One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[caz]

By contrast, a publican is supposed to know the names of everyone living in the immediate neighborhood and who attended the local schools? Why would he?

There seems to be an impression here that the Saddle was the kind of pub in the early 1990s that was always packed to the rafters from noon to last orders with crowds of local drinkers, whose names would have remained largely unheard and unknown to the landlord/lady, because they would have been too busy pulling pints to catch or take in any names, when used by the regulars. My vast - hic! - experience of pubs all over London and beyond told me that the Saddle was a small, quiet and relatively intimate place, where a name exchanged over a pint was likely to be remembered if the same customer popped in on more than two or three occasions. People would not have come from miles around just to drink in the ambience, and researchers from London would have been rarer than hen's teeth before Mike Barrett made a name for himself - and not always a name to repeat in polite company.

Nothing could be further from the case regarding my own local across the road, which has been extremely well frequented, particularly for the Sunday lunchtime session, since the latest landlord took over and moved down from the Midlands, with his wife and young son. He and his wife very quickly picked up the names - and very often the nicknames - of all those who have been regulars for decades, or moved to Devon in more recent years like Mister Brown and I. Many come by bus from the nearby villages, or as far away as Exmouth, and even less frequent visitors are soon addressed by name. There's a reason why it's called the hospitality business, and addressing the customers by name whenever possible is just one way to keep them coming in.

[rjpalmer]

…on an Amstrad word processor. An Amstrad PCW is obviously something you need to forge a Victorian diary! Not for transcribing something to send to publishers and authors.

I find it remarkable that you are still paying homage to the same misinformation that was fed to the public nearly thirty years ago but has been subsequently exposed as a lie.

In Harrison’s bestseller, the public was indeed told that Mike bought the word processor after being given the diary by Tony Devereux in 1991 in order to write the “story of the diary” himself, but Barrett, an ‘umble scrap metal dealer, lacked the skill. Fortunately, the purchase wasn’t a total bust because Anne instead used it to type-up Mike’s research notes and create a typescript of the diary. Just as you suggest.

Except that it was mainly a lie. The research notes were bogus, and Barrett bought the Amstrad in 1986–long before he had ever met Tony Devereux—and immediately afterwards he began submitting articles for publication. The ‘umble scrap metal dealer, in reality, was a struggling freelance journalist—a fact that Mike and Anne failed to reveal to Smith, Harrison, and Montgomery.

There was never a peep said about it until these facts were revealed to the diary believers by outside critics, namely Chiitteden, Gray, Harris, and Barrat.

But don’t let that bother you, Markus. Nothing to see here!

[caz]

That's not how I remember it, but I haven't seen the segment in over 20 years. So you're saying that Barrett was drinking in another one of the local pubs that Tom Mitchell recently suggested there is no evidence of him having frequented?

If that's the case, it doesn't particularly matter and the point is the same; that Bob knew and remembered his most infamous patron but failing to recognize the name of Eddie Lyons is commonplace. That you feel this is somehow evidence that he was a liar who misled Feldman and Harrison and thwarted their investigation is a..how shall I put it?... a most fanciful conclusion.

If anyone can look at Eddie, and what he has himself variously claimed, volunteered or flatly denied over the years; and if they can also look at all those who knew Eddie, and what they have had to say about him; and yet protest that he has been unfairly singled out for negative attention that he never wanted, courted or deserved, and is in fact someone they would trust to be entirely straight with them, and not mess with the truth, then I have a bridge to sell them.

Mrs Hammersmith

[rjpalmer]

There seems to be an impression here that the Saddle was the kind of pub in the early 1990s that was always packed to the rafters from noon to last orders with crowds of local drinkers, whose names would have remained largely unheard and unknown to the landlord/lady, because they would have been too busy pulling pints to catch or take in any names, when used by the regulars. My vast - hic! - experience of pubs all over London and beyond told me that the Saddle was a small, quiet and relatively intimate place, where a name exchanged over a pint was likely to be remembered if the same customer popped in on more than two or three occasions. People would not have come from miles around just to drink in the ambience, and researchers from London would have been rarer than hen's teeth before Mike Barrett made a name for himself - and not always a name to repeat in polite company.

