Maybrick--a Problem in Logic

[caz]

Hi Caz,

I was thinking last evening along similar lines - that, to make a case for the hoax, March 9 1992 is a pivotal day. On that day, I also figured, some magic dust happened in The Saddle. An electrician mentions to Mike Barrett that he'd been working at Battlecrease House and the floorboards had been raised for the first time in a century. "They were in good nick for their age, mind", he says innocently. Mike Barrett has been compiling the Maybrick hoax since the centenary year (1989) and has it all typed-up on his PC at home. Suddenly, he realises that he has just been handed a smoking gun which would 'confirm' his hoax as real. So he races home, contacts Pan Books, they recommend Doreen Montgomery, so he 'phones her and says "Are you interested in the diary of Jack the Ripper?" and she says "Yes, how about you come to London with it on April 13 (?)". "Not a problem" replies Mike, slightly disingenuously.

Mike then has a month to source a Victorian document for Anne (or some other) to transcribe the typed-up text into. It doesn't matter how he gets his hands on the Victorian scrapbook, he just does. It doesn't matter if they have 30 days or 11 days to write the hoaxed account into the scrapbook, they just do.

And off Mike goes to London with his suitcase and his diary, and the rest is history. He has instantly become the greatest actor and greatest forger in history, and boy is the world about to know it.

Now, obviously I don't believe this account to be the truth of the matter. But - in deference to those who do - what possible argument against it is there?

Ike
Devil's Advocate Ltd.

The fact, Ike, that Mike's smoking gun, which would 'confirm' his hoax as real, was never used by him. Even when the golden opportunity arose, in 1993, to latch onto the rumours of the diary being found in Battlecrease by an electrician, he hotly denied it had come from the house and swore an affidavit to reinforce his claim that Tony Devereux had given him the diary with no explanation. He didn't have the wit to say that Tony could have got it from the Battlecrease electrician who lived in the same street and drank in the same pub! That would have put Mike in the clear, and if Paul Dodd had then claimed his 5%, it would have been small beer compared with the damage he inflicted on his future whisky tokens just a year later. There must have been a very compelling reason why Mike was so angry with the electrician who had handed him this smoking golden gun, and spent the rest of his life pouring cold water on it. What if Mike - shock, horror - was lying, when denying that the diary came from the house? What if he couldn't bear to cut out the middle man - his late mate - and admit that the diary had come to him direct from the electrician, not in 1991 but in March 1992?

And does the electrician with the golden gun have a third nipple? I think we need to know.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

An interesting aspect of the transaction is that Graham was put down as a late payer. She delayed paying for the diary for quite a long time. Does this mean that she was initially refusing to cooperate with Barrett's little scheme, or was she deliberately and rather cleverly trying to diminish the paper trail by making it look like the red diary hadn't been purchased until after the 'Maybrick' journal had already been made public?

Morning R.J,

Could you direct your readers to the evidence you found for Anne Graham being marked down as a late payer, not Michael Barrett? Everything else you write above is pure speculation which relies on her knowledge of, or active involvement in the chain of events, from the initial telephone enquiry for a Victorian diary, made around March 10th 1992, to the resulting delivery of the little red 1891 diary towards the end of that month, and the fact that it wasn't paid for until the May. So you will understand why it's rather important to establish that she was in on this enquiry from the start. I have seen no evidence for it myself. As far as I know, Anne may have had no idea that Mike was trying to obtain such a diary; no idea about the advertisement, or that the 1891 diary was the result; and no idea that Mike had been billed £25 for it and been marked down as a late payer for failing to settle it. For all I know, Anne only found out about the purchase when Mike finally had to ask her for a cheque, two months later, and she wasn't best pleased about it because it was an expensive and ludicrous thing to have ordered. For all I know, she had no knowledge of the advert which had produced it, until Keith Skinner tracked it down with her help, and therefore no idea that the wording of it would add to the suspicions which had been growing along with Mike's tall tales.

