Maybrick--a Problem in Logic

[caz]

“Williams, the name is Williams…remember that…Williams.”

After hanging up, Mr. Earl places the now famous advertisement: “Unused or partially used diary dating from 1880-1890, must have at least twenty blank pages.”

Again, this is Earl’s advertisement, not Barrett’s. We don’t know if Mike said anything about the year 1890 and considering that Earl ultimately went outside the parameters of his own advertisement (a worthless 1891 appointment book), we can deduce that Barrett’s instructions were not very precise. If it was Barrett and not Mrs. Barrett, that is.

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? It was Mr. Barrett who went down as a 'late payer', when he failed to respond promptly to the invoice in his name. If you believe it could have been Mrs. B who made the enquiry, whether on behalf of Mr. Williams or Mr. Barrett, would you still deduce that the instructions were 'not very precise', or does that only apply if Mike was the one issuing them? In the case of Mrs. B making the enquiry, how would you imagine the conversation might have differed, while producing the same, totally unsatisfactory result?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Lets be honest none of us with an interest in the case, and I'm including those who met the man, are in a position to say whether or not he had the mental ability to conceive and compose the diary. It's a pity those who were involved with Barrett at he time of the Diary's emergence failed to look into Barretts "career" as a part time writer of articles for a pop magazine. In my opinion the man, was far from being an idiot. Of coarse those with a desire to distance Barrett with any involvement in the production of the Diary would have us believe the man was little short of being an imbecile, barely able to sign his own name. How many of those individuals knew the man intimately before 1992? How many were around and were on intimate terms with Barrett at the time when those articles were produced by him for the pop magazine?

Hi Observer,

One person knew the man intimately before 1992. She was around and was on intimate terms with Barrett at the time when those articles were submitted and accepted: his wife, Anne. Both admitted, after the diary emerged, that Mike's written work was not fit for publication until Anne "tidied" it up. She'd have known, better than anyone else on the planet, the risk she would have been taking, not to mention the hard slog she would have been in for, if Mike had decided his next project would be to fake a diary by the real James Maybrick from Liverpool, confessing to Jack the Ripper's murders in London, and if she had been insane enough to agree to "tidy up" whatever he might have managed to produce on his own. With that agreement in place, we are asked to believe that she would have left Mike in control of sourcing a suitably "old book" for the purpose, and would have trusted him not to leave a paper trail solid enough to lead straight back to the Barretts as the recent recipients of the actual book used for their hoax.

Was it just a piece of luck that the only paper trail left was the one for the tiny diary for the year 1891, which proved about as useless as anything could possibly have been for faking the rambling thoughts of a man who had shuffled off in 1889? Was it a similar piece of luck that no such paper trail would emerge for the acquisition of the old scrapbook Mike took to London? Or did Anne gamble on a paper trail back to the useless 1891 diary not proving fatal, unlike one for the scrapbook they ended up using? And if so, why would she have been remotely confident, in March/April 1992, that Mike had not left another unambiguous, and this time 100% incriminating paper trail, had he acquired it from a Liverpool auction house, to be used immediately for the diary and taken to London?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

because the truth is important. Looking forward to you and Ike debate over the authenticity of the diary. You have a lovely Easter too Caz.

Thanks Abby. I did.

The truth is indeed important, but how do you decide what the truth is, without the necessary facts? If your version of the truth is based on personal belief, you can't simply claim it to be the truth, and therefore 'important'. Facts are always more important than belief, when it comes to judging the truth of the matter. If and when the facts become known and established, the truth will be revealed and belief will be made redundant.

Love,

Caz
X

[Graham]

I think you mean co-authored with Carol Emmas, Graham - but good question nevertheless!

Good point, young Ikey. I could say I was only testing, but I'm an honest cove.

Graham

[Iconoclast]

master debaters

Cough cough …

[caz]

Oh, I get it now. You want to play tennis without a net.

Okay then, carry on. Let's watch Caz and Icon go at it in full debate, and let the best debater win! I promise to sit by as silently as Anne Graham for the next six months, and Lord Orsam is banned and Mike is busy with the Liverpool pub scene, so there shall be no interruptions. Let the debate begin!

