The Diary—Old Hoax or New?

[Herlock Sholmes]

Mmm, yes, and Shirley Harrison said she found the term 'one-off' used in technical paperwork (belonging to a Kent engineering company) in about 1865.

Graham

Hello Graham,

I definitely won’t call anyone a liar unless there is very good evidence for it so I’m not going to call Shirley Harrison one. That’s said, as John pointed out, I find it really strange that a researcher would neglect to get documented evidence of such an important issue
as Trayner’s use of the term one off, but just to rely on everyone accepting her word. As we know David Orsam is a researcher that doesn’t scrimp on detail or depth. He looked through all the trade directories that he could find and he found no mention of a company called Trayner’s. I’m no researcher but over a year ago I joined a Kent History forum and asked members for any information on Trayner’s. This was a forum full of people fascinated by local businesses and industry. I got quite a few replies but not one of them found any evidence of a company called Trayner’s or Traynor’s or anything like it. At the very least, this is strange. Can anyone actually prove that this company existed? It might have done but, as it stands, one person’s word on the basis of a phone call is just not good enough.

[Herlock Sholmes]

I have to say that one of the points against the diary that only came to my attention via David’s article is the use of the word regards (as pointed out by Sam) This is such a jarring use of the word in place of -with regard to or regarding? It just doesn’t ring true and to find that it’s a word that Mike Barrett used too.... That said, if it could be shown that this usage was and is common to Liverpool?

[Graham]

Well, excuse me for accepting in good faith something said by a respected writer on the Ripper Case....as of now I'll just take everything about the bloody Diary with a great big pinch of salt......

Graham

[John G]

Hello Graham,

I definitely won’t call anyone a liar unless there is very good evidence for it so I’m not going to call Shirley Harrison one. That’s said, as John pointed out, I find it really strange that a researcher would neglect to get documented evidence of such an important issue
as Trayner’s use of the term one off, but just to rely on everyone accepting her word. As we know David Orsam is a researcher that doesn’t scrimp on detail or depth. He looked through all the trade directories that he could find and he found no mention of a company called Trayner’s. I’m no researcher but over a year ago I joined a Kent History forum and asked members for any information on Trayner’s. This was a forum full of people fascinated by local businesses and industry. I got quite a few replies but not one of them found any evidence of a company called Trayner’s or Traynor’s or anything like it. At the very least, this is strange. Can anyone actually prove that this company existed? It might have done but, as it stands, one person’s word on the basis of a phone call is just not good enough.

Thanks for the info about the Kent History forum, Herlock; this further reinforces the serious problems with SH's "evidence". And if David is correct, that she uncritically accepted hearsay evidence via a third party, then I'm afraid her credibility is completely destroyed.

I'm somewhat reminded of the eminent World War 2 historian, Hugh Trevor Roper, who must be about a thousand times better known, and respected, than SH, who most people outside of the rarefied world of Riperology have probably never heard of. However, it didn't stop him validating the Hitler Diaries...

[caz]

If Barrett were perceiving himself as "fleeced" and victimized, why would he open himself to even more victimization by an admission of fraud/forgery? He would also be killing the goose that might keep laying his golden eggs.

Hi Eliza,

I'm afraid logic tends to go out of the window for someone suffering from paranoia. Mike really did believe everyone had it in for him. "Infamy, infamy, they've all got it in for me". The alcohol didn't help. If he thought his personal goose was already cooked, and couldn't see how there'd be any more golden eggs coming his way no matter what, then a confession - or claim [I prefer either word to 'admission', which implies you have already delivered a guilty verdict] that the diary was a recent fake, would at least help to strangle the goose he imagined was still busy laying golden eggs for everyone else - including his wife. You really have to know the whole story, but even then it's not easy for anyone not inside Mike's head at the time to imagine what he was going through - much of it self-inflicted, but no less painfully real for him.

If Barrett were truly a "pathological attention seeker," who wanted attention by way of false confession of forgery--why did he wait so long to confess? The short answer is: he tried for as long as he could to keep the truth hidden, but ultimately broke down and confessed-like so many amateurish miscreants.

As I said, you really have to know the whole story, of what was going on and when. How long is 'so long'? Mike's wife left him in early 1994, and things went rapidly downhill for him after that. By the April, Paul Feldman was pestering him with his latest theory of a blood relationship back to the Maybricks from the Barretts or Grahams. Mike was furious because he thought Feldman was going to try and prove his daughter Caroline was descended from Jack the Ripper [work that one out!]. It was just two months later, in the June, when Mike had had enough and told the newspaper he had written the diary himself. Far from trying 'as long as he could to keep the truth hidden', nobody up until that point had anything on him [Scotland Yard had found nothing and washed their hands of the diary in late 1993], and his perceived enemies, Feldman, Anne and the diary people, could not have been more surprised or shocked by his claim, which helped nobody, least of all Mike himself. The big money was finally coming in and things were set to get better.

