The Diary—Old Hoax or New?

[Iconoclast]

Hey Ike,

Why does it have to be five things?

Here's a couple of troubling things to me:

1. The writer's obsession with Abberline
2. Ink was fresh until it started bronzing in mid-late 1990s.
3. Is the 'diary' a scrapbook, a photo album or a guard book and why write a story in that?
4. Why did Tony Devereux have to borrow Mike's copy of Tales of Liverpool?

But the most troubling aspects are the interpretations people have put on the writing content. Like your insistence there was an "FM" on Kelly's wall and another carved into her arm.

Thanks for the five things, Scotty. Just on the subject of 'five', can you find me five different photographs of Kelly's death scene in which the 'FM' on Kelly's wall cannot be seen, please?

I honestly think you'll struggle, but do give it a go and see how irritatingly persistent they are I turning up. As for the 'F' carved into Kelly's arm, if you can't see an 'F' there, I honestly don't know what to say to you, mate. Let's not even call it an 'F' - let's just call it 'wounds that look at this angle for all the world to be an 'F''.

Cheers, Ike

[rjpalmer]

3. Is the 'diary' a scrapbook, a photo album or a guard book and why write a story in that?

Hi Scott.

From Shirley Harrison, the diary's best-known supporter.




"It had clearly been a photograph album." And indeed, a corner of a photograph was found in its binding.

Calling it a "Victorian scrapbook" is one of Ike's many optimistic quirks.

One of Donald Rumbelow's friends believed it to be Victorian, but Kenneth Rendell called it "Victorian or Edwardian." Melvin Harris claimed on the old forums that similar photograph albums were still being made in 1930.

Even if we are generous and say it is Victorian, Queen Vickie lived until 1901, so the album could conceivably date to nearly 12 years after Maybrick's death.

All this is relevant considering the strange oily blotch on the inside cover of the photo album.

I don't know if a maker's mark was ever there, but there is no doubt that people often sign and date their books on the upper left inside corner of the cover.

Thus, the location of the oil stain is quite interesting.

[Scott Nelson]

Hey, Scotty, what happened to the five things you find most troublesome about James Mybrick's scrapbook?

Hey Ike,

Why does it have to be five things?

Here's a couple of troubling things to me:

1. The writer's obsession with Abberline
2. Ink was fresh until it started bronzing in mid-late 1990s.
3. Is the 'diary' a scrapbook, a photo album or a guard book and why write a story in that?
4. Why did Tony Devereux have to borrow Mike's copy of Tales of Liverpool?

But the most troubling aspects are the interpretations people have put on the writing content. Like your insistence there was an "FM" on Kelly's wall and another carved into her arm.

[Iconoclast]

It's also nice to finally see the stain where Barrett once claimed he had slapped the diary with a fresh kidney!

I'm pretty sure that that particular hallucinogenic claim featured his wife Anne dropping a kidney onto the inside front cover of the scrapbook not he himself.

Well, what can you expect if you prance around with actual kidneys when a priceless document is open at the side of the cooker with a pan full of spitting fat on it, eh?

Don't try this at home, folks.

[rjpalmer]

Very interesting images. Thanks.

I now see what caused the black rectangular shape that looked so curious in the previous image.

The oily substance has soaked so thoroughly through the endpaper that it has become semi-transparent 'oil paper,' showing the edges of the colored cloth underneath.

It's also nice to finally see the stain where Barrett once claimed he had slapped the diary with a fresh kidney!

[jmenges]

I view this damage and staining with curiosity and not a little suspicion.

Linseed oil is the same as flaxseed oil. There are grades of it that are nearly odorless.

These photographs of the inside cover were taken by James Johnston and shared with me back in 2019.

JM

[Iconoclast]

This is worthless, Ike.
You've taken a snippet of conversation out of context with nary a hint of what led up to Anne's reference to the 'forgery thing.'

You will note from the below - a generously (though utterly irrelevant) extension of the 'snippet of conversation' which was quoted 'out of context' (I think you meant a snippet of conversation which may have been taken out of context and which you will now see was not). I trust my dear readers will agree with me that I quoted as much as was required, whilst chucking in the bit about the bottle of whisky as it made me chuckle:

KS: Yes, so it must have been bizarre to hear a fortune, a possible fortune, to be made and all you wanted to do was to throw the thing on the fire.
AG: Well, that was actually, you know, organised through Doreen and that, you know.
SH: Yes –
AG: When I realised –
SH: He was serious –
AG: - that he was going to get the bloody thing published –
SH: Yes, yes.
KS: Yes.
AG: You see, I had to be very subtle in my approach in as much that I couldn’t say to him, we don’t get it published, we write a story around it. I just sort of give it to him bit by bit to try and make him understand it’s come from his idea, it was his idea. But I couldn’t do it! I had managed to manipulate him every, years, so many things, I just [inaudible] this one [laughs ruefully].
KS: I asked, erm, when you were out of the room about ‘O costly intercourse of death’, the Hillsborough disaster –
SH: Yes, yes, yes.
KS: - in which, erm –
AG: Anyone want more tea?
KS: Oh, yes.
[General discussion about tea, cake, staying over that evening, and a book which Skinner and Harrison hoped to take a photocopy from.]
AG: Did anything else come up? I, I, I was expecting you – to be honest – to come back and go on about the forgery thing [Barrett’s affidavit of January 5, thirteen days earlier].
SH: No. Not that at all.
[Inaudible background discussion.]
AG: Yeah. I thought you’d have the forgery story and not, I really did.
SH: None of that at all.
AG: Did that other chap turn up?
[General discussion around how helpful Ken Forshaw had been with Barrett.]
AG: I dread to think what he said [laughs].
SH: Oh, he wanted us to buy him a bottle of Scotch.
AG: Oh, he did?
SH: [Inaudible] a quarter bottle –
AG: So, he’s still on it, then? He’s just got no money and that’s why he’s not drinking, probably.
SH: Well, he must drink because of his alcoholism. He can’t not drink, can he?
AG: No.
SH: So, I don’t know where he gets it from.
[General discussion around how clean the house and Barrett were along with the status of the wound to his arm as well as his various scars.]

So, that's how Anne Graham touched on the subject of Mike's hopeless affidavit, and how she let it quickly lie when she realised that Shirley and Keith were not going to dig into it. Perhaps Lord Orsam would like to update his 'Silence of the Annes' article by reviewing his sinister reasoning for Keith Skinner twice in one day being tentatively introduced to the inglorious January 5, 1995 affidavit and twice not pursuing it - there was surely some nefarious reason for Keith not digging deeper, but what on earth could it have been? (Lord Orsam will let us all know, I have no doubt, and it won't be good for anyone he perceives to be in the 'diary camp', let me forewarn you all.)

Keith knew it was another forgery claim, by the way (he actually says to Mike in the morning of the Anne Graham interview when Mike mentions his latest affidavit, "Is that to say, “I forged the Diary”?" but unfortunately both Mike and Shirley were off on another tack and the moment was gone, with Keith clearly uninspired because it's not like Mike hadn't made that claim a few times already). Keith undoubtedly would have been a great deal more interested in hearing more about the January 5, 1995 affidavit if Mike had added, "Yes - and in it I give a detailed account of exactly how I forged the diary", but Mike didn't so Keith (not unreasonably) wasn't. In retrospect, I don't think he missed out on very much, even if the Theatre of Orsam has tried desperately to make some kind of melodrama out of it.

[rjpalmer]

Mike, Alan, Melvin, and Anne were four people who had seen the contents of the affidavit, so that doesn't sound like much of a secret to me.

Good Lord, Tom, you really are struggling.

We know that Mike, Alan, and Melvin knew about the secret, non-circulating confessional affidavit. Mike & Alan are the ones who created it, and Alan was taking advice from Melvin or at least keeping him in the loop. This has been established and is not in dispute.

My question is who was Mike's intended audience? What was his motive for signing it and lodging it with his solicitor?

I've already given you Keith's theory from 2018 in an earlier post. His explanation (and he can correctly me if he thinks I'm a misstating it) is that Mike made a false confession because "he hated Paul Feldman" (the owner of the visual rights) and wanted to get back at him.

I'm trying to establish the legitimacy of that hypothesis.

If this was the case, what is the evidence that Barrett circulated this allegedly bogus confession to potential film companies, or to newspapers, or to the media, etc., which certainly would have complicated Feldman's quest for a major motion picture?

There isn't any. No evidence has been provided.

Instead, you have identified an audience of one: Anne Elizabeth Graham. Which is exactly what your good friend David Barrat has argued. Again, I suggest that you chase down a copy of his dissertation.

Thus, we are faced with the bizarre fact that Barrett, with Gray's help, created a supposedly bogus confession and then released it solely to the only person in the entire world who would have personal insight into its authenticity or inauthenticity. Anne Graham.

It doesn't compute. No matter how much you wriggle, you can't make it make sense.

By the way, I love your provocative use of the word 'leaked'. 'Leaked to the internet' - ooh, the salaciousness, the drama, the intrigue!

I used the word 'leaked' deliberately because I've seen no evidence that Barrett agreed to the release of the affidavit. Maybe he did and maybe he didn't; perhaps Stephen Ryder, if you contacted him, could clarify matters, but my assumption is that Melvin Harris released it.

Whether he had Barrett's permission, I couldn't say, but the first public airing this secret, non-circulating confessional affidavit came two years after its creation.

Those are the facts.

A might strange delay if the motivation was to harm Paul Feldman. No; whatever the motivations of Gray and Harris, Mike was clearly using the affidavit as 'leverage' over Anne, and Mike's private notes to Anne confirm this.

