies and got away with it, because Shirley could not have seen anything in those notes to suggest he had not only heard of Ryan's book but had got his information from it. I'm not even sure what that would prove if true, except that Mike couldn't lie straight in bed, even when there was no obvious advantage in doing so. And we knew that already.

In short, if Mike knew he would need to deny all knowledge of Ryan's book if Shirley asked, because he had used it to fake the diary, why the effing hell would he have consulted it again for his 'research' notes? What kind of idiot does Barrat think Barrett was?

Love,

Caz
X

[Iconoclast]

Others might even come to the conclusion that MB, through some quirk in his personality, [was] unable to be candid.

To give the 2001 version of RJ his due, this is one of the very best pithy summaries of Mike Barrett I could ever imagine. I'm almost jealous!

Ike

[rjpalmer]

Feldman never saw the copy of ToL which Janet Devereux handed over to Scotland Yard in October 1993, so he must have been mistaken. It did not have Mike's name in it, nor any other distinguishing features.

You'll have to excuse me for asking, but is this a 'fact' or just another example of where you are 'clearly speculating'?

Either way, your comment is evasive. First off, Feldman was there at the time--you weren't.

More importantly, your comment is misleading. Even if Barrett's signature wasn't in the book (and I suspect Feldman wasn't making it up) there is still no reasonable doubt that it was Barrett's personal copy. It was in the possession of Devereux's daughter who had turned it over to the police, telling them without prompting that her father had identified it as Barrett's own copy. A second sister confirmed this. This makes it conclusive.

Yet, you seem to be trying to leave the impression there is some doubt about this book having been Bongo's.

Is that what you are implying?

[rjpalmer]

Direct quote please. I don't recall making that claim. I don't recall saying anything about a contractual agreement to make or turn over any notes, and it was clearly my speculation, based on all the available evidence and a good dollop of common sense, that Shirley didn't ask Mike if he'd ever heard of Ryan's book after looking through a whole series of notes taken from that very book!

This is a very strange statement. It seems designed to muddy the waters.

Mike notes do not mention Ryan's book, even though he secretly used it. So why on earth couldn't Shirley have asked him about Ryan at a later date??!?

Are you implying that Harrison sussed to the fact that Barrett's notes were based on Ryan, but didn't challenge him about it?? And then Shirley went on to make misleading comments about those notes in her own books?? If that is what you are implying, it is absurd.

That she would ask Barrett about his sources at a later date is entirely rational and reasonable. Indeed, according to Feldman's book, Feldy became suspicious about the notes sometime around 1994 because they seemed too 'literate' to have been Mike's work. That's why questions were being asked, and why Anne Graham was asked to clarify the genesis of the notes.

What still isn't explained is why Keith was specifically asking about Ryan's book in April 1994.

It seems unlikely that Keith could have been worried that the nest of hoaxers had simply cribbed all the Maybrick information from Ryan (which really amounted to little more than clumsy namedropping) because as late as November 1998 Keith was still under the wrong impression that the Maybrick Diary contained “the inclusion of obscure information about Maybrick.” (His introduction to Anne Graham’s book).

This mistaken belief has now been corrected. Nearly all the 'obscure' information about Maybrick can be found in Nigel Moreland's "This Friendless Lady" and ALL of it can be found in Ryan--the same book Barrett had mysterious insight about at the 1999 Cloak and Dagger meeting.

(By contrast, Orsam has compiled a very useful list of 'obscure' information about Maybrick's real private life between 1888-1889 --the walking tour in Wales, the portrait, etc--and none of this is mentioned in the diary)

The reason that Barrett repeatedly denied knowing about this book is now obvious, but less obvious is why Skinner and Harrison had been so keen to ask him about it.

It is almost as if there was something behind the scenes that triggered these specific questions.


As for 'direct quotes'

Post #8097

[Barrett] had to have something to show for all those months of hard work, which he hadn't actually done because he didn't know the diary existed before March 9 1992, and didn't know Bernard Ryan's book from a bar of soap before Shirley mentioned it to him, at some point after April 13 1992. He couldn't then name Ryan as his source for the Maybrick research, or Shirley would have instantly rumbled that his notes had not been compiled over several months, but only after she herself had made him aware of Ryan's book.

And again in Post #8160

Taking the easy route, [Mike] uses Shirley's tip and takes his Maybrick info from Ryan's book, but then can't name it for obvious reasons: Shirley would know he has done next to no Maybrick research in all those months before she gave him a source to work with.

There you have it, folks.

If any of you were under the mistaken impression that Caz was stating that Shirley had told Mike about Bernard Ryan’s book between April 1992 and July 1992, the fault is yours.

Caz was ‘clearly’ speculating.

But I do thank Caz for belatedly admitting—when pressed—that there is not any evidence or even likelihood that Shirley had mentioned this book to Mike before he handed over his notes.