Finally, I don't think one "takes back" an allegedly monumental and historic find by claiming it was all a hoax.

It depends on what Mike considered his priorities at the time. If he thought the diary had done him more harm than good, and had ultimately robbed him of his precious only daughter, would he really have been more concerned about what happened to this 'allegedly monumental and historic find', which had been called a shabby hoax? "I've lost my daughter. I'm losing control of the diary. I'm losing control over my life. If I can't get my daughter back, or my life back, I will use the diary any way I can to get back at my enemies."

Love,

Caz
X

[Sam Flynn]

I'm afraid logic tends to go out of the window for someone suffering from paranoia. Mike really did believe everyone had it in for him.

I'm paranoid, but I have low self-esteem. I can't see how anyone could be bothered to have it in for me.

[Abby Normal]

I'm paranoid, but I have low self-esteem. I can't see how anyone could be bothered to have it in for me.

lol. Always try to follow the Golden Rule. Unless, of course, your a masochist.

[Iconoclast]

What has Brexit got to do with the diary? If you think the diary is not a modern hoax your deluding yourself.

I've had a quick look to see if anyone has replied to this and they haven't so I shall. Caz, John, was simply contrasting your firm assertion that the scrapbook is a hoax with her own ironic assertion that Brexit is a miracle. Other than you, we all understood what she was illustrating - namely, that making bald assertions without providing the evidence to back them up is a pointless game we can all play (but to no end). I knew she was being ironic mainly because she was disparaging about the impact Brexit is going to have on the nation in a post only a handful above the one you replied to; but also because her post - without being ironic - would not have served any obvious purpose and she doesn't appear to be a poster who operates without grounds and reason. If I were you, I'd take that as a polite hint.

[Iconoclast]

I have to say that one of the points against the diary that only came to my attention via David’s article is the use of the word regards (as pointed out by Sam) This is such a jarring use of the word in place of -with regard to or regarding? It just doesn’t ring true and to find that it’s a word that Mike Barrett used too.... That said, if it could be shown that this usage was and is common to Liverpool?

Honestly, Herlock, David was reaching (to say the least). Loads of people use the term 'regards' where others might use the term 'regarding'. It's really not a point to invest too many brain cells, it really isn't.

[Iconoclast]

Right - time for Iconoclast to say a few well-chosen words, as ever …

Firstly, Herlock, please change your font colour back to black - it's a wee bit jarring on the eyes, mate. If you don't, I'm going to change mine to deep purple (bold) and we can have a good old fashioned fight-to-the-death scene to see whose ghastly colour should prevail.

Secondly, can we please stop implying that the scrapbook uses the phrase "one-off instance"? This is heavily prejudicial! The scrapbook uses the phrase "one off instance" which could mean that the instance was one where the author was 'off' (form). Now, I know all of the arguments about this also not being an expression commonly in use (then or now) but we cannot wholly exclude the possibility that Maybrick was the author and he meant that it was a single moment when he was 'off' form and that it would not be repeated. If Maybrick wrote it then he wrote it 'live' - he didn't go back to it and edit it, so it may not have come out exactly as he intended it, but as it was written for his own eyes, what would he care?

So please do not claim that the Maybrick scrapbook uses the phrase "one-off instance" for it does not.

I am willing to accept that the phrase "one-off instance" did not exist in 1888 or 1889 if everyone else is willing to accept that that is not what the scrapbook states.

Thirdly, I assume that David Orsam's analysis regarding the eventual use in print of the phrase (or even 'concept') of "one-off instance" as late as the 1980s reflects only those uses where it was in fact in print? Is it not perfectly possible that it was used long before then in numerous non-print forms? Could people not have written the term (or similar terms such as "one-off event") numerous times in letters, etc., whose contents fell away to dust rather than into the pious, eternal arms of the digital domain? I think I would accept Orsam's claim if everyone else was willing to accept that we do not know what was written and then lost to posterity.

