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[caz]

Leeds University carried out two tests in November 1994. The first was positive for chloroacetamide, the second was negative. AFI's test a month earlier was positive for chloroacetamide. That makes 2 positive tests and 1 negative. But even if the negative test was correct, it simply means that Barrett's affidavit was wrong in identifying the ink used for the forgery as Diamine. As I've already made clear, I place no reliance on Barrett's affidavit. What I've said on multiple occasions is that the diary must have been created after 1945 and that no reason has been given by anyone as to why the Barretts weren't capable of creating it.

With Rod McNeil, to repeat: his 1993 test put the date of the ink on the paper at between 1909 and 1933, depending on the amount of exposure to light, thus effectively ruling out Maybrick as the author. That's what you call "the science". Later, he made a statement offering an opinion that the diary was created prior to 1970 but cautioned that "there is always the possibility of error associated either with the operator or the techniques itself". The reason for his change of mind was not explained so that the result cannot be repeated. That is not science. You discard McNeil's test findings but seem to rely on his later statement. That is not science.

This post was not addressed to me either, but a few issues jumped out when reading it.

If I understand RJ Palmer's position, he takes the view [originally supplied by Voller, before he saw the diary for himself] that Leeds may only have assumed that their methods and equipment could detect the presence of chloroacetamide, and their first test on ink taken directly from the diary gave what appeared to be a positive result. The second test was conducted to eliminate the possibility of contamination and confirm if the ink did or did not contain chloroacetamide. The result was negative - which can indicate one of two things: the ink is not Diamine; or whatever Leeds thought had contaminated the sample used for the first test was not chloroacetamide, but some other unknown substance that was not found when the test was repeated. That's the only explanation I have seen for Leeds getting the results they did if they were testing Diamine ink - twice.

For whatever reason, AFI's testing methods were not repeated, which is a great shame because their own positive result could not be repeated, to eliminate the possibility of a false positive in their own case. False positives are an occupational hazard and can be hard to rule out without subsequent testing, and I've always been led to believe that it's not good science if a test is not repeated or repeatable, to confirm a positive result.

Edited to add...

If Mike was lying when he identified the Bluecoat art shop to Harold Brough as the source of the diary ink, then it's not Diamine and Mike knew it - simple as that.

It could be argued - and I'm sure it will be, if the diary ink is ever tested again and Diamine isn't indicated - that Mike got the ink from somewhere else and got a kick out of watching everyone running round like headless chickens, unable to nail him for forgery or to disprove his claims.

The difficulty would be trying to identify some other 'modern' ink that could have been used instead - with or without Mike's added sugar. I don't think another type of ink has yet been realistically suggested.

[Herlock Sholmes]

This post was not addressed to me either, but a few issues jumped out when reading it.

If I understand RJ Palmer's position, he takes the view [originally supplied by Voller, before he saw the diary for himself] that Leeds may only have assumed that their methods and equipment could detect the presence of chloroacetamide, and their first test on ink taken directly from the diary gave what appeared to be a positive result. The second test was conducted to eliminate the possibility of contamination and confirm if the ink did or did not contain chloroacetamide. The result was negative - which can indicate one of two things: the ink is not Diamine; or whatever Leeds thought had contaminated the sample used for the first test was not chloroacetamide, but some other unknown substance that was not found when the test was repeated. That's the only explanation I have seen for Leeds getting the results they did if they were testing Diamine ink - twice.

For whatever reason, AFI's testing methods were not repeated, which is a great shame because their own positive result could not be repeated, to eliminate the possibility of a false positive in their own case. False positives are an occupational hazard and can be hard to rule out without subsequent testing, and I've always been led to believe that it's not good science if a test is not repeated or repeatable, to confirm a positive result.

Edited to add...

If Mike was lying when he identified the Bluecoat art shop to Harold Brough as the source of the diary ink, then it's not Diamine and Mike knew it - simple as that.

It could be argued - and I'm sure it will be, if the diary ink is ever tested again and Diamine isn't indicated - that Mike got the ink from somewhere else and got a kick out of watching everyone running round like headless chickens, unable to nail him for forgery or to disprove his claims.

