The Diary—Old Hoax or New?

[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]

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.

[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.

[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.

[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
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[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...

[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

[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?

[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.

[John Wheat]

Well that was edifying.

Brexit is clearly a modern miracle.

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

[caz]

Ordinary people have long been able to "call" someone by shouting their name, or to "call on" someone in the sense of visiting them... but we don't talk about "giving" someone a visit, do we, and I doubt that many people ever have.

Well that's okay, Gareth, because nobody to my knowledge mentioned 'giving someone a visit' before you did here. It's certainly not in the diary. Nor is shouting the name of Her Majesty into a megaphone in Liverpool and hoping the old dear's ear trumpet will pick it up on the Isle of Wight.

As you well know, because you have read the same posts as I have on this subject, which must be becoming more tiresome by the day for anyone still awake, in the late 19th century people were routinely "giving someone a call" or "paying someone a call" or "paying someone a visit" or "making house-calls" [if you were a doctor for example] and they all meant the same thing - they were calling on someone in person.

However, ordinary people have been able to speak of "giving someone a call" since that phrase passed into everyday parlance after telephones had become widely used.

You have it arse backwards, Gareth. When telephones began to be widely used, "giving someone a call" was no longer confined to seeing someone in person. If nothing was changing hands, like a bunch of flowers - or [cough] a butcher's knife - and there was no need for physical contact or face-to-face conversation, you could just "give someone a call" over the telephone to deliver your message. It's little wonder the idea caught on, and no surprise to find the older usage of "giving someone a call" diminishing, as the modern usage took hold. But that is of no possible concern to us here, because the diary is meant to reflect Victorian usage, and it does so. No Victorian Sam Flynn would have batted an eyelid at the phrase as 'Sir Jim' uses it. He is quite clearly envious of Pu$$y Cat, Pu$$y Cat, and fancies going to London to visit the Queen. She'd have appreciated the sentiment, even if today's Sam Flynn can't, because she'd have had little notion of how the phrase 'give her a call' would be co-opted in the future by millions of telephone users.

This is getting a bit surreal, isn't it? You may as well argue that when 'Sir Jim' writes: 'The next time I travel to London I shall begin', the Barretts most probably had a flight from Liverpool in mind, because flying had really taken off [ha ha] by the time they were creating their hoax, so the phrase 'travel to London' would have been much more widely used across the globe to imply 'travel to London by air', with train travel taking more of a back seat [ha ha].

Talking of which, don't you just hate it when you get a nice, forward-facing seat on the train to London, with a table for drinks and snacks, and you're just enjoying the gorgeous view out of the window and your first gin and tonic of the day when a woman ten years younger than you gets on at Crewkerne and asks you to move, because she feels sick in a seat facing backwards? She then proceeds to look down at her phone without once looking out of the window or looking the least bit queasy. Don't you just hate it when the same thing happens, not once but twice, on the return journey to Devon? Two more women, both ten years younger than me, who would have to stand all the way [because they told me when I asked] if there were no forward-facing seats left [and no mugs like me to take pity on them and move to another seat]. O tempora! O mores!

Rant over. The next time I travel to London I shall begin... the journey in a seat facing backwards and be done with it. Because I know when I'm beaten.

Love,

Caz
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[John G]

Deleted.

[Graham]

My grandfather (born about 1880) used the term 'top myself' quite regularly when I was a boy. As in: if he repaired something, he'd mutter "If this doesn't work now, I'll top myself".

I'd just like to point out that I don't accept that James Maybrick wrote the Diary, nor that he was Jack The Ripper. I do, however, believe the Diary to be a lot older than the 1980's, not necessarily from the time of the Ripper Murders, but how it came into the possession of Mike Barrett, I'm sorry I haven't a clue.

Graham

[John G]

Let's consider the statistical chances of the Diary being genuine. Well, based upon the "one-off" problem we would have to accept that, out of all of the billions of individuals that could have originated the phrase "one-off", in a non-technical sense, it was actually originated by James Maybrick in a Diary of dubious provenance. In fact, the provenance is non existent.

Not only that, but the phrase, which no one at the time would have understood, so would have been completely meaningless, doesn't re-enter commom parlance for about a century.

On that basis, the statistical probability of the Diary being genuine must be several thousand million to one against.

[John G]

I would just point out that in nearly thirty years no one has been able to find a single legitimate example of the phrase "one-off" being used prior to the Second World War, except in a strictly technical sense, and I'm sure it's not for want of trying. In fact, are there any documented examples prior to the early 1980s?

Of course, we could always adopt a Wilkins Micawber approach and hope that "something will turn up"!