Who is under this “impression”? No one suggested anything of the sort, but the thought must have crossed your own mind, since you brought it up.

What was actually pointed out is that Barrett is described by the publican himself as coming in at around lunchtime, and Barrett stated he came in before picking up his daughter from school. Either way, he’s there mid-afternoon.

Unless you have evidence to the contrary, Eddie was 14 miles away at a job site during those same hours in February 1992; you can’t place him in Fountains Road before that date; you can’t place him in the pub; and Eddie denies meeting Barrett until the following year when that “weirdo” showed up on his doorstep.

Gone is the famous “onus” that you project onto all accusers to prove their point; you’re now content to argue that no one can prove that it DIDN’ T happen!

[caz]

...especially if she also has insights about substance abuse and knew a bloke who called his wife 'The Whore.'

I 'knew' a great number of blokes back in 1992, in the sense of having met them once or twice through my ex husband, but how that could be seen as evidence that I also knew what any of them called their wife, let alone that I would have considered it appropriate, or a jolly wheeze, to use the same term of abuse for Jack the Ripper's wife in his fictional diary, is frankly too weird to be funny.

What could Tony or his missus ever have done to deserve this remarkably insensitive treatment at Anne Barrett's hands?

I'm sorry, but this one reeks of desperation to put the pen in a woman's hand, for the sin of not 'splitting' on her abusive husband over when and how the guard book really arrived in Goldie Street.

[caz]

Anne was working in an office in 92. I was working in an office in the printing department in 99. So what? Neither of us would have the faintest idea that your “photo album” would fit nicely into a Victorian office vignette.

The only people that would know work in museum libraries or are pushing 100 and were working in the 50s like Ken Burnett. Ike isn’t too old. He isn’t old enough!

I’ve reflected on your 5 “facts”. If one of them is damning, why list all five? One off and instance? Bumbling and buffoon?

I guess it boils down to whether Anne can think of Maybrick using a guard book in an office versus Maybrick being able to think of putting two words together!

Hi Lombro,

My first job, back in 1971, was in an office environment, and I had several similar jobs over the years, right up to 2007. I always fondly think of the rows upon rows of lever arch files where I worked at Shell Centre, Waterloo, whenever the same few seem to appear on the shelf behind the desk of so many stars of so many old tv crime dramas.

From the late 1970s I began buying scrapbooks from W.H. Smith for mounting my ever growing collection of family photos, because these were cheaper than actual photograph albums, but this turned out to be a bit of a false economy because they were too bulky when full, and became dog-eared and damaged over time.

What strikes me about a guard book for office use is how ideally suited this would be to a business owner keeping a secret diary, which he didn't want anyone to know about. The old arguments about Maybrick being able to afford an actual diary always made me smile, because they spectacularly missed the point, that 'Sir Jim' could not 'afford' to let anyone snooping around catch sight of what was obviously a diary and be tempted to peek inside. A dusty old guard book, like one of a dozen lever arch files, might sit on a shelf indefinitely without attracting particular attention, or - with a bit of luck - be removed and put back without a meddlesome clerk noting its absence or asking about its contents.

The very last thing Mike should have been trying to obtain for faking Maybrick's secret thoughts was an actual diary, whether it only looked like one or had the word DIARY emblazoned indelibly on its front cover. Never mind the quality or the width, or even the date. A diary of any description would have been no good to man nor beast for keeping secret thoughts secret. Surely even Mike Barrett ought to have appreciated why a book that advertised the nature of its contents before it was even opened was arguably the last thing 'Sir Jim' should have been using.

To best illustrate the point, imagine a handwritten label on the front cover of Mike's "diary", reading: The Secret Diary of James Maybrick, aged forty-nine and a quarter.

Now look at what Mike is meant to have fallen back on as second best, at an auction at the end of March, because he failed to obtain the "diary" that was his first choice: a guard book that nobody would have guessed from its external features what it was being used for and what was lurking inside, not intended for prying eyes until long after the last syllable was blotted.