The difficulty would be trying to identify some other 'modern' ink that could have been used instead - with or without Mike's added sugar. I don't think another type of ink has yet been realistically suggested.

Wasn't that Melvin Harris' precise criticism of the Leeds test, Caz? That Leeds didn't repeat the AFI test but did something different?

Hence, he wrote in "The Maybrick Hoax: A Fact-File For the Perplexed":

"We reached an understanding [with Robert Smith/Shirley Harrison] that these tests would duplicate the procedures used by AFI. It was accepted that identical tests, would be staged by two laboratories, one of these being AFI once more, the other being one chosen by them. This never happened. The agreement was violated when Mrs Harrison arranged for quite different tests to be carried out at Leeds University. The original standards applied at AFI were never matched; the results were unsatisfactory and did nothing to resolve matters."

https://www.casebook.org/dissertations/maybrick_diary/factfile.html

I can't agree with your statement that the only two alternative interpretations for the Leeds results are that, "the ink is not Diamine; or whatever Leeds thought had contaminated the sample used for the first test was not chloroacetamide, but some other unknown substance that was not found". Why could chloroacetamide not have contaminated the sample used for the first test but at a much higher concentration than was in the diary ink? After all, the point made by Harris was that the apparatus used by AFI, "could detect the preservative at extremely low levels (at nanogram levels)". If Leeds was using apparatus which could not detect chloroacetamide at extremely low levels, its results are irrelevant. I'm sure you're aware aware that one of the points made by Harris was that Leeds failed to detect sodium in the diary ink even though Dr Eastaugh recorded the presence of significant amounts of sodium.

To rely on the Leeds result as confirmation that there was no chloroacetamide in the diary ink, contrary to AFI's finding of its presence, strikes me as a mistaken approach.

[caz]

Before C.A.B. gets too excited, it's early morning here and I meant from the diary critics.

Another odd aspect of the Floorboard Theory is that Fast Eddie Lyons supposedly slipped across The Mersey, traveled to the shopping district up in Liscard, where he anonymously and cautiously sold the watch to the Murphys (despite the watch having been in the family's possession for years) but was at the same time Eddie was also so utterly reckless that he sold the far more distinctive Diary of Jack the Ripper in his local up the street to the loosest set of lips in Liverpool.

Sounds legit.

When denying in 2018 that he found anything, Eddie himself compared the potential finding of Mike Barrett's diary in Dodd's house with the potential finding of gold bars, which he thought would have had more instant and obvious appeal to anyone looking to make hard cash.

It's a subjective view - not apparently shared by Eddie - that anyone finding a tatty old scrapbook with handwriting in it would have seen this as 'far more distinctive' than anything made of gold.

Assuming the diary was found in the house, it's not obvious that the finder - or anyone else who saw it before Mike Barrett did - would have gone straight to the last page of writing and identified it as the potential handiwork of the real Jack the Ripper. That could have happened later, or not even appreciated until Mike began bragging in his local about finding a publisher for Jack the Ripper's diary. Mike would have been too canny to deliberately draw anyone's attention to that last page when he first set eyes on it himself, if it was just thought to be a tatty old book of little obvious interest or value.

[caz]

Wasn't that Melvin Harris' precise criticism of the Leeds test, Caz? That Leeds didn't repeat the AFI test but did something different?

Hence, he wrote in "The Maybrick Hoax: A Fact-File For the Perplexed":

"We reached an understanding [with Robert Smith/Shirley Harrison] that these tests would duplicate the procedures used by AFI. It was accepted that identical tests, would be staged by two laboratories, one of these being AFI once more, the other being one chosen by them. This never happened. The agreement was violated when Mrs Harrison arranged for quite different tests to be carried out at Leeds University. The original standards applied at AFI were never matched; the results were unsatisfactory and did nothing to resolve matters."

https://www.casebook.org/dissertations/maybrick_diary/factfile.html

I can't agree with your statement that the only two alternative interpretations for the Leeds results are that, "the ink is not Diamine; or whatever Leeds thought had contaminated the sample used for the first test was not chloroacetamide, but some other unknown substance that was not found". Why could chloroacetamide not have contaminated the sample used for the first test but at a much higher concentration than was in the diary ink? After all, the point made by Harris was that the apparatus used by AFI, "could detect the preservative at extremely low levels (at nanogram levels)". If Leeds was using apparatus which could not detect chloroacetamide at extremely low levels, its results are irrelevant. I'm sure you're aware aware that one of the points made by Harris was that Leeds failed to detect sodium in the diary ink even though Dr Eastaugh recorded the presence of significant amounts of sodium.

