Who were they?

[caz]

In reality, these manuscripts could have been so picture perfect that the editor, knowing the previous work of this "very reliable" (Burness's own phrase) contributor, he merely looked them over with a satisfied grin, never once lifting his pencil to add a missing comma or a misplaced apostrophe.

In which case, would the Barretts not have been 'dumbing down' when writing Maybrick's diary?

Is this RJ's genuine idea of what the 'reality' could look like?

[erobitha]

Interesting. I lean towards a Battlecrease provenance only because to me it seems more plausible than Barrett(s) writing it, Tony D giving it to Mike, or Anne's "been in the family for decades" story.

I would be inclined to be of the same general opinion. It came out of Battlecrease on 9th March 1992. I am absolutely certain of it. Eddie Lyons found it.

The only questions that remain for me is who wrote it, who put it there and why.

People need to move on past the Barrett hoax and focus on the facts of Battlecrease and Eddie. These are not pure items of coincidence.

There are some peripheral characters in this story who deserve a little more attention and understanding.

[caz]

The watch remains an inconvenience for those dismissing Maybrick, and for me at least, I want to know why and who wrote the book.

If the watch emerged before the scrapbook, how would the world have responded?

Hi ero,

This reminds me that Martin Fido always admitted that he had no easy explanation for the watch and the scientific findings, but then his expertise was not in that area so I'd have expected no less of him.

In a way, one could argue that the watch did emerge before the diary, in that the engravings were seen and deciphered before the 63-page diary was published and its contents revealed. Had the scrapbook gone the way of the Hitler Diaries within weeks of publication, the watch would not have troubled anyone further, and I doubt the tests would ever have been commissioned.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

everyone knows who wrote it.

Everyone? Is everyone a handwriting expert now, Abby? Whose handwriting is it in, for those of us who don't answer to the name 'Everyone'?

While I look forward to learning something from your diary posts, I'm struggling right now to imagine what that would feel like.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

If pushed I'd suggest someone very close to Maybrick wrote the Diary and hid it in Battlecrease, but the only reason I currently prefer that suggestion is because of the similarity between the distinctive Bs used whenever Battlecrease is written in the Diary, and the Bs on the hand-labelled bottles of brandy removed from Battlecrease by the police in 1889 as evidence against Florence Maybrick.

I read "Did She Kill Him." An excellent book even without the JTR connection. In the book, the details of an extremely thorough search of the entire house are described. The diary was not found as a result of the search. So either it was not there at the time or it was missed.

Just saying. I have no dog in the fight.

c.d.

Hi c.d,

Always good to see you posting.

A Victorian newspaper was found in the house in more recent times, by one of the electricians who worked for Colin Rhodes. Despite the current owner, Paul Dodd, saying he had gutted the place at one time, he missed this newspaper. The electrician concerned asked if he could keep it and Dodd said he could. Unfortunately we don't have an actual date for it, so it's not known if it was there when the 'extremely thorough search of the entire house' would have been made in the wake of Maybrick's death. But it does show that things like this can turn up in old houses without the occupier knowing they were there.

Most of us Brits are used to hearing about people finding all sorts of things under the floorboards on our side of the pond, in spite of the odd sceptic on yours. I seem to recall that one of them was mistaken about the construction and appearance of Victorian floorboards, and as a result was disinclined to take the possibility seriously.

There is no point having a mind if it can't be changed by new information, eh?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Well, I can't argue with that one. Bruce Robinson certainly got it right.

A piece of creative writing.

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

Does RJ know?

[caz]

Interesting. I lean towards a Battlecrease provenance only because to me it seems more plausible than Barrett(s) writing it, Tony D giving it to Mike, or Anne's "been in the family for decades" story.

And what better idea for planting a Battlecrease diary and anticipating the future fireworks, than in Battlecrease House? If this was someone's idea of a private practical joke, it strikes me as a bleedin' obvious choice. It certainly beats the crap out of a 'dead pal' provenance, but then beggars can't be choosers, and the cheeky Scouser who dug up Devereux was begging for the attendant fame and fortune he could expect from owning "the old book" and identifying JtR. He could never have owned the Battlecrease provenance, even if Eddie Lyons had been captured on Candid Camera, leaving the house on 9th March 1992 and waving a parcel wrapped in brown paper.

Mike must have thought himself very clever, to substitute a late Fountains Road resident for a live one.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

I would be inclined to be of the same general opinion. It came out of Battlecrease on 9th March 1992. I am absolutely certain of it. Eddie Lyons found it.

