Barrett and the Diary.

[Chris Jones]

Hi RJ,


7] And the watch? Was this seperate to the Diary, mere coincidence, or what? Barrett never claimed any knowledge of the watch, so far as I'm aware.


9] I need a drink.

Cheers,

Graham

Graham,

I believe that you MUST treat the Diary and the Watch as separate items, irrespective of whether you consider them to be genuine or fakes. In recent months I have met both Mike Barrett and Albert Johnson and I do not for one second believe that the two of them are working together as part of some sort of conspiracy. Indeed, there is little love lost between them.

Mike Barrett told me that he believes the Watch to be a forgery. He felt that it was produced just to 'cash in' on the publicity that surrounded the Diary.

Albert Johnson told me that he believes that the Watch and the Diary are both genuine and that James Maybrick is a very credible candidate to be Jack the Ripper.

What do I believe? I have said previously on these boards that I consider Albert to be an honest man. That does not mean I think the Watch actually belonged to James Maybrick, however, it does mean that I do not believe that Albert was in anyway involved in the production of a hoax. I accept Albert's story about how he acquired the Watch.

The Watch and the Diary are separate. To me, the Watch is the more puzzling item of the two.

Oh, I quite fancy a drink as well - it has been a long day!

Chris Jones

[caz]

Caz,

It sank in for me. So basically Keith has researched, gone and talked to people, now he has super secret evidence that no one is allowed to see but which he is allowed to make pronouncements on and keep closeted away.

Not quite ‘no one’, Ally. But yep, he’s evidently not ready to make it public yet and yep, no one stopped him from saying what he said about it.

What's he waiting for? For all the key players to die so no one can follow up after he puts forth his "proof"

If and when Keith sees the need to explain his reasons for saying what he said, and for saying no more at that stage, he will do so.

In the meantime I’m curious to know how you decide what is factual about any event which you have not personally witnessed. How do you even ascertain the time and date and identities of those involved, if not by trusting that the information recorded by others on your behalf is accurate, reliable and truthful, regardless of whether the event is ongoing, or happened yesterday, ten years ago or six centuries ago?

Let's not let facts get in the way of attempts to mitigate his culpability in making claims about evidence he's holding that he refuses to share while making claims of the Diary's authenticity, which once again, is something you have soundly condemned others for doing. For years.

What facts? Again, you might want to look at how you decide what’s a fact and what isn’t. For instance, why let a silly fact like Keith making no ‘claims of the Diary’s authenticity’ get in the way of this odd idea of Maria’s, now gathering some kind of insane momentum, that evidence of the diary coming out Battlecrease somehow equates to it being authentic? If that’s what you really think, no wonder you have to concentrate on how ‘naughty’ Keith’s moment of revelation was, rather than dwell on its implications for the diary’s real origins.

Hi Caz,
Can you confirm that Keith's Battlecrease documentation has been subject to rigorous scientific testing to ensure that it is genuine?

Love,
Callyphygian

Hi Cally,

Nice to see you posting again. When you have a serious question I’d be happy to try and answer it. If you require the same rigorous scientific testing of every document you ever read before accepting it as genuine, that would have to include the test results, and you’d be in no fit state to read anything by then, because of the ever decreasing circles that would have caused you to disappear up your own backside.

It’s a marvel that you and Ally can function at all in a document-based medium like this one, if you can’t gather any facts from what others have recorded.

Love,

Caz
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[caz]

Does the sphere book exist?

Is the quote in it and in the diary?

Did Mike Barrett own a copy of the Sphere book?

Did it fall open on the page with the quote?

That seems like a fair place to start

Hi Victor,

Yes, a fair place to start. But wouldn’t you agree that it would be even fairer if people didn’t stop right there and refuse to look any further?

Yes, the Sphere book exists, and it contains a slightly different version of the only quotation that appears in the diary.

But the fact that Mike’s copy exists, and has this tendency to open at the page containing the quotation, is taken completely on trust by the same people who claim to need proof of every other flippin’ document. But then this one’s existence and history is absolutely crucial to any remaining hope that Mike Barrett could have been in any way, shape or form involved in the diary’s creation. So it needs to exist, and so much more than this, it needs to have been in Mike’s possession, at some point before April 1992 when he brought the diary to London, for it to have any relevance at all. The last thing required around here is proof of its existence in order to believe Mike was telling the truth - for once - and that he acquired a copy new from Sphere in the late 1980s. It’s amazing how suddenly no evidence is required at all when it suits.