To rely on the Leeds result as confirmation that there was no chloroacetamide in the diary ink, contrary to AFI's finding of its presence, strikes me as a mistaken approach.

Hi Herlock,

'one of these being AFI once more' would imply that Melvin wanted AFI to repeat the test they did, which had given a positive result.

I don't know how this 'understanding' was reached to duplicate AFI's procedures and how formal it was, or why Shirley didn't ask Leeds to conduct 'identical' tests, unless she wanted to learn more about what was in the diary ink than just whether or not chloroacetamide was indicated. Typical Melvin, to accuse Shirley of having 'violated' their alleged 'agreement', when the bottom line is that if the 'original standards applied at AFI were never matched' by Leeds, they were not matched again at AFI either, in order to confirm their own positive result. Melvin was therefore quite right to conclude that 'the results were unsatisfactory and did nothing to resolve matters'. He evidently didn't consider AFI's single positive result sufficient to do so.

I suppose it depends on the level of chloroacetamide in Diamine that you think would have been sufficient to act as a preservative, and where you suppose 'a much higher concentration' of it could have come from and contaminated the sample scraped directly from the diary for the first test. This contamination problem had obviously been dealt with efficiently enough for the second test to show up as negative, so I'm wondering what you think was going on at Leeds, and why no similar contamination problem could possibly have affected the single AFI result.

I'm not relying on Leeds to have confirmed there was no chloroacetamide in the diary ink. You seem to be relying on the impossibility of AFI getting a false positive, while I prefer to err on the side of caution, given what Melvin wrote about matters remaining unresolved, and given Mike Barrett's prodigious ability to lie and lie again.

[caz]

The fact of the matter is that there is no science which tells us that the diary was created before 1992. It just doesn't exist.

Baxendale? Hello? Why did Baxendale allow the diary, using science as his guide, to have dated back to 1946 in his report to Robert Smith? Even when the Sunday Times reported him giving a rather different opinion of age, there was never any suggestion that it could have been written as recently as 1992, just a few weeks before Baxendale had examined it for the first and only time.

While Robert was understandably keen to get a second opinion when he saw the report, The Barretts ought to have been hugging themselves if the diary was written by them in April 1992, when they learned that in Baxendale's professional opinion it might have been written before either of them was born.

[rjpalmer]

"if it was just thought to be a tatty old book of little obvious interest or value"

These semantic games aren't very effective, are they?

If what Ed Lyons found under the floorboards of this old Victorian murder house was just a 'tatty old book of little interest' the public will obviously wonder why Ed didn't simply tell Paul Dodd and his workmates about this discovery of 'little interest' when he was supposedly at the house on 9 March.

The public will also wonder why Ed risked his job and police trouble by hiding this tatty old book under his work apron and smuggling it out of the house. After all, it was of little value, wasn't it?

They will also wonder why Ed 'beat cheeks' down to the nearest pub to sell this tatty old book of little value to a dimwit who immediately identified it as THE DIARY OF JACK THE RIPPER.

They will further wonder why we are told that Eddie & Co took this 'tatty old book' to a university so it could be tested or authenticated. That's rather an odd thing to do, isn't it, with a tatty old book of little value?

The way the Ripper Diary suddenly becomes a 'tatty old book' when in the hands of Ed Lyons reminds me of how Polly Nichols' oozing blood becomes a gushing deluge when the Lechmerians describe it.

The diary's supporters avoid calling Eddie's discovery THE DIARY OF JACK THE RIPPER in the same way Christer avoids using the word 'ooze.'

---In my always humble opinion.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Hi Herlock,

'one of these being AFI once more' would imply that Melvin wanted AFI to repeat the test they did, which had given a positive result.