The only questions that remain for me is who wrote it, who put it there and why.

People need to move on past the Barrett hoax and focus on the facts of Battlecrease and Eddie. These are not pure items of coincidence.

There are some peripheral characters in this story who deserve a little more attention and understanding.

It will come, ero - as surely as the last Boris supporters ebb away, until only someone like Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg remains, because he has sold his soul to the lying man-child and there is no way back.

I see many parallels between Bongo and Boris. Both had the balls to beguile the gullible with their constant lies, whether they were covering their backs over Battlecrease, Brexit or Partygate. And nobody enjoys that "told you so" moment.

Love,

Caz
X

[John Wheat]

I've said this previously but in all likelihood the Barretts wrote the diary. There is no evidence anyone else wrote the diary.

[c.d.]

Hi c.d,

Always good to see you posting.

A Victorian newspaper was found in the house in more recent times, by one of the electricians who worked for Colin Rhodes. Despite the current owner, Paul Dodd, saying he had gutted the place at one time, he missed this newspaper. The electrician concerned asked if he could keep it and Dodd said he could. Unfortunately we don't have an actual date for it, so it's not known if it was there when the 'extremely thorough search of the entire house' would have been made in the wake of Maybrick's death. But it does show that things like this can turn up in old houses without the occupier knowing they were there.

Most of us Brits are used to hearing about people finding all sorts of things under the floorboards on our side of the pond, in spite of the odd sceptic on yours. I seem to recall that one of them was mistaken about the construction and appearance of Victorian floorboards, and as a result was disinclined to take the possibility seriously.

There is no point having a mind if it can't be changed by new information, eh?

Love,

Caz
X

Hi Caz,

Thanks and a hiya right back at you.

As I said, I have no dog in the fight and I generally try to stay clear of the whole diary business. It is entirely possible that the diary was missed in the search, no question about that and your post reflects that. But I will say that upon reading the book (again, a damn good book if anybody has not read it) I was struck by the attitude of the person conducting the search and thinking damn this guy seems to have a personal vendetta against Florence/Victorian wives/women in general or maybe was simply trying to make a name for himself. But if the author was accurate, they damn near tore the place apart.

So it boils down to possible versus probable. But consider this -- I think it is reasonable that Maybrick wanted to keep the diary hidden and close to him (assuming he wrote it). I would think his bedroom would have been the most obvious place. It was off limits to the help and even Florence. I believe he kept it locked if not mistaken. Now assuming that he was a middle aged man and didn't want to spend an hour moving furniture and tearing up rugs and possibly hurting his back every time he made an entry, I would think a quick push of a dresser, moving a rug and lifting up a floorboard would have sufficed for his purposes. But we have to believe that if it was there the police missed it. Possible/probable. Everyone draw their own conclusions.

c.d.

[Iconoclast]

What does it all boil down to? A suspicion that the Barretts could have concocted the diary between them [with one of Anne's hands tied behind her back - a bemusing Fido image which never quite made any logical sense to me], based on Mike's published interviews in Celebrity Magazine?

Both Barretts admitted that Mike couldn't have written anything unaided and ever hoped to see it in print, and Martin Fido agreed with this assessment. He believed that Anne could have written the diary, but when he got a personal taste of her researching and writing skills he could hardly believe that she would have let something as badly written as the diary see the light of day. It was close to another 'impossible' moment, like the one relating to the ion migration issue. The diary was too coherent for Mike to have composed it, yet not polished enough to reflect Anne's handiwork. To play devil's advocate, I found this another example of strange logic: the diary is meant to have been the true, private ramblings of a cotton merchant turned murderer; not good literature, nor indeed an Anne Graham essay to be graded up or down for its grammar and spelling. Whoever created it was not consulting a dictionary, nor aiming to reflect their own best use of English. They were aiming to portray one of the most thoroughly flawed human beings in relatively recent history. Using perfect grammar and spelling would have been the last of their concerns, while some effort to copy Maybrick's known handwriting style should have been the first - unless that was never the point of the exercise, because personal fame and fortune never came into it.

In ruling out the Barretts as the diary's creators - as I do - I would expect anyone else, who wasn't worried about the handwriting and had no intention of being identified anyway, to have picked somewhere appropriate for their funny little creation to rest until disturbed by others. This is why I don't understand the visceral pull against this having been Battlecrease House, where the Maybricks were only in residence from February 1888 to May 1889, coinciding exactly with the period covered by the diary. It ought to be called the Battlecrease Diary, for that is what it reflects: supposed events while the house bore that name, courtesy of Florie I believe. It was not called that until the family moved in, and lost the name following Jim's suspicious death. Many believed that Jack the Ripper came and went in that same period.

