Maybrick Diary Typescript 1992 (KS Ver.)

[Scott Nelson]

So was there a transcript created before the diary? Then the diary is created and taken to London, where Barrett learns that a transcript is needed (for reviewer's edification??) So they ask Mike to create one, thinking it doesn't exist yet? But Mike didn't think they would want one, so he goes back to his old transcript on his word processor and makes modifications to it, correcting differences between the handwritten diary and the typescript. Then he tells Doreen and Shirley the transcript he hands over is only a first draft?

[Tab]

Really sorry, Tab, but I tend to read and respond to one post at a time, in the order in which it appears in the thread, so I have only just reached Palmer's epic post on the history of when, how and why the Barrett's typescript ended up with Doreen.

No worries, thanks for the clarification.

[caz]

One thing that stuck me more forcefully when seeing the typescript is that at no time does 'Maybrick' strike out a single line of his prose. We don't see any of those curious asterisks anywhere in the typescript's 'main' text. 'Maybrick' is perfectly able to write without revision, including writing a few memorable lines. It's only when he comes to writing verse that he strikes out line after line, and even openly curses his inability to write. It's rather comical.

In fact, I'd argue that it's cheesy as hell--the custard is way over-egged--but I suppose some go in for this sort of thing and find it realistic. The same bloke that just wrote three long paragraphs is suddenly cursing 'drats!' (I paraphrase) because he can't write a simple line or two of verse.

It doesn't ring true. The 'Dear Boss' writer oozes with linguistic confidence, so it's remarkably out of character as well. It's so bad that I can almost see why Caz sometimes refers to the diary as a deliberate spoof or farce, even though I don't ultimately agree with that assessment. I think it is unintentionally bad.

Seasons Greetings.

I meant to respond to this one a long while back, so apologies for returning to it now.

It's another good observation by Palmer, that the only lines struck through in the diary [while leaving the words beneath visible - and largely legible] are when 'Sir Jim' is clearly meant to be trying his own hand at a bit of creative writing, in the form of rhyming verse. When merely committing his thoughts to paper, he isn't experimenting to see how his abilities as a wordsmith might match up to those of his more talented brother. 'Sir Jim' reads back to himself each funny little rhyme before deciding whether to strike lines out or leave them be.

I agree that this whole exercise does look cheesy, and I wonder what Anne herself thought of it when trying to wrestle the thing from Mike and burn it. Is this one of the reasons why she thought Doreen would send Mike packing? If so, it would have been another task to tick off their list that the Barretts needed like raging tooth ache. Even if it had once been considered a neat idea to add to the mix, the tedious and time-consuming process of actually copying across all those experimental lines, as composed, repeated or amended, and deciding which 'Sir Jim' should strike through and which he could leave alone, seems a rather strange one to have gone through with, if Mike had only just obtained an old book to put it all in on 31st March 1992. If they had both considered the idea too good to abandon, come April Fools' Day, in favour of an easier, faster task with less cheesy results, I don't think Mike ever mentioned this, or explained the reasoning behind giving themselves this extra work to do - on top of making sure the final typescript could pass as an honest attempt to transcribe what was in the scrapbook.

[caz]

Clearer, but not more palatable, methinks.

But I suppose Barrett is the gift that keeps on giving. As long as we can paint Mike a 'mental vegetable' capable of any foolish incompetence, then we have all the explanation we ever need for any mysteries in the typescript.

But let's remind ourselves that this version of events is dependent on the uncorroborated word of Anne Graham--for she's our only source is she not, for how the typescript was supposedly created by Mike dictating and she typing?

I've decided to explore the wisdom of accepting Anne's word over Mike's on the 'incontrovertible' thread, Caz, if you care to have a look sometime.

I just noticed the odd use of the word 'palatable' here, which implies that my suggested potential explanation for one of the differences between the typescript and the diary was not to Palmer's taste, which didn't really need pointing out. A better word might have been 'plausible'.

I don't think I have ever personally tried to 'paint' Mike as a 'mental vegetable'. Clearly, the process of creating the typescript - as described by Mike or Anne - could hardly have been undertaken in the first place if either of them had been a mental vegetable, and we've known what each claimed about it since the dawn of time. In fact, it would have been far easier for someone with Mike's literacy problems to have read from a typed document, so Anne could hand write it into the scrapbook, just as he claimed in his affidavit, than the other way round. I'm not denying that it would have been considerable harder for Mike to have read from the diary itself, so Anne could type it up, as she claimed. The handwriting would have been unfamiliar to Mike, whether it was by a total stranger or by Anne, effectively disguising her usual hand.

In short, I'm puzzled as to why Palmer thinks I would have sought to 'paint' Mike as incapable of doing what Anne herself claimed he did, while arguing that her word was likely to be the more reliable. Palmer may think I'm dim, but I'm really not that dim.

