Who were they?

[rjpalmer]

Your argument is built entirely upon twin premises - that Anne proactively deceived everyone, and that the researchers knew it.

How dense can you be, Thom?

In the very statement you quote I wrote that "Keith still repeated [the May 1992 date]--apparently believing it to be true"

Which DOES NOT SUGGEST he knew it to be a deception. Good Gawd man, drink more coffee or take some no-doze. The same can be said of Shirley Harrison who also said the red diary had been purchased after Mike had brought the scrapbook to London.

That is not evidence that Shirley 'knew' it to be a deception.

Rather, it is evidence that Anne hadn't told the whole story.

And how in the Devil is it 'proactive' to be forced into coughing-up the check stub after Barrett revealed that he had purchased a red diary and she knew this was true?

One really has to be a masochist to engage with the Diary Crowd.

[Iconoclast]

Or, seen from another angle...
"there was nothing to stop Eddie Lyons - or the other electricians for that matter - from resurfacing and providing proof of how they obtained the scrapbook thus exposing Anne's narrative as entirely false.
Unless you consider the bleedin' obvious: nothing had been sold to Mike down the boozer and Anne knew it, which neatly explains why she felt free to tell the Yapp/Formby porkies."

Well, that's a very good point, RJ, as it happens, but not one which lends itself to the inauthenticity of Anne's tale but - rather - to the authenticity of it. It's not top of my list of provenenaces, but your argument is interesting - no-one (never mind the electricians) could have produced evidence of any other provenance and Anne knew it because the provenance she provided was actually the true one.

It's an interesting thought. Not the one you started it but well done on bringing it inadvertently to our attention.

As I say, it's not yet at the top of my provenance list, but you've certainly nudged it up a few degrees!

[Iconoclast]

A series of axe murders across America. Usually of families. Often followed by a fire. All near to train lines. Most of them weren’t previously linked but when the authors present the evidence it’s obvious that many of them were. What’s good though Ike is that they don’t try any leaps of faith to try and ‘rope in’ murders to the series. The list some as ‘possibles’ or even remotely possibles and some as probables or definite’s. It’s a long list. Cracking book though.

So I'll take it as read that they haven't tried to boost sales by suggesting the perpetrator was Jack himself?

I think I would, but then I am a marketing genius ...

[Iconoclast]

Just to add...

In my experience, Keith Skinner is the kind of fastidious researcher who wouldn't accept his own birth without seeing the birth certificate to prove it.

The idea that Keith of all people would have entertained a 'silly belief' in a Battlecrease provenance with no more evidence for it than there is for Mike's auction claim [which is precisely none] is - well - one of the silliest I have ever come across. When there only appeared to be a choice between Anne's family claim and Mike's fakery claim, it wasn't so much a case of entertaining a 'belief' in one or t'other as being unable to disprove one, while not being able to believe the other.

When new evidence came along for a third possibility, it needed to be taken into account but constantly tested against the alternatives, to try and find the fatal flaw that would rule it out. Rejecting this evidence unseen in the wider context and untested, in favour of an unproven belief or claim, or someone else's unproven theory, would have been very silly indeed.

But RJ can't seem to get his head round this.

Love,

Caz
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I have seen a clip of Keith Skinner receiving something like 'Outstanding Researcher Award' at one of the Ripper conferences. He's as humble as ever and perhaps genuinely feels he is over-rated and doesn't fully deserve the honour, but his audience clearly disagrees with him - they are fulsome in their applause and appreciation and that rather convinces me that they know the man's character reasonably well. I would put it to all of my dear readers that his audience (of Ripperologists) offer a greater insight into the integrity of Keith Skinner than an obscure poster on the internet who self-evidently has a very rigid agenda to peddle.

[Iconoclast]

And yet, once again, Barrett's interviewer (KS) was still repeating--apparently believing it to be true--the wildly misleading May 1992 date as late as 1998 at the Cloak and Dagger Club, and you and your co-authors were still parading, without irony, Anne' version of these event in The Inside Story.

So, I don't think she was so much 'dim' as desperate and perhaps even a little insightful that the years would roll by before her deceptions were realized.