That leave us with Barrett having hidden his source. And Graham must have known the notes were bogus, too.

I think I've had enough 'gaslighting' for the week--so now I'm off.

[rjpalmer]

P.S. Keith can comment if he wants, but I do wonder if during all of Feldman's genealogical work in 1994 someone noticed that Mike's reference to Benjamin Thurston in his research notes was suspicious and absurd.

Thurston was an American and graduated from Harvard sometime around 1795 and lived his life in Maine, USA. It is wildly unlikely that anyone working in the Liverpool Librarary in the 1990s could have traced Florie's family tree this far back--I doubt Liverpool would have had the relevant genealogical materials. Nor would any of this have been relevant to Mike's research of the diary.

Maybe it was noticed Benjamin Thurston was mentioned in Ryan? (Lord O mentions that the only other known source for this was Florie's book, but the same passage in Barrett's bogus notes mentions the 'Brittanic' which ISN'T in Florie's book, so his source must have been Ryan).

Was this why Mike was asked about Ryan in April 1994?

[caz]

You'll have to excuse me for asking, but is this a 'fact' or just another example of where you are 'clearly speculating'?

Either way, your comment is evasive. First off, Feldman was there at the time--you weren't.

Christ on a bike, RJ. I've made it clear about a thousand times that everything I post relating to what happened before I became involved comes from Keith's documentation, and he was there. Was Feldman present when Scotland Yard took Janet's ToL? No, he wasn't. And it was Janet's book by October 1993, as possession is nine-tenths of the law, and she had never attempted to return it to "Bongo", and "Bongo" did not miss it, in all that time, from the day Janet saw it in her dad's house in January 1991 and asked to borrow it.

Keith was in touch with Bonesy following the publication of Inside Story in 2003, and was able to get further information that Feldman didn't and to clarify certain matters, including the condition of Janet's book in October 1993, and what she said on handing it over about when she had borrowed it. If you won't take my word for it, that Mike's name was not in Janet's book and there was nothing to suggest he had read it, that's fine. You can ask Keith. Or just ask a policeman.

More importantly, your comment is misleading. Even if Barrett's signature wasn't in the book (and I suspect Feldman wasn't making it up) there is still no reasonable doubt that it was Barrett's personal copy. It was in the possession of Devereux's daughter who had turned it over to the police, telling them without prompting that her father had identified it as Barrett's own copy. A second sister confirmed this. This makes it conclusive.

Yet, you seem to be trying to leave the impression there is some doubt about this book having been Bongo's.

Is that what you are implying?

It's what you want to infer. Feldman was obviously mistaken, and like you, he had no reason to doubt it was Mike's copy, although he never saw it. It suited his theorising to believe it could be identified as Mike's. He not only came to believe Anne had given the diary to Tony to give to Mike, in the spring/summer of 1991, but he was also working on a hunch that Tony had spilled the beans and told Mike after being pestered for answers. Mike couldn't grasp this line of questioning at Baker Street in July 1995, and ended up saying in his frustration that Tony couldn't have helped him with the diary because he was dead and didn't know it existed. He had misunderstood what Feldy was seeking to confirm and Feldy, still on a roll, simply didn't register the significance of what Mike had just told him and the moment was lost.

Once in a while, it would be nice if you could acknowledge when you have got something wrong, or leapt to a false assumption, or have misinterpreted what you have read, because it's what you wanted to infer from it, rather than what it was, or is. I find it astonishing that you would cling to Feldman as your source when you want his beliefs to be factually based, but maybe you see common ground on a subconscious level, because of his overwhelming confidence in his own hunches, and the evidence or lack of it be damned.

[caz]

Mike notes do not mention Ryan's book, even though he secretly used it. So why on earth couldn't Shirley have asked him about Ryan at a later date??!?

She could. You speculate that she did; I speculate that she didn't - and I base this on all the evidence I have seen and heard, plus a good dollop of common sense. You base yours on wishful thinking and dancing round that evidence.

Are you implying that Harrison sussed to the fact that Barrett's notes were based on Ryan, but didn't challenge him about it?? And then Shirley went on to make misleading comments about those notes in her own books?? If that is what you are implying, it is absurd.

I've said what I've said. What you choose to infer from it is absurd. I'm saying the opposite. We know Shirley didn't 'challenge' Mike about the notes, but accepted they were honestly compiled and transferred since Tony's death. If Mike had 'secretly' used Ryan's book for some of the notes, evidence is needed that he did so because he had used it to fake the diary, and thought Shirley would be suspicious if he actually named his source. It's a ludicrous argument because it would have looked just as suspicious if Shirley had 'sussed' what he had done, and he denied all knowledge of the book, and there would have been absolutely no need to risk it in the first place.