So Mike accidentally ended up 'making do' with what he should have been looking for in the first place.

And we still don't get a plausible suggestion to account for certain passages appearing to reflect the book that housed them, when that type of book is not supposed to have been a twinkle in Mike's eye, or indeed anywhere on his radar, when he phoned Martin Earl with an ill-judged request for an actual diary.

The text would not have required any new passages to be created in the days leading up to 13th April 1992, to reflect an auction find on 31st March, and I can't see why Anne or Mike would have particularly wanted to go down that road, but by golly the text and the guard book do seem to complement one another like love and marriage, or horse and carriage.

Love,

Caz
X

[erobitha]

Hi Lombro,

My first job, back in 1971, was in an office environment, and I had several similar jobs over the years, right up to 2007. I always fondly think of the rows upon rows of lever arch files where I worked at Shell Centre, Waterloo, whenever the same few seem to appear on the shelf behind the desk of so many stars of so many old tv crime dramas.

From the late 1970s I began buying scrapbooks from W.H. Smith for mounting my ever growing collection of family photos, because these were cheaper than actual photograph albums, but this turned out to be a bit of a false economy because they were too bulky when full, and became dog-eared and damaged over time.

What strikes me about a guard book for office use is how ideally suited this would be to a business owner keeping a secret diary, which he didn't want anyone to know about. The old arguments about Maybrick being able to afford an actual diary always made me smile, because they spectacularly missed the point, that 'Sir Jim' could not 'afford' to let anyone snooping around catch sight of what was obviously a diary and be tempted to peek inside. A dusty old guard book, like one of a dozen lever arch files, might sit on a shelf indefinitely without attracting particular attention, or - with a bit of luck - be removed and put back without a meddlesome clerk noting its absence or asking about its contents.

The very last thing Mike should have been trying to obtain for faking Maybrick's secret thoughts was an actual diary, whether it only looked like one or had the word DIARY emblazoned indelibly on its front cover. Never mind the quality or the width, or even the date. A diary of any description would have been no good to man nor beast for keeping secret thoughts secret. Surely even Mike Barrett ought to have appreciated why a book that advertised the nature of its contents before it was even opened was arguably the last thing 'Sir Jim' should have been using.

To best illustrate the point, imagine a handwritten label on the front cover of Mike's "diary", reading: The Secret Diary of James Maybrick, aged forty-nine and a quarter.

Now look at what Mike is meant to have fallen back on as second best, at an auction at the end of March, because he failed to obtain the "diary" that was his first choice: a guard book that nobody would have guessed from its external features what it was being used for and what was lurking inside, not intended for prying eyes until long after the last syllable was blotted.

So Mike accidentally ended up 'making do' with what he should have been looking for in the first place.

And we still don't get a plausible suggestion to account for certain passages appearing to reflect the book that housed them, when that type of book is not supposed to have been a twinkle in Mike's eye, or indeed anywhere on his radar, when he phoned Martin Earl with an ill-judged request for an actual diary.

The text would not have required any new passages to be created in the days leading up to 13th April 1992, to reflect an auction find on 31st March, and I can't see why Anne or Mike would have particularly wanted to go down that road, but by golly the text and the guard book do seem to complement one another like love and marriage, or horse and carriage.

Love,

Caz
X

By the way, wouldn’t a guard book make the perfect decoy if the original pages were left in when the words were being put to the pages? Left in plain view for all to see, hidden behind pages and pages of business junk.

There is no proof to suggest the pages were removed prior to the ink hitting the page. Yet, the pro Barrett side seem to assume that is a forgone conclusion. Why?

Surely removing those pages would only matter when the writer had no further use for them? When the diary was found the writer wanted the finder to not be thrown off by the curiosity of Victorian business, so the writer could have removed them at that point. Do the Barrett hoaxers have any evidence of that being impossible?

[rjpalmer]

The old arguments about Maybrick being able to afford an actual diary always made me smile, because they spectacularly missed the point, that 'Sir Jim' could not 'afford' to let anyone snooping around catch sight of what was obviously a diary and be tempted to peek inside.

