Who were they?

[Iconoclast]

If your theory requires that your prime suspect is a reckless moron that behaves in a way that no human being would behave, it's just possible that your theory is wrong.
RP

Get your facts right, chummy. It's not my theory. You are quoting someone who has suggested that the 1891 diary was purchased in order to secure a valid receipt for a Victorian diary either as proof of ownership or as an indicator of how much such an artefact should be sold for. As I say, not my theory.

Not that that really matters to you, Muddy, because you are famous for taking all manner of bits of information, scrambling them together, and drawing conclusions from the mess you have made in the bowl.

And your cussing does you no favours, mate.

[Scott Nelson]

Originally posted by Scott Nelson View Post
Hi Caroline, what if Mike (who may have already had the Diary in his possession before March 9th) didn't know the Diary was supposed to be written by Maybrick before someone told him, or he figured it out for himself on that March date?

I'm not sure I understand what that would imply about where Mike obtained it? Certainly it would knock out the 31st March auction theory if he had the scrapbook by 9th March, and if he had even the smallest part in the diary's creation he would surely have had to know who JtR was meant to be, and would have had Maybrick firmly in mind when requesting a Victorian diary around 9th or 10th March.

It was given to Mike by Devereux. Tony didn't tell Mike who the Diary was about. I'm suggesting Mike didn't figure out it was about Maybrick until March 9th. Mike then had a brainstorm idea of writing his own version of the Diary by getting another book, he but gave up as the appointment time with Crew drew near.

[rjpalmer]

Oh, and sorry for the language, Ike.

I've been browsing Bruce Robinson and Thomas Mitchell this week, and it seems necessary to use the words or phrases ****, *******, and **** right off, every paragraph or two.

Throwing the f-bomb around makes the crazies theories so much more convincing to the reader, apparently.

[rjpalmer]

Dear God, man, answer the ******* questions!

"So when would Eddie have worked out that the old book was 'priceless' and, more to the point, how could he have cashed in if he was right, considering it didn't belong to him?"

As I said yesterday, Tom, feel free to **** right off.

The first question--the 'when'---has been answered: if we are to believe in this fantasy, he had 19 DAYS to research the document, and to realize what he was selling for a song was The Diary of Jack the Ripper.

The second question --how could he have cashed it in if it didn't belong to him--is stupid. You're the ones arguing that he DID cash it in. Not only that, he cashed it in to an unemployed drinker with the loosest lips in Merseyside.

I don't know. If it was me, I would have handed the diary to Dodd.

If I was a crook--and there is not one scintilla of evidence that Eddie is a crook---I think I'd have researched the diary myself, waiting for months until I could no longer be linked to Dodd's project (not that Eddy HAS been linked to Dodd's project) and then peddled it to a dealer in a distant city. Or come up with a lame provenance like Mike's and hope a London publisher was either gullible or greedy enough to publish it.

Mainly, I'd have just read the text and realized how ridiculous it was.

What I wouldn't have done was to sell it just around the corner from my girlfriend's house within three weeks of Dodd's project to an unemployed drinker with the loosest lips in Liverpool for twenty-five quid.

If your theory requires that your prime suspect is a reckless moron that behaves in a way that no human being would behave, it's just possible that your theory is wrong.

RP

[erobitha]

Dear God, man, answer the ******* questions!

"So when would Eddie have worked out that the old book was 'priceless' and, more to the point, how could he have cashed in if he was right, considering it didn't belong to him?"

Sometimes I I think I live in a paralleled universe where everybody just ignores the fact that Eddie Lyons is more than just a passing character in all of this.

Who was at Battlecrease the day Mike phone Doreen? Eddie
Who lived two minutes from The Saddle Pub where Mike drank? Eddie
Who accompanied Mike to meet with Robert Smith at The Saddle? Eddie
Who told Brian Rawes they think they might have found something important at Battlecrease? Eddie
Who tried selling the diary to a local businessman? Eddie
Who did Mike threaten with legal action? Eddie
Who most likely asked Feldman “what’s it worth?” which spooked him off the scent? Eddie

For a man who is meant to be some unfortunate patsy he is awfully active in this story.

Guess we gullibles believe whatever we want to believe.

[Iconoclast]

Well, forgetting the fact that there is utterly no evidence that Eddie found the diary, or even knew Barrett, let alone sold the diary to him, let's think it over ......

Dear God, man, answer the ******* questions!

"So when would Eddie have worked out that the old book was 'priceless' and, more to the point, how could he have cashed in if he was right, considering it didn't belong to him?"