Imagine if we had circumstantial evidence and witness testimony from several individual sources, indicating that the diary did come out of the house in 1992, and nothing that had yet been found to rule this out?

It might be an idea to put that imagination to better use than squandering it all on Mike Barrett's auction story.

Hi Caz,

I clocked this post the other and made a mental note to come back to it to read it at my leisure (and then got sidetracked, as ever).

Anyway, I have come back to it now and read it and - as ever from you - it's a rather slightly different take on the context of the Barretts and the context of Battlecrease House. It made me stop and think about the dynamics of both times - 1888 and 1992 - and the 'visceral pull' which says it can't have come from that grand old house when in truth it absolutely could have done; whereas, as you argue so eloquently, the visceral pull against the Barretts being the penmen is not sustainable - there is no context which I find plausible enough to properly place them hovering quill over inkwell. Possible, I guess, but plausible, no.

Obviously, my being the only May in the village, I cannot conceive for a moment that it wasn't written by James Maybrick (I cannot find sufficient reason to rule him out despite the patent challenges such as handwriting and potential anachronisms, including Algernon Orsam's 'one off instance'), but I would concede that others might not unreasonably conclude that someone connected to that household in or shortly after 1889 had put that quill to paper and left it there to be found for reasons far too translucent at this long distance to feel more plausible than possible.

Still, a thought-provoking post - less rare from this particular author than from most, which seems rather 'ridiculous' to say on such a site, frustratingly.

Ike

[Scott Nelson]

Hmmm, it sounds neat but - as I read it back again - it seems to require that Barrett wrote the version we got (which is, as I recall, your theory) and that's very much where we diverge as there is no way on God's good earth (and mine) that Michael T. Barrett wrote a word of that document.

No Ike, I don't think Barratt had anything to do with writing the Diary. I think Tony Devereux did. It's possible Devereux had an older Diary, or some document written as a spoof and rewrote it sometime after 1988. Then he may have destroyed this old document. Mike just turned over what Tony had given him.

[Abby Normal]

Everyone? Is everyone a handwriting expert now, Abby? Whose handwriting is it in, for those of us who don't answer to the name 'Everyone'?

While I look forward to learning something from your diary posts, I'm struggling right now to imagine what that would feel like.

Love,

Caz
X

Nice weasly insult caz. And what have you or anyone learned about Jack the Ripper or contributed to ripperology from the gazillion posts, all the time and research on it and books written ??? Right not a dam thing. Congrats!

[Al Bundy's Eyes]

Loath as I am to wade into the diary argument, it's worth pointing out that at the time Ripperologist we're examining the diary in the early nineties, none of them were aware that Mike Barrett had tried to source a blank Victorian diary. If this had been known at the time, what effect would it have had?

And before we start on the unsuitability of the red diary, it's too small, dates on every page and all that distracting guff, we need to remember:

Mike tried to obtain a blank Victorian diary before showing his diary to a publisher. Why? As a value reference for Jack's confession, or as a body double for it should the police come round are the only arguments for this, and both are equally ridiculous. He sought a blank diary before meeting the buyer.

The blank diary was independently verified. Had it not been, it would have gone down as Mike Barrett fairy tale nonsense. But. It wasn't. Mike 'Bongo Bullshit' Barrett, who was lying when his lips moved, was telling the truth. He absolutely did what he claimed.

If the investigative team knew this at the time, what would they have made if it? I mean, the guy claiming to be in possession of Jack The Rippers diary was trying to buy a blank Victorian diary before he'd shown his to a buyer. It's a bit dodgy, and totally true.

(You can chuck in his finding the Crashaw quote, which conveniently was in a book he'd previously owned too as either proof that he authored the diary, or astoundingly fortuitous).

Well, that concludes my trip to diary land.

[StevenOwl]

Mike tried to obtain a blank Victorian diary before showing his diary to a publisher. Why? As a value reference for Jack's confession, or as a body double for it should the police come round are the only arguments for this, and both are equally ridiculous. He sought a blank diary before meeting the buyer.

Both arguments are perfectly plausible, particularly the second one. Diary naysayers branding everything they don't agree with as 'ridiculous' doesn't help anyone. The very wording of Mike's 'Victorian diary wanted' advert shows that he wasn't trying to obtain something that could pass for Maybrick's real diary.