Your argument is built entirely upon twin premises - that Anne proactively deceived everyone, and that the researchers knew it. I'm not aware that there is any evidence that Anne proactively sought to deceive anyone (and the evidence actually points to the contrary as she was so accommodating in providing what she knew to Keith Skinner); nor am I aware of any evidence whatsoever that the various researchers you speak of knew of her deception.

What you do have is a set pf premises which are so tunnel-visioned that your conclusion is inevitable and yet so very utterly unsound.

[Iconoclast]

Hi Ike,

Not master hoaxers, just regular hoaxers. In fact, not very good hoaxers in my opinion. More opportunists than geniuses.

Hi Abe,

I should have put 'master' in inverted commas as I was referring to Mike's own description of himself (was it 'The world's greatest forger'?).

I would agree with you that - if it is a hoax - then it revealed itself too easily in some of the details provided; but I wouldn't agree that it is necessarily a hoax because of its style. Its style is perfectly acceptable to me for an averagely-educated cotton broker with a young, flirty wife and a hugely more successful brother. Do the details make it impossible to be authentic, though? Obviously, I do not think so (hence my really rather brilliant Society's Pillar).

Cheers,

Ike

[rjpalmer]

Anyway, I'm off.

[rjpalmer]

Unless you can show that they knew about the March 1992 ordering and therefore suppressed that knowledge, then you have no grounds to call it a 'distortion' (other than that you want your audience to be misled regarding their options here).

Don't be so dense, Ike.

I never suggested Keith was deliberately distorting reality at the Cloak and Dagger meeting. Indeed, I said he 'apparently believed the May 1992 date was true.'

What I am suggesting is that Keith's impression of the purchase date is evidence that Anne had successfully bamboozled him.

Or are you trying to mislead your three readers?

What I do believe is that Anne herself knew this date was misleading. She controlled the purse strings. She damn well knew Mike had been dunned as a late payer by Martin Earl. What she didn't know is Martin Earl's methods, so she felt confident to give her bogus explanation for the purchase, not realizing that Martin Earl had placed an advertisement in Bookfinder that would make a mockery of that explanation. No one needs to have a minimum of 20 blank pages to see what a diary looks like.

Ergo, she lied.

The weird thing--the Through the Looking Glass aspect of this discussion---is that at least some of you--particularly Caz--believe that Anne lied and lied through her teeth FOR YEARS to the researchers around her, yet you're still willing to argue that her dodgy behavior was on the up & up.

You want your cake and to eat it, too.

[rjpalmer]

On the contrary, it may be "hiding the evidence" or it may have been "we didn't realise we had evidence that was relevant to someone's claims that we hoaxed the scrapbook". You have homed-in on the former possibility, and I have - in my view, far more fairly - noted that both views are possibilities..

Don't break your arm patting yourself on the back as you rewrite your argument on the spot, Thomas.

You said, dubiously, that they took no steps to hide the purchase. You now claim you are 'noting both views.'

This won't do.

Revealing to Shirley the existence of the red diary at any time in 1992 or 1993 would not have been "defending themselves from the claim of having hoaxed the scrapbook." It would have been the most natural thing in the world.

Your suggestion is ridiculous and deliberately myopic. They could have revealed the existence of the red diary as part of any normal communication between two collaborators. Mike and Shirley were under contractual agreement to share research.

There were attempts, both by Harrison and later by Skinner, to determine what research Barrett had previously conducted. Mike or Anne could have mentioned the red diary then. There were also attempts, by Shirley and others, to determine if the scrapbook was genuinely Victorian.

Anne's own rationale for the purchase of the red diary is that Barrett wanted to know what a genuine Victorian diary looked like.

What would have been more natural, then, to have mentioned this red diary there and then to Shirley Harrison, as she pondered these questions, and to show that they, too, had researched this?

Instead: nada. Not a peep.

Shake it, bake it, put any spin you want on it, Thom, they failed to reveal the existence of the red diary and the strange circumstances of its purchase until AFTER Bongo started spilling the beans.

The jury of history won't like that.

But hey, you, Owl, Caz, and Ero are convinced, so why give a toss what an insane member of the clown car thinks?