[rjpalmer]

The Barretts didn't live their lives in a bubble, and yet nobody from their past - family, friends, teachers, vicars, doctors, bank managers, solicitors - has ever looked at that diary and said yes, they could believe it was in Anne's handwriting, or yes, they could believe this couple willing and able to have produced this thing and then brought it forward as someone else's work.

I certainly don't know that's true.

Shirley Harrison reported that when Mike's mother read The Diary of Jack the Ripper she threw Mike out of her house (he'd been camping on the sofa, apparently).

That's a rather strange reaction. But, as they say, who knows what a man is capable of more than his own mother?

About the only other 'friend' we hear about is Audrey Johnson and she tells a halting story about Anne being deeply upset at work because Anne's hubby was 'writing a book.' Sounds interesting, but evidently Audrey would tell no more, out of 'loyalty' to Anne.

Yes, I read your off-topic post over on the McCann thread. It's a bizarre analogy and I fail to understand it. Did anyone suggest Mike and Anne wrote the Diary of Jack the Ripper while on vacation with seven other adults who were in and out of their room and were in constant contact? How is this an apt analogy?

Why would anyone have known if Mike and Anne were writing the diary in the privacy of their own tiny home on Goldie Street? This line of thinking seems a little...desperate.

[rjpalmer]

So when would Eddie have worked out that the old book was 'priceless' and, more to the point, how could he have cashed in if he was right, considering it didn't belong to him?

Well, forgetting the fact that there is utterly no evidence that Eddie found the diary, or even knew Barrett, let alone sold the diary to him, let's think it over.

According to your own theory, Mike 'waved' Martin Earl's invoice for a tiny, blank or nearly blank memo book 'under Eddie's nose'--and this was enough for Eddie to relinquish the priceless Diary of Jack the Ripper for twenty-five quid. A most curious method of assessing the value of a document.

This couldn't have been any earlier than March 27-29th, because we are told in your own book (p. 237) that the invoice was sent to Mike Barrett on 26 March 1992. Adding a day or two in the post, this means Mike had this most unlikely of bargaining chips on around March 28th.

Since Eddie the Ripoff allegedly nicked the diary from Dodd on the 9th, that left Eddie somewhere in the neighborhood of 19 days to determine a more plausible asking price than 25 quid and come up with a different game plan for passing on his stolen booty -- somewhere in London, for instance, using a middleman, etc. etc.

Instead, Eddie hung on to The Diary of Jack the Ripper (yes, I refuse to use your convenient phrase 'the old book') for nearly three weeks, patiently waiting to sell it to an unemployed and penniless drinker, whose wife held the purse strings, and, not irrelevantly, a man with the loosest set of lips in all of Merseyside. A most curious choice for a customer of stolen goods.

If you want to go with that story, feel free. I don't think historians will be queuing up around the block to accept it. It's destined to end up in the same Ripperological rubbish bin that holds Joseph Sickert's stories and the theories of William Le Quex.

You'll say I'm just being skeptical, but I recall that you ran this theory past Lars (Mr. Poster) --hardly a critic of the Diary--and he immediately rejected it as beyond the beyonds.

And rightfully so.

And still no plausible reason why Anne threw herself into the middle of this circus for the sake of a man she was divorcing and had allegedly beaten her to a pulp.

[erobitha]

Do you want the truth, RJ?

Bingo!

I think RJ and Orsam are petrified of the truth Caz. It means everything they have argued and argued and argued over was all in vain.

In the words of Jack Nicholson....

[caz]

Next, you'll be telling me that Eddie Lyons sold the priceless The Diary of Jack the Ripper for twenty-five quid.

So when would Eddie have worked out that the old book was 'priceless' and, more to the point, how could he have cashed in if he was right, considering it didn't belong to him?

I thought even Mike Barrett was as sceptical as hell when he first saw the name on the last page. The reactions of others told him he might just have something here.

The Barretts didn't live their lives in a bubble, and yet nobody from their past - family, friends, teachers, vicars, doctors, bank managers, solicitors - has ever looked at that diary and said yes, they could believe it was in Anne's handwriting, or yes, they could believe this couple willing and able to have produced this thing and then brought it forward as someone else's work.

Belief is a powerful thing, but it's not the best tool in the box if you really want to get at the truth.

Do you want the truth, RJ?

[Iconoclast]

That's a bingo, folks!
Anne made up her 'in the family provenance tale' to take the narrative away from Mike.
And what was Mike's 'narrative'?
That he and Anne wrote it!

I’m not sure how that’s a ‘bingo’ nor what exactly a ‘bingo’ is, but I can say that Mike making those claims and Anne knowing those claims to be untrue would be a very strong motivator for her to seek to take the power of the narrative away from her addled husband.

So I think you just ’bingoed’ yourself there, RJ.

