One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[rjpalmer]

I'm happy to wait until hell freezes over.

Make that two of us.

And while we wait for that unlikely meteorological event, let's have a brief summary.

You claimed that I am ignoring evidence "pointing against Barrett and Graham as the diary's creators," yet, when pressed, you refuse to state what that evidence is.

In reality, I helped you get the ball rolling by starting a list of 4 items that might be consider evidence of the diary's antiquity. So far, no one has added anything to that list.

I do notice, however, that you now mention the diary being found at Battlecrease on 9 March 1992--which would presumably eliminate the Barretts as suspects.

Is this correct?

If so, is it fair for me to remove item #1 from my previous list---namely, that Billy Graham remembered seeing the diary shortly after World War II?

Or do you think it is possible that Billy Graham did see the diary in the 1940s but that it somehow still made its way under Dodd's floorboards in the intervening years, but--by a bizarre set of circumstances--was found and handed back to Graham's own son-in-law?

If you agree that idea is silly, can I now revise the list of evidence that I am supposedly ignoring?


1. Rod McNeil’s ion migration test determined the diary's ink went on paper between 1909 and 1933, inclusive.

2. The chemist Alec Voller noticed the ink was ‘bronzed’ during a visual examination of the diary in October 1995, which to him suggested antiquity.

3. [By implication] a miniscule piece of metal, ‘darkened with age,' was found in a scratch on the back inside cover of the ‘Maybrick’ watch. This is not the diary, of course, but I'll be generous and include it.

4. The diary was found under Dodd's floorboards on 9 March 1992 and Barrett could not have placed it there, having no known association with Dodd or any of the electricians working at Battlecrease on that date.

Is that a fair summary of where we now stand? Or am I ignoring anything else?

[rjpalmer]

Chronologies are fundamentally determined by dates, and getting them 'wrong' by a factor of two years just three to four years later smacks of 'reinterpretation after the event'

Oh, by the way. I meant to say how much of a kick I got out of this rigmarole, Ike. Thanks for the humor.

"Chronologies are fundamentally determined by dates." ....unless, of course, you want to give credence to the floorboard tales told by Alan Davies or Brian Rawes!

The first claimed he told a shopkeeper in Bootle in late 1991 that a leather-bound diary had been found in a biscuit tin under the floorboards of Battlecrease. Several months too early to have anything to do with Bongo Barrett and Eddie Lyons and a phone call to Doreen Montgomery in March 1992. Worse yet, we are informed by Robert Smith that when he investigated this claim he learned that this shop in Bootle hadn't opened until November 1992---when Barrett's diary was already safely in London!

Oops!

"Chronologies are fundamentally determined by dates."

Our second informant tells of a breathless Eddie Lyons rushing down the drive at Battlecrease with news of an important discovery under the floorboards in June 1992-again three months too late to have anything to do with our boy Bongo or the diary. And the timecards for Lyons, Rhodes, and Rawes fully corroborate that this was the month these three men were indeed working together.

"Chronologies are fundamentally determined by dates."

Indeed! And the chronology shows that these tales fall apart on further inspection.


Meanwhile, despite your increasingly desperate efforts to undermine Bongo's affidavit, your misgivings are spectacularly meaningless because we already have hard dates showing when Barrett went shopping for the red diary---the ad placed by Martin Earl in Bookfinder and the check stub supplied by Anne Graham show that it was 1992.

Thus, the minor discrepancies in Gray's noble attempt to make sense of these slushy confessions by Barrett need not unduly worry us. The account given by Barrett has been confirmed, so it matters very little whether a man in the throes of a bender said it was 1990, 1991, or 1066.

[Iconoclast]

Thus, the minor discrepancies in Gray's noble attempt to make sense of these slushy confessions by Barrett need not unduly worry us. The account given by Barrett has been confirmed, so it matters very little whether a man in the throes of a bender said it was 1990, 1991, or 1066.

Just to be absolutely clear here, RJ, there was absolutely nothing whatsoever 'noble' about a private detective being led in the background by a man with zero integrity (terrified his book sales would be just single digits instead of the anticipated double digits 'blockbuster') pushing a man whose life was clearly well and truly unravelled into making false confessions and signing affidavits he would not have touched in sober and domesticated times.

Harris was a viper seeking personal gain under the banner of 'integrity' (don't make me laugh) and anyone and everyone was fair game to him in his irrational, psychotic pursuit of 'the truth' (as he so vainly saw it). Grey was a bloke desperate to earn some money - no criticism there; but he could have stepped back and assessed the situation better and realised he was being used by Harris to kill the sales of Harrison's book and used by Barrett to find his errant wife. I suspect he ended-up being paid by neither which I find slightly sad as I assume Gray meant no malice.

