Maybrick--a Problem in Logic

[Iconoclast]

Sorry. I forgot the attachment. Here is the list as it appeared in October 1888:

Far be it for me to ever get into any form of an argument, but once again your argument hinges heavy upon the thought process of the killer after the event, does it not? Maybrick wrote to the effect of "I left them a very good clue" and we are left to decipher it, unfortunately. I think Shirley Harrison suggested that the very good clue may have been the piece of cotton in what may have then become the tin match box, empty (I hope it were she for I say so in my bSP). Maybrick could have left such a clue, and just not read the article that you posted or read it and completely missed it. He was human, Rog. It's an artform but it can be learned with practice.

And he homed-in on Abberline rather than the City Police? Honestly - did he really need to care a toss to say it to himself in his private scrapbook?

Ike (now behind that oak tree on the left)

[Iconoclast]

Ike - a minor point of housekeeping. Please refer to page 41 of "Society's Pillock." Who the heck is Catherine Morris? I can see getting one name wrong, but both?

For goodness sake, Rog, you could have PM'd me!!!!!!!!! I'm probably going to wake up tomorrow (if I'm lucky) to find my hamster's head in bed with me!

Anyway, I have made the correction. Can I ask that you make a correction to your own post above, please - it's my brilliant Society's Pillock, thank you.

PS In what sense did I get both of Caz's names wrong (as she published under 'Morris', it seemed reasonable to cite 'Morris' rather than 'Brown'). In retrospect, however, I perhaps should have referred to her in my bSP as 'Caz' as that - I think - is the naming format I used elsewhere whilst being very brilliant?

Ike (Yes, honestly - I'm behind this big rock)

[caz]

The Maybrick Diary related tape recordings were from Robert McLaughlin’s personal collection, which he digitized and gave to me. Keith Skinner had no hand (let alone thumb) in what I chose to release.

JM

Ho ho, this was in response to R.J's funny little pop at Keith:

'Keith made quite an information dump over the past 12 months or so--but it is hard not to notice that all those podcasts featured Feldman, Graham, Harrison, etc. One wouldn't want to be left with the impression that an unseen editorial hand had placed his thumb firmly on the scale, only releasing data generally favorable to the diary's authenticity...'

Ho ho ho. I have met Robert McLaughlin and he is a smashing guy, but the thought that he would deliberately have handed over data that was 'generally favorable to the diary's authenticity' is just too funny, on at least two levels.

Level one: Robert has broadly similar beliefs to R.J regarding the diary's origins.

Level two: I'm confident that Robert has more than enough integrity not to hand over data because it accords with his own beliefs, but it's hilarious that R.J sees what was released as being 'generally favorable to the diary's authenticity'.

Own goal or what?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

You got me there, Ike. It was indeed fortuitous that the Kelly photograph survived and was published, and that Maybrick anticipated its existence, survival, and publication, so he could quite accurately write that he left the letter F "in front" for "ALL EYES TO SEE." Not Bowyer's eyes, mind you. Or Abberline's. Our eyes---the eyes of Ike and the rest of the readership that Barrett envisioned would be happily hunting for "clues" in the famous photo. Probably one glass of stout too many that night, Poor Bongo. He slipped out of character, but then, even Homer and Feldman nod.

When you and your colleagues are arguing for the existence of imaginary enormous biscuit tins with hermetically sealed lids that magically keep ink in suspended animation for 102 years, I think it is time that I hunted down a website dedicated to the "meaningful truth" (to use your curious phrase) of the Cottingley Fairies. I could use a more credible diversion.

Cheer up, R.J. You still have at least one 'rock', before your Barrett hoax solution is doomed to failure, even if you and Baxendale have both been battling with unknowns, without knowing it.

At least I know what I don't know, and don't pretend that I do know, don't ya know?

Here's your second 'rock' again:

...and Martin Earl’s advertisement, showing that one or more of the occupants of Goldie Street were behind it. Any ‘solution’ that disregards this “debilitating” data, to use the term Howells and Skinner used in another context, is doomed to failure.

I expect you mean that it must have been young Caroline who picked up the phone, bless her little cotton school socks, when Martin Earl called to ask if a tiny 1891 diary, with printed dates three to a page, and no pages that were literally blank, would be any good to her Dad, even though he had asked for one dating from 1880 to 1890 with at least twenty blank pages. Did her Dad want Martin to order it for him? The price was £25. And Caroline must have said: "Yes, that sounds just the ticket, please do go ahead and order it and send my Dad the bill", having no idea why it would be as much use as a chocolate fireguard. She couldn't call her Mum or Dad to the phone because one was at work and the other was busy dreaming of the greenhouse he would soon be able to buy, thanks to Martin Earl's alternative Victorian diary, which he planned to turn into Maybrick's murderous memoirs.