So help us out here, R.J. How do you know Anne Graham was the one in control of ordering, obtaining and paying for this very odd little book? And please, please don't insult your readers' intelligence by saying you know because Mike said so. He was only able to say so because his wife, who had very recently divorced him, had been left to 'tidy up' his mess again by settling the bill.

Love,

Caz
X

[Iconoclast]

Not getting all philosophical, but does a diary only become a diary by virtue of someone using it as such? A blank book, Victorian or otherwise, is just that. A blank diary specifically has to have dates, a calendar, that's what makes it a diary. Anything else is a journal of sorts. It can be used as a diary, but it's not specifically a diary per se.

So if Mike "Bongo" Barrett set out to acquire a 'diary', was he thinking in terms of his intended use for a blank journal, as such, he somewhat absent mindedly asked for a diary, and on recieving said item, an actual diary, with dates, realised "bugger, I don't need a diary at all, I need a journal to make into a diary. What a pillock I am. Anne, can you lend me £25 until I've nicked some scrap? Oh, and by the way, we're going to be really pushed for time now". I mean, that ties in with the whole 'not the sharpest tool in the box' thing.

I agree, a Victorian bookmaker wouldn't necessarily date books because it limits their use and makes them unsaleable after a point. But a blank book is not a diary until it's used as such.

Or is that another Problem in Logic?

Hi Abe,

No, you're spot-on. I was out walking the dogs there and was kicking myself for having failed to make this very point, so thank you for making it and so concisely.

A diary is clearly one or both of two things:

• The Base: any document which is formally named a 'Diary' or which has dated sections in the form of a formal diary - this is a diary even if it is blank
• The Record: anything which has been recorded (i.e, the content of the record) - crucially, this is NOT a diary if its base is blank (unless it is an example of the above)

I think you make a fair point about Bongo's request: he may very well have asked for a Victorian diary and had what we would call a notebook in mind (you wouldn't get a notebook with the year on it as that immediately becomes the very definition of a diary so in this scenario we would have to assume that it was the agent who added the dates '1880-1890'). The counter argument to diary manufacturers attempting to give longevity to their products by not dating them is that they won't sell as well: most of us buy a diary with dates in because we don't want to have to physically enter the dates each time we write and because of the obvious aesthetic appeal of a professionally-printed document.

But have we lost track of why we are even debating these issues? The advert in BookSeller (?) specifically mentioned a diary from 1880-1890. Does this categorically prove that Bongo was seeking a document to write his hoaxed diary in (I'm referring to the original version, not some mooted version to take to London to protect the original)? That is the only issue here. If you are someone who thinks it does, then you either haven't properly considered all of the options, or you are someone who has a significant problem with logic, or you have a vested interest in making that argument, or one or more of all three.

Great post, Abe - right on the nose.

Ike

[Al Bundy's Eyes]

Not getting all philosophical, but does a diary only become a diary by virtue of someone using it as such? A blank book, Victorian or otherwise, is just that. A blank diary specifically has to have dates, a calendar, that's what makes it a diary. Anything else is a journal of sorts. It can be used as a diary, but it's not specifically a diary per se.

So if Mike "Bongo" Barrett set out to acquire a 'diary', was he thinking in terms of his intended use for a blank journal, as such, he somewhat absent mindedly asked for a diary, and on recieving said item, an actual diary, with dates, realised "bugger, I don't need a diary at all, I need a journal to make into a diary. What a pillock I am. Anne, can you lend me £25 until I've nicked some scrap? Oh, and by the way, we're going to be really pushed for time now". I mean, that ties in with the whole 'not the sharpest tool in the box' thing.

I agree, a Victorian bookmaker wouldn't necessarily date books because it limits their use and makes them unsaleable after a point. But a blank book is not a diary until it's used as such.

Or is that another Problem in Logic?