And this argument makes me smile, because you always insist you don't believe the diary is genuine and 'doubt' that Maybrick was the Ripper, yet once again you are arguing that the hoax being written in an old photo album is perfectly consistent with what James Maybrick would have done.

Not believing the diary is genuine, isn't your real problem explaining why your mythical old hoaxer didn't pop down to the local stationery shop and pick up something a little appropriate? Like a ledger or an actual blank diary?

To the skeptical mind, the fact that the hoaxer was stuck scribbling in a photograph album is entirely consistent with it having been written many decades after 1889, when finding a suitable blank diary would be a chore--which, of course, Mike Barrett found out first-hand.

[rjpalmer]

I 'knew' a great number of blokes back in 1992, in the sense of having met them once or twice through my ex husband, but how that could be seen as evidence that I also knew what any of them called their wife, let alone that I would have considered it appropriate, or a jolly wheeze, to use the same term of abuse for Jack the Ripper's wife in his fictional diary, is frankly too weird to be funny.

This is really a strange comment totally devoid of any appropriate context.

I assume it has occurred to you that you are a woman. I would certainly hope so. Why would these blokes (or your ex-husband) have admitted to a woman the awful names they use to address their wives or ex-wives? It's not a good look.

It is, however, something an angry and particularly bitter man will let slip to a drinking buddy while the two are in their cups---you now, a real drinking buddy like Mike and Tony Devereux were as confirmed by at least one publican.

Men can be quite crude and insensitive when among themselves. It's known as "locker room talk," Caz, if you are unfamiliar with the concept. It's nothing I condone, but it is an unfortunate reality.

What could Tony or his missus ever have done to deserve this remarkably insensitive treatment at Anne Barrett's hands?

Oh, brother.

This strange and misguided question signals that it's time again to take a long hiatus from the Maybrick forum. I simply don't have time or desire to respond to such a strange thought process.

Who suggested that Tony or his ex-wife did anything to deserve Anne's ire? Where do you come up with these ideas?

The suggestion is that Maybrick of the diary is partially based on Tony Devereux's own attitude towards his ex-wife---regardless of whether she deserved that attitude or not. It has nothing to do with Anne's own feelings about them, other than she's working with Barrett's first-hand knowledge of how Devereux spoke of his ex-wife. If Anne is the authoress, she would only be exploiting the appropriate dialogue--she's not naming the Devereuxs by name, so she's not raining "ire" down on their heads. Good grief--what a strange take.

Melvin Harris learned that Devereux referred to his ex-wife as 'The Whore,' and I think anyone with even the minimal amount of commonsense could grasp how a fictional writer, or a pair of fictional writers, will use knowledge from their own experiences or second-hand experiences while building up a character. This is commonplace. It shouldn't be controversial.

You'd have been better off arguing that Devereux never used the phrase, but it's obvious enough that Devereux was remarkably bitter towards his ex-wife, as seen in the strange codicil in his will.

As such, I find Melvin Harris's statement plausible and believable. I also noticed long ago that Devereux's ex-wife did marry a slightly younger man not long after the divorce was finalized, which might tend to explain his bitterness.



Yet we are supposed to believe that crude talk about one's wife, or an office manager having no patience with a subordinate, are huge leaps of insight beyond the imagination of Mike and Anne?

It's silly.

[Lombro2]

Oh, the Amstrad word processor was bought in 1986! Sorry about that! When you wrote April 3, I immediately thought you were saying you believed they bought it 3 days after your auction. Excuse me for automatically having a low estimation of your mental processor or your having a low one of us.

Just for the record, I wouldn’t have fallen for the week and a half from-scratch execution of a forgery. Even a shoddy one. Six years is much better. For a shoddy one.

PS I skipped or missed the whole electronic typewriter and early PC era, but didn’t the Amstrad have memory?

[rjpalmer]

Oh, the Amstrad word processor was bought in 1986! Sorry about that! When you wrote April 3, I immediately thought you were saying you believed they bought it 3 days after your auction. Excuse me for automatically having a low estimation of your mental processor or your having a low one of us.