[caz]

Fair enough.

Thank you. I'll take that as an apology - sort of.

[caz]

Thanks. We are making progress. Thanks for admitting that you're just theorizing and not insisting it is a fact.

My 'theorising' was to do with which Barrett was more likely to have done the typing, and the evidence is very strongly against Mike.

All the indications, from the known facts, are that Doreen was in receipt of the typescript without having formally requested one - and by 'formally' I meant in writing. Perhaps I should have clarified. If Doreen asked for one informally over the phone, she would have been speaking to Mike, as she already had the typescript before having the pleasure of hearing Anne's voice for the first time. But even I can't prove a negative, so I can't insist that a written request could not have been sent; only that if one was, no copy survived along with the other letters Keith found in Doreen's files.

Not to argue further, but the question I'd ask is why you believe Anne's account? Why believe anything she is telling you?

It's a fair question. Perhaps Anne and Mike were both lying about the typescript. They'd obviously have had their reasons if they created both documents, and I'd be more inclined to think they both lied than to believe that Mike was the one telling the truth. He was the serial liar after all, and he could lie just for lying's sake. He could tell one blatant lie for some perceived advantage in that moment, and then cancel it out two minutes later with another whopper. I see Anne as the more rational of the two, who would have had specific reasons for claiming what she did.

She gave this 'dictation' explanation at a dinner on 31 May 1995. This is the same era when she's telling a dozen other stories that you don't believe--hiding the diary behind the furniture, her father seeing it after World War II, giving the diary to Tony, etc. etc.--so what justifies any belief in her on this occasion? Not that anyone likes to admit it, but she's lying just as much as Mike is--isn't she?-only more consistently and less erratically?

It's hardly a case of anyone not liking to admit that Anne lied, or Palmer would not remind everyone of the fact every five minutes that I have not personally given her story any credence for the last twenty years. If that's not liking to 'admit' it, I don't know what is.

And what she is saying goes directly against the account that Doreen--who was in a position to know and who you don't think is a liar--told Nick Warren the previous year:

"Right from the word go, everyone knew that Mike had bought a WP precisely to transcribe the Diary, in order to study its contents more easily." This doesn't gel with Anne's tale about creating it "in a go situation."

Someone, somewhere, is lying.

Oh crikey! I don't suppose it could have been Mike lying to Doreen about when and why he bought the word processor? Why does the liar have to be either Anne or Doreen, when there's a serial liar in the room whose lies are nothing if not positively elephantine?

Doreen has obviously got her information from Barrett.

Crikey, I didn't see that one coming.

And Doreen understood Mike transcribing the diary to have meant many months previously to Mike calling her out-of-the-blue and thus before any requested was made or any 'go situation' had occurred--yet Shirley, by contrast, understood it had been a request that she and Doreen had made to Barrett after he met with them in London.

You clearly have no desire to contemplate this contradiction--but isn't it pretty obvious what must have gone on?

Palmer can tell me. But the way I see it, if Doreen thought Mike had transcribed the diary long before 9th March 1992, because that's what he had told her, there would have been no need for her to formally request one. She could simply have said: "Please could you bring it to London with the diary", or else: "Now I've seen the diary and will not be sending you packing, could you send me the transcript you prepared as soon as you get home?" and Mike would then have said under his breath: "Oh sugar lumps", and set about making adjustments to what was on his word processor. Alternatively, Anne could have helped him get an innocent looking transcript done "fast" now she knew Doreen was seriously interested. We don't know if Anne was aware of what Mike had told Doreen, but by lying to her that he had already transcribed the diary, he would have been making a rod for his own back when she inevitably wanted to see it!

The detail that intrigues me is that Doreen knew from the start that Mike owned a word processor. Shirley also mentions it within the first few pages of her book.

Doesn't this strike you as strange?

Well it might, if I thought Mike had actually used the machine for creating a fake diary! It would have been much safer to say nothing about it, until someone else provided that information. He was claiming to have been given the diary by his deceased friend, so why tell Doreen he had bought a word processor for any reason?

There is overwhelming evidence that Barrett hid his writing career from both of them. Later, he even bragged about it. There's a long excerpt from the Gray tapes on Orams Books website that has Barrett rattling off the names of the magazines that published his interviews. So why would he just spontaneously admit to owning a word processor? If, for some reason, one wanted to hide the fact that they are a farmer, would they just spontaneously admit to owning a tractor?

Not likely.

And if for some reason, one wanted to hide the fact that they had just faked Jack the Ripper's diary, would they just spontaneously admit to owning the machine it was faked on?

Mike's admission has to be connected to the request for a typescript, just as Shirley remembered it. They would have asked Mike if he could produce one--did he own a typewriter?