[Iconoclast]

For you, Ike

--seeing that you don't care for my input, please allow the charming young woman in the video below win you over to a world hitherto unknown to you:

a world of Victorian diaries unblemished by useless stamps and printed dates. Why would a wise bookseller stamp a useless '1884' on the cover, knowing they he could sell his overstock the following year if he left it generic? I'm finding dozens upon dozens of Victorian Diaries without any such markings! Enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCVHMCCG2Sg

What is wonderful about YouTube is that you can literally find a video about whatever you type in the search bar.

Cutting through all the sideshows, the issue is simply one of why Mike Barrett was so willing to accept what on the surface would be a more or less useless artefact (that is, a diary from 1890 or beyond with the year printed on each page).

The issue is not, 'Can Roger Palmer use YouTube in 2020 to immediately answer the question "Were some diaries in the Victorian period - like some diaries in 2020 - produced without years on each page?"'.

The issue is simply, 'How likely is it that - in the pre-internet age especially - Mike Barrett could have been so confident that the diary he received from his poorly-specified request would be undated that he could use it for his nascent hoax?'.

I think that the most rational and reasonable answer to this second question would say that - in 1992 - if you needed a Victorian diary which was undated on each page, you would absolutely had to have unequivocally specified it. We all understand that it suits your argument regarding this request for a Victorian diary to demonstrate what - in retrospect - is now easily-researched (that some Victorian diaries were undated, just as some are still today). What we really need is a link to the YouTube videos which explain to us why Mike Barrett in 1992 - in your opinion - was so certain that he would receive an undated diary that he didn't think to specify it thus.

At the risk of overstating this, the logical conclusion of your premise here is that because there were some Victorian diaries which were undated, the assumption must have been made that all Victorian diaries were therefore undated. I don't believe that that can ever be considered true. Not even by Bongo Barrett.

[rjpalmer]

For you, Ike

--seeing that you don't care for my input, please allow the charming young woman in the video below win you over to a world hitherto unknown to you:

a world of Victorian diaries unblemished by useless stamps and printed dates. Why would a wise bookseller stamp a useless '1884' on the cover, knowing they he could sell his overstock the following year if he left it generic? I'm finding dozens upon dozens of Victorian Diaries without any such markings! Enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCVHMCCG2Sg

[Iconoclast]

Ike, I'm not trying to be an difficult, but I'm having trouble with your line of reasoning. Please help.

According to your beliefs, sometime around March 1992 Barrett has obtained a genuine Victorian diary (if we believe Caz, this came from someone named Fast Eddy who got it from Battlecrease). It has no dates printed on either the cover or the individual pages, but it proports to be a diary. Suspicious, Mike spends 25 quid to obtain another genuine Victorian diary from HP Bookfinders that--according to you--he KNOWS will have dates stamped on the pages and cover (because everyone knows this, after all) thus confirming that the object he has in his possession is suspicious, since it should, by all rights, have dates printed on it! Which, however, Mike already knew would be the case before he shelled out 25 quid. Because...er...everyone knows this.

Come again? Is that what you're saying? Because, my dear boy, you've lost me in the fog.

rj, honestly - you are confusing me with someone you can easily bamboozle with nonsense!

Cut out all the irrelevant frippery in your post above. Where do you get "it purports to be a diary"? More to the point, what do you mean by "it purports to be a diary"? The Victorian document was (and is) a scrapbook. Please don't attempt to make it what it isn't in order to justify your previous puerile post in which you showed us a picture of a notebook and implied that it was a diary-without-dates simply because Charles Evans used a blank notebook to create his own version of a diary.

That's the key to your above post, but you have attempted to wrap it up in nonsense to hide that fact.

And it's not according to my beliefs. The floorboards provenance is just one of the two available to anyone who cares to pay attention. I cannot tell you which of the two is the true one, but I believe there is every reason to be that one of them is.

Ultimately, I don't know why Mike Barrett ordered a Victorian diary. Al I know is what everyone knows which is that diaries almost without exception have dates (including the year) on every page.

What is this idiotic line of reasoning, "the object he has in his possession is suspicious, since it should, by all rights, have dates printed on it" [because Barrett has ordered an actual Victorian diary]? I honestly don't think even Mike Barrett in his worst moments could have dredged the bottom of the logic barrel to produce that one.

