Maybrick--a Problem in Logic

[Graham]

You've just done it

No I haven't. I simply asked anyone who reads this and who knew Barrett personally if they had ever heard him quote a Latin phrase.

Know what? The more I read your posts, the more I consider that all you are basically doing is simple contradiction, no more, no less.

Graham

[Observer]

Barrett did extremely well to locate it in the Sphere book of Victorian Literature, but no more than that - he put in the hard yards and he got his result. No biggie.

Put in the hard yards? Oh you're admitting now that he was capable of serious research, Shirley Harrison and her researchers couldn't find it.

Listen, considering the level of intelligence you constantly harbour Mike Barrett with, it's a big biggie that he was able to find OCIOD in Liverpool Central Library. According to you he got lost as he turned at the bottom of his street.

So you admit, Barrett put the hard yards in, did extremely well, and managed to find the Quote from Crashaw's "Santa Maria Dolorum". He's got the information for Shirley Harrison, presumably he's taken note of it, written it down. Why then within two days, did he have to put himself through the bother of tracking down, (and paying for to boot) a copy of that self same book he had access to in Liverpool Central Library?

[Iconoclast]

I'll post my opinions as I see fit. With regard to swaying opinions with any degree of accuracy, I'd put your own house in order first.

Tell me why would it be that the Maybrick household would have had copies of Crashaw's work, as a matter of course? That's pure speculation. Also read my post above. Out of all the limited number of books available in which Crashaw's works are included, how many of them featured "Santa Maria Dolorum"? The poem might not have been included in all of them. This cuts the odds down dramatically if we are to believe that Maybrick was acquainted with the poem. As I said it's impossible to determine whether Crashaw was a favorite of the Maybricks. To say that it's "very likely that the works would have been in the Maybrick household" is grossly misleading to the good readers who visit this thread.

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.

[Iconoclast]

No I haven't. I simply asked anyone who reads this and who knew Barrett personally if they had ever heard him quote a Latin phrase.

Know what? The more I read your posts, the more I consider that all you are basically doing is simple contradiction, no more, no less.

Graham

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

[Iconoclast]

Put in the hard yards? Oh your admitting now that he was capable of serious research. Listen, considering the level of intelligence you constantly harbour Mike Barrett with, it's a big biggie that he was able to find OCIOD in Liverpool Central Library. According to you he got lost as he turned at the bottom of his street.

1) Pick up large book with 'Victorian Literature' on the spine.
2) Turn each page until you get to the end (remember to read each page).
3) Stop if you find the relevant quotation.
4) Put book back on shelf.
5) Go home.
6) Tell someone you've found it.

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

[Observer]

No I haven't. I simply asked anyone who reads this and who knew Barrett personally if they had ever heard him quote a Latin phrase.

And if none of them have does that make Shirley Harrison's opinion unreliable?

Know what? The more I read your posts, the more I consider that all you are basically doing is simple contradiction, no more, no less.

Graham

Good for you. Don't read them then.

[Observer]

1) Pick up large book with 'Victorian Literature' on the spine.
2) Turn each page until you get to the end (remember to read each page).
3) Stop if you find the relevant quotation.
4) Put book back on shelf.
5) Go home.
6) Tell someone you've found it.

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

Hang them.

So Barrett didn't do extremely well in finding the quote?

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

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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!

[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"

[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.

[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]

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.