Palmer is making an assumption here about the order of events. If Mike had been asked for a typescript before he had mentioned owning a word processor, the easiest thing in the world would have been to keep quiet and say he didn't have the means. Doreen was the one with the office and the equipment. She was either interested enough to get a transcript done early on in the process, or she wasn't.

To be continued...

[rjpalmer]

My 'theorising' was to do with which Barrett was more likely to have done the typing, and the evidence is very strongly against Mike.

Sorry, Caz, but your logic here escapes me.

If the typescript was actually the bi-product of an earlier rough draft, even Barrett could have hunt-and-pecked it out over a period of days or weeks. (I personally have no problem with a rough draft existing long before Mike's call to a literary agent in March 1992).

And even if it was Anne's typing, so what? How does that verify her account?

All that tells you is she typed it.

It doesn't tell you when she typed it, or why she typed it, and it certainly doesn't tell you she typed it up for Doreen's benefit after a formal or informal request.

Oh crikey! I don't suppose it could have been Mike lying to Doreen about when and why he bought the word processor? Why does the liar have to be either Anne or Doreen, when there's a serial liar in the room whose lies are nothing if not positively elephantine?

It's difficult to understand what this outburst signifies.

Of course, Barrett was lying!

Who would suggest otherwise? I certainly haven't. I certainly don't believe Mike bought a word processer to create the typescript so he could study the diary. The evidence shows he owned the word processor since 1986. He absolutely WAS lying.

The problem you faced, when you were still arguing that Doreen hadn't requested a typescript, is that Doreen's belief that Mike created the typescript for his own use---as Doreen told Nick Warren in 1994--makes mincemeat of Anne's explanation in 1995, which was a clear contradiction. Mike's lying makes no difference.

It's that Anne was contradicting Doreen that matters, since Doreen would hardly have requested Anne to typescript now that the diary was in a 'go situation' if Mike had already told her one existed.

My point is that your faith in Anne is misguided, because she is the only source for the typescript being created through a cooperative dictation.

And what did Anne say about her ability to cooperate with Mike during these years?

Do you recall?



Anne, who you believe sat down with Mike and created this fairly faithful and error-free 29-page typescript through dictation, said in a different context, that the idea of her and Mike cooperating on "anything" was absolute rubbish.

How long would the 29 page typescript have taken to complete? 3-5 hours? Longer?

Sounds like another obvious contradiction that anyone who wants to believe Anne's account will need to swallow.

Perhaps Anne and Mike were both lying about the typescript.

Happy Days. We got there in the end. There's no need to argue that Anne was 'more reliable' than Mike.

They're both lying.

So why did the typescript exist if Anne didn't type it up for Doreen, and Mike didn't type it up for his own benefit?

[rjpalmer]

Palmer is making an assumption here about the order of events. If Mike had been asked for a typescript before he had mentioned owning a word processor, the easiest thing in the world would have been to keep quiet and say he didn't have the means. Doreen was the one with the office and the equipment. She was either interested enough to get a transcript done early on in the process, or she wasn't.

I'm making no assumption; I'm acknowledging that we weren't there and don't know the exact details--only that it can be inferred from Barrett's strange admission about owning a word processor that sometime during the request for a typescript Barrett admitted he owned one. He had probably talked himself into a corner.

Otherwise, there is no reason he would admit it, since it's a fact on record that he both hid his writing career and lied to the Fraud Squad about owning the Amstrad, as advised by Paul Feldman.

We know the two ladies weren't under the impression that Barrett ran out and bought the Amstrad in April 1992, after visiting London, because in the first edition of Shirley's book she states that Barrett told her he had originally thought he'd write the diary's story himself before giving up and calling a literary agency, so he had already bought the Amstrad. (He lied an implied it was 1991, when it was 1986).

And Doreen also told Nick Warren that the Amstrad and the typescript existed before Barrett came to London.

That means that either Doreen asked Mike whether he would be able to produce a typescript--at which time he was forced to admit that he owned the Amstrad--or when he came to London with the typescript Doreen was smart enough to notice the typeface indicated a word processer, at which time Mike made the admission.

I think the evidence suggests the former, though this is not certain since none of us were there. Either way, his admission contained two lies: why he bought it, and when.

I see no reason Barrett would have made this admission had events not forced his hand. He certainly wanted to hide his earlier career as a freelance writer.

[caz]

And we know from a story told by Keith that Barrett didn't want people to know he owned a word processor. It is something he thought about. At some point, Barrett was afraid the Serious Fraud Squad would learn about the Amstrad, and Feldman's remarkable advice to Barrett was to lie about it. To lie to the police that he didn't own one, which Keith quite rightly thought was horrible advice.