If you are suggesting only two debaters, R.J, then surely you mean 'let the better debater win'. Or perhaps Ike and I are both seen as master debaters.

If only others would join in and actually debate, rather than spectate and then shout "you cannot be serious!" at regular intervals.

New balls please.

[caz]

Put that horse in the Grande National. I've stuck an e on the end of Grand by the way it's de rigueur around these parts at the moment it seems. The thing is it's an easy shot for the National, lets make it more interesting. How about we make it run backwards blindfolded wearing oversize wellington boots with a 15 stone penalty. I'd still put my shirt on it.

Blimey, Observer, so you'd still put your shirt on Barrett's filly - True Confessions?

Even without the blindfold, wellies, your Hawaiian shirt and all, it should have been shot the day after it was born, in January 1995.

I wish you luck with that one and trust you own more than one shirt.

[caz]

Caz scolds Mike for not sticking around to ask Keith ‘tough’ questions. But how do you ask tough questions to a self-proclaimed agnostic who insists that he has no hound in the hunt, only mild preferences? You might as well swordfight with the ghost of Hamlet’s father. Tough questions do not come into play if someone insists they have no answers—only more questions.

Hi R.J,

I assumed, maybe wrongly, that Mike's broken promise - or was it an empty threat - to ask Keith some tough questions at the conference, was aimed at the traditional Q&A session, so Mike's questions and Keith's answers would be aired for all to hear. If the audience then felt that Keith was dodging those answers, while professing to be a diary agnostic, they would have had the perfect opportunity to chime in and say so. So allow me to scold you now, for anticipating how Keith might have answered, had Mike not denied him that opportunity. Even Keith is not smart enough to guess what questions Mike would have asked, had he not been torn away early by some more pressing engagement.

I don’t know if you saw my comment on the Piltdown Man hoax on the other site. The hoax was accepted for decades before someone noticed the file marks and realized that old Pithy had the jawbone of an orangutan. Only then did the business of unmasking the hoaxer really kick into gear, but by then the trail was as cold as a Diary debunker’s heart. In subsequent years books came forward naming various conspirators—trying to explain who did what at Piltdown pit.

Now, I could sit back and say, “You see! The Piltdown debunkers can’t even agree on who dunnit! Some say Teilhard de Chardin, some say Dawson, and, lordy, some dumb-arse even says Conan Doyle! And if they can’t agree, well my dear fellow, then why not face the reality—or at least the POSSIBILITY-- that Piltdown Man IS REAL!”

This may be a delightful and joyful and wise argument, perhaps even convincing to certain folks chewing popcorn in the upper decks, but it doesn’t make the jawbone any less orangutan.

But that particular hoax was 'accepted for decades', which makes it a statement of the bleedin' obvious to point out that 'the business of unmasking the hoaxer' came far too late to be successful. The Maybrick diary, in stark contrast, was condemned in some quarters as a 'shabby hoax' almost from the off, and certainly well before Shirley's first book was published, while all the suspected hoaxers, bar Tony Devereux, were still alive to be investigated. How incompetent would any hoax buster be, to spend decades trying to unmask the hoaxer(s) in this case, and still be failing miserably today? So your pithy observations on Piltdown Man merely serve to highlight how different he is from the object you are seeking to compare him with, and how little they have in common.

I suspect that this is the secret belief of the Diary agnostic:

“I have no pony in the race. Any old nag can win and I’m as happy as a clam, just as long as it’s not Barrett’s filly, True Confessions.”

Can it really be agnosticism if one has a secret belief? Answer: of course not.

Not a secret belief on my part, R.J. I fully admit to being an agnostic regarding when exactly the diary was composed and penned, but I'm a non-believer when it comes to any knowledge Mike Barrett ever claimed to have about either process. In fact, I'm a non-believer in anything he ever claimed to know about how it came into his possession. Just like with the existence of God, or fairies at the bottom of the garden, I can't be turned into a believer in the diary being wholly or partly a Barrett creation, just because some people out there are true believers. God talks to His believers. Conan Doyle saw the fairies and believed. Some people have read Mike Barrett's stories and believe in the truth of some of them.