Yes, Mike’s copy does exist (but even then I’m having to trust the source who recorded that this piece of hard evidence was handed over by Mike in December 1994). Yes, it has a tendency to open at certain pages, including the one in question. Equally, other copies of the same book tend to open at the same pages, due to the normal binding process, and not as a result of a ‘fault’. We would naturally expect Mike to have paid more attention to the page in question than to any other, regardless of when he acquired his copy, and this would inevitably increase his own copy’s tendency to open there. So it’s not possible to conclude that it would have readily ‘fallen open’ at the quotation when Mike first happened to pick up the volume.

The condition of this book, together with all the circumstantial evidence surrounding its earliest recorded mention and subsequent appearance, allows for Mike to have picked it up in a second hand book shop sometime during the second half of 1994 - far too late to have helped him forge the diary. The only support for Mike acquiring his copy new from Sphere at any time prior to the end of September 1994 comes from Mike himself.

By the June Mike wanted to shaft Feldman so badly that he claimed he had forged the diary himself. The only ‘proof’ he could think of at that time was where he claimed the ink had come from, but subsequent analyses have thrown cold water on any idea that he was telling the truth.

Next came his estranged wife’s claim about the diary being in her family for years, making it necessary for Mike to up his game if he still wanted to shaft Feldy. So when Shirley suggested that he do something constructive and go to the library in search of the mystery quotation, was he suddenly reminded that he knew its source already and needed only to produce the book he had at home and Feldy would be shafted good and proper?

Not a bit of it. Instead he went to the library like a good boy and began busying himself looking for the quotation. We know this much because he telephoned Feldy’s secretary to announce in triumph that he had found a library book containing the quotation, and this checked out. He then proceeded to gloat about how this knowledge would make everyone believe he must have forged the diary.

Now what in the world was Mike doing in the library in the first place, seeking out a book containing the quotation, and bragging about his amazing discovery to Feldy’s secretary, if he already had the means of shafting Feldy because he had the book at home? What possible purpose would have been served by Mike checking that the library also had a copy? What was he doing, claiming to the very person he wanted to ruin that he had just discovered the source - a poet named Crashaw - if the whole point of the exercise was to prove he had known this all along - unless the idea had only just occurred to him and he was running off at the mouth as usual, without even thinking about how he was going to obtain a copy of his own which he could claim as proof positive?

I've never accepted that Barrett is a dupe. The evidence suggests to me something very different.

Hi RJ,

You are right if Mike was the one doing the duping when he claimed he had owned that Sphere book all along. People still believe it to this day. Where’s the provenance for the Sphere book being ‘in the family for years’ then? Hmmm?

Does it not occur to you that if Mike was involved in creating the diary, and thought of popping in a couple of lines of genuinely old poetry from a book he happened to have indoors, he would surely have been able to come up with a better provenance for the diary itself than “A drinking pal gave it to me with no explanation shortly before he died unexpectedly”? If Anne was also involved, it almost beggars belief that she would have thought anyone would be satisfied with that. Why the hell didn’t they work out between them in 1992 that a simple ‘in the family’ provenance would instantly be a hundred times more acceptable?

In a recent tv documentary called the ‘Artful Codgers’ it was revealed that a family hoaxing business had succeeded in fooling any number of ‘experts’ in a variety of fields before finally being rumbled, because they had also taken care to create a believable sounding provenance for each of their artefacts, which people didn’t think to question. Sometimes you have to look beyond the obvious when no attempt is even made to explain how someone in Mike’s position would end up with Jack the Ripper’s confession.

Looking again at just how close to the Whitechapel murder locations was the church where Crashaw's daddy was once vicar, I do find it one hell of a coincidence that Mike is meant to have picked this poet entirely at random from a book that he is meant to have selected from his own personal book collection indoors, and stuck him in the diary just for jolly, when one considers the recurring theme of 'Whitechapel Liverpool, Whitechapel London' - and even more when one considers just how close Whitechapel Liverpool also was to St Peter's Church, where Maybrick's own daddy was once parish clerk.

What were the chances, on top of all this, that the Crashaw poem would turn out to have been published in an edition of the complete works, in Liverpool in 1866, and available in a bookshop just a short stroll from either of the Maybrick family homes in Church Alley or Mount Pleasant?