Continuing from my post of yesterday, when I was rudely interrupted by the clock telling me it was bath time...

This contradicts the fact that one of the first things Mike told Doreen was that he did own a word processor. His frank and freely given admission is not something he evidently thought through at the time, and it was Feldman's stupid advice to deny it if asked by Scotland Yard's finest, that caused Mike to stupidly take that advice. The Squad did not apparently have a warrant when they knocked in October 1993, and were not in any case investigating Mike, making his denial not only stupid but needless into the bargain. If Palmer imagines that the stupid Barretts would have left evidence on the word processor of how they had created the diary back in April 1992, he must have them both down as considerably more stupid than anyone had previously considered.

By contrast, this admission by Mike to Doreen has to be connected to the typescript. That's what makes sense.

I agree.

So, here's how I see it--feel free to ignore it; you usually do, but it explains the contradictions and raises doubts about your belief in Anne's version.

Let's have it.

In London, or shortly afterwards when the project was being negotiated, Doreen would naturally have told Mike she needed a typescript. As Shirley had agreed to work on the book, she would have needed a copy, too, and this is what Shirley later remembered and told you in the email. They had 'certainly' requested a copy. No reason to doubt this. It's the most natural thing in the world.

London was 13th April; the typescript was with Doreen and Shirley by 22nd April.

Would it have been the most natural thing in the world to request that Mike transcribe the diary he said he had been given by his dead mate, regardless of what it had contained? If the handwriting had been in a foreign language? If it had run to 300 pages and not a more user-friendly 63? If much of it had been illegible or beyond Mike's capabilities to understand? Would there have been no alternative, despite the reality that another transcript was made at a later date by other hands?

But Mike must have told Doreen at this point--'no problem'--he had already made a typescript to study the diary, since this is what Doreen remembered and later relayed to Nick Warren.

Palmer is getting warmer, but I'm not sure he can feel it yet.

What I imagine happened is Doreen had asked Barrett if he owned a typewriter when she made this initial request and Barrett realized then that he had to admit to owning a word processor--which was somewhat unusual for an unemployed scrap metal merchant in 1992. Enough so that this detail has to be explained in Shirley's book.

Of course, Anne wasn't in London (or on a subsequent phone call) and didn't know any of this. She only remembers Barrett needing to get a typescript to Doreen and Shirley in London sometime in April 1992 now that the diary was in a 'go situation.'

The right hand didn't know what the left hand had said in London.

And this is why Anne is giving a different account than Doreen when she's telling her tale in May 1995.

In short, Mike and Anne couldn't keep their stories straight as revealed by the contradictions. As such, I don't see any reason to believe the typescript was created in the way Anne said it was--by dictation.

Barrett told Doreen he could supply a typescript because he knew he already had one on his Amstrad at home. He lied and said he created it to 'study' the diary, but it existed as a rough draft because Barrett himself was the hoaxer.

No dictation was necessary. Mike just returned to Liverpool and made necessary changes to a pre-existing earlier draft to reflect any last-minute alterations made during the creation of the physical diary. Anne didn't know what Mike had told the ladies in London, so this is why we are seeing a contradiction in these accounts.

That's how I see it.

Oh dear, he's getting colder again now.

What was the reason for Mike telling Doreen early on that he owned a word processor? Who else would have known this and told Doreen, if Mike had just said nothing? Even if Doreen had thought to ask the question about this unemployed scrap metal merchant's domestic typing arrangements [which is merely Palmer's assumption], he could have denied owning anything of the kind, just as he went on to do in October 1993. It would have been his cue to get rid of this 'somewhat unusual' possession, after deleting whatever was still on it that might have given his little game away.

But what does he do instead? He adds to his problems by telling Doreen he has already made a transcript 'to better study the diary'! What was he thinking?

I'll tell you how I see it. We know Mike told Doreen that the diary had been kicking around for several months following Tony's death in August 1991, and that he had been trying to make sense of it, with the help of just a couple of books on Jack the Ripper, before finally calling her on 9th March 1992. He saw a way to bolster this falsehood with the 'somewhat unusual', but indisputable fact, that he owned a word processor. If he didn't set eyes on the scrapbook until March 1992 [whether that was at an auction sale on 31st or down the pub on 9th] it is self-evident that he was not using his word processor to make a transcript from it during the long autumn and winter days and nights of 1991, but nevertheless he stupidly told Doreen that he had done so. He then compounded this lie with another, to make it sound more like "the God's honest truth and what have you", by saying - "and this is factual, this is really factual" - that he had only made this 'somewhat unusual' purchase with one thing in mind: to transcribe that diary so he could research it more easily.

