One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[rjpalmer]

I'm curious why you would think that is odd or humorous that Anne would "fancy a bit of writing."

When she finally left Barrett and joined the diary "team," what did she do? Didn't she write a report that so impressed Martin Fido that he concluded that she could have written the diary with "one hand tied behind her back"?

Didn't she also fancy writing a full-length biography of Florence Maybrick--and did so---with her co-author, who was apparently a photographer?

And didn't Keith Skinner inform us that Anne fancied writing another true crime book, that was going to be about Victorian baby farming?

It sounds like a woman who had writing aspirations of her own, but--having a full-time job--projected these aspirations onto her less talented husband, who needed an occupation.

As a don at Oxford University, how many dozens if not hundreds of student papers would Martin Fido have read?

I'm guessing Martin was a pretty good judge of people's writing abilities.

[rjpalmer]

[and he can correct me and provide clarification if I have misunderstood any of the following elements]

Yes, thanks. Indeed, you do have it completely wrong.

What I suggested is that you and Ike and Keith and the small smattering of people who still believe the diary is an old document should listen very carefully to what Anne Graham was saying in her long 'confessional' statement to Paul Feldman. I think she lays it out pretty plainly.

If you wish to ignore that advise, I certainly can't force you.

You instead launched into an exercise in creative writing.

Who said anything about Anne 'fancying a bit of novel writing'?

That is not what she alluded to in her statement. She said--in her own words--that she wanted Mike to write a story....a story about Maybrick being the Ripper.

That was the plan, wasn't it, when her father funded Mike's purchase of a word processor in the mid-1980s? That, since Mike was on disability and had health problems and couldn't work, that he would pursue a writing career--evidently with her support and her help?

But we know how that would have went, don't we?

Anne also admitted that she had to 'tidy up' Mike's various writing projects, and I see no reason why it would have been any different this go-round, and, indeed, I suspect she ended up doing 85-95% of the work.

Your argument has always been that Anne was too smart or too ethical to have assisted Barrett in a scam. But your assumption is that she began with the knowledge that it was going to be a hoax.

I don't think this is true. She said she wanted Mike to write A STORY (ie., she assumed this). She had no intention of having the 'diary' published. It was supposed to be a story.

This is the essence of her own statement.

Thanks to David Barrat, we have now seen several samples of Barrett's published articles and they are entirely competent, but I think it is reasonable to take Anne's word for it that she, on some level, helped Mike in their creation.

It also doesn't take a Sherlock Holmes or a Dr. Freud to realize that Anne had writing aspirations of her own and had encouraged Barrett to seek this line of employment. It was her father who apparently funded the purchase of the word processor. So why on earth wouldn't she have helped him?

I want to make one thing plain.

I don't think Anne is any more morally or ethically guilty of helping Barrett create this fraud, if that is indeed what she did and was alluding to, than the artists that Barrett tricked into submitting their drawings for his non-existent children's book. ("The Loot Magazine" scam). They were coerced and tricked, and I suspect Anne Graham was as well.

Ultimately, she was deeply upset by Barrett's scheme, as confirmed by the accounts given by her friend Audrey and her little daughter Caroline.

Shirley Harrison noted in her book that Irish Roman Catholic women are taught that they must stick with their husbands, and Anne kept her head down, terrified, but also placing hope in the very reasonable assumption that the literary agent would eventually come to her senses and Mike's hoax would implode.

Anne said as much. She believed Doreen would send Mike packing. Why would she not humor her abusive husband's whims, if she believed the whole project would implode? No, Anne wasn't thinking clearly, perhaps, but do emotionally and physically abused women think rationally and clearly? Or do they just try to cope from day to day?

But have it your way. If you want to believe the fantasy that Fat Eddy the electrician found the diary under Maybrick's floorboards and sold it to a man he didn't know in a pub for twenty-five pounds, by all means, do so. It still leaves you with the 'man in the pub' provenance--just a variation on Bongo Barrett's own malarky.

Meanwhile, the laws of chemistry and the use of the police inventory list and the use of modern idioms tell us the diary is a modern fake, so you're merely transferring the suspicion from two known writers (Graham and Barrett) to a man with no known history of writing (Lyons). That doesn't strike me as very rational, nor productive.

Personally, I am confident that Anne (or her daughter) will eventually admit to what happened and it won't be far removed from what she was implying in her original statement to Feldman, except that the diary never existed in her youth, nor did it come down through the family. Whether she first came up with the idea of Maybrick-as-Ripper, who knows? Maybe there was an element of truth to Steve Powell's ever-evolving memory of an Australian nurse who liked to talk about Jack the Ripper. Harrison seems to have given it some credence.

Finally, if Anne thinks I have misunderstood her or are misrepresenting what she implied in her statement, she can, of course, correct me.

[FISHY1118]

Just a polite reminder from Ikemin that all posts on this thread must adhere to strict rules, chief amongst which is the acknowledgement that the James Maybrick scrapbook has never been proven a hoax and is almost certainly the genuine account of Jack the Spratt’s evil crimes.

Thank you

Ikemin

Yer good luck with that one

[Iconoclast]

Just a polite reminder from Ikemin that all posts on this thread must adhere to strict rules, chief amongst which is the acknowledgement that the James Maybrick scrapbook has never been proven a hoax and is almost certainly the genuine account of Jack the Spratt’s evil crimes.

Thank you

Ikemin

[caz]

RJ's latest theory [and he can correct me and provide clarification if I have misunderstood any of the following elements]:

Some background information first...