Before Omlor mentions miracles, let me tell you that miracles apply to either side of the Crashaw fence - and Mike has used a fair few to dupe people, consciously or otherwise.

Caz
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[caz]

My lord,

To read some of the prose around here, one would think we were discussing covert intelligence and international intrigue.

Really, Caroline. It's just a bit of information about a cheap hoax.

And if Keith was so bent on keeping the whole thing mum while the ongoing investigation was ongoing (as it has been for so very long), if keeping it secret was really as vital as you make it sound in your post above, and he is the careful and cautious man you always tell us he is, then why would he blab about it in a public forum?

I'm sure nations won't fall if he simply backs up his public claims and puts up the goods.

--John

As I said to Ally, if and when Keith sees the need to explain his reasons for talking or not talking, he will do so. Why does everyone think I should be the one to explain his reasons for saying what he said, when he was responding spontaneously to a spontaneous question from the late great Jeremy Beadle?

I’m sure 'nations won’t fall' if he doesn’t give you another morsel until he’s good and ready either. You are the one constantly making a big deal out of the ‘intrigue’, albeit from a position of enforced ignorance. What the hell are you so worried about, so long as you can cling to your absolute faith in two ‘clear and obvious’ modern fakes?

Chris,

true but i would think Bruce was a more likely sceneerio as I believe Keith is helping him with a book in which Bruce tries to pin the JtR murders on Micheal Maybrick.

Either way if that's the rpoblem ,pre empting a to be published thoery - maybe it should be stated (maybe it shouldnt have been pre empted)

maybe Keith said something interpreted in a way he didnt mean - but if thats the case one would also think he would have said.

in any case I cant imagine what the evidence could be but I await to become 'astounded' later
Jenni

Well that was as clear as mud, Jenni.

From the bits I managed to grasp, you seem to know a good deal more than I do (in my case it’s precisely nothing) about what Keith is helping Bruce with and what Bruce is trying to do. I too await to become ‘astounded’ by many things. What does astound me right now is how much speculation goes on around here, based on goodness knows what sources, by people who claim to require concrete proof before they will believe anything at all.

Love,

Caz
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[Graham]

Hi all.

It's Tuesday evening, I'm still bored, and on top of that I've had a very bad attack of hay-fever today....

Let's just have a quick re-cap, eh?

- Robert Smith won't release the Diary for testing, so that would seem to be that. The Diary won't be subject to further testing so long as it's in his possession. And even if it were re-tested, would there a universal acceptance of the results? Course there would. Not.

- Albert Johnson wants to sell the watch, so there is a reasonable chance that the watch could be subject to further testing, but if so what could we possibly learn from the results? Certainly not who was responsible for placing the markings on the watch. Nor, probably, a precise date for when they were placed there (with due reference to the Turgood tests).

- Steve Powell has consistently not come up with any information to demonstrate an Australian provenance for the Diary and the Watch; in fact, he seems to have disappeared from the boards altogether.

- Anne Graham could well have vanished off the face of the earth for all we know, and even if she suddenly re-appeared would she be inclined actually to discuss the Diary? I bet not.

- Mike Barrett's track-record suggests that it would be diffcult to completely accept anything he may have to say about the Diary.

- Keith Skinner makes some kind of statement regarding the provenance of the Diary but we hear no more from him, which generates an understandable degree of cynicism around and about these boards.

So where do we go from here, people? Or is my pleasant, open-minded, simple-smiling, trusting-eyed naivete showing through?

Cheers,

Graham

[Jenni Shelden]

Caz,

don't know why you've taken against me recently - but who cares. Im sure you are entitled to your opinion. I was saying I was thinking Keith might have a reason not to say something - and that if he was doing the research I thought he was he might have found some actual evidence and not be talking nonsense as was being implied (but legally be unable to produce the evidence which would belong to Bruce). Now if i've got that wrong I apologise, sometimes the grapevine isnt in full wroking order.

I am not trying to offend Keith - as I say - I like the guy.

I wish he would have thought before he spoke though. I wish i had been there in all honesty - cos i would have asked him! (Unfortunately at the time (my birthday!) I was throwing up somewhere adn unable to eat having lost nearly a stone.)

And I wish that if is remarks have genuinely been misinterpreted (this seems possible) he would just say what he meant. Then we wouldnt be having this 'conversation' would we because we would know.