Love,

Caz
X

[rjpalmer]

Sorry. I forgot the attachment. Here is the list as it appeared in October 1888:

[rjpalmer]

Hi Caz - (Or should I call you Catherine?)

Here is why I stopped in this morning: to reply to Post #539 about the infamous “tin match box empty.” Warning: longish post, but, to the rational, it destroys the theory of an old hoax. Not that that hasn’t been done before.

You write:

how would Mike Barrett have figured out that one of the items on this list, and only one, had not previously appeared on the list published in any newspaper report, going right back to October 1888?

This strange and misguided argument keeps cropping up. Feldman uses it to ‘prove’ the diary is either genuine or a modern fake. Supposedly the ‘one’ item left off the list is the matchbox.

Unfortunately, the statement is simply wrong. Let’s kill this canard once and for all, shall we? Even though we’ve gone over it before?

Reproduced below is the description of Eddowes’ belongings as published in various newspapers during the first week of October 1888. This excerpt comes from The Globe of October 1^st, but it can be found in many other papers, including The Times, The Oxford Times, etc. No other report has ever been located, even in the age of digitization.

If we compare this press release to the ‘official’ inventory list of Eddowes belongings compiled at the mortuary (see Evans & Skinner, p. 203-204 for a copy), we see that, rather than “one and only one” item being left out, many of Eddowes’ belongings were not mentioned in the press report, including:

twelve pieces of white rag, some slightly blood-stained
one pair of brown ribbed stockings
two small blue bed ticking bags
a second white handkerchief
the spoon
a piece of red flannel containing pins & needles

It is also worth noting that the press release turns Kate’s two tin boxes of tea & sugar into one tin box of tea and sugar. So, one of these is left off, too. That’s seven items so far.

Interestingly enough, there are also two items in the news release that are NOT mentioned in the “official list”:

the red mitten
the handbill naming “Frank Cater, of 405 Bethnal Green Road”

In addition, if we look at City Police Inspector Edward Collard’s deposition given at the Eddowes inquest, he reveals that there were other items scattered next to Eddowes’ body in Mite Square. These were picked up by Police Sergeant Thomas, and thus did not make it to the mortuary and are also not mentioned in the ‘official’ tally:

3 small black buttons ‘generally used for women’s boots.’
A small metal button.
A common metal thimble.
A small mustard tin containing two pawn tickets.

The pawn tickets and the handbill mentioning ‘Frank Cater,’ were probably set aside by Collard, since their origins would need to be traced and investigated.

As for the myth of the “tin match box” not being mentioned by the press…thus “held back” by Abberline…it IS mentioned by the press. This is actually a major blow to the Diary’s supposed antiquity. There is only one match box mentioned in the combined sources. As you can see, the press claimed the box contained cotton, but by the time it was described at the mortuary it is listed as “empty.” Maybe the cotton was lost or thrown away, or the report was simply inaccurate? Or a policeman, inspecting the box, tossed the cotton to one side and it became separated from the match box? It is entirely possible that the ‘cotton’ mentioned by the press are some of the various cloth bits mentioned in the police inventory. For instance, the ‘twelve pieces of rag’ (which Trevor Marriott takes to mean sanitary napkins).

Anyway, it is now painfully obvious that “one and only one” item was not “held back.” Feldman is pulling our leg. It’s false information. It’s bogus. And if something WAS held back, it wasn’t the match box.

Nor was it Abberline doing the holding. A sophisticated hoaxer would have known that the Eddowes investigation was conducted by the City Police. Anything ‘held back’ would have been ‘held back’ by Inspectors Collard or Inspector McWilliam. Barrett got it wrong.

If this is the quality of the arguments you use to “prove” the diary’s sophistication, then why even bother?

As I say, what this really demonstrates is that the Diary is a modern hoax. If an “old hoaxer” from say 1910 had used contemporary press reports to create his text, he would have assumed that the match box contained cotton. Instead, he repeats the ‘official’ list, showing the box empty, and this was not made public until the 1980s. Dave O’Flaherty researched this thoroughly years ago.