It would have been typical of Mike to sandwich a sliver of truth between two of his more blatant bread and butter lies. What he should have anticipated was that Doreen would inevitably ask him to bring or send her this marvellously useful typescript. That would have been the most natural thing in the world if he had told her he had already made one, to explain what he had been doing between August 1991 and March 1992. And that is when panic would have set in, as much if no transcript yet existed, as it would have done if what was really on his word processor at the time was an incriminating draft of the diary he and Anne had just created or were about to create.

Anne may only have been told by Mike that Doreen was seriously interested in the diary but wanted him to transcribe it as soon as possible. I'm not sure she'd have rolled over and played ball if she knew he had told Doreen he already had one on the word processor, which he had bought specially for the purpose!

[caz]

So was there a transcript created before the diary? Then the diary is created and taken to London, where Barrett learns that a transcript is needed (for reviewer's edification??) So they ask Mike to create one, thinking it doesn't exist yet? But Mike didn't think they would want one, so he goes back to his old transcript on his word processor and makes modifications to it, correcting differences between the handwritten diary and the typescript. Then he tells Doreen and Shirley the transcript he hands over is only a first draft?

Not quite, Scotty. IF Doreen asked Mike to make a transcript from the old scrapbook, it appears that he told her he had already done one in the months following Tony's death, on a word processor he had bought for that purpose. Whatever the truth of the matter was, he was then committed to showing Doreen what he'd got, regardless of whether he had nothing diary related on the infernal machine yet, or a suspicious, potentially incriminating document, that would now need to be turned into one that could pass as an honest transcript, only made so that Mike could 'better study the diary'.

I think it's important to note that Doreen was under the impression that Mike had transcribed it for his own use initially, before contacting her agency in March 1992. So while it's not 100% clear who first mentioned anything about a transcript, once Mike told Doreen he had one, she would inevitably have asked for it.

It's arguably less important to dwell on whether or not Doreen requested a transcript before Mike claimed to have an oven-ready one on his word processor. When he made that stupid claim there was no going back. Up until that point, he could simply have made sure to delete and dispose of any evidence of fakery, relieving himself of the need to check or modify it once the diary had been seen in London. Did he think it would be a deal breaker to say he didn't have the means to do a transcript himself?

Love,

Caz
X

[rjpalmer]

Did he think it would be a deal breaker to say he didn't have the means to do a transcript himself?

That's what I've been telling you for a week.

Barrett didn't want to reveal his writing career. If you or Tom or anyone wants to deny that--then I'm afraid you're in denial.

But in showing up in London, Mike had marketed himself as a blue-collar 'ex scrap metal dealer' so Doreen would naturally wonder if he had the ability to produce the typescript she wanted, since blue-collar blokes aren't known for being typists who own typewriters. So she must have asked him about it when she asked for the typescript.

Thus, Barrett was painted into a corner, since she wanted a typescript and he wanted to get the diary published. Yes, he could have thought of it as a 'deal breaker'--or at least a requirement that he would certainly want to satisfy.

So, thinking on his toes, or having already invented a back story, Mike tells her he bought a word processor specifically to transcribe and study the diary. This is the same b.s. Doreen would repeat to Nick Warren, but Warren eventually knew it was a lie. There was far more to the story: Barrett's hidden writing career with Celebrity, etc.

And this was hardlly a "frank and free" admission by Mike, as you characterize it. Mike didn't have a frank bone in his body. His 'admission' contained two provable lies: when he bought it, and why he bought it.

Thus, there is no 'contradiction' with Mike later hiding the word processor from the police. Again, he doesn't want them to think he was a writer. But in Doreen's case, he had to come up with some reason he could give her the transcript. What he didn't reveal is that he had owned the word process years before he even knew Tony Devereux and had used it to launch a career as an interviewer and writer for Celebrity and Chat magazines.

I have no idea why you want to argue proven facts.

You can still argue that Barrett was lying about having previously created the typescript, and had to rush home and create one, but then you'll need to explain why Anne Graham 'cooperated' in the production of this typescript when your whole theory rests on Anne not cooperating with Mike when it comes to creating a hoax. And, of course, Anne's own contradiction saying the same thing.

[rjpalmer]

If Palmer imagines that the stupid Barretts would have left evidence on the word processor of how they had created the diary back in April 1992, he must have them both down as considerably more stupid than anyone had previously considered.

Sorry Caz, but this is the sort of smarmy comment that shows you aren't discussing the diary in good faith and simply want to mischaracterize the beliefs of your perceived enemies.

It's sad, really, but it's also the last straw--because who needs it?

I've never painted the Barretts as stupid. By contrast, you're the one arguing they didn't have the ability to create a hoax that fooled at least some members of the London literati.
.
Your comment is also self-defeating because we don't, in fact, know with certainty if the Barretts hid the word process or not.