Unless, you really think he is the kind of person to talk about evidence that he knows would never see the light of day - but as you point out - you know him better than me - so maybe my thinking that was actually unlikely by now was wrong in your opinion?

I find it hard to tell with you.

Maybe its because you seem to spend your time trying to be sarcastic towards me lately.

Either way, no offence intended
Have a pleasant evening

see you soon

Jenni

[catvance]

thank you, caz. with all the name calling and bickering the really little things tend to get lost. and in a case like this it's the little things that really make the case. i've been reading jtr books since i was a kid and i never felt anything for any of the theories until maybrick. when you start to pick at the smallest of the threads that's when it really jumps out at you. i was anxious to read cornwell's book to see if my fondness for maybrick would lessen but her theory leaks like a sieve from page one. maybrick just feels right. i know that's not scientific but cops are always talking about their gut feelings so it can't be all bad.

[Graham]

thank you, caz. with all the name calling and bickering the really little things tend to get lost. and in a case like this it's the little things that really make the case. i've been reading jtr books since i was a kid and i never felt anything for any of the theories until maybrick. when you start to pick at the smallest of the threads that's when it really jumps out at you. i was anxious to read cornwell's book to see if my fondness for maybrick would lessen but her theory leaks like a sieve from page one. maybrick just feels right. i know that's not scientific but cops are always talking about their gut feelings so it can't be all bad.

Hi Catvance.

Purely out of interest, may I ask you what books you've read regarding the Diary and James Maybrick as the Ripper?

Cheers,

Graham

[Jenni Shelden]

ps i don't require concrete proof for beliefs - I require it for facts, hence the sentenced started I believe rather than I know for a fact.

[catvance]

i admit just the more common ones, the book itself, the maybrick websites, newspaper articles and the dissertations on here. like i said, it's the little things that really nag at you. it's easy to say it's a hoax and i was one of those when it came out. i thought it would just be a fun read, but i really got hooked. as an aside, a friend of mine found a diary of a civil war soldier and spent several years figuring out who wrote it. he didn't put his name in it and he made only casual references to other people so it was quite a challenge. it reminded me when i read it that diaries are only meant for the person who wrote them and no one else.

[Omlor]

All this talk...

But...

Caroline still can't explain how Mike knew the source of the five word quote and could identify the only other book anyone has ever seen that excerpts it and cites it (other than the diary).

There's still no explanation for why Keith Skinner blabbed in public about having secret squirrel evidence and then not only refused to show it to the public but also refused even to explain why he wouldn't back up his claims with his evidence.

The legendary "ongoing investigation" remains eternally "ongoing," but it hasn't produced a single word, single theory, or single piece of published evidence.

Both of the hoaxes remain kept away from qualified scientists, not even shown to them so that they might at least tell us what is and is not possible concerning testing with the latest available technology.

And the Diary World dancing goes on.

Another day, but nothing new.

See you all later,

--John

[Graham]

Hi Catvance.

The Ripper 'Diary' really isn't a diary in the strict meaning of the word - apart from the very last page there are no dates given. In many respects it's just a series of 'mumblings' committed to paper, with here and there a solid fact thrown in as though to tempt the reader to make an identification. When it was first published, I read it and the books by Feldman and Harrison, and I was 99.9% convinced that the mystery of the Ripper had been solved. Trouble is, the Diary tells us nothing about any of the murders that we didn't know already, and there is absolutely nothing to link James Maybrick to the murder of 5 (give or take) East End prostitutes.

There is a remote possibility that the Diary may have been written not long after the Maybrick Case as a means of getting Florie Maybrick out of gaol, but there are those who would argue (for reasons you must know) that this is not possible. Personally, I'm still not 100% convinced of the impossibility of this.

I think Paul Feldman (and maybe others) did an ace PR job in identifying Maybrick with the Ripper Murders - top-hat, twirlable moustache, a toff, wife-beater, all-round rotter, etc. But there just ain't no proof. (Nor is there against Druitt, Kosminsky and a few others that spring to mind).

Cheers,

Graham

[rjpalmer]

If Anne was also involved, it almost beggars belief that she would have thought anyone would be satisfied with that. Why the hell didn’t they work out between them in 1992 that a simple ‘in the family’ provenance would instantly be a hundred times more acceptable?

Simple. They weren't working together in 1992.