The Barretts have moved to Goldie Street so Anne can be close to where her elderly widowed father is living. She has a full-time job and a daughter at primary school. Mike is unemployed so he has taken on the role of 'house husband' and also does the school runs. His routine includes a pint or two at the Saddle before picking up Caroline from the school opposite. This is when he meets Tony Devereux, who also enjoys a lunchtime pint.

Now over to RJ...

During this period, when Mike is no longer contributing to Celebrity Magazine, his wife fancies a little writing for pleasure in her spare time, and settles on the idea of a 'novella', based on one of the sickest series of murders in criminal history, and decides that Jack the Ripper should be James Maybrick of Liverpool, writing his diary and composing flippant doggerel to describe the gruesome deeds.

So Anne sets to work using the word processor, which was bought in 1986 for Mike's abandoned efforts, and when she is finally happy with the result, Mike reads it and then has the brilliant idea of getting her novella transferred by hand into a suitably old book and trying to flog it as the true confessions of Jack.

RJ will no doubt clarify if it is Mike who prints off Anne's draft and causes the fight over it on the kitchen floor when he outlines his plans for it. She never intended it for publication and wants nothing to do with this crazy scheme, but Mike takes over and bullies her into submission, to the extent that she is not only fully aware of his efforts to obtain the raw materials for this fraudulent enterprise, but she actively assists him throughout the process. The last thing she wants is another row.

When Mike swears his affadavit on 5th January 1995, he gives an account of this process that is basically correct, apart from getting the year wrong because of his terrible memory for dates. He accuses Anne of transferring the fraud by hand into the photo album, while young Caroline looks on. He would hardly forget it if a third party did the handwriting, so he is either lying about his wife's involvement because she left him, or she really did all this, just to keep the peace at home, and he is now punishing her for doing what he coerced her into doing in the first place.

Which is it, RJ?

If you think Mike could have lied about whose handwriting is in the diary, what else was he lying about? Who was the real hoaxer in that case, and why would Mike protect him or her?

PS - I think I can see why RJ can't have the Barretts fighting over the physical diary. If it is only obtained from an auction on 31st March 1992, and Anne's novella is then transferred into it over the next few days, it just doesn't work, does it?

[FISHY1118]

Dr Brown said the act of mutilation would have taken at least five minutes,

This is correct by dr brown .




But Don Rumblelow said this part .So im going with dr brown

Of course, if the removal of the kidney was not a deliberate act but simply a chance occurrence, the theories become idle speculation.




I think knight sums it up pretty spot on tho .



Why ,with such a limited amount of time would the killer go for the kidney if it wasnt his intention?. knowing how difficult it would be to remove , only someone with skill and knowledge would attempt it in near darkesss and very ,very little time . More importantly....... The killer left with the kidney .

So in summing up, its not 100% absolute proof [rarely if anything is regarding JtR] he intended to take the kidney . But this makes a damm good case for it . Thus all along as ive said, suspects like Druitt , Maybrick ,Lechmere ,Hutchinson are for me not even in the starting blocks for being JrR .

[Iconoclast]

PS Watch out, Wor Jacky's Ghost is about. We'll be out next season with an eye on the east end of London to strike you down and surgically remove your 7th-place spot. Is it still reet foggy down there, by the way?

[Iconoclast]

The underlining was from my original reading not for the purposes of posting this.

The weight of expert opinion may well have favoured some degree of anatomical knowledge (see my 'anatomy' post on my return from Scotland) but there is a huge area of doubt around whether Jack had to have surgical expertise and whether he just got lucky with Eddowes.

Ike

[Iconoclast]

[Iconoclast]

[Iconoclast]

[Iconoclast]

Well it should have been my Westham v Rangers in the final lol.
I see Rangers lost on penalties, tough when that happens ,never a good way to lose .
Im sure you didnt make it up , i just wanted to see the reference in the book, as i cant find it myself .
Not that it will make a difference, i already have and answer . lol.

Two rules of penalties:

1) If you're going to gamble and go down the middle, make sure it's high enough to miss the goalkeeper's trailing feet (Rangers made two mistakes out of five like this and got away with the first error but not the second);
2) Before you take your first penalty check the nationality of the team you're up against. If they are German, just give them the ******* cup and let us all get to bed a bit earlier.

[FISHY1118]

You'll have to wait, Fishy. I'm watching the Frankfurt-Rangers Europe League Final, then I'm off to bed, then I'm off to Scotland tomorrow without my laptop for a week.

PS I didn't make it up, mind!

Well it should have been my Westham v Rangers in the final lol.

I see Rangers lost on penalties, tough when that happens ,never a good way to lose .



Im sure you didnt make it up , i just wanted to see the reference in the book, as i cant find it myself .

Not that it will make a difference, i already have and answer . lol.

[Iconoclast]

Wilson & Odell (1987, p128) Screenshot please.

Dr Brown said the act of mutilation would have taken at least five minutes, but then he was an advocate of a skilled murderer. Of course, if the removal of the kidney was not a deliberate act but simply a chance occurrence, the theories become idle speculation. But if the murderer had the intention to secure the organ there can be little doubt that he had sufficient knowledge of human anatomy to find it and remove it with great speed.

You'll have to wait, Fishy. I'm watching the Frankfurt-Rangers Europe League Final, then I'm off to bed, then I'm off to Scotland tomorrow without my laptop for a week.

PS I didn't make it up, mind!

[FISHY1118]

I rather thought that might be the case, FISHY.

Mike Barrett was sorry he was not the right kind of writer either.

What a disappointment for a Barrett Hoax conspiracy theorist.

If you were to try your hand at that Picasso, take a tip from the expert and add sugar to your paint. Egg wash won't wash.

Love,

Caz
X

Not sure what to make of that but anyway, on we go .