I don't know how this 'understanding' was reached to duplicate AFI's procedures and how formal it was, or why Shirley didn't ask Leeds to conduct 'identical' tests, unless she wanted to learn more about what was in the diary ink than just whether or not chloroacetamide was indicated. Typical Melvin, to accuse Shirley of having 'violated' their alleged 'agreement', when the bottom line is that if the 'original standards applied at AFI were never matched' by Leeds, they were not matched again at AFI either, in order to confirm their own positive result. Melvin was therefore quite right to conclude that 'the results were unsatisfactory and did nothing to resolve matters'. He evidently didn't consider AFI's single positive result sufficient to do so.

I suppose it depends on the level of chloroacetamide in Diamine that you think would have been sufficient to act as a preservative, and where you suppose 'a much higher concentration' of it could have come from and contaminated the sample scraped directly from the diary for the first test. This contamination problem had obviously been dealt with efficiently enough for the second test to show up as negative, so I'm wondering what you think was going on at Leeds, and why no similar contamination problem could possibly have affected the single AFI result.

I'm not relying on Leeds to have confirmed there was no chloroacetamide in the diary ink. You seem to be relying on the impossibility of AFI getting a false positive, while I prefer to err on the side of caution, given what Melvin wrote about matters remaining unresolved, and given Mike Barrett's prodigious ability to lie and lie again.

Hi Caz,

Harris explained why no similar contamination problem would have affected the AFI result in his dissertation that I posted the link to. He said:

"AFI, by contrast, had used anticontamination tests before and after every one of its recorded runs".

Leeds didn’t do so. In this respect, I remind you of the contents of a letter written by Alec Voller to Nick Warren dated December 27th 1994 which has been previously posted on here:

"The Leeds report is profoundly disturbing. That any possibility of cross contamination should have been allowed to arise in Gas Chromatography is unforgiveable but even worse, calibration of the instrument appears to have been very cursory and its ability to detect tiny traces of chloracetamide assumed rather than properly established. For reasons that I will expand upon later, it is questionable whether the SEM/DEX examination which forms the central core of this report, should have been performed at all. This is not necessarily to say that the results obtained at Leeds are wrong but I feel that a distinct question mark hangs over them."

He also said:

"By contrast with the above, the report for Analysis for Industry presents us with almost a model picture of how an analysis should be conducted and reported."

I’d add that the negative result for chloracetamide by Leeds was not repeated either.

I've never said anything about the "impossibility of AFI giving a false positive". The point I'm making is that the Leeds result does not undermine the AFI result. What I rely on in this case is Mike Barrett's unexplained and highly suspicious behaviour in secretly seeking a Victorian diary with blank pages in the context of the production by him of a fake diary which must have been written after 1945 and almost certainly after 1988.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Baxendale? Hello? Why did Baxendale allow the diary, using science as his guide, to have dated back to 1946 in his report to Robert Smith? Even when the Sunday Times reported him giving a rather different opinion of age, there was never any suggestion that it could have been written as recently as 1992, just a few weeks before Baxendale had examined it for the first and only time.

While Robert was understandably keen to get a second opinion when he saw the report, The Barretts ought to have been hugging themselves if the diary was written by them in April 1992, when they learned that in Baxendale's professional opinion it might have been written before either of them was born.

Baxendale most certainly did not date the diary "back to 1946". He never even mentioned 1946 in his report. What he said, as you know, was that, "An exact time of origin cannot be established, but I consider it likely that it has originated since 1945". That incorporates any time up to and including its emergence in 1992. He certainly did not rule out the diary as having been created in 1992. As you also know, his reported opinion to a Sunday Times journalist in 1993 was that the diary, "had probably been written recently, in the past two or three years". That obviously incorporates 1992 as a time-frame for the diary's creation. As you know, it isn't possible - and certainly wasn't possible in 1992 - to precisely date when ink has been put onto paper. Science just can’t do it. I wrote that:"The fact of the matter is that there is no science which tells us that the diary was created before 1992". That statement remains absolutely correct, and you writing, oddly, "Baxendale? Hello?"doesn't alter that fact I’m afraid Caz..

