The Diary—Old Hoax or New?

[John Wheat]

If you (or anyone else) could write a book which showed through concrete and circumstantial evidence (and not an ounce of personal opinion) that Mike and Anne Barrett were heavily involved in the creation of the Maybrick scrapbook, I think we would all be more than happy to read it. It would run to all of two or maybe three pages so it would be a quick read, that's for sure.

Face it Ike. The diary wasn't written by Maybrick. Also Mike and Anne Barrett are the clear favourites to have created the scrapbook. If you have actual evidence that stacks up to refute this please provide it?

[PRB]

... It would run to all of two or maybe three pages so it would be a quick read, that's for sure.

It only takes two or three pages of truth to completely demolish 500 pages of utter wibble.

[rjpalmer]

It would run to all of two or maybe three pages so it would be a quick read, that's for sure.

Oh, I don’t know, Ike. I think it would require “at least twenty blank pages.”

[Iconoclast]

If it was all about the evidence and not personal opinion. Then the book would be about how Maybrick didn't write the diary and that Ann and Mike Barrett were heavily involved in the escapade.

If you (or anyone else) could write a book which showed through concrete and circumstantial evidence (and not an ounce of personal opinion) that Mike and Anne Barrett were heavily involved in the creation of the Maybrick scrapbook, I think we would all be more than happy to read it. It would run to all of two or maybe three pages so it would be a quick read, that's for sure.

[John Wheat]

Hi Scotty,

Good post.

I'm impressed with your background reading - I'd imagine that what you have read has exposed you to pretty much all of the nuances of the case. I note, of course, that you feel the evidence overall points to inauthenticity, but I'd be interested to know what you feel are the core reasons for thinking this. If I pinned you down to 5 things that really bother you, what would they be? Can I suggest for the purposes of this exercise we skip the handwriting and the torn out pages as they are obvious concerns which ought to bother everyone?

I doubt there are going to be many (or indeed any) more pro-Maybrick books published in future other than my remarkable Society's Pillar 2025 which will be as balanced an account as I can make it (based upon the evidence) whilst nevertheless still arguing for authenticity. The original was about 125 pages long and - I thought - the best that I could offer, but I now have access to significant amounts of additional material which I suspect will make the 2025 version around 500 pages so, you never know, there may just be enough in there to tip the scales for you!

It's obviously all about the evidence, and not at all about personal opinion, and it's important that we are able to evaluate what we read here (and elsewhere) with one eye on the credibility of any argument being put forward, and credibility clearly comes from backing up our claims with well-founded and ideally syllogistic reasoning.

Cheers,

Ike

If it was all about the evidence and not personal opinion. Then the book would be about how Maybrick didn't write the diary and that Ann and Mike Barrett were heavily involved in the escapade.

[Iconoclast]

It looks like your other diary thread was closed Ike, but on it you wrote:
"Genuine question, Scotty: Is your knowledge about the scrapbook purely based upon what you have read on the message boards?
If not, which books have you read?
PS As you may know, I have a strong suspicion that the vast majority (maybe 90%+) of people who come on the message boards making bold claims about the inauthenticity of the scrapbook do so from a position of having failed to read a single book on the subject, so I'm just checking if you're one of those or not.
Ike"

I read Harrison's book in late 1994, followed by Feldman's book and Harrison's update. This was followed by the Inside Story, Smith's book and the recent Jones and Dolgin book. I've read almost all of the posts on this site and the forums site, Melvin Harris's articles and your Society's Pillar dissertation.

I don't believe in hanging on to books for very long, so all the Maybrick stuff is gone. I'm proposing my theory largely from impressions I've gathered, which suits me just fine.

Hi Scotty,

Good post.

I'm impressed with your background reading - I'd imagine that what you have read has exposed you to pretty much all of the nuances of the case. I note, of course, that you feel the evidence overall points to inauthenticity, but I'd be interested to know what you feel are the core reasons for thinking this. If I pinned you down to 5 things that really bother you, what would they be? Can I suggest for the purposes of this exercise we skip the handwriting and the torn out pages as they are obvious concerns which ought to bother everyone?