[rjpalmer]

Of course, what could have been a better way for Anne to have 'kept the diary in the Land of the Plausible' than by telling Keith and Shirley and Feldman the truth--that Barrett brought the diary home from a pub and later stormed down to Eddie Lyon's house--so they could have traced its true origins?

Yet, never in a span of nearly a decade did Anne even once see fit to clue them in? Even when she was (allegedly) in a relationship with Feldman?

Sorry, Tom. But like all your theories, the reader is required to put the blinkers on and believe the nonsensical and to forget everything they have ever observed about human nature.

Next, you'll be telling me that Eddie Lyons sold the priceless The Diary of Jack the Ripper for twenty-five quid.

The tale you are telling wouldn't even make plausible fiction in a daytime soap opera. None of the characters are acting in any believable way.

[rjpalmer]

So she used a clever ruse to take control of the narrative away from Mike and to keep the scrapbook in the land of the plausible.

That's a bingo, folks!

Anne made up her 'in the family provenance tale' to take the narrative away from Mike.

And what was Mike's 'narrative'?

That he and Anne wrote it!

Damn, Ike. It's almost like the exact thing we've been telling y'all for 25 years, but back in the day were scolded for "rushing to judgment."

Does a wildly implausible tale really keep a dodgy diary in the Land of the Plausible?

Well, for some folks it did. Mission accomplished.

[Iconoclast]

Some home truths:

Fishy, your premise that Dr. Brown had identified unequivocal evidence that Jack the Ripper must have had extensive surgical skills not only rules out James Maybrick as a candidate but also essentially every other of the so-far 200 candidates, including - of course - the three canonical Jacks most commonly discussed (Druitt, Kosinski, Ostrog). Who does that leave? Which of the experienced surgeons are left for us to train our gazes upon in 2023, and why on earth was this not done the moment Dr. Brown hd finished speaking in 1888? Why were any non-experienced-surgeons ever thereafter considered as possible Jacks?

RJ, if you've stopped your cussing, y'all, there are clearly two potential provenances which support the authenticity of the Victorian scrapbook (this is not the same as saying that there were two provenances in actuality - a vulgar trick Orsam attempted to say that I had claimed in order to mock). There's the possibility that it came from Tony Devereux to Mike Barrett (possibly from Ann Barrett before Devereux), or it came from Battlecrease House on the morning of March 9, 1992.

There are other provenances, including the possibility that the scrapbook text was hoaxed by a hoaxer or hoaxer unknown. Then there's the really hard-yards argument that says it's possible that a Barrett or Barretts concocted the whole thing.

Now, none of those potential provenances have yet been ruled-out. Therefore it is for the individual to decide which he or she favours (and there can be more than one favoured depending upon the availability of evidence and/or the plausibility of the claim). Thus, you can have a situation such as you have with me where I believe the evidence points overwhelmingly towards a Battlecrease House provenance, whilst not ruling-out the possibility that it came to Mike via Tony Devereux either with or without Anne's prompting. None of that means that I can be certain which is correct, but I can certainly argue that the evidence favours one over the other.

Now, the final point. Why did Anne Graham make the claim that she had given Deverux the scrapbook to give to Mike if she knew all along that he had turned up with it in his grubby mitts on or around March 9, 1992? Well, again, it's impossible to know the answer to this for certain so one has to surmise and - since you've asked - I would surmise that she knew the scrapbook had come to Mike via nefarious means and she knew that he had not created it, so she had strong reason to believe that it could be the real deal, and that real deal had a rightful place in the world as cash-generator, cinema deal-generator, or just truth-generator. I also imagine that she wanted to shut up her errant husband who was threatening to make himself (and therefore his immediate family) look very foolish indeed. So she used a clever ruse to take control of the narrative away from Mike and to keep the scrapbook in the land of the plausible.

Now I have no idea if these (or some of these) were her reasons for doing what she did, but I can confidently say that it is not impossible to give a coherent or believable reason why Anne would have come forward with her 'in the family' nonsense had the diary merely been something that Mike had brought home from the boozer, particularly considering she was 'free and clear' of him and wasn't cashing her royalty cheques. You may not like the reasons outlined, but surely even your vanity stops short of assuming you are the arbiter of what is potentially true or untrue?

[erobitha]

Why don't you think for yourself, Jay, instead of parroting the words of others?

'The only game in town?' It's a meaningless catch phrase.

There was obviously another game in town: Mike and Anne bamboozled the diary researchers.

That Keith and Feldy and Shirley decided to dismiss the Barretts as implausible authors is hardly evidence that Anne's provenance--which y'all now accept was hokum--was the only avenue worthy of their time and attention.

Kettle pot black.

Timesheets.