Why? Because, as was so often the case, the public was given two different versions.

In the paperback edition of Shirley Harrison's book, she writes:

"The facts are this. The police did not have a warrant. Mike Barrett invited them to his house and co-operated in every way. The WPC was hardly "found." It was on the table in the dining room where he had transcribed the diary with the help of his wife, in order to make it easy to read." (page 272)

This makes it sound as if, potentially at least, the police did find a transcript or floppy disks.

However, in the third edition (Blake), we read this from Shirley:

"The facts are these. Michael Barrett invited the police into his house. There was no word processor in sight. No notes. Detective Thomas left empty handed. The explanation about Mike Barrett's original research and his use of a word processor was, in any case, in the first edition of my book for all to see." (p260).

Which way was it? Was the word processor in plain sight or was it hidden and "nowhere in sight"?

Can the confusion be traced to Mike & Anne independently telling Shirley two different accounts as to what happened when the police came calling?

This seems possible.

It would also seem quite plausible that Mike followed Paul Feldman's advice and hid the word processor, which Shirley wouldn't have immediately known, thus explaining the strange 180-degree contradiction between her two editions.

Anyway, goodbye for a good long while. You'll have to take it solo from here. Any further discussion is pointless.

[caz]

Sorry, Caz, but your logic here escapes me.

This has nothing to do with 'logic'.

If I say the evidence all points to the earth not being flat, it's not 'logic', or a matter of opinion. It's just counting.

So if Palmer wants to use logic, to argue that Mike's typing skills could have been usefully employed in producing the typescript, contrary to Anne's claim that his typing was "hopeless", and the evidence which all points to the same inevitable conclusion, I'm not sure that's going to be enough.

And even if it was Anne's typing, so what? How does that verify her account?

All that tells you is she typed it.

That's enough for now, because if Palmer was hoping to give Mike any task that involved unaided typing - either to modify an incriminating typescript or to make an innocent transcript - he was in for a bitter disappointment.

It doesn't tell you when she typed it, or why she typed it, and it certainly doesn't tell you she typed it up for Doreen's benefit after a formal or informal request.

And what does it tell Palmer, the only man on the planet who claims to understand what makes a woman like Anne tick?

It's difficult to understand what this outburst signifies.

Of course, Barrett was lying!

Who would suggest otherwise?

When Palmer said that someone, somewhere, was lying, I took that to mean some individual other than Mike, otherwise it would have been a statement of the bleedin' obvious, identifying a singular someone as Mike.

The problem you faced, when you were still arguing that Doreen hadn't requested a typescript, is that Doreen's belief that Mike created the typescript for his own use---as Doreen told Nick Warren in 1994--makes mincemeat of Anne's explanation in 1995, which was a clear contradiction. Mike's lying makes no difference.

It wasn't my problem, because it's clear as day that if Mike told Doreen he had created the typescript for his own use, before making contact with her in March 1992, and if he only clapped eyes on the scrapbook that same month, he was lying for some perceived benefit. There is logic in the suggestion that he needed to account for having told Doreen on 10th March, how this diary had affected their lives [his and his wife's] since it had come into his possession. Having a word processor and claiming to have a transcript of this affecting document would have gone a long way to explain it. I can see no other perceived benefit for a 'lazy' Mike in claiming something that would instantly compel him into action, whether it be getting a transcript done from scratch, or having to compare a final draft with the handwritten diary, in order to highlight and make any necessary adjustments to the former, in order to make good his claim. I don't believe he could have anticipated having to go through either process, or foreseen any benefit in doing so. And whichever way we look at it, Anne would have needed to be heavily, if not exclusively involved in the typing, while Mike would have done his best to grapple with the handwritten version, regardless of who had held the pen.

It's that Anne was contradicting Doreen that matters, since Doreen would hardly have requested Anne to typescript now that the diary was in a 'go situation' if Mike had already told her one existed.

But Palmer keeps forgetting that Mike would have told Doreen one thing and Anne another, to keep them both sweet. It's what he did - all the time.

My point is that your faith in Anne is misguided, because she is the only source for the typescript being created through a cooperative dictation.

And what did Anne say about her ability to cooperate with Mike during these years?

Do you recall?



Anne, who you believe sat down with Mike and created this fairly faithful and error-free 29-page typescript through dictation, said in a different context, that the idea of her and Mike cooperating on "anything" was absolute rubbish.

How long would the 29 page typescript have taken to complete? 3-5 hours? Longer?

Sounds like another obvious contradiction that anyone who wants to believe Anne's account will need to swallow.

Funny how Palmer relies on what comes out of Anne's mouth when it suits his argument, isn't it?