But 'noble'? Honestly, I pissed my pants, mate ...

[Iconoclast]

"Chronologies are fundamentally determined by dates."

Yes, they are. Thank you for confirming this simple point that I was making. Bongo's 'chronology' was provably incorrect - not just on the basis of 'dates' but on the basis of your favourite type of dates, the 'hard dates' such as when Tony Devereux died.

If you can show us that Alan Davies was referring to a hard date of "late 1991", that would show the chronology to be inconsistent. APS began trading on October 26, 1992. The events of March 9, 1992 - of course - gave us the scrapbook. One of those electricians retrieved it from Battlecrease House and it soon found its way into the hands of Mike Barrett. By July 1992, Mike had vicariously secured a publishing deal. Not the sort of thing anyone would imagine he'd keep quiet about in his local pub - you know, the one he shared with Eddie Lyons. On July 17, 1992, Lyons found himself back at Battlecrease House for the first time since March 9 (and possibly 10), 1992. The memories quickly flooded back. He had taken that scrapbook and sold it to Barrett for about £25. Now Barrett was about to publish the property Lyons had stolen. Of course, he was deeply concerned that day - July 17, 1992 - when Brian Rawes turned-up looking for the P&R van (he wasn't on the timesheet, by the way, RJ, despite your strange claim that he was - he was just nipping in to collect the company van, hardly grounds for Colin Rhodes to bill Paul Dodd, eh?); so Eddie spoke with Rawes briefly about having found something important and Rawes told him to tell Colin Rhodes. Of course, Eddie didn't. He couldn't if he wanted to protect his reputation and keep working in Liverpool (or indeed anywhere else). So he let it lie. APS opened in late October 1992 and a month or so later, Alan Davies walked into the shop and told Alan Dodgson (assistant) about the rumours he'd heard about a diary being found by some electricians who worked in the same company as he did. Hard dates confirm this chronology. Dodgson said his boss - Tim Martin-Wright - might be interested in the diary; but next time the conversation came up, Davies was confirming what he may have already been told - that the 'diary' had long ago been sold "in a pub in Anfield", and there the tale ended until the summer of 1994 when Martin-Wright discovered Harrison's book in a shop in Berwick and reached out to Paul Feldman.

Some lovely hard dates available to anyone who wants them, RJ. Of course, you've got to want them. Are we clear? Are we clear? I think the answer to that is "Crystal", don't you?

Not so much 'oops', RJ, as 'poops!' - you've once accepted someone's vague recall of dates and details over the very hard dates you claim you crave.

[Iconoclast]

[QUOTE=rjpalmer;n788176]
... we already have hard dates showing when Barrett went shopping for the red diary---the ad placed by Martin Earl in Bookfinder and the check stub supplied by Anne Graham show that it was 1992.[/QUOTE

Indeed. Barrett acquired the scrapbook in March 1992 and immediately (literally, immediately) set about seeking out a doppelganger because he knew it was stolen property and he was not going to be giving it back when the rightful owner (with polis in tow) came knocking at his door. By the time the silly little 1891 maroon diary was proffered to him (end of March), his fears had been assuaged and he didn't need it anymore. He still took it, mind. Typical Mike - he didn't have to pay for it there and then so he said he was still interested in it and wanted to receive it.

Thus, the minor discrepancies in Gray's noble attempt to make sense of these slushy confessions by Barrett need not unduly worry us. The account given by Barrett has been confirmed, so it matters very little whether a man in the throes of a bender said it was 1990, 1991, or 1066.

The account given by Mike Barrett was a patent mash-up of all his greatest hits, this time with Melvin Harris on lead guitar, and Alan Gray on recorder. Mike was simply giving Harris what he wanted but he provided the 'facts' in such a cack-handed fashion that his story was a pure fabrication from start to finish. Every little detail he added was massaged. The maroon diary is a great example.

If you (or anyone else) is determined to cling to Mike Barrett's affy David as a source of 'truth' in this case, you should not be too surprised if you find yourself ravelling and unravelling the hard dates to make Mike's fantasy saleable to the general public.

Ike

[Iconoclast]

Meanwhile, despite your increasingly desperate efforts to undermine Bongo's affidavit ...

I think we all know that undermining Bongo's affy David is not exactly a Mensa puzzle, RJ.