I say this without malice, Roger - I honestly expect so much better of you than this.

[rjpalmer]

Ike, I'm not trying to be an difficult, but I'm having trouble with your line of reasoning. Please help.

According to your beliefs, sometime around March 1992 Barrett has obtained a genuine Victorian diary (if we believe Caz, this came from someone named Fast Eddy who got it from Battlecrease). It has no dates printed on either the cover or the individual pages, but it proports to be a diary. Suspicious, Mike spends 25 quid to obtain another genuine Victorian diary from HP Bookfinders that--according to you--he KNOWS will have dates stamped on the pages and cover (because everyone knows this, after all) thus confirming that the object he has in his possession is suspicious, since it should, by all rights, have dates printed on it! Which, however, Mike already knew would be the case before he shelled out 25 quid. Because...er...everyone knows this.

Come again? Is that what you're saying? Because, my dear boy, you've lost me in the fog.

[Iconoclast]

If you say so, Ike (but see below, and let me know if you want further examples).

But maybe you're right. Maybe Barrett knew EXACTLY what he would get when he ordered a genuine Victorian diary. But that rather undercuts your own argument that he needed to shell out 25 quid to see what one looks like, no?

Waiter! Check, please!

Well done, Roger. That's a picture of a blank notebook that someone called Charles Evans has used as a 'diary'. I could do that with a post-it pad, but if I ordered a diary I would not expect to get a notebook or a post-it pad back.

Citing a so-called example of something which contradicts a well-established rule without following the rule does little for the argument.

[rjpalmer]

P.S. If you can't make it out, the notation at the bottom states 'The Diary of Charles Evans, 1851 September 24-1855 January 21'

[rjpalmer]

Come on rj - that's just not acceptable.. We all know that a diary generally has dates so we all know that -

If you say so, Ike (but see below, and let me know if you want further examples).

But maybe you're right. Maybe Barrett knew EXACTLY what he would get when he ordered a genuine Victorian diary. But that rather undercuts your own argument that he needed to shell out 25 quid to see what one looks like, no?

Waiter! Check, please!

[Iconoclast]

Maybe I'm as dull-witted as Barrett was allegedly dull-witted, but if I was going to go hunting for a genuine Victorian diary I wouldn't ASSUME that it would be stamped all over on the cover and every page with the year '1891' or '1881' or anything else. I'm not buying an appointment book, I'm buying a diary, and most of the diaries I've seen aren't dated--they are just blank books with some flowery image embossed on the cover.

Come on rj - that's just not acceptable if you are using it in the form of an argument (and most of your readers here will assume you are and therefore give it far greater credence than it deserves). We all know that a diary generally has dates so we all know that - if we want one that fits a known chronology - we have to specify either a date no later than the last possible year (in this case, 1889, obviously) or else we have to go to great lengths to stress to the person we are requesting it from that "It must be one of those really rather unusual diaries that are not dated on every page (whether they have pretty flowers on them or not)".

I think Barrett's simplest strategy would have been to ask for "A diary dated 1880-1889 or else a genuine Victorian diary that is one of those really rather unusual diaries that are not dated on every page (whether they have pretty flowers on them or not)".

I think your previous experience of diaries is simply not helpful to us here as it does not tally with what we all know we mean when we refer to a 'diary'.

It's one of the reasons why I call the Maybrick scrapbook a 'scrapbook' and not a 'diary'.

[rjpalmer]

Maybe I'm as dull-witted as Barrett was allegedly dull-witted, but if I was going to go hunting for a genuine Victorian diary I wouldn't ASSUME that it would be stamped all over on the cover and every page with the year '1891' or '1881' or anything else. I'm not buying an appointment book, I'm buying a diary, and most of the diaries I've seen aren't dated--they are just blank books with some flowery image embossed on the cover.

The intention of requesting an 1880-1890 diary was almost certainly to locate a suitable medium that would be forensically dated to the correct general period (by a bibliophile, if not a scientist) and not in some crazy hope of hitting the jackpot by acquiring an 1887 or 1888 ledger published by the Liverpool Cotton Broker Association.