If she had cooperated well enough with Mike by creating the diary with him in the early 1990s, including up to 90% of the composition, all of the handwriting and typing involved, then yes, she would have been lying about that, so it follows using Palmer's logic that she must similarly have been lying about helping Mike with a 29 page typescript, taking just a few hours, when it became clear that Doreen was seriously interested in the old book?

I think the onus is on Palmer to prove that the major act of cooperation ever happened, before he uses this as evidence that she lied about the minor one.

Happy Days. We got there in the end. There's no need to argue that Anne was 'more reliable' than Mike.

They're both lying.

If Palmer says so.

I only said 'perhaps'.

So why did the typescript exist if Anne didn't type it up for Doreen, and Mike didn't type it up for his own benefit?

I think the question for Palmer is why he still argues that Mike dictated the words from the final draft of the typescript for Anne to copy out by hand into the scrapbook, as this serial liar claimed in his January 1995 affidavit, if he is now happy to agree that the man lied about this document.

[caz]

Barrett didn't want to reveal his writing career.

This looks like a non sequitur. It's also a negative which can't be proved and an assumption about what was motivating Mike at the time. Not revealing his short-lived, unspectacular and spouse-assisted 'writing career' was not a crime, nor evidence of a career change to literary hoaxing. We all pick and choose what to reveal, or not to reveal, about our lives when meeting new people, whether we are applying for a job, looking for a life partner or - as we can safely say about Mike - dreaming of one day having a best seller and approaching a literary agent [the clues are there] with a unique diary that has fallen into his lap, either literally or as a concept. Put your best goods in the shop window, make the best first impression you can and, if you can't write about what you know - because you can't write and you don't know much - bluff your way through and keep everything crossed.

How thrilled Mike must have been to get equal billing with Shirley as her co-author, no less. It's a popular bucket list staple [a former schoolfriend of mine tried for years to get her writing published] and it's not as if Mike hesitated and said: "Sorry, Shirley, but I'm completely new to this game. All I can give you is the diary, I've always been shite at writing. I should have explained when I phoned Doreen." He couldn't wait to get stuck in and impress them with his research and transcription skills! If he didn't want to reveal that he had writing aspirations, he did a lousy job of concealing it. He went into this with his eyes wide open, willing - if not able - to write a book about the diary. He could have just settled for selling the publishing rights and leaving all the hard graft to others, which, according to Shirley, was pretty much what happened. She found him to be out of his depth and struggling with simple research tasks she set for him. Was Mike just lazy, or did he take the plunge, only to find himself in the deep end all over again, just like he had been in the 1980s?

But in showing up in London, Mike had marketed himself as a blue-collar 'ex scrap metal dealer' so Doreen would naturally wonder if he had the ability to produce the typescript she wanted, since blue-collar blokes aren't known for being typists who own typewriters. So she must have asked him about it when she asked for the typescript.

Thus, Barrett was painted into a corner, since she wanted a typescript and he wanted to get the diary published. Yes, he could have thought of it as a 'deal breaker'--or at least a requirement that he would certainly want to satisfy.

Palmer's making my argument for me now. If Mike showed up in London, marketing himself as a scrapper not a writer, who had serendipitously become the owner of a potentially priceless Jack the Ripper artefact, he would have been a total idiot to change course so quickly, by telling Doreen he had already used his own word processor to make a typescript from the handwriting in the old book.

What was Doreen going to say if our lazy faker had chuckled and said: "I'm only an 'umble ex scrap metal dealer, who has seren... serendip... sugar lumps, by sheer luck ended up with this dAirY of incalculable value. It doesn't come with a transcript and I wouldn't know where to start, to be honest, what with my hand tremors and what have you. If you don't want this document of immeasurable worth, I can always shamble down the road with my dodgy hip to Grabbit & Run, Auntie Queerian Books Are Us, who have their own transcribers on the premises."

In my best Doreen voice: "Don't be hasty, Michael dear. I'm sure we can get someone to transcribe it. After all, as I said in my first letter to you, finds like these don't grow on trees. We won't be throwing baby out with the bath water for lack of a guide book for new mothers."

There is also a world of difference between requesting a transcript, and requesting the transcript. That little word could have told us which came first: Doreen's somewhat unusual request for one, or Mike's claim to have made one, after telling her how the diary had supposedly been affecting life in Goldie Street ever since his good friend's death in August 1991. It was inevitable that Doreen would request sight of it, wasn't it? But hardly inevitable - or even all that likely - that she would have asked this ex scrap metal dealer to prepare one. Would she have asked without even knowing if he could read and write? If she was more concerned with what he had been doing over the preceding months to study the diary, and how he had gone about it, isn't that more likely to have been Mike's cue to tell two stupid, impulsive lies for the price of one?