Of course, the true believer can theorize the wildly unlikely scenario that the diary was written by someone with access to official reports (yet, strangely, hones in on something as insignificant as an empty match box!) or we can be brave and honest and rational and admit that the ‘tin match box empty’ was mentioned in one of the two books Barrett used to compile his phony “research notes” sometime around 1991-92: Paul Harrison’s Jack the Ripper: The Mystery Solved.

The first scenario, evidently believed by ‘old hoax’ theorists, is not even remotely plausible and requires a suspension of disbelief at a level unheard of even in a field known for romantics and dreamers.

Carry on.

[rjpalmer]

Ike - a minor point of housekeeping. Please refer to page 41 of "Society's Pillock." Who the heck is Catherine Morris? I can see getting one name wrong, but both?

[rjpalmer]

Thank you erobitha. This is exactly what I wondered about...

So this first 'rock' of R.J's may in fact have been of the Edinburgh variety - soft and crumbly, and all too easy to swallow?

Very probably, Caz. I guess I hadn't really thought it through.

In the 1970s, some adherents of the “New Age” religion kept their razor blades in tiny carboard pyramids because this mystical and holy Egyptian shape is said to have the power to prevent the blades from going dull (or seeds from degrading, or wine from spoiling, etc.) See Colin Wilson’s The Occult, or The Power of the Pyramid, for more details.

Similarly, the humble biscuit tin may also have mystical qualities, not yet fully understood by science. Somehow the tin keeps the ink in a state of suspended animation for years or even decades, baffling any effort to determine its age. I wonder if Rod McNeil considered this during his ‘ion’ migration experiments?

Yes, the scenario of suspended oxidation is conceivable--even probable.

No wonder those cookies from Christmas 2018 taste the same today as when the tin was first opened! I withdraw my assumption.

I do wonder, however, if the first page of the Diary, penned in the spring of 1888, could have been kept in optimal conditions until it was buried under the floorboards of Battlecrease in the Spring of 1889? Wouldn’t it have had at least one year of exposure to oxidation, as Maybrick lugged it back and forth to London?

Yet, here again, one of the document examiners suggested that multiple entries of the diary had been penned in the same sitting, so perhaps this isn’t much of an objection either. The diary could have been tossed together in as little as 11 days, which would tend to make all the ink of a broadly similar ‘age,’ exposed to the same general level of oxidation. Hmmmm.

I do wonder, however, about your use of the word ‘airless’ to describe the space underneath Dodd’s floorboards.

I was assured by the Diary savants who frequent Howard’s site that the floorboards in these old house are so loose and gaping that dead cats, detritus, old newspapers, books, burglars, etc. are frequently found underneath—meaning that Dodd simply failed to notice the oversized biscuit tin when he ‘gutted’ the house sometime around 1990.

But these matters are mysterious, cryptic. Unfathomable, really. Best to leave it alone.

[Iconoclast]

By the way, Roger, Keith did have a question which was rhetorically addressed to me but which I inferred was 'meant' for you as it was underpinned by your preferred scenario painted for us recently: if the ink went on to the paper between (say) April 2nd and April 12th 1992 (factoring-in the two days Mike said it took to dry the front cover after soaking it in linseed oil), and Baxendale did his ink experiments at the end of June 1992 (or thereabouts), then how would the fact that the ink had only been on the paper for 10 weeks (say) affect the solubility test? I might have thought the ink would be extraordinarily soluble given the recency of its laying-down and that this might have been commented upon by Baxendlae himself.

I'm whispering this as quietly as I can as the slaughter is still going on around me ...

This one is perhaps for erobitha or Graham, or anyone else with a CSE in Inkology.

If the ink had only been on the paper for 10 weeks would a solubility test indicate that it had been very recently applied? Could Mike, as RJ and Lord O would argue, have anticipated the ink being subjected to a solubility test and found some way for his diamine ink to give a false reading of age? Is that why Mike added sugar because, as he explained to Keith at the C&D, it dissolved in the ink and separated the molecules? How on earth would Mike Barrett know that when a man like me (with four O-levels) not know it???

Erobitha? Graham? Inkology CSE-owners?

But, remember - shuusshhhhhh!!!

[caz]

Hi Caz,

You seem to be missing the subtlety of Professor Chisholm’s argument. I would have expected better, and it’s rather disappointing.

I missed it totally, R.J. I must have nodded off at that point. Was 'Professor' Chisholm's argument something to do with your two 'rocks', or just another meaningless distraction?

