Maybrick--a Problem in Logic

[Iconoclast]

He had the Sphere book all along.

And you can prove this, yes?

[Iconoclast]

Yes, just like the little maroon diary he bought, the one which he though it best to transcribe the text from the "genuine" Maybrick Diary to take to London fearing that the original might be lost or stolen. Or is it, the maroon diary was purchased because he wanted to see what a Victorian diary looked like, to compare it to the Maybrick Diary.

He had the Sphere book all along.

If you know for definite what Mike Barrett did or did not do (whether in relation to the original scrapbook, the useful 1891 diary, the Sphere volume, etc.), or if you know for definite why he did things, just let us all know. Don't forget to clarify for us exactly how you know these things to be true. All we can really say with any safety is:

• We know he brought the scrapbook to London
• We know he sought out an 1880-1890 diary
• We know he said Tony D gave him the scrapbook (though we only know that he said it)
• We know his marriage collapsed
• We know he got pissed-up a lot
• We know he started claiming he created the scrapbook
• We know he denied it
• Then claimed it
• Then denied it
• Then denied it (because he forgot he hadn't just claimed it)
• We know he was abjectly unable to provide a single shred of evidence to support his claims
• We know his claims did not stack up to the facts
• We know people excused this on his 'stroke' in 1993 for which his medical records show no such event
• We know he made a thousand claims, contradicted them, failed to back them all up
• We know he eventually drifted away, his insignificance finally sobering him up

Now, this is the guy you and Roger and Lord Orsam would have us believe pulled-off a complex 60+ page Ripper hoax which to this day is unrevealled.

I think you may be quite wrong, you know.

[Observer]

He bought a book that had huge significance in his life right then. Secondhand. Maybe paid anything up to 50p for it. Probably felt he wanted it.

Yes, just like the little maroon diary he bought, the one which he though it best to transcribe the text from the "genuine" Maybrick Diary to take to London fearing that the original might be lost or stolen. Or is it, the maroon diary was purchased because he wanted to see what a Victorian diary looked like, to compare it to the Maybrick Diary.

He had the Sphere book all along.

[Iconoclast]

Why did he have to do that? Why go to the expense, and leg work when he already had the information for Shirley Harrison from Liverpool Central Library

How would I know?

Does that mean he was definitely a hoaxer?

He bought a book that had huge significance in his life right then. Secondhand. Maybe paid anything up to 50p for it. Probably felt he wanted it.

[Observer]

How much of a bourgeois cotton-broker, interested in wine, women, sports, and gambling would he have had to be, say, at the age of 7 when he may have learned the lines from a book in his father's house?

I think that once again you are spinning the wheel until it lands on the slice of pie you want.

I believe that's called spinning the wheel until it lands on your slice of pie

[Observer]

4) He buys a copy from a local bookstore (who knows how long he looked before he did?)

Why did he have to do that? Why go to the expense, and leg work when he already had the information for Shirley Harrison from Liverpool Central Library

The sane amongst us (including those who met Barrett) piss ourselves laughing at their credulity

Lets see, all five of you, if my calculations are correct, and even then only three of you believe Maybrick was Jack The Ripper..

[Observer]

Yep. They were texting me after the monkeys.

Anyone could have done it. The fact that Barrett did was nevertheless much to his credit.

Tell them to get the black armbands out, the locals have hung them. Harrison and her team couldn't locate it.

[Iconoclast]

I find the following ironic.

If I am reading correctly, Ike and Caz (and Keith?) apparently believe that Barrett pulled a scam ...

I think you're going out of your way to read the situation thus, Roger. There was no scam.

1) Barrett is asked to help to find quotation
2) Barrett beavers away in LCL until he finds it
3) He beats his wife [not literally on this occasion] and Emmas to it - hold the front page!
4) He buys a copy from a local bookstore (who knows how long he looked before he did?)
5) He comes out with all manner of **** more or less every time he opens his mouth - fabrication and confusion becomes his watchword (the drink helps)
6) Many years later, people put posts on a Casebook claiming that Barrett was obviously a hoaxer
7) The sane amongst us (including those who met Barrett) piss ourselves laughing at their credulity

And no, I cannot agree with Ike. The bourgeois cotton-broker Maybrick, married in the C of E, and interested in wine, women, sports, and gambling, would certainly not have been a fan of an obscure Roman Catholic poet. He would have found Crashaw appalling and incomprehensible and a disgrace to British Protestantism. Quote an ode to the Virgin Mary? I think not!

How much of a bourgeois cotton-broker, interested in wine, women, sports, and gambling would he have had to be, say, at the age of 7 when he may have learned the lines from a book in his father's house?

I think that once again you are spinning the wheel until it lands on the slice of pie you want.