Mike was probably as shocked as anyone else would be when he tore open the brown paper wrapper and saw the date '1891'. Doh! No wonder Anne put him in a headlock when she got home, and the two rolled around on the kitchen floor.

[caz]

Haha, never heard that one before. I'm afraid the retort alludes me.

Did you mean to take one of the mistakes from the diary and make it your own, Observer? Or could this be evidence that you wrote the diary yourself? It's an argument made against Mike Barrett, that he wrote it because he often quoted from it.

Which of the following is more likely?

1. That Barrett bought the maroon coloured diary in order to perpetrate the hoax that is The Maybrick Diary? Bear in mind he asked for at least 20 blank pages, and that he paid £25 for the privilege, quite a sum in those days for Barrett considering his financial situation.

or

2.Barrett went to the considerable expense, for his meagre income, to buy the diary to copy the contents of the original scrapbook because he was fearful it might get nicked or lost.

Why could he not have just bought a jotter at WH Smiths for a couple of bob and saved the 25 quid he spent on the diary?

The fact is, Observer, Mike had no idea what his enquiry might produce, nor how much it might cost. And in the end, Anne paid for it by cheque from her own bank account when Mike was marked down as a 'late payer'. So you might say that the cost to himself, in monetary terms at least, was nothing. But he didn't know, until the bill for the 1891 diary arrived, whether it would be for 50 pence or 500 pounds.

In short, whichever argument you personally favour, Mike simply didn't consider his own financial situation, nor that of his household. Ditto if, as R.J has suggested, it was Mrs. Barrett who made the enquiry. Perhaps she was the one with more money than sense, while Mike had precious little of either commodity.

Each has his or her own preference, so let's leave it to those casual visitors of this forum, the one's with a limited knowledge of the Maybrick saga, to make up their own minds. We wouldn't want to mislead them would we?

What, with the idea that Mike knew the little 1891 diary would set him back £25?

Love,

Caz
X

[rjpalmer]

So, R.J, how did Mr. Williams turn into Mr. Barrett, by the time the 1891 diary was sent to Mr. Barrett at the right address in Goldie Street?

That might be an enigma best answered by Shirley Harrison.

Rather oddly, Doreen and Shirley weren't unduly alarmed when Mike's name suddenly changed from Williams to Barrett, so I doubt H.P. Bookfinders would have cared who was footing the bill as long as they received their twenty-five pounds. What is highly suspicious to some is merely a 'flair for the dramatic' to others.

Evidently Keith called H.P. Bookfinders and confirmed the late payer was 'Barrett,' but I haven't seen his documentation. As previously noted, the prior owner of the hoax house on Goldie Street was a 'Mr. Williams,' and I suspect Barrett may have used that particular alias for a reason. Then again, maybe he was a Robbie Williams fan. Personally, that sort of music make me gag (or fall asleep or fall asleep gagging) but to each his or her own.

What irritates me is that at some point it must have been blindingly obvious that if Barrett's purchase of red diary was 'worthless' the scrapbook must have been bought later, but no one checked the correct dates with O & L. Alan Gray tried to inspect their books, but was turned away. However, I won't use the unkind word 'incompetent' that you use on the other thread. I'd say it was more a matter of impotence, or, at worst, a lack of any sense of urgency. Keith and Shirley and Gray and Harris didn't have the power of the police, so their 'failure' to unravel the mystery to your remarkably high standards of evidence is what it is. They couldn't subpoena, etc., and since Smith never filed a complaint, no thorough police investigation of the Barretts could ever happen, despite your insistence that it did.

Let me put it this way. If ten years from now, you still haven't nailed Fast Eddy for the Great Battlecrease Floorboard caper, and he's still roaming the streets freely calling you crazy, I promise not to call you and Keith incompetent. It's not like you can drag him down to the nick and beat a confession out of him! All you have is the power to persuade.

Have a jolly day.