That she would ask Barrett about his sources at a later date is entirely rational and reasonable. Indeed, according to Feldman's book, Feldy became suspicious about the notes sometime around 1994 because they seemed too 'literate' to have been Mike's work. That's why questions were being asked, and why Anne Graham was asked to clarify the genesis of the notes.

Absolutely. But questions like this were asked at intervals throughout the process of trying to understand the Barretts' relationship with the diary and how it had come into their lives. And very often during this process Mike volunteered information without being asked a specific question.

What still isn't explained is why Keith was specifically asking about Ryan's book in April 1994.

The reason that Barrett repeatedly denied knowing about this book is now obvious, but less obvious is why Skinner and Harrison had been so keen to ask him about it.

It is almost as if there was something behind the scenes that triggered these specific questions.

Where do you get these false assumptions from?

Keith wasn't 'specifically asking about Ryan's book' in April 1994. The whole line of his questioning was to clarify for himself how Mike had identified Battlecrease House in Riversdale Road in the early days of his research which, as far as Keith was concerned, began after Tony's death in August 1991. Mike said he must have seen a photograph of the house somewhere although he knew there wasn't one in ToL. Keith suggested various Maybrick books, but the only one Mike picked up on was Ryan while Keith was changing the cassette. So Keith then asked him just to recap on what he had been saying - not because Ryan had any significance for Keith at the time, but so he would have a full record of what they had discussed.

And again, in Goldie Street on 18th January 1995, it was Mike who brought up Ryan's book when Shirley asked a general question about sources, reminding her that she had been the one to tell him about it after the research had begun, just as he had told Keith the previous April. Mike told Shirley that when he read the book she had recommended, it "confirmed even more". Quick thinking on Mike's part, to have the diary coming first, and Ryan later confirming for him what was in it. But he was the one who brought up this specific book on both occasions, when he had no need if it then forced him to lie about its role in the story.

And nothing much wrong with Mike's memory either, in January 1995, when he had just dictated his affidavit to Alan Gray. He volunteered the same Ryan story on 18th that he had volunteered to Keith nine months previously, and was able to keep the details perfectly straight on each occasion.

There you have it, folks.

If any of you were under the mistaken impression that Caz was stating that Shirley had told Mike about Bernard Ryan’s book between April 1992 and July 1992, the fault is yours.

Caz was ‘clearly’ speculating.

Of course. Why would anyone have supposed I was doing anything else? It was all couched in the language of speculation, but if anyone was confused, I imagine the context - Mike having no awareness of the diary before 9th March 1992 - would probably have given the 'folks' a clue, if they were paying attention. They'd have 'sussed' it even if you missed it.

There is no evidence, nor even the remotest likelihood, that Mike attended an auction in late March 1992, and brought home the scrapbook for Anne to use for a Ryan-based fake. It's clearly speculation and it's totally without foundation.

[caz]

P.S. Keith can comment if he wants, but I do wonder if during all of Feldman's genealogical work in 1994 someone noticed that Mike's reference to Benjamin Thurston in his research notes was suspicious and absurd.

Thurston was an American and graduated from Harvard sometime around 1795 and lived his life in Maine, USA. It is wildly unlikely that anyone working in the Liverpool Librarary in the 1990s could have traced Florie's family tree this far back--I doubt Liverpool would have had the relevant genealogical materials. Nor would any of this have been relevant to Mike's research of the diary.

Maybe it was noticed Benjamin Thurston was mentioned in Ryan? (Lord O mentions that the only other known source for this was Florie's book, but the same passage in Barrett's bogus notes mentions the 'Brittanic' which ISN'T in Florie's book, so his source must have been Ryan).

Was this why Mike was asked about Ryan in April 1994?

No, because he wasn't asked about Ryan. You misled yourself.

Mike volunteered the information that he had read Ryan's book, and also "Fifteen Years", which he read in the library as it could not be taken out, but claimed this was after the research had begun, and after Shirley had mentioned Ryan to him.

He didn't attribute either detail to an impossible source; he didn't name a source at all, as with many of his other notes. I'm not sure why anyone should have found their inclusion suspicious or absurd, if Mike was unfamiliar with the material and just jotting down bits and pieces of information he thought might be of interest.

If he avoided the date of birth Ryan gave for Gladys, pretending he hadn't found one for sinister reasons, he could have done the same with the Britannic or gone the whole hog and taken all his notes from any of the available non-Ryan sources.

I also suggest you read Admin's post on the Special Announcement thread if you have not done so already.

[rjpalmer]

It's what you want to infer. Feldman was obviously mistaken, and like you, he had no reason to doubt it was Mike's copy, although he never saw it. It suited his theorising to believe it could be identified as Mike's...