I doubt there are going to be many (or indeed any) more pro-Maybrick books published in future other than my remarkable Society's Pillar 2025 which will be as balanced an account as I can make it (based upon the evidence) whilst nevertheless still arguing for authenticity. The original was about 125 pages long and - I thought - the best that I could offer, but I now have access to significant amounts of additional material which I suspect will make the 2025 version around 500 pages so, you never know, there may just be enough in there to tip the scales for you!

It's obviously all about the evidence, and not at all about personal opinion, and it's important that we are able to evaluate what we read here (and elsewhere) with one eye on the credibility of any argument being put forward, and credibility clearly comes from backing up our claims with well-founded and ideally syllogistic reasoning.

Cheers,

Ike

[FISHY1118]

Clearly.

[John Wheat]

It's a modern hoax with Mike and Ann Barrett involved. That's clearly what the evidence suggests and frankly the idea it was written by Maybrick is laughable.

[Scott Nelson]

It looks like your other diary thread was closed Ike, but on it you wrote:


"Genuine question, Scotty: Is your knowledge about the scrapbook purely based upon what you have read on the message boards?

If not, which books have you read?

PS As you may know, I have a strong suspicion that the vast majority (maybe 90%+) of people who come on the message boards making bold claims about the inauthenticity of the scrapbook do so from a position of having failed to read a single book on the subject, so I'm just checking if you're one of those or not.

Ike"

I read Harrison's book in late 1994, followed by Feldman's book and Harrison's update. This was followed by the Inside Story, Smith's book and the recent Jones and Dolgin book. I've read almost all of the posts on this site and the forums site, Melvin Harris's articles and your Society's Pillar dissertation.

I don't believe in hanging on to books for very long, so all the Maybrick stuff is gone. I'm proposing my theory largely from impressions I've gathered, which suits me just fine.

[Mike J. G.]

Which of the provenance stories is the most dodgiest one for you? I'd be interested to see you list your thoughts from "dodgiest" to "least dodgiest".

They're all pretty dodgy, to be fair.

That's the problem with things of a questionable nature, that are too good to be true and come from questionable sources.

[erobitha]

We'll never know. But we'll all make our own minds up as we see fit. Jim didn't write it. It's only fair to say that it doesn't match Mike nor Anne's handwriting, but Mike was the person who introduced it to the world, and so he was undoubtedly involved on some level, great or small. Nobody else besides Mike and Anne were talking... So it's either from an unknown person or persons... Or one of the many dodgy provenance stories are true, so pick one.

At any rate, James Maybrick was not Jack the Ripper, imo.

Which of the provenance stories is the most dodgiest one for you? I'd be interested to see you list your thoughts from "dodgiest" to "least dodgiest".

[Mike J. G.]

I have my own theories and views, but I support Keith Skinner in when he says we should be trying to establish exactly where it came from first before we make any leaps to who wrote it. In my own theory I ignore him completely, but he is actually right. If the diary can be proven to been in Battlecrease House on the 9th March 1992, does it mean it was there on the 8th of March 1992? A year before? Ten years before? A century before? This opens up a whole new stream of investigation before we are even close to using this as the smoking gun of it being James Maybrick who wrote it. Which I don't believe he did.

Based on the weight of evidence today, the Battlecrease provenance has the most going for it. It is by no means conclusive, but we have too much circumstantial and testimonial evidence to ignore. We have statements from other electricians and independent witnesses that point the finger at Battlecrease. We have the double event on the 9th of March 1992. We have the coincidence of The Saddle being two doors down from Eddie Lyons and where Mike drank daily.

With Anne's story we have her and her dying father's statements.

Then, of course, we have the theory favoured by many, a Barrett hoax with or without Anne. No evidence at all to support this, except a retracted "confession" with no actual proof Mike successfully purchased anything that was used to create the "hoax".

It's all unsatisfactory.

I'd definitely like to know where it came from, but the Battlecrease provenance, for me, doesn't add up and I tend to agree with Chris Jones's comments regarding the whole story about that.

