Who were they?

[erobitha]

Is it just me or has there been a drastic decline in the level of trash talk on this thread? Maybe fatigue has set in (not surprisingly) because I sense we are just one or two posts away from an "oh yeah?" as a response. Might be time to give it a rest.

c.d.

Oh yeah?

[caz]

But in all likelihood the Barretts did write the diary. What's so unbelievable that someone who claimed to have written the diary with the level of literary skill to have written it, wrote the diary?

Because only Mike Barrett claimed to have written it, during the blackest period of his life after he lost his wife and only child forever, and if you think he had 'the level of literary skill' to have written it, you must either have some evidence for this that nobody else on the planet has ever seen, or you need a timely trip to Specsavers or, failing that, a check-up from the neck up.

Come to think of it, what planet are you on?

I don't know anyone on this one who thinks Mike had the skills needed to write the diary.

Love,

Caz
X

[StevenOwl]

I believe Abby put the evidence against the Barretts better than I could so Ive left it to him.

In other words you haven't read the Diary, you haven't read any books about the Diary, you haven't done any research of your own into the Diary, and you're happy to just parrot the ill-informed, badly researched views of the posters on here who inhabit your anti-Diary echo chamber. Righto...

[c.d.]

Oh yeah?

I knew that was coming.

Looks like I injected some wit back into the discussion.

c.d.

[John Wheat]

In other words you haven't read the Diary, you haven't read any books about the Diary, you haven't done any research of your own into the Diary, and you're happy to just parrot the ill-informed, badly researched views of the posters on here who inhabit your anti-Diary echo chamber. Righto...

No I have read the diary. I have done plenty of work into who the Ripper was. But Abby put it better than I could.

[John Wheat]

Because only Mike Barrett claimed to have written it, during the blackest period of his life after he lost his wife and only child forever, and if you think he had 'the level of literary skill' to have written it, you must either have some evidence for this that nobody else on the planet has ever seen, or you need a timely trip to Specsavers or, failing that, a check-up from the neck up.

Come to think of it, what planet are you on?

I don't know anyone on this one who thinks Mike had the skills needed to write the diary.

Love,

Caz
X

What planet am I on? I'm not delusional unlike many on this thread. The diary is poorly written you make out it's a literary masterpiece. Mike Barret could easily have written the diary.

[StevenOwl]

Is it just me or has there been a drastic decline in the level of trash talk on this thread? Maybe fatigue has set in (not surprisingly) because I sense we are just one or two posts away from an "oh yeah?" as a response. Might be time to give it a rest.

c.d.

I do hope that everyone can see that it's primarily the Diary naysayers who are dragging this (and all other Diary threads) into the gutter with their ill-informed, abusive ****-posts.

[rjpalmer]

I'm not so sure that Mike's sister Lynn had anything to say about Mike's potential ownership of the Sphere guide nor that Anne was inaccurate about the purchase of the word prosser (Mike certainly was), but these are either small points or else gaps in my memory.

Everything that gets in the way of your irrational belief is a "small point" of no consequence, Ike, even if it strikes to the heart of the matter. That's why this sorry saga is so tiresome and pointless.

No offense, Ike, but you inhabit a world of self-delusion and self-deception, and that is why you are ultimately incurable. I suspect this is why Lord Orsam has announced his retirement from the Diary Fiasco. He knows y'all have no answers and will just talk yourself in circles until the final gong sends you off to the Great Broadmoor in the Sky.

It always amuses me that even now Team Diary tends to defend Anne Graham--it was MIke, not Anne!--from having told lies early on, about the research notes, the word processor, etc.

How do we skeptics know this? How do we know what Anne had said to Shirley or Keith or whomever? Where are the tapes? Where are the transcripts? All we hear about is Barrett, but both Keith and Shirley have alluded to joint interviews with Mike and Anne, so she must have been sitting right beside him when he was weaving his bullsh*t.

If, as you seem to admit, you don't believe her "in the family" provenance--and thus you admit that she was telling lies to Keith and Shirley and Feldman and Montgomery for YEARS, why are you so eager to imply that she wasn't telling lies right out of the gate?

I'm curious why this might be.

[c.d.]

I do hope that everyone can see that it's primarily the Diary naysayers who are dragging this (and all other Diary threads) into the gutter with their ill-informed, abusive ****-posts.

I can't speak for others but no, I don't see that. From my perspective (no dog in the fight) there is more than enough guilt to go around.

c.d.

[rjpalmer]

Well, I already wrote it, so I might as well post it.

Was it Brucey who used those words, or just Owly in his post?

Does RJ know?

Yes I do know, but who cares?

Owly’s paraphrase was humorous because it was unintentionally ironic. The original was some gibberish about the diary being the 'summit of my literary efforts' had "Brucey" written the hoax. Brucey, like Ickipoo, clearly likes to wind us up with outlandish statements.

But let me pose a rude question.

Why should anyone give a rat's ass what "Brucey" thinks about the Maybrick Hoax?

Robinson gives us an interesting example of his unusual investigative techniques.

He mentions a letter in the Pall Mall Gazette dating to 1892, signed by someone calling himself Moreau Masina Berthrad Neuberg.

Mr. Neuberg claims that a friend named Woods confessed that he, with the help of a Battlecrease servant, poisoned Jim Maybrick. Unfortunately, and not unlike Tony Devereux, Neuberg’s friend has recently died and thus can’t confirm this startling chain of events.