Love,

Caz
X

[Iconoclast]

Good posts both, Caz and Ike. As has been said in the distant past, Mike Barrett couldn't forge a sick-note.

Caz, as someone who knew her, can you tell us if Anne has ever made any public comment regarding the Diary since she started her new life? I suppose I mean her life after she co-authored with Shirley Harrison.

Graham

I think you mean co-authored with Carol Emmas, Graham - but good question nevertheless!

[Graham]

Good posts both, Caz and Ike. As has been said in the distant past, Mike Barrett couldn't forge a sick-note.

Caz, as someone who knew her, can you tell us if Anne has ever made any public comment regarding the Diary since she started her new life? I suppose I mean her life after she co-authored with Shirley Harrison.

Graham

[Iconoclast]

Hi Observer,

My best guess is some time before Monday March 9th, 1992. Not fussed how long before, really.

I just don't buy the 'coincidence' of an electrician working in Battlecrease, Aigburth, that morning, and Mike Barrett making the earliest confirmed reference to the diary's existence that same afternoon, when telephoning the literary agency about his find. On top of that, the electrician concerned happened to use the same pub as Mike, in a different part of Liverpool, and was living on the same street as the then deceased Tony Devereux.

I also don't buy the 'eleven day wonder', between the end of March and April 13th 1992, during which Anne Barrett is charged with writing out the diary in a handwriting that has yet to be identified as her own, by any professional and reputable forensic examiner. On top of that, she is charged with handing it over to her unpredictable, excitable and thoroughly mendacious husband, to take to London and try passing it off as a diary written more than 100 years previously.

I have also seen enough of Mike's handwritten correspondence to last me a lifetime, and if I believed there was any way the diary could be in his hand, or indeed Anne's, I'd have walked away long ago and taken up a hobby that was less likely to attract such a lot of criticism and ridicule for simply offering my opinions.

Hope you had a pleasant Easter.

Love,

Caz
X

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.

[caz]

With regard to the diary. When do you think it was created? I know you have expressed your thoughts on the this issue before, but could you just refresh our memories.

Hi Observer,

My best guess is some time before Monday March 9th, 1992. Not fussed how long before, really.

I just don't buy the 'coincidence' of an electrician working in Battlecrease, Aigburth, that morning, and Mike Barrett making the earliest confirmed reference to the diary's existence that same afternoon, when telephoning the literary agency about his find. On top of that, the electrician concerned happened to use the same pub as Mike, in a different part of Liverpool, and was living on the same street as the then deceased Tony Devereux.

I also don't buy the 'eleven day wonder', between the end of March and April 13th 1992, during which Anne Barrett is charged with writing out the diary in a handwriting that has yet to be identified as her own, by any professional and reputable forensic examiner. On top of that, she is charged with handing it over to her unpredictable, excitable and thoroughly mendacious husband, to take to London and try passing it off as a diary written more than 100 years previously.

I have also seen enough of Mike's handwritten correspondence to last me a lifetime, and if I believed there was any way the diary could be in his hand, or indeed Anne's, I'd have walked away long ago and taken up a hobby that was less likely to attract such a lot of criticism and ridicule for simply offering my opinions.

Hope you had a pleasant Easter.

Love,

Caz
X

[Al Bundy's Eyes]

That said, with this lockdown boredom, a flutter on an illegal bare knuckle boxing match wouldn't go amiss.

[Al Bundy's Eyes]

Them poor scrap metal dealers have been getting a right slating. It's running the risk of them boycotting the site. Last thing we need is a protest from a bunch of surly scrap thieves, sorry, dealers!, definitely dealers. And their oily dogs.

[Observer]

I should imagine they do. For all we know, Anne Graham reads them.

She might well do. The thing is it's the nature of the site, everyone of us is capable of upsetting some relative (or researcher in the example you mentioned) when we post here