Finally, it would appear from Orsam that Harrison made the rather foolish mistake of trusting what she had been told without checking her facts. Unforgivable? Probably. Malicious? Not necessarily. She was chasing-up a huge volume of information for the first edition and it is well within the bounds of human frailty to fail to check something which needed checking but which may have slipped her mind. She may have intentionally failed to check her source. She may even have simply made it up. Personally, I'm willing to cut her some slack and accept that it was a mistake on her part. If "one-off" was as big a deal then as it has become now, I'd expect her to have been all over it, but I don't think it was and therefore her oversight does not to me smack of duplicity in the slightest.

Right, that's Iconoclast's sermon over for tonight. I trust you have all had your eyes opened by my brilliant erudition and your minds unlocked by my incisive logic? (No need to confirm - I'll just assume it.)

Ike

[Herlock Sholmes]

Honestly, Herlock, David was reaching (to say the least). Loads of people use the term 'regards' where others might use the term 'regarding'. It's really not a point to invest too many brain cells, it really isn't.

I’m rapidly approaching 54 and I’ve never once in my entire life heard anyone else use regards in this way Ike.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Right - time for Iconoclast to say a few well-chosen words, as ever …

Firstly, Herlock, please change your font colour back to black - it's a wee bit jarring on the eyes, mate. If you don't, I'm going to change mine to deep purple (bold) and we can have a good old fashioned fight-to-the-death scene to see whose ghastly colour should prevail.

Secondly, can we please stop implying that the scrapbook uses the phrase "one-off instance"? This is heavily prejudicial! The scrapbook uses the phrase "one off instance" which could mean that the instance was one where the author was 'off' (form). Now, I know all of the arguments about this also not being an expression commonly in use (then or now) but we cannot wholly exclude the possibility that Maybrick was the author and he meant that it was a single moment when he was 'off' form and that it would not be repeated. If Maybrick wrote it then he wrote it 'live' - he didn't go back to it and edit it, so it may not have come out exactly as he intended it, but as it was written for his own eyes, what would he care?

So please do not claim that the Maybrick scrapbook uses the phrase "one-off instance" for it does not.

I am willing to accept that the phrase "one-off instance" did not exist in 1888 or 1889 if everyone else is willing to accept that that is not what the scrapbook states.

Thirdly, I assume that David Orsam's analysis regarding the eventual use in print of the phrase (or even 'concept') of "one-off instance" as late as the 1980s reflects only those uses where it was in fact in print? Is it not perfectly possible that it was used long before then in numerous non-print forms? Could people not have written the term (or similar terms such as "one-off event") numerous times in letters, etc., whose contents fell away to dust rather than into the pious, eternal arms of the digital domain? I think I would accept Orsam's claim if everyone else was willing to accept that we do not know what was written and then lost to posterity.

Finally, it would appear from Orsam that Harrison made the rather foolish mistake of trusting what she had been told without checking her facts. Unforgivable? Probably. Malicious? Not necessarily. She was chasing-up a huge volume of information for the first edition and it is well within the bounds of human frailty to fail to check something which needed checking but which may have slipped her mind. She may have intentionally failed to check her source. She may even have simply made it up. Personally, I'm willing to cut her some slack and accept that it was a mistake on her part. If "one-off" was as big a deal then as it has become now, I'd expect her to have been all over it, but I don't think it was and therefore her oversight does not to me smack of duplicity in the slightest.

Right, that's Iconoclast's sermon over for tonight. I trust you have all had your eyes opened by my brilliant erudition and your minds unlocked by my incisive logic? (No need to confirm - I'll just assume it.)

Ike

Come on Ike we have to look at context. The fact that he puts a in front of one off instance makes it clear that he was saying a one-off instance. The alternative..a one..off instance doesn’t work.

[Iconoclast]

Come on Ike we have to look at context. The fact that he puts a in front of one off instance makes it clear that he was saying a one-off instance. The alternative..a one..off instance doesn’t work.

Au contraire, Herlock. As I noted some months ago on the Casebook, my own mother still uses the expression "a one" all the time (she's from North Shields, as am I for that matter, so maybe this is a north-east England thing). Whilst I am not saying categorically this is what the scrapbook author intended by his use of the phrase, he could have intended "a one … [thinks about what he's trying to say] … 'off' instance". He absolutely doesn't give a stottie cake (with pease pudding and saveloy) about whether or not it's particularly linguistically elegant because he's saying it for himself.

[Iconoclast]

I’m rapidly approaching 54 and I’ve never once in my entire life heard anyone else use regards in this way Ike.

You need to get out more, young man ...

[Sam Flynn]

Come on Ike we have to look at context. The fact that he puts a in front of one off instance makes it clear that he was saying a one-off instance. The alternative..a one..off instance doesn’t work.

Which reminds me, I'll be having a one beer soon.