Those hung up on whether the Diarist is referring to the initals ‘F. M.’ or some other initials, or some other alleged ‘clue’ are missing the thrust of Chisholm’s observation.The diarist states that he left ‘X’ (whatever X might be, and we can argue until the cows come home) “in front for all eyes to see.”

“All eyes”? Who are these people with all these eyes? And how did their eyes come to be “in front” of Kelly? Any guesses Caz?

No blinking idea, R.J. Perhaps you can explain why you are directing such questions to me, because I truly haven't the foggiest.

The statement only makes sense if the diarist is anticipating the Kelly murder scene being broadcast publicly…and the only way this could happen is through a photograph. Only then can “all eyes” see it. Further, it is only from the perspective of the famous police camera angle that these “eyes” are “in front” of Mary Jane. In the actual room in Miller’s Court there is nothing in front of Kelly but a blank wall, almost entirely consisting of windows covered with an old jacket and other rags.

What has any of this to do with the strange suggestion that Mike Barrett may have got some sort of brainwave from Simon Wood's remark about spotting initials on the wall in the Kelly photo?

Maybe Keith will appreciate the following analogy. The subtle error in the narrator’s perspective is kind of like an actor forgetting the concept of the “fourth wall,” and suddenly addressing the audience—or at least becoming aware of the audience. Or like Michael Caine, in Alfie, suddenly and disconcertingly turning to the camera in front of him. Caine shouldn’t be thinking of “all eyes” being on him, should he? Unless he already knows an audience will eventually be sitting in a movie theatre watching him?

Now do you get it? But perhaps Chisholm was being overly subtle to win the admiration of the herd. Richard Whittington-Egan seems to have appreciated his point, and so do I.

No, I don't get it. And if it's catching I don't want it. What the devil are you on about, R.J? It's not as if I have ever argued that 'Sir Jim' was James Maybrick, recording in his diary that he'd left a large FM on Kelly's wall. And I'm always pointing out that 'in front' doesn't make a lot of sense if the initials referred to in the diary were meant to be on the wall immediately adjacent to Kelly's bed. From the perspective of anyone - cameraman, doctor, policeman or killer - looking at her destroyed face, turned towards them as they stood on the other side of the bed, any such initials would have been immediately behind her.

Anyway, as far the initials ‘F.M.’ go, I was merely exploring Observer’s observation. I am not particularly convinced that Barrett was referring to FM on the back wall...

Thank goodness for that! So this was all a silly distraction after all.

P.S. If you have any complaints about the size of my diction, please forward them to Stephen Ryder, who seems to have recently changed software. I notice that Ike suffered from the same physical defect in his post, though he suddenly swelled up towards the end of his exertions. With pride, no doubt.

I just don't get why you seem to be the only one whose posts have shrunk. When I try to respond to your posts, mine sometimes shrink too. It's like being in Alice In Wonderland. The only way I can get round it when it happens to me is to copy and paste back and forth until normal size has been resumed. This one seems to have come out fine though.

Love,

Caz
X

[Iconoclast]

So this first 'rock' of R.J's may in fact have been of the Edinburgh variety - soft and crumbly, and all too easy to swallow?
Love,
Caz
X

Well I reckon that means Cooler Caz is made out of Brighton Rock, guys. Personally, I wouldn't mess. RJ's a Shark, sure, but she's hanging with a real bad crowd. Switchblades were prison tickets years ago. She don't care. She's carrying, and I for one wouldn't get in her way. Don't say I didn't warn ya, dudes!



Not that I'm the nervous type or what have you, but I'll be back when the eviscerations stop.

[caz]

Conditions dictate how such chemical reactions take place. It is wholly conceivable if the diary was kept in cold metal tin, starved of oxygen - and then in a cool and stable environment that the ink may not have fully bonded with the paper completely. Oxidisation will rapidly accelerate that process.

Thank you erobitha. This is exactly what I wondered about.

You see, when Baxendale did his solubility test, around June 1992, nobody had a clue about the conditions in which the diary might have been kept prior to its debut in London on April 13th 1992. Only Mike Barrett knew for sure at that point how long he'd had the scrapbook, and whether the writing was already in it or was added later.

It was generally assumed, because nobody knew any different, that Mike had acquired the old book, with 63 pages of writing in it, around a year previously, in late Spring/early summer 1991. He said he got it from Tony Devereux, who had died in August 1991 without telling Mike anything about it. So nobody at the time of Baxendale's solubility test was even considering the possibility that a) the diary had emerged, blinking, into the daylight as recently as March 9th 1992, after hiding for goodness knows how long in some small, dark and airless space, let alone that b) the scrapbook might only have been bought at auction on March 31st 1992, with the ink then applied to its blank pages, so it was fresh as a daisy when Mike took it on the train on April 13th 1992, to show goodness knows who in London.