[caz]

Let me explain the position of the Barrett Believers:

Eddy, the man who stands accused of stealing the diary from Battlecrease, reportedly says he "picked up" another book from there at another time. He's not sure what kind of book it was, except that it was an "old book". That of course makes him innocent of stealing the actual diary!

That's like a guy, who stands accused of stealing the Mona Lisa, saying he picked up another painting from that museum at another time. It was tossed in a skip and he doesn't remember what painting it was except it was an "old painting".

Innocent, I say! INNOCENT!

This looks like a variation on the theme of plausible deniability - in Eddie's case implausible deniability.

On 17th July 1992, in the drive of Dodd's house, he tells Brian Rawes that he made an "important" find while working in the house.

Around April/May 1993, he allegedly asks Feldman over the phone what his "confession" to taking JtR's diary from the house would be worth.

On 26th June 1993, he pops into the Saddle, after being contacted by Mike Barrett on Robert Smith's request, to meet them both and claim that he found something in Dodd's house that was so unimportant that he chucked it into a skip that was never there.

Since then, Eddie has repeatedly denied finding anything at all in the house, but he has never to my knowledge taken advantage of Mike Barrett's forgery confession to back up his own denials. He is apparently a Barrett sceptic.

I don't really buy the plausible deniability arguments in Mike's case, although we just don't know what would have been going on inside his head if he first set eyes on the diary on Monday 9th March 1992 and promptly sought out someone from the publishing world, of which he did at least have some limited experience. The world of antiques may have been a closed book by comparison [no pun intended but gratefully received].

We know that Mike must have phoned over his 'unusual' request to Martin Earl by Thursday 12th March at the latest, in order to appear in the issue it did. It's a bit tight for Mike to have had his 'dead Fountains Road friend' provenance in place by then, so he may have been floundering around that week, with nobody he could talk to frankly for advice on what had just landed in his lap, or would shortly be landing in his lap if he played his cards right - and close to his chest.

We all fall back to some extent on the fact that Mike wasn't the world's most rational thinker, so how much less rational might he have been when put on the spot by a diary he knows nothing about, but which has the potential to change his little world virtually overnight? If the diary typescript was sitting on his word processor, all ready to go, when he called Martin Earl requesting something to house it, he would surely have had a better idea of what he needed than the wording of the advert suggests. It may be argued that he was behaving irrationally throughout this process, which ended with the purchase of the 1891 diary, but he'd have had less excuse for this level of irrationality if faking Maybrick's diary had been his goal. Rational minds, grappling with an irrational one like Mike's, are in a difficult position because that very irrationality does not lend itself to a rational analysis of what Mike was thinking or why. We could all be 100% wrong.

[caz]

Baxendale most certainly did not date the diary "back to 1946". He never even mentioned 1946 in his report. What he said, as you know, was that, "An exact time of origin cannot be established, but I consider it likely that it has originated since 1945". That incorporates any time up to and including its emergence in 1992. He certainly did not rule out the diary as having been created in 1992. As you also know, his reported opinion to a Sunday Times journalist in 1993 was that the diary, "had probably been written recently, in the past two or three years". That obviously incorporates 1992 as a time-frame for the diary's creation. As you know, it isn't possible - and certainly wasn't possible in 1992 - to precisely date when ink has been put onto paper. Science just can’t do it. I wrote that:"The fact of the matter is that there is no science which tells us that the diary was created before 1992". That statement remains absolutely correct, and you writing, oddly, "Baxendale? Hello?"doesn't alter that fact I’m afraid Caz..

Words mean something, Herlock.

Baxendale considered it 'likely' that the diary was written at some point after 1945.

My point stands. He allowed for it to have dated back as far as 1946, and revised this in 1993 to 'probably' in the past two or three years.

We don't know why he did this, without seeing the diary again, but that's not the same as stating an opinion that it could have been written as recently as April 1992.

Mike Barrett had consulted his solicitor in June 1992 because he feared that Scotland Yard might seize the diary if forensic tests found it to be a genuine confession by Jack the Ripper!

Go figure, as they say across the pond.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Words mean something, Herlock.

Baxendale considered it 'likely' that the diary was written at some point after 1945.

My point stands. He allowed for it to have dated back as far as 1946, and revised this in 1993 to 'probably' in the past two or three years.