[Victor]

Hi Caz,

So there's a 5 word quote in the Diary that is also in a Sphere Book.
The quote is from a poet called Crashaw and was in print in 1866.
Barrett had a copy of the Sphere Book in 1994.
Quite a number of copies of the book, including Barrett's, "fall open" at the quote.
And that's the end of what we definitely know.

So is it true that Barrett definitely placed an ad for an old diary sometime after he had given the hoax one to his publishers?

And is a discussion of the watch in any of the "Diary" books? There doesn't seem to a lot about it on here other than the scientific tests.

[caz]

So is it true that Barrett definitely placed an ad for an old diary sometime after he had given the hoax one to his publishers?

And is a discussion of the watch in any of the "Diary" books? There doesn't seem to a lot about it on here other than the scientific tests.

Hi Victor,

Apologies for the delay in my response.

No, the ad was placed shortly before the diary was first taken to Rupert Crew, the literary agency which found a publisher for it.

Yes, the watch is discussed in every diary book that has been published to date, as far as I am aware.

Caz,

don't know why you've taken against me recently - but who cares. Im sure you are entitled to your opinion. I was saying I was thinking Keith might have a reason not to say something - and that if he was doing the research I thought he was he might have found some actual evidence and not be talking nonsense as was being implied (but legally be unable to produce the evidence which would belong to Bruce). Now if i've got that wrong I apologise, sometimes the grapevine isnt in full wroking order.

I am not trying to offend Keith - as I say - I like the guy.

I wish he would have thought before he spoke though. I wish i had been there in all honesty - cos i would have asked him! (Unfortunately at the time (my birthday!) I was throwing up somewhere adn unable to eat having lost nearly a stone.)

And I wish that if is remarks have genuinely been misinterpreted (this seems possible) he would just say what he meant. Then we wouldnt be having this 'conversation' would we because we would know.

Unless, you really think he is the kind of person to talk about evidence that he knows would never see the light of day - but as you point out - you know him better than me - so maybe my thinking that was actually unlikely by now was wrong in your opinion?

I find it hard to tell with you.

Maybe its because you seem to spend your time trying to be sarcastic towards me lately.

Either way, no offence intended
Have a pleasant evening

see you soon

Jenni

Hi Jen,

I wasn't trying to be sarcastic towards you. I didn't fully understand what you were suggesting in that previous post and was wondering where your information was coming from. I realise now (I think) that you were merely thinking out loud and considering possibilities that were not based on anything coming directly from a source who would be in a position to know the answers.

Hi All,

I am happy to repeat the answer already given: that, as Keith himself explained afterwards, he was giving a spontaneous straight answer to a spontaneous straight question at the trial last May, concerning his investigations into the diary's origins. Most people seem to have accepted that as the only answer they can reasonably expect to the question: 'why say anything at all?'

One can just imagine the outcry in certain quarters had Keith responded that he could not say anything about his progress (which would not have been true because he could and he did), or that it wasn't appropriate to say anything (which would have been called evasive); and a simple "no comment" would have been worse still. There would have been demands for an explanation and accusations of teasing at the very least, if not howls of protest that he had implied progress had been made but was refusing to say what that progress was.

Caroline still can't explain how Mike knew the source of the five word quote and could identify the only other book anyone has ever seen that excerpts it and cites it (other than the diary).

Yes I can, John. But I can't help it if you still call that explanation an impossible miracle, without even having seen the layout of the library concerned, and the limited number of shelves concerned, and the limited number of books on those shelves, which Mike had unlimited time to browse through, and which included three Sphere volumes containing the five words in question - five little words that didn't travel at all well, if you believe they were copied into the diary from this particular title.

Simple. They weren't working together in 1992.

Hi RJ,

No, they certainly weren't. It's a shame Melvin thought otherwise. He claimed that while Mike and Anne didn't actually forge the diary, they did 'place' it for the person who did the hard bit. So it should still be a wonder to you why the forger let Mike do the placing and the supplying of such an awful provenance - especially if you think Devereux had any tangible links with the real culprit. Surely a dead person with no links whatsoever could have been found, if nobody involved could come up with a better basic plan?

Or do you think the forger was in such a tearing hurry to get the diary to a publisher before the ink was dry that he was happy for Mike to pick on the first dead person to come to mind to provide a provenance, no matter if it was totally implausible and transparent and could lead straight back to the forger himself?

Have you really thought this all through properly yet yourself?

Love,

Caz
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