Unfortunately, Baxendale wasn't able to say: "Crikey, I'd say this was written within the last 2 or 3 months", or: "it was written at least 2 years ago", either of which would have been a good deal more useful to those seeking to finger the Barretts or eliminate them.

The two ‘rocks’ of the modern hoax reality are Baxendale’s solubility test, showing the document was new, and Martin Earl’s advertisement, showing that one or more of the occupants of Goldie Street were behind it. Any ‘solution’ that disregards this “debilitating” data, to use the term Howells and Skinner used in another context, is doomed to failure.

So this first 'rock' of R.J's may in fact have been of the Edinburgh variety - soft and crumbly, and all too easy to swallow?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Long post alert...

Hi Caz...

...My answer to your question is simple. On 30 September 1994 Barrett called two different women to inform them that he knew a source for the ‘O Costly’ quote. One was Shirley Harrison, who was told that he had found the quote by "chance" but, alas, he didn’t bother to write down the reference, although he thinks it was in Volume 6.

May I just stop you there, R.J? It might be better if we both go back to the earliest sources:

On Friday 30^th September 1994, Shirley sent a handwritten letter to Keith, which included the following: ‘I am hotfoot on the “intercourse” quote. Will report.’
It is not clear what Shirley meant by this, but it’s highly unlikely she was being deliberately vague or cryptic. Had Feldman phoned her? There is no evidence that either of them knew on that date the source of the quote.

It was only on Monday 3^rd October that Keith picked up Shirley’s phone message to say that Mike seems to have found the quote in Volume 6 but didn’t even make a note of it. On Tuesday 11^th October, Shirley told Keith that Mike had phoned her on Monday 3^rd October, which is when she had to tell him to go “back” to the library and find the reference. He wasn’t able [or according to you, willing] to give Shirley the correct title of the Sphere series, the correct volume number, the page number or even the author’s name.

There is no source for Mike having revealed his ‘find’ directly to Shirley before 3^rd October 1994. And it only became clear to her on 6^th October, thanks to the fax from the library, that the words were by Crashaw and could be found in Volume 2. This is the earliest source I have for the name Crashaw popping up in this whole saga.

Moving swiftly on...

Most likely within minutes, Barrett picks up the phone a second time and calls Martine Rooney, (or perhaps he called Martine first, but, either way, this was still 30 September 1994), only this time Barrett tells his listener that not only does he know the author of the quote, but he has the book in front of him. As far as the record shows, Mike said nothing to Martine about the Liverpool Library or any other library, but, as if in confirmation of his possession of the volume, he correctly informs her that the diarist has mistakenly misspelled "O COSTLY" as "Oh COSTLY."

As I explained above, we only know that Mike phoned Martine on the Friday, but I accept that he may have had the book close by at the time [which he would have, if he’d just found the quote in one of the Sphere volumes and immediately used the library’s pay phone – assuming they had one - to call Feldman’s office]. But what is your source for him revealing the author as Crashaw on that occasion? I haven’t found one.

On Tuesday 11^th October, Keith asked Martine what she remembered about her conversation with Mike on Friday 30^th September. She recalled that Feldman wasn’t there, but that Keith was. Mike claimed he had the book in front of him because, as you rightly say, he knew it was O, not Oh as in the diary. But that was the first thing he was likely to recall about his discovery, if he’d just seen the line for the first time in the library. It proves nothing. He had pored over that diary day and night until certain words and phrases were etched into his brain. Keith asked Martine if Mike had said anything else about the line or pounced on any other word. Martine admitted it was possible but she wasn’t taking much notice. Mike did claim he was looking at it and he talked about volumes, rather than a single book, and it was in one of them. Martine didn’t recall if he mentioned what number. No evidence that he referred to Crashaw as the author. But the series of Sphere volumes [plural] would have been there on the library shelf on 30^th September, for Mike to see.

If Mike had a volume 2 in front of him when calling Martine on the Friday, he most certainly didn’t have one in front of him on the Monday when calling Shirley. It strikes me as obvious, when you put all the earliest sources together, that he didn’t have access to a volume 2 of his own and was relying on his memory for which book he’d seen ‘O costly...’ in, at the library on the Friday.