A question occurred to me the other day, by the way. In the World According to Bongo, it took him and Anne eleven days to complete the transcription of the text from his PC into the scrapbook. Eleven days. He got it on March 31, 1992, Lord Orsam would have us believe, so let's say the two of them settled down that very day, cackling wildly at their deceit, to create this monster. Mike claimed:

We were now ready to go and start the Diary. We went home and on the same evening that we had purchased everything, that is the materials we needed, We decided to have a practise run and we used A4 paper for this, and at first we tried it in my handwriting, but we realised and I must emphasie (sic) this, my handwriting was to (sic) disstinctive (sic) so it had to be in Anne's handwriting, after the practise run which took us approximately two days, we decided to go for hell or bust.

So Mike had the scrapbook, the pens, and the ink (yes, yes, I know, he claimed this was all in January 1990, but I think we know that doesn't work for Lord Orsam and yourself so let's stick with hard dates of March 31, 1992), and two whole days had passed, so we're now at April 2. That's okay though because April 2 to April 12 (the day before he took the scrapbook - soaking wet linseed oil and unbonded ink and all - to London) just gives us the magical eleven days. Phew! That was close, eh?

Anyway, this is my question: Why on earth did it take the two of them eleven days to write out what had already been created by Barrett on his PC? Eleven days to write out what most of us could have written in one or two days. They started on Thursday, April 2, 1992. Anne was obviously working that day and the following day so they would have only made progress in the evening. But then they had the whole weekend of April 4 and 5 to properly nail-down the transcription. This would have given them a full week for their illegal enterprise to dry. Why on earth did it drag out so long?

I assume the answer will be that Mike then goes on to claim that:

Several days prior to our purchase of materials I had started to roughly outline the Diary on my word processor.

Thus, the text wasn't actually created - Mike was roughly outlining the text on his PC, see? Ah, but then Mike goes and gives us one of RJ's favourite snacks - a hard date:

During this period when we were writing the Diary, Tony Devereux was house-bound, very ill and in fact after we completed the Diary we left it for a while with Tony being severly (sic) ill and in fact he died late May early June 1990.

Well, that's a bit awks, isn't it? It sounds for all the world like none of this could have been happening in April 1992 after all. How on earth do we explain this and still use the purchase of the little maroon 1891 diary as evidence that Mike and Anne were planning a fraud which would potentially take them from their small home in Goldie Street, Liverpool, either to the riches of the Ritz or the worms of Wormwood Scrubs and its female equivalent, thereby leaving precious daughter Caroline to the wolves, because - of course - that's so obviously what two loving parents would do in order to keep paying the mortgage they'd had no problem paying for three years?

I'm confident there'll be a logical explanation for all this.

Not.

Ike

[caz]

I'll give yer 'hard dates', fella. [Spoken in my best Ted Hastings accent.]

Caz's Amazing Timeline [CAT] only has hard dates. If I have no hard date for an event it doesn't get in. There's a bouncer on the door armed with a switchblade.

Hard dates everywhere you look, right up to and including 2022. If I have a hard date for a relevant newspaper report, phone call, interview, meeting, statement, affidavit or written communication, it will go in. But where there is a reference to an event, or a claimed event, which has no hard date, that will be made clear within the entry concerned, but the event itself will not have its own dated entry. I will never, ever, simply presume or invent a specific date to fit in with anyone's theory of what happened and when.

Context is everything with CAT.

We can see at a glance what was being said and written, at any particular time from before the first ever independently confirmed reference to RJ's bête noire:

Monday 9th March 1992.

There is no independent evidence from before that date of anyone mentioning the diary in any context, way, shape or form. Not a single solitary recorded syllable from Mike 'loose lips' Barrett, or from anyone who knew him, before that hard date.

And then the floodgates open, with Anne not even aware of Mike's impetuous, knee-jerk call to Doreen, which has pre-empted and made impossible her advice not to do anything rash, but to use the diary's contents as a basis for a fictional story. Seeing that sensational last page, he sees his own fame and fortune writ large upon it. If you look up the adage: 'Be careful what you wish for', there ought to be a photograph of a downcast Michael Barrett alongside it, sans wife, daughter, diary and dignity, with his hand heavily bandaged.

I'll read RJ's 'contributions' from last evening another time, as I have better things to do on a Friday afternoon, which is fast approaching.

Love,

Caz
X

[Iconoclast]

I'll give yer 'hard dates', fella. [Spoken in my best Ted Hastings accent.]
Caz's Amazing Timeline [CAT] only has hard dates. If I have no hard date for an event it doesn't get in. There's a bouncer on the door armed with a switchblade.

I assume that anyone with access to this fabled CAT does so at their own peril, Caz, so I'll sadly decline the invitation that went astray in the post and I didn't get; but what I would say is, you should publish it one day!