[Iconoclast]

If it's nothing but monkey-business, then why did Anne Graham and Carol Emmas fail so utterly when they were sent to the Central Liverpool Library by Feldman to complete this very task?

You're codding, Dear Boss. It sounds a lot like you're admitting that Barrett was a better researcher than the two of them combined.

It was a brief line in what I'm sure has been described as a substantial textbook. I cannot account for the fact that Barrett got there first, or even that Graham and Emmas may not have got there at all. If the book was there, then anyone could have found the quotation (eventually). If the book wasn't there, then that would suggest that it was a Barrett cover story and that he knew about where to find it all along because he'd randomly gone up to his attic whilst writing the hoax to source a couple of lines (badly) from a poem I'm sure he'd never heard of in a book I'm sure he'd never read.

Are you basically arguing that the Sphere book was not in Liverpool Central Library, Roger?

[Iconoclast]

Remember you've attributed Barrett with the intelligence of a three toed sloth.

Yep. They were texting me after the monkeys.

Anyone could have done it. The fact that Barrett did was nevertheless much to his credit.

[Observer]

If it's nothing but monkey-business, then why did Anne Graham and Carol Emmas fail so utterly when they were sent to the Central Liverpool Library by Feldman to complete this very task?

You're codding, Dear Boss. It sounds a lot like you're admitting that Barrett was a better researcher than the two of them combined.

Shirley Harrison, and her researches failed to find it too.

"We had hunted high and low in anthologies to find it without success"

[rjpalmer]

I find the following ironic.

If I am reading correctly, Ike and Caz (and Keith?) apparently believe that Barrett pulled a scam when he called Feldman’s assistant on 30 September 1994 claiming to have the book that contained ‘O Costly.’ In reality, Barrett found the quote during a rough week in the Liverpool Library. He didn’t really own The Sphere book. This, of course, puts Barrett in a bind. In order to fulfill his scam, he now has to scramble around Greater Liverpool and find a suitable copy of The Sphere, thus “proving” his account. Evidently, Mike doesn’t cough-up the book until December—a delay which some find odd and suspicious.

Barrett would later claim that he found the book in a shop in Mount Pleasant. As with ‘Blue Coat,’ he doesn’t name the shop, but it was apparently Reid of Liverpool, a well-known bookshop that still exists. From what I’ve read, Shirley Harrison apparently tried to confirm this purchase but came up empty—no proof was ever found that Barrett actually bought the book there; just another one of Mike’s stories that cannot be substantiated. No receipt, no auction ticket.
Here’s the ironic part.

Isn’t this ‘scam’ that Ike and others find so tenable, strikingly similar to what some of us believe about the Maybrick Diary itself?? And even what Mike himself claimed? Barrett states that he called Doreen Montgomery on the phone, claiming to have the Diary of Jack the Ripper (he didn’t), and when she bit, he had to scramble around town to find a suitable blank or partially blank diary or ledger before he could travel to London. Again, there was an uncomfortable delay, but Barrett eventually DID show up with the diary.

“Utterly ridiculous!,” we are told, but now almost exactly the same theoretical chain of events is used to “explain away” Barrett’s copy of The Sphere book.

If we are constantly told that there is no evidence that Barrett hustled down to O & L to buy a black ledger, should we not admit that there is no evidence that Barrett ever hustled down to Reid of Liverpool either, and, indeed, didn’t Mike’s friend Morrison confirm, or partially confirm, that he had already owned the Sphere book earlier that summer, ie., prior to his first call to Feldman’s assistant?

It makes me wonder if Barrett’s episode with Montgomery is what gave him the idea of later “explaining away” his awkward and damaging ‘Sphere Confession’ by telling an almost identical tale!

And no, I cannot agree with Ike. The bourgeois cotton-broker Maybrick, married in the C of E, and interested in wine, women, sports, and gambling, would certainly not have been a fan of an obscure Roman Catholic poet. He would have found Crashaw appalling and incomprehensible and a disgrace to British Protestantism. Quote an ode to the Virgin Mary? I think not!

[rjpalmer]

I've got five monkeys on the shore at Hartlepool texting me as I type volunteering for the role.

If it's nothing but monkey-business, then why did Anne Graham and Carol Emmas fail so utterly when they were sent to the Central Liverpool Library by Feldman to complete this very task?

You're codding, Dear Boss. It sounds a lot like you're admitting that Barrett was a better researcher than the two of them combined.

[Observer]

He's the very definition of wind-up merchant.

Haha. That's rich coming from someone who constantly champions Maybrick as Jack The Ripper.

[Observer]

Don't bother reading my post. Just reply with your usual ill-thought out rant and assume it's 'on point'.

It's not, by the way.

They don't like it up em you know.