It is not difficult to "reverse engineer" what Keith is trying to figure out by quizzing Martine: did Barrett already own Volume 2 on 30 September? Unfortunately, there is no clear answer, because a person can’t see what another person is holding while talking to them over the telephone. [But Jenny & Jim “Lizard King” Morrison seem to think Mike did own the book, and perhaps so, too, did Barrett's sister. A reference from Melvin Harris, dating to October 1994, describes a PLURALITY of people that could confirm Barrett's prior ownership of the Sphere volume, which I take to mean that Barrett had told Harris/Gray that his sister Lynne and could also confirm it].

But where is the specific reference to anyone confirming that Mike had the Sphere Volume containing the Crashaw lines: Vol 2?. Would they have understood the significance of this particular book by October 1994? Did Alan Gray really understand it, even when Mike handed the used copy to him in the December? Melvin Harris made a point of saying, in 2002, that Mike had ‘never claimed that Volume 2 had been lent to Jenny or was even seen by her. He simply stated that Jenny and other people could testify that he owned a NUMBER of the Sphere volumes’. Now let that sink in again, R.J. Why would Melvin have said this if Gray had questioned Jenny at any time and reported back to Melvin that she had confirmed that Mike had lent her volume 2? Isn’t it blindingly obvious that any confirmation Gray may have got from Jenny or her son must have fallen short of including the ‘relevant’ volume?

I suspect this PLURALITY of people had very little idea about what they were meant to be confirming. If Mike really had been keeping some Sphere books in his attic since 1989, and lent them to Jenny’s son in the summer of 1994, how could anyone have confirmed his ‘prior’ ownership of the Crashaw volume, specifically, if he had kept this one back to use as evidence of his forgery claim in the June? Did Mike’s sister Lynn witness the books going up to his attic in 1989, or coming back down again in 1994, and commit to memory their titles or volume numbers? Or did he show her his volume 2 before or after taking the books to Jenny?
We know Lynn’s furious reaction on learning in 1997 that Mike had claimed she had destroyed evidence of his forgery. She issued a statement through her lawyer, threatening to sue for libel if Mike took his affidavit to press, and saying she had not seen him since 1994. Also, if volume 2 did go to Jenny with the others, we know that Gray failed to report this much back to Melvin. So we are still none the wiser.

To conclude:

Based on Keith's notes, you seemingly want to believe story #1--the one Mike told to Shirley. Barrett found the quote over a long and difficult week in the library. Or by chance—depending on which version of the story we wish to believe. I find this illogical and, frankly, absurd. No way did Barrett dig through nearly 1,000 meters of bookshelves to find a five-word phrase. He’s lying. Further, I still strongly suspect that Mike’s story evolved over a series of calls to Shirley, since it went from a “chance” discovery, to a week-long ordeal of superhuman endurance. His later statements to Shirley, as far as I am concerned, are attempts to “walk back” his rash decision to admit that he had owned the volume all along.

Okay, so why did Mike suddenly decide, at the end of September, to spring his surprise on everyone? Was it when he read the ‘oh costly...’ reference on page 231 of Shirley’s paperback and remembered that it was actually ‘O costly...’ in his Sphere book? Within a few days he had told Martine, Shirley and Liz Winter, his solicitor’s assistant, that he knew the source. So if he quickly realised how miraculous his library find looked, due to Shirley’s ‘amazed’ reaction on 3^rd October, he was nevertheless repeating this claim to Liz Winter ten days later, on 13^th. At some later point he recalled that his initial reaction to seeing ‘O costly...’ in the library had been that nobody would believe it in a million years. Understandable, if he knew that others had hunted high and low to find it without success, and Shirley’s 1994 paperback makes it clear that nobody at that time yet had a source for it. But you will no doubt argue that the penny only dropped gradually. Maybe Shirley just sounded a bit taken aback to begin with, so it took some time for it to sink in with Mike just how ‘miraculous’ such a find would have been, even after months of searching. Stuck with it, he had to pretend he knew the enormity of his find at the time.

I, on the other hand, tend to believe Barrett's story #2, as told to Martine Rooney. I think the book was in Barrett's lap when he made the phone call, and thus he knew it was Vol. 2. He merely pretended he was in a muddle when talking to Shirley...that's classic Barrett. What better way to convince her that he had clawed through hundreds of volumes in the CLL than to act confused and name the wrong volume as if he had searched through many?