Perhaps as a corollary to my brilliant 2025 Society's Pillar?

Ike
Always a Little Fearful Where The Switchblade is Concerned

[rjpalmer]

There is no independent evidence from before that date of anyone mentioning the diary in any context, way, shape or form. Not a single solitary recorded syllable from Mike 'loose lips' Barrett, or from anyone who knew him, before that hard date.

Yes Caz, thanks. I think this has been discussed and acknowledged about 25,000 times but I suppose there is no harm in saying it yet again.

And because 'Mr. Williams' (the name Mike was using on that date) mentioned the diary while on the telephone, is that credible evidence that the diary actually existed?

Because Mike said so?

Like when Mike mentioned that he had an auction ticket from O & L in his pocket? Does the mere fact that Barrett mentions something allow us to conclude that it exists?

I will assume not.

So, with this in mind, let's regroup and rephrase.

There is no independent confirmation that the diary physically existed until Barrett showed up in London and showed it to Shirley Harrison and Doreen Montgomery a little over a month later, on 13 April 1992.

[rjpalmer]

Hi Ike.

I have to say, your new line of reasoning is a startlingly candid.

Shockingly so.

You seem to be saying that the diary is so insubstantial that it should have taken the Barretts only two or three days to cobble it together instead of eleven!

That doesn't really inspire much confidence in the diary's sophistication, does it?

Next!

[rjpalmer]

Ike - another assumption you seem to be making is that Anne Graham was always a willing participant during this 11-day span.

Is that what the evidence--such as it is--suggests?

You're still ignoring Anne's own account. She said she once tried to physically destroy the diary. If Barrett's account is substantially correct, this would have occurred during those 11 days that you characterize as a determined and efficient effort, filled with love and cooperation.

Yet, it was sometime in this same general era that Anne showed up to work, deeply upset, complaining about her husband's "book." This was not from the lips of Barrett, but from Anne's friend Audrey.

Many years ago, I tried to discuss this matter with Keith Skinner in a series of short emails and he was of the opinion that this upsetting event took place after Barrett had already brought the diary to London. I still see no reason to draw this conclusion. Keith said something about Anne being off work, but Audrey's account obviously dates to a time when Anne was still coming down to the office, and no 'hard date' could be given and Audrey seemed reluctant to tell tales behind her friend's back, which is interesting in itself.

Further, it would be natural to assume that Anne being upset at work is related to Little Caroline's account of Mike and Anne physically fighting on the kitchen floor--you know, the room where stoves are kept--and wasn't the obvious assumption that Little Caroline was referring to a fight that took place 'pre-Doreen'?

Further, didn't Graham have a full-time job at this time?

Anyway, I'm taking a break. I'm still waiting for a comprehensive list of the evidence that I am supposedly ignoring. Do you have anything to add to my list of four items?

[Iconoclast]

Hi Ike.

I have to say, your new line of reasoning is a startlingly candid.

Shockingly so.

You seem to be saying that the diary is so insubstantial that it should have taken the Barretts only two or three days to cobble it together instead of eleven!

That doesn't really inspire much confidence in the diary's sophistication, does it?

Next!

Doh - come on RJ!

Only someone who thought the scrapbook was a hoax would think that and I clearly don't. As I understand it, Mike had already 'written' the text on his PC over many months - remember? - so all he had to do was to get Anne to write it down which really should have taken a lot less than eleven days.

Still, it's all irrelevant because we all know it's all bolocks and the Barretts had nothing to do with the creation of the scrapbook so we can move on, I think.

Next!

[Iconoclast]

I'm still waiting for a comprehensive list of the evidence that I am supposedly ignoring. Do you have anything to add to my list of four items?

Other than an actual scrapbook which actually tells us where to look for Florence Maybrick's actual initials? And a watch which James Maybrick felicitously signed his name into the back of?

No, other than those two, I think I'm probably spent ...

[Iconoclast]

You're still ignoring Anne's own account. She said she once tried to physically destroy the diary. If Barrett's account is substantially correct, this would have occurred during those 11 days that you characterize as a determined and efficient effort, filled with love and cooperation.

The eleven days never existed, RJ. Get over it.

The Barretts had no hand whatsoever in the creation of the Victorian scrapbook. Not a jot in that old jotter. It was almost certainly James Maybrick himself but - if it wasn't - it certainly wasn't Bongo and his long-suffering wifey.

Ike

[rjpalmer]

Monday 9th March 1992.

There is no independent evidence from before that date of anyone mentioning the diary in any context, way, shape or form.

Or, as Martin Fido put it,

"a disastrous emergence of something from nowhere."