I think many of us, if not all besides Ike, believe that it wasn't written by James Maybrick, but someone wrote it and it somehow ended up with Mike. I've said before, I'm open to the idea of an older hoax, and I'm even open to the idea of a Battlecrease provenance, but I just don't find it convincing and I've laid out my reasoning in other threads.

And therein lies the problem with all of this, we're no further along in the mystery after all this time and I personally don't think we'll ever know. And even if we got someone like Anne spilling the beans, would everyone buy it?

Anne might have been telling the truth, but once you muddy the waters with a load of imaginative waffle then you've shot your credibility down the pan.

Her suggestion that she gave the scrapbook to Tony so that Tony could give it to Mike is and was goofy. And when she was asked "why" and she said something along the lines of "I'd rather not talk about it" you just knew she was chatting bollocks. She comes across in the radio Merseyside interview like a giggling schoolgirl, and her explanations are in no way convincing to me, but that's just me, I don't know the woman.

We'll never know. But we'll all make our own minds up as we see fit. Jim didn't write it. It's only fair to say that it doesn't match Mike nor Anne's handwriting, but Mike was the person who introduced it to the world, and so he was undoubtedly involved on some level, great or small. Nobody else besides Mike and Anne were talking... So it's either from an unknown person or persons... Or one of the many dodgy provenance stories are true, so pick one.

At any rate, James Maybrick was not Jack the Ripper, imo.

[erobitha]

I'll add that Anne's remarks about not wanting to talk about certain things just seemed a bit like weak deflections. I get that her marriage was far from happy, but you're out in the public eye making bold claims, so you've got to be prepared to answer questions that relate to the claims that you're making, and her family provenance stories just didn't sound at all convincing to me.

But then, the scrapbook under the floorboards provenance doesn't add up for me, either. Too many leaps of the imagination are needed to get that scrapbook from under the floorboards, into an unnamed university and then into the Saddle.

It's anyone's guess where it actually came from and when, but it's hard to make the argument that it was written by James.

I have my own theories and views, but I support Keith Skinner in when he says we should be trying to establish exactly where it came from first before we make any leaps to who wrote it. In my own theory I ignore him completely, but he is actually right. If the diary can be proven to been in Battlecrease House on the 9th March 1992, does it mean it was there on the 8th of March 1992? A year before? Ten years before? A century before? This opens up a whole new stream of investigation before we are even close to using this as the smoking gun of it being James Maybrick who wrote it. Which I don't believe he did.

Based on the weight of evidence today, the Battlecrease provenance has the most going for it. It is by no means conclusive, but we have too much circumstantial and testimonial evidence to ignore. We have statements from other electricians and independent witnesses that point the finger at Battlecrease. We have the double event on the 9th of March 1992. We have the coincidence of The Saddle being two doors down from Eddie Lyons and where Mike drank daily.

With Anne's story we have her and her dying father's statements.

Then, of course, we have the theory favoured by many, a Barrett hoax with or without Anne. No evidence at all to support this, except a retracted "confession" with no actual proof Mike successfully purchased anything that was used to create the "hoax".

It's all unsatisfactory.

[Mike J. G.]

I'll add that Anne's remarks about not wanting to talk about certain things just seemed a bit like weak deflections. I get that her marriage was far from happy, but you're out in the public eye making bold claims, so you've got to be prepared to answer questions that relate to the claims that you're making, and her family provenance stories just didn't sound at all convincing to me.

But then, the scrapbook under the floorboards provenance doesn't add up for me, either. Too many leaps of the imagination are needed to get that scrapbook from under the floorboards, into an unnamed university and then into the Saddle.

It's anyone's guess where it actually came from and when, but it's hard to make the argument that it was written by James.

[Mike J. G.]

Oh, and Anne's in her family for years story likely meant the photo-album with pictures was with the family, minus the hand-written diary text which was later added. So Anne may not have been lying about the origin of the diary as a photo album.

I found most of what Anne said, especially on the BBC radio Merseyside show, to be pretty hard to buy into. She just sounds like she's telling porkies and is a bit embarrassed by the whole saga.

I doubt we'll ever know the truth of it all, not enough to satisfy everyone, anyway. Anne's obviously distanced herself from the affair and Mike's gone.