[Iconoclast]

Neither Mike, nor Anne, mentioned this relevant purchase to Shirley Harrison during the 2 1/2 years that Mike was working with her as a collaborator. That is "hiding the evidence."

On the contrary, it may be "hiding the evidence" or it may have been "we didn't realise we had evidence that was relevant to someone's claims that we hoaxed the scrapbook". You have homed-in on the former possibility, and I have - in my view, far more fairly - noted that both views are possibilities.

"Hiding the evidence" is self-evidently a proactive process. One has to make a conscious decision that something needs to be hidden from view. How do you know that this was their intent, given that they may have simply been unaware that such a purchase was relevant given that neither was defending themselves from claims that they had hoaxed the scrapbook, merely from claims that the scrapbook had been hoaxed (there's a world of difference prior to Mike's June 1994 'confession')? The answer is that you don't know but you state it as if you do because you are unable to grant your audience the alternative view.

When the existence of this purchase was finally revealed, Anne still left the false impression that it was purchased in May 1992--a distortion that was still being repeated by Diary researchers at least as late as 1998.

As I recall, Anne was asked for the details of the diary in 1995? Some three years after she wrote that cheque in a fit of pique, furious with Mike that he had wasted £25. I doubt very much she remembered when she wrote the cheque so I can only assume that she looked at her cheque stub and saw that she wrote the cheque in May 1992 so I guess that that is what she'd say. Did she know when Mike hd actually ordered the diary? If the date was on the invoice (if there was an invoice) then I guess she would but she has to have conscious intent to deceive and that to me would prompt her to destroy the remaining evidence not simply hand it over. The fact that she handed it over speaks to me of someone who had no concerns for the consequences of doing so. I don't see how you can fail to see that alternative view but you either do or else you are proactively "hiding" that view from your audience here.

I should have added here that you present the researchers' failure to realise that the diary was ordered in March 1992 as a 'distortion'. A distortion of what? If Anne had stated that the diary was purchased in May 1992 and produced the evidence to back it up, what sort of 'distortion' are the researchers knowingly perpetrating? I don't understand your logic. Unless you can show that they knew about the March 1992 ordering and therefore suppressed that knowledge, then you have no grounds to call it a 'distortion' (other than that you want your audience to be misled regarding their options here).

[c.d.]

And in virtually every instance, money and/or valuables untouched.

c.d.

[rjpalmer]

Or, seen from another angle...

"there was nothing to stop Eddie Lyons - or the other electricians for that matter - from resurfacing and providing proof of how they obtained the scrapbook thus exposing Anne's narrative as entirely false.

Unless you consider the bleedin' obvious: nothing had been sold to Mike down the boozer and Anne knew it, which neatly explains why she felt free to tell the Yapp/Formby porkies."

[Herlock Sholmes]

What's it about, Sir H.?

A series of axe murders across America. Usually of families. Often followed by a fire. All near to train lines. Most of them weren’t previously linked but when the authors present the evidence it’s obvious that many of them were. What’s good though Ike is that they don’t try any leaps of faith to try and ‘rope in’ murders to the series. The list some as ‘possibles’ or even remotely possibles and some as probables or definite’s. It’s a long list. Cracking book though.

[caz]

That's the insanity of this 'debate.'.
.
Those who were fooled by Anne for years and now arguing that there is no way Anne could have believed she could have fooled them...

...IF IF IF she knew Mike had proof!

Blimey, how hard can this be?

RJ must think his readers are every bit as dim as he thinks Anne was.

[caz]

Hi Caz,

That's exactly what happened though. Her unprovable narrative was believed by many rational and intelligent people. Mike was a shambles, no one believed a thing he said, so Anne's story worked a treat. Dim or otherwise, Anne's made up provenance was accepted, until it wasn't.

Hi Al,

Anne's narrative only worked at all because Mike had no evidence to prove his - and she must have known it.

However much a shambles Mike had become, there was nothing to stop him - or the auction house for that matter - producing proof of how he obtained the scrapbook and exposing Anne's narrative as entirely false.

Unless you consider the bleedin' obvious: there was no such proof and Anne knew it, which neatly explains why Mike never did produce it.

Love,

Caz
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