Hang on, you ‘strongly’ suspected that Mike’s story ‘evolved over a series of calls to Shirley’, going from making a “chance” discovery, to ‘a week-long ordeal of superhuman endurance’. You implied it was Shirley’s ‘amazed’ reaction to this discovery, which prompted Mike to dream up his week-long library search. So why are you now suggesting that he already had the story in mind, of having clawed through ‘hundreds of volumes’ [in your own estimation], when he told Shirley he had found it ‘quite by chance’ and thought it was in Volume 6? He wasn’t pretending, on 3^rd October, to be muddled and confused about the volume number, if the story had not yet ‘evolved’ to include the arduous search in the library which had left him in that condition. Here is Keith’s note of the call again, which he made on the same day:

‘Mike seems to have found “Oh Costly Intercourse of Death” – quite by chance.
Is in the Sphere Companion To English Literature Vol 6 (MB thinks) – did not even make a note of it!’

Alas, "with all things Mike,” he has muddied the waters successfully.

And to be blunt, you’re not doing a bad job of that yourself, R.J, considering you can’t even get your own argument straight.

And, to be blunt, I simply cannot grasp why you place so much emphasis on Barrett mentioning Vol. 6. Even if I am wrong, couldn’t he have merely forgotten which volume he had used to crib the Crashaw quote? And later realized it was Vol 2 and not Vol 6 when he went to fetch the correct volume from Jenny?

To be fair, I did suggest something of the sort myself, when asking you what you believed, and why you thought Mike mentioned volume 6 to Shirley. I asked if you believed Mike checked with Jenny, between 3^rd and 6^th October, to establish the correct volume, then checked with the library to check they had the correct volume [he’d already mentioned volumes – plural – to Martine, which could have been a costly mistake if the library had none of them on their shelves], before finally giving the correct details to Shirley so she could check with the library herself.

So whether Mike gave Shirley the wrong volume number to deliberately muddy the waters, or because he had forgotten which volume had provided him with his diary quote, I’m not sure why he’d have plumped for volume 6, or whether he’d have been aware that this was ‘The Victorians’, if he had taken the lines from volume 2 pre-diary, and the books were now with Jenny. My own belief is that he had merely forgotten, by the time he called Shirley on the Monday, which volume he had found the quote in at the library on the Friday. ‘The Victorians’ would be the obvious one for Mike to have pounced on first, when seeing them all in a row in the English Literature reference works section, so it would be unsurprising if this was the one he thought of afterwards. And remember, there never was any confirmation from Jenny - certainly not via Alan Gray to Melvin Harris - that she ever had a volume 2 or even saw it.

PS. I’ve put off reading Lord Orsam’s article on Robert Smith’s book until I had a chance to study that illustrious volume, but I did break down and skim some of it this afternoon. He refers to the ‘O Costly’ fiasco and has noticed the same thing that I have: the account of Mike’s remarkable discovery given by Harrison in 2003 materially differs from the account that you and Keith give in Ripper Diary and from what Smith states in his own book. Orsam quotes Harrison (p. 267 of the Diary of Jack the Ripper, emphasis added by Lord O):

'Without success we had hunted high and low in anthologies to find it. I asked Michael to look in the Liverpool library. He badgered the staff there for help and sure enough he rang me within a few days and told me, '"You will find it in the Sphere History of English Literature, Volume 2. It is by Richard Crashaw".'

This is important. Note that Shirley insists that she had given this specific task to Barrett and that he flawlessly came back a few days later with the correct ‘Volume 2’ citation. She says nothing about his original claim of ‘by chance’ or ‘Volume 6.’ This is not a criticism of Harrison, per se, who I think is a decent woman, but it strengthens my belief that she has misremembered this event, and the only time she TRULY sent Barrett to the library was to confirm the CORRECT citation for the Sphere volume, ie., after Mike admitted he had made no note of it. This happened during her second call from Barrett on October 3rd , when she DID give Mike the task of going to the library, as confirmed by Keith’s note. This is what she is remembering in her 2003 book, which is why she no longer remembers ‘vol 6’ or ‘by chance.’ Unfortunately, based on this claim, Robert Smith, etc., are now stating as FACT that Barrett was given this task and that he was helped by a squadron of harried librarians or even unidentified college professors, as Feldman believed.

This is all about going back to the primary, or earliest recorded sources, R.J. Firstly, as I have now explained, there is no evidence that the call to Shirley on 3^rd October was the second time Mike spoke to her about his discovery. Secondly – and this really is important - it does you no favours to come up now with what is essentially your own interpretation of what Shirley was remembering in 2003, when you previously doubted her powers of recall just a year after the events, in 1995, when she remembered telling Mike to do something constructive – ie. source ‘O costly...’ after the Brough article in June 1994 and prior to her 1994 paperback coming out.