On learning this, Robinson conducted a lengthy search for this Moreau Masina Berthrad Neuberg in South Africa (the letter had been posted from Limpopo) but couldn't find any trace of him and concluded the name was an invention.

In an interview in GQ, writer Robert Chambers describes what Robinson did next:

"Robinson spent "more time than I care to remember" searching South African records for the Dutchman. "Then I asked myself, why would someone with a name that long sign it in full in a letter? It looked like an anagram. I started moving Scrabble tiles around, and a phrase emerged. I gave the letters to my late mother, a crossword enthusiast. She produced the same single phrase: 'I began a brute Mason murderer. Ha.' Maybrick, as you know, used to write 'Ha!' on his envelopes."

With that, I think we can safely dismiss Robinson from our inquiries. He can be of no help.

Rhetorical question. Why does every half-baked Ripperologist start looking for anagrams?

Wallace. Mitchell. Robinson. There have been others. All the same silly idea, the same silly detective technique. If all else fails, get out the Scrabble set and start looking for anagrams. Just don’t look toward Anne E. Graham.

Robinson further claims that he "knows" the true provenance of the Maybrick Hoax, but that it is protected by the Official Secrets Act, and if he revealed it, he would go to prison.

I’m thinking Bruce may have had a little too much fun in the 1960s and some of that fun came dabbed on a sugar cube. I don’t know Thom Mitchell personally, or if he suffers from a similar sort of debility, but I do know that his scatterbrained ideas are just as fantastical and obviously muddled-headed as those of Feldman and Robinson.

Much of the research into the dodgy diary was conducted with a glass of Scotch in one hand.

No doubt about it: Robinson is a man of infinite jest and creativity, not unlike AP Wolf, but I don't think the combined efforts of Mitchell, Wolf, and Robinson could solve a simple case of jaywalking, nor do I think they care.

That's what I believe. They don’t care about the right answer. They just want to thumb their nose at the establishment. This might well explain Diarythink as a whole. Y’all don't want the right answer…y’all just want a different answer, even if it is a nonsensical one.

That's why we are treated to barking mad theories like 'bumbling buffoon' being a reference to Mr. Bumble from Oliver Twist, or the maroon diary being a "doppelganger" for Mike to give to Dodd if he came asking for the mythical stolen goods. They're not even remotely believable answers, but they are answers, and that's all that matters anymore. There is no genuine, sincere effort to obtain the truth. Mainly, it's just self-delusion.

[caz]

no evidence against anyone!?!? the diary provenance begins and ends with the Barretts, he admitted writing it and he was looking for a victorian diary with blank pages. if thats not enough evidence for you, then nothing will be.

Where to start?

At the beginning, I suppose.

If you want to lean on Mike's admissions [or confessions, or claims, or statements, depending on individual preference, but I'm happy to use your word], he 'admitted' that the diary was written, and in the scrapbook ready to go to London, by early 1990. There is no evidence for this but he 'admitted' it. In fact, he made a point of describing everything that was happening in January 1990 relating to the diary's creation. He was very specific about that date. He also 'admitted' that when the work was all done, the finished diary was put to one side because Tony Devereux became severely ill, but then he died.

That was his story, and eventually he called the literary agency about the diary and used his dead friend as its provenance. If only the rest were history, instead of people relying on his story.

Now, we do know for a fact that Mike's request for an unused or partly used Victorian diary was not made until 9th or 10th March 1992, when he first told anyone he had Jack the Ripper's diary.

What do you think he needed this for in March 1992, when he later 'admitted' that the diary he took to London in April 1992 had been sitting around biting its nails in nervous but excited anticipation since January 1990?

I advise you not to say that he suddenly decided at the last moment to try and obtain a more genuine looking diary than the one he had made two years earlier. He certainly never 'admitted' to any such thing, for good reason, because the one he ordered and received was for the year 1891 and was very small indeed, with printed dates throughout. If he'd managed to remove all the dates without making a dog's breakfast of it, he'd have only been able to squeeze into the disfigured pages a tiny fraction of what was taking up 63 pages of his much more accommodating and user-friendly, date free scrapbook.

Are you still keen to lean on what Mike 'admitted' for your preferred version of the truth?

Love,

Caz
X

[Iconoclast]

Posting one-liners, repeating the same old opinions, is no substitute. In the current heat wave, seeing and responding to yet another one posing as some kind of proof, puts me in mind of batting away flies as they land on a screen. It does the flies no good, but they still keep coming and telling me that I'm the one wasting my time.

A masterful analogy, Caz - I loved it!

And no jokes at the back there [yes, I'm looking at you, Ike] about the Lord of the Flies.

Lord of the Flies! Hrumph, pherswerrk, fnar fnar!

[Iconoclast]

What a load of toss.

Indeed ...

[Iconoclast]

Is it just me or has there been a drastic decline in the level of trash talk on this thread? Maybe fatigue has set in (not surprisingly) because I sense we are just one or two posts away from an "oh yeah?" as a response. Might be time to give it a rest.

c.d.

This is what happens when cheap threads unravel. I suggest that we all stick with the quality of the kent face, as it were. The Greatest Thread of All never unravels. She awaits you all whenever you need her ...

[Iconoclast]

I don't know anyone on this one who thinks Mike had the skills needed to write the diary.

Correct, Caz, but oh-so easily misunderstood if you've not even read it as the vast majority of the Dad's Army warriors on this site appear not to have done.

Wooden brooms for rifles.