[Iconoclast]

Good one!
No one knows about it (except, of course, Mike, Melvin, and Alan) but it isn't a secret!
Names, Ike.
Give your readers the names of the people who had seen and read Mike's secret, non-circulating confessional affidavit before it was leaked to the internet two years later, as Caz has so succinctly admitted.

No-one knows (for certain) who Jack the Ripper was but that doesn't make it a secret, does it? It just means that no-one currently knows. Similarly, if a few people did know who Jack the Ripper was and they were not sharing it, that still wouldn't make it a secret. We could ask them and they could simply say who he was. Their not saying is therefore not evidence that there is a secret being withheld (or - in your choice vernacular, 'non-circulated').

Mike, Alan, Melvin, and Anne were four people who had seen the contents of the affidavit, so that doesn't sound like much of a secret to me. On the morning of January 18, 1995, Mike told Shirley and Keith that he had made a recent affidavit so the secret doesn't seem so precious, does it? Sally Evemy and Kenneth Forshaw were present at that meeting so presumably they also became aware of it. Now, for whatever reason, no-one picked-up on it and explored this further, but it doesn't sound like much of a secret still, does it?

For more people to have been made aware of it, one or more of four people who had copies of it had to make theirs publicly available. Mike didn't. Alan Gray didn't. Melvin Harris didn't. Anne Graham didn't. Was this evidence of an almighty conspiracy to withhold the truth, or was it simply that Mike, Alan, and Anne had no-one specifically to share it with, and - most suspiciously of all - Melvin Harris couldn't bring himself to show the world the fruits of his long campaign to get a detailed confession out of Mike?

By the way, I love your provocative use of the word 'leaked'. 'Leaked to the internet' - ooh, the salaciousness, the drama, the intrigue! Someone posted it online and that becomes a 'leak'. This is why I so often have to accuse you of muddying the waters, RJ. You and Orsam are so practiced at it, I honestly don't think you even know you're doing it. The good news for my dear readers is that I am here to protect them from your sense of theatre.

By the way too, it is impossible for me to know what background material you and Orsam do or do not have. Sometimes you have stuff that surprises me and sometimes - like now - you do not appear to have stuff and that surprises me. Sadly, it's not in my gift to share it as it's not my material to share (I offer snippets without authority to hopefully make the occasional point).

That said, I'm starting to think that Society's Pillar 2025 is likely to be even more remarkable than the critics originally predicted ...

[rjpalmer]

People not knowing something does not a 'secret' make.

Good one!

No one knows about it (except, of course, Mike, Melvin, and Alan) but it isn't a secret!

Names, Ike.

Give your readers the names of the people who had seen and read Mike's secret, non-circulating confessional affidavit before it was leaked to the internet two years later, as Caz has so succinctly admitted.

[rjpalmer]

Anne openly referred to Mike's affidavit - highly embarrassed by her ex-husband's antics, no doubt - on January 18, 1995, after Shirley Harrison et alia had spent the morning with Mike Barrett:

AG: Did anything else come up? I, I, I was expecting you – to be honest – to come back and go on about the forgery thing [Barrett’s affidavit of January 5, thirteen days earlier].
SH: No. Not that at all [So Shirley knew about it].
[Inaudible background discussion.]
AG: Yeah. I thought you’d have the forgery story and not, I really did.
SH: None of that at all.
AG: Did that other chap turn up?
[General discussion around how helpful Ken Forshaw had been with Barrett.]
AG: I dread to think what he said [laughs].
SH: Oh, he wanted us to buy him a bottle of Scotch.

This is worthless, Ike.

You've taken a snippet of conversation out of context with nary a hint of what led up to Anne's reference to the 'forgery thing.'

Those who have read Inside Story will recall that Barrett had previously admitted to Shirley that he had forged the diary (this took place in the back garden the day before Mike's drunken, quickly retracted confession to Harold Brough) and without proper context we have no idea what Anne is referring to.

The only reference to Mike's secret, non-circulating affidavit in the above snippet is your own interlinear commentary in brackets!

Tsk, tsk. Very naughty, Old Man.

Your readers don't want your guiding hand leading them down the garden path. They want to see the entire transcript without your editorial musings sprinkled in.

[Iconoclast]

Why did he deny it to Bob Absurdia?

One of the downsides of having an Apple Mac is that it has a mind of its own and wields its autocorrect rather tyrannically ...

[Iconoclast]

... so keep it to yourself, won't you?

[Iconoclast]

Remember, everyone - it was a secret ...

[Iconoclast]

So why would Melvin Harris receive a copy of the thing he most craved in all the world, and then do nothing with it, dear readers?

Was it:

A) He simply had too much integrity, the old softy?
B) It went to his old address and his redirection had lapsed? or
C) He immediately realised it was a complete crock of ****?