Going right the way back to 11^th October 1994, Shirley had told Keith that Mike was very upset about her paperback and, ‘determined to do something serious about this’, he said he had spent a week in the library trying to find the quote.

Yes, Shirley may well have forgotten by 2003 some of the finer details, but they are still there on record from the time and cannot be ‘unsaid’ or otherwise wished away. But I note that at first you seemed fixated about Shirley having a faulty memory by 1995. Then you said it was irrelevant, because the important thing was to establish that Mike had his own copy of volume 2 all along. And now you are back to your fixation that she was misremembering, and claiming that this is important again.

If Shirley was condensing the story down for the sake of brevity, or to keep the narrative flowing, in later editions of her paperback [I have it almost word for word the same on page 282 of the 1998 edition] I can very easily interpret her words in a different way, if I refer back to those earliest, most reliable sources:

'Without success we had hunted high and low in anthologies to find it. [After Harold Brough’s article appeared] I asked Michael to look in the Liverpool library. [We still didn’t have a source when my 1994 paperback came out. When Mike read it he was very upset and, determined to do something serious, he spent a week trying to find the quote.] He badgered the staff there for help and sure enough he rang me within a few days [of beginning his search] and told me, '"You will find it in the Sphere History of English Literature, Volume 2. It is by Richard Crashaw".'

To conclude:

If you were truly satisfied that you had caught Mike lying about his library find, you would not have spent YEARS picking up, examining and dropping, then picking up again, a whole series of assorted weapons in the hope of finding other smoking guns that had come from Mike’s hand. Nobody would. It would be akin to juggling the qualities of chalk and cheese in a sustained effort to come up with something that defines them as different. Lately you have been flipping from one diary-related argument to another and back again, like you are in a pinball machine. I can only conclude that you must be battling with more than a sliver of doubt, which is keeping you from settling on one thing that defines the diary as a Barrett creation, and finally taking your leave.

Love,

Caz
X

[rjpalmer]

Thanks, JM.

Well, I certainly stand corrected. The release of the ‘Maybrick’ podcasts coincided so neatly with Keith’s re-emergence on the scene, that I assumed (wrongly) that he may have contributed, just as he has contributed so many times to various Diary ‘projects.’

I apologize to Keith—though I don’t think there is anything wrong in having released these tapes to the public. That really wasn’t the point. Indeed, the more the merrier—I just hope ALL the seminal archive material eventually gets saved and released to the public, whether it is through you, through Robert, through Keith, through David Barrat, or through me or someone else. Cassette tapes don’t last forever and if the Barrett/Gray tapes are not transferred soon, they will be lost.

The podcasts that have been released feature three interviews with the Diary’s most fierce defender, Paul Feldman; three interviews with Shirley Harrison, who is also convinced that the diary is genuine; a podcast were Anne Graham recounts having seen the Diary in the 1970s; and a podcast featuring Michael Barrett retracting his confession. I think it is fair to characterize this collection, as useful as it is, as being less-than-balanced. Maybe that is simply the ‘way it was,’ as programs debunking a fraud are less likely to ever make the airwaves. The only program with any pretense to balance would be the one where Keith interviews a very drunk Mike Barrett.

Ultimately, I guess it’s out of my hands. Keith said sometime ago that he would release the Barrett’s typescript of the diary; he has evidently changed his mind, which is his prerogative. Keith is correct: the diary’s detractors would undoubtedly analyze it for hints of composition, and we can’t have that.

Maybe I will try to retrieve the Barrett tapes and release them myself, though this is unlikely, and I won’t have a full set without someone coming to bat. They really do offer a glimpse inside Michael Barrett’s mind—one you won’t hear or see in “Diary” books. It should also be remembered that Alan Gray was not a student of the Ripper murders, nor the Maybrick case. He was a private detective. Much of what Barrett is telling him flies far over his head and is never pursued. Thus, there may still be untapped avenues of investigation. If the truth is to be gotten at, it is important that independent ears have access to these tapes, but that has nothing to do with you, of course.

I do apologize to Keith for assuming that he had cooperated in the release of these tapes.

[jmenges]

People can decide for themselves what editorial control may have been exerted.

People who have no idea who gave me the tapes, how many there are, what they all are, and whether or not I’ve already released all of them, can waste their time imagining all sorts of things.

JM