Once in a while, it would be nice if you could acknowledge when you have got something wrong, or leapt to a false assumption, or have misinterpreted what you have read, because it's what you wanted to infer from it, rather than what it was, or is. I find it astonishing that you would cling to Feldman as your source when you want his beliefs to be factually based, but maybe you see common ground on a subconscious level, because of his overwhelming confidence in his own hunches, and the evidence or lack of it be damned.

I fear Lord Orsam was right about you, Caz. This can't be anything other than deliberate gaslighting.

I am not "inferring" that this was Mike's personal copy of Tales of Liverpool. Everyone knew that it was. How?

Because Janet and Nancy Devereux were both told this by their own father and were able to produce the book and hand it over to Scotland Yard.

By contrast, when Barrett was asked by the Fraud Squad to produce his copy, he couldn't do it. I feel no need to 'acknowledge that I have something wrong' when there is no indication that I AM wrong about this.

Was Keith Skinner similarly wrong when he posted this back on 1-31-2018 on the "Acquiring a Victorian Diary" thread?

TO R.J.PALMER

Roger. To swiftly answer your question off the top of my head and without checking

back to my reference material to confirm factual accuracy...

The essence of what I remember about Tales Of Liverpool is that Mikes copy was given to the Scotland Yard investigating officer in October 1993 by Tony Devereuxs daughter who had been loaned it by Devereux when she visited him in 1992. [Sic: Keith must mean 1991]. From what I was able to ascertain when I spoke with the daughter, she was pregnant and saw the book in Devereuxs house and asked her father if she could borrow it. Devereaux said yes but to bring it back because it belonged to Bongo (Mike Barrett). It never was returned because Devereux died in August 1992].[sic: 1991]. Im pretty sure that, with the daughters assistance, I was able to narrow down the date when she would have borrowed the book because it related it to her pregnancy. Summer comes to mind but without going back to my notes I cannot be sure. As I think Ive openly said to David, the book is an important piece of evidence for it being the source of some of the Maybrick content of the Diary. Mike references it in his research notes. Ive by no means discounted it Roger as a pointer to the diary being a modern fake. Mike does name Devereux in his sworn affidavit of January 1995.

We still have unfinished business to resolve in some of your previous posts.

All Good Wishes, Keith

Keith obviously accepted that it was Barrett's copy of Tales of Liverpool in Devereux's possession, and admitted this was an 'important piece of evidence' because it had been confirmed by Nancy Steel and Janet Devereux.

As for Feldman, I think his genealogical musings are utterly bonkers, but I was unaware that you are in the same camp. You have lavishly defended Ike's theorizing, and all Ike has basically done is to regurgitate the same arguments that Feldman came up with 25-30 years ago.

From Feldman's own account, he seems to have either seen the book, or was given this information by either Nancy Steele or Detective Bonsey.

I was led to believe that Keith later failed to track down this copy and couldn't confirm that Barrett's name was in it--but there was never any indication that Feldman was shown to have been wrong ("obviously mistaken" as you now claim!) and that it wasn't in the book. Either way, two dependable people with no motive for lying confirmed that Devereux had identified it as Barrett's copy.

You now seem to be indulging in gratuitous doubt-making in order to keep your theory afloat, but is there really any doubt? I wonder if Keith now shares these doubts as well. He didn't seem to back in 2018.

[rjpalmer]

Hi Caz,

One further comment. As a courtesy to you, let me just explain that I won't be reading any further responses on this thread, so don't waste your time. I may return if there are any new developments, but I don't really see that happening anytime soon.

I see that Oram has joined the ranks of "he who shall not be named," and with Keith Skinner also not posting, there doesn't really seem to be any reason to soldier-on.

As it now stands, I am basically just an unwanted kabbitzer at a party that really belongs to you, Ike, Steve Owl, and Jay Hartley. I see no crying need to discuss the Maybrick Hoax any more than there is a crying need to discuss Pedachenko or the Lewis Carroll theory.

Cheers.

[MrBarnett]

Hi Caz,

One further comment. As a courtesy to you, let me just explain that I won't be reading any further responses on this thread, so don't waste your time. I may return if there are any new developments, but I don't really see that happening anytime soon.

I see that Oram has joined the ranks of "he who shall not be named," and with Keith Skinner also not posting, there doesn't really seem to be any reason to soldier-on.

As it now stands, I am basically just an unwanted kabbitzer at a party that really belongs to you, Ike, Steve Owl, and Jay Hartley. I see no crying need to discuss the Maybrick Hoax any more than there is a crying need to discuss Pedachenko or the Lewis Carroll theory.

Cheers.

’As a courtesy to you… don’t waste your time…’

Very courteous. Did you run this before your Lord and Master before you posted it?

Remind me, how many times have you announced your intention to flounce off from this thread? Is this really it, or will you be back sniping at at Caz in a few days?