We don't know why he did this, without seeing the diary again, but that's not the same as stating an opinion that it could have been written as recently as April 1992.

Mike Barrett had consulted his solicitor in June 1992 because he feared that Scotland Yard might seize the diary if forensic tests found it to be a genuine confession by Jack the Ripper!

Go figure, as they say across the pond.

Yes, words certainly do mean things, Caz, which is why Baxendale's conclusion in no way undermines or contradicts the statement in my #490 that, "there is no science which tells us that the diary was created before 1992".

Baxendale doesn't tell us that the diary was created before 1992. He said in his 1992 report that it was likely created "since 1945" which means any time between 1946 and 1992 inclusive.

That being so I can’t understand you responding to my #490 with the words "Baxendale? Hello?"?

You say "my point stands" but what is your point? Is it a new point that wasn’t in response to the post that I thought that you were replying to? We all know that Baxendale couldn't positively date the diary to any particular year but, equally, he didn't rule out that was created in 1992. So what exactly is it you're saying?

As for your unsourced claim that Barrett consulted his solicitor in June 1992 in case the diary was seized by Scotland Yard, which I don't find mentioned in your book, I have literally no idea what that has to do what anything we're discussing, other than an attempt at changing the subject.

Do you now agree that there is no science which tells us that the diary was created before 1992 Caz?

[rjpalmer]

On 17th July 1992, in the drive of Dodd's house, he tells Brian Rawes that he made an "important" find while working in the house.

Perhaps I'm alone, but I suspect there must be others who are trying to get their heads around what you and Keith Skinner believe Eddie allegedly found under the floorboards of Dodd's house.

Was it "a tatty old book of little obvious interest or value" or was it "an important find"?

Did Ed Lyons risk his job and potential criminal trouble to steal the Diary of Jack the Ripper or did he steal a tatty old book?

[Herlock Sholmes]

This looks like a variation on the theme of plausible deniability - in Eddie's case implausible deniability.

On 17th July 1992, in the drive of Dodd's house, he tells Brian Rawes that he made an "important" find while working in the house.

Around April/May 1993, he allegedly asks Feldman over the phone what his "confession" to taking JtR's diary from the house would be worth.

On 26th June 1993, he pops into the Saddle, after being contacted by Mike Barrett on Robert Smith's request, to meet them both and claim that he found something in Dodd's house that was so unimportant that he chucked it into a skip that was never there.

Since then, Eddie has repeatedly denied finding anything at all in the house, but he has never to my knowledge taken advantage of Mike Barrett's forgery confession to back up his own denials. He is apparently a Barrett sceptic.

I don't really buy the plausible deniability arguments in Mike's case, although we just don't know what would have been going on inside his head if he first set eyes on the diary on Monday 9th March 1992 and promptly sought out someone from the publishing world, of which he did at least have some limited experience. The world of antiques may have been a closed book by comparison [no pun intended but gratefully received].

We know that Mike must have phoned over his 'unusual' request to Martin Earl by Thursday 12th March at the latest, in order to appear in the issue it did. It's a bit tight for Mike to have had his 'dead Fountains Road friend' provenance in place by then, so he may have been floundering around that week, with nobody he could talk to frankly for advice on what had just landed in his lap, or would shortly be landing in his lap if he played his cards right - and close to his chest.

We all fall back to some extent on the fact that Mike wasn't the world's most rational thinker, so how much less rational might he have been when put on the spot by a diary he knows nothing about, but which has the potential to change his little world virtually overnight? If the diary typescript was sitting on his word processor, all ready to go, when he called Martin Earl requesting something to house it, he would surely have had a better idea of what he needed than the wording of the advert suggests. It may be argued that he was behaving irrationally throughout this process, which ended with the purchase of the 1891 diary, but he'd have had less excuse for this level of irrationality if faking Maybrick's diary had been his goal. Rational minds, grappling with an irrational one like Mike's, are in a difficult position because that very irrationality does not lend itself to a rational analysis of what Mike was thinking or why. We could all be 100% wrong.

When you say "he chucked it into a skip that was never there" could you kindly provide the evidence that there was no skip anywhere outside Battlecrease on 9th March 1992?