Hi Markus,

I'm always happy to hand out parting gifts, but having no Turtle Wax, you'll have to settle for this. Read all about the word processor here:

Acquiring A 20th Century Word Processor - Casebook: Jack the Ripper Forums

Enjoy!

[Lombro2]

Thanks, Roger, that was enjoyable. Orsam and DJA going at it, over ancient technology, was like watching a T-Rex fight a Tricerotops. I loved the part where Orsam said DJA is “muddying the water”! How could he even tell that?! Hilarious!

The Amstrad 8526 had 256 KB of RAM. That means it had enough memory to store 256,000 characters. The diary has maybe 20,000 characters so it could hold about 12 drafts.

This PCW was launched in 1985 and was the “bargain of the century” compared to IBM and Mac products. IBMs were 2000 dollars and the pound was almost at par at its 1985 low. Your £500 is a bargain you couldn’t miss, especially if you’re planning an earth-shattering literary hoax. Or it could just be a real coincidental purchase based on deals of the century.

[Iconoclast]

I wonder if Mike persuaded Anne to let him buy the word 'prosser' on April 3, 1986, because they were both chuffed to bits that Liverpool FC had just beaten Chelsea 1-0 to secure yet another League Championship? You just never know, do you?

Personally, I find it strange to think that I can visualise that specific day, even if my idle link with the world processor is obviously exactly that - idle.

But for those who like occasionally to idle, I should also note that April 3, 1986, was the terrible day that Celtic stole Hearts' League Championship, the Jambos having led the table for most of the season only to fall to two goals at Dundee in the last seven minutes. I can still recall seeing the BBC news with the fans throwing their scarves onto the track around the pitch in despair. That would (and should) have been the first time in the history of league football in Scotland that neither Rangers nor Celtic were champions for four consecutive seasons. As it was, the two Glasgow minnows were already on a record-breaking run of three seasons without the league flag thanks to Sir Alex Ferguson's Aberdeen and Jim McLean's Dundee United. And that was the end of anyone else having a look in - Celtic's steal in 1986 started this obscene run of 38 consecutive league flags for C and R.

I first went up to Auld Reekie in the summer of 1987 - immediately intoxicated by the smell of hops from the old Scottish & Newcastle Brewery, the same wonderful aroma I had smelled at St James' Park when I first worshipped at the Cathedral on the Hill in the 1970s and the other old Scottish & Newcastle Brewery still stood on Barrack Road next to the sacred land.

Ah, happy days, even if I've never yet seen a league flag on either side of the border ...

[rjpalmer]

Or it could just be a real coincidental purchase based on deals of the century.

Is it also a 'coincidence' that a month after Barrett bought the word processor, bits from his interviews started appearing in Chat magazine, such as the one that David Barrat found in the 26 May 1986 issue: "'Emmerdale Stephen's Naughty Mail'?

The Amstrad wasn't a 'coincidence,' Markus. It was a career move!

And one that the Barretts kept hidden from both their own literary agent and collaborator as well as the public.

You're a very forgiving sort if that doesn't give you pause to reflect.

Happy Holidays.

[caz]

I wonder if Mike persuaded Anne to let him buy the word 'prosser' on April 3, 1986, because they were both chuffed to bits that Liverpool FC had just beaten Chelsea 1-0 to secure yet another League Championship? You just never know, do you?...

Let me just stop you there, Ike, before you get too carried away and end up in fantasy land.

I distinctly recall Mike being asked at one point: "Are you a red or a blue?" and I'm not at all sure he immediately understood the question [his political leanings? eye colour when sober?], but it became pretty clear that his Saturday afternoons were not spent at Anfield or Goodison Park, shouting obscenities at the visiting team. It's just another indication that he didn't exactly have an army of 'mates' to hang about with - either part-time pub pals or fellow footie fans - and they were not queuing up to beg him not to "split" on them over the diary.

In short, Mike's friends, in the main, were more likely to be imaginary than made of flesh and blood, and could probably be counted on the fingers of someone who had an unfortunate accident with a threshing machine.

Love,

Caz
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