Mike: "The first thing I did, Mrs Montgomery, was to go out and invest in a shiny new word processor so I could make my own transcript of the diary."

Doreen: "That's very impressive, Michael. Shirley will obviously be needing one, so you've saved us quite a job there."

Mike [sotto voce]: "Damn. Me and my big mouth. Now I've got my work cut out. Correction - Anne's got her work cut out. I'll have to tell her a white lie and say that Doreen has asked us for a transcript. Come to think of it, it would be true. Doreen has asked for it."

Thus, there is no 'contradiction' with Mike later hiding the word processor from the police. Again, he doesn't want them to think he was a writer.

The police descended on Mike on 22nd October 1993, shortly after Shirley's book was published, which jointly credited her and Mike with the narrative and commentary. By 26th November it would reach number six in Britain's hardback bestseller list. What did they think he was - a professional bra fitter? It would have been distinctly odd for a recently published author not to own some sort of typing apparatus.

I have no idea why you want to argue proven facts.

Which 'proven fact'? Is it proven that Mike did hide the word processor from the police? Or was it grinning up at them from the dining table when he denied owning one, revealing this soon-to-be best-selling author to be an idiot as well as a liar?

Do we even know that Mike denied it? If it was hidden from sight on Feldman's advice, he had no need to deny owning it unless the police actually asked. Who is the source for Mike's denial? Was it Feldman, because Mike told him about it afterwards?

Palmer is also making a rather bold assumption that Mike said nothing during the interview about his past interest in creative writing, or the writing circles he had attended, where he was encouraged to submit articles. Is it a proven fact that Mike bit his tongue for once, because he didn't want to reveal his previous 'writing career' to the police, despite his most recent literary achievement?

You can still argue that Barrett was lying about having previously created the typescript, and had to rush home and create one, but then you'll need to explain why Anne Graham 'cooperated' in the production of this typescript when your whole theory rests on Anne not cooperating with Mike when it comes to creating a hoax. And, of course, Anne's own contradiction saying the same thing.

I don't need to explain anything. In fact, there is not much point in trying, until Palmer can bear to part with his Barrett hoax goggles for a minute, to better see the light. Someone had to create the typescript, which Keith has made available to this thread, whether it represents a version of the final draft of a 1992 hoax, modified at the eleventh hour, or a decent enough attempt at a faithful, swiftly made transcript, complete with its inevitable and unavoidable examples of human error.

While we would expect to see errors in any transcript, even after invisibly mending the obvious ones, the diary itself had to be free of any mistakes that could only have been the result of someone transferring the words by hand from a prepared script. This would still have been a transcript, but more susceptible to human error, where one such mistake would have been one too many if it couldn't easily be corrected. Yet I see no obvious signs of fatal errors needing attention, so it would have been quite a feat to do this at any speed, let alone in a disguised hand and without a dictionary. I'm not buying the eleven day creation claim, but then I don't buy from lying conmen like Mike who tried to sell it.

[caz]

While we would expect to see errors in any transcript, even after invisibly mending the obvious ones, the diary itself had to be free of any mistakes that could only have been the result of someone transferring the words by hand from a prepared script. This would still have been a transcript, but more susceptible to human error, where one such mistake would have been one too many if it couldn't easily be corrected. Yet I see no obvious signs of fatal errors needing attention, so it would have been quite a feat to do this at any speed, let alone in a disguised hand and without a dictionary. I'm not buying the eleven day creation claim, but then I don't buy from lying conmen like Mike who tried to sell it.

Expanding on this theme, and using Anne Barrett as the pawn, I wonder if anyone can imagine the scene, where she is sitting at the table, pen poised, ready to transfer the words by hand into the specially adapted guard book from a prepared typescript?

According to Mike's affidavit from January 1995, their young daughter is a witness to what happens next, when he proceeds to read the words from the typescript and Anne hand writes them into the guard book.

As we know, the first entry begins in mid-sentence, which is presumably meant to be a clever touch, and at least Anne takes care to begin on the first surviving right-hand page. But there are two differences between the typescript and the guard book in that very first line:

...what I have in store for them they would stop this instance. [typescript]

...what they have in store for them they would stop this instant. [guard book]

The first difference, between 'I' and 'they', doesn't alter the meaning and could be a result of haste or mishearing.

The second difference, between 'instance' and 'instant', reveals an error in the typescript which is correct in the guard book. If Anne is the one making that correction, it suggests a slower, more careful approach to the task ahead.

I think, if I were in Anne's shoes, I'd be struggling to make my handwriting flow, with Mike reading from the typescript, one sentence at a time. I would also want us both to be very familiar with the words before committing a single one of them to the paper, given that there would be no going back. Could I trust Mike not to foul up? Could I trust myself not to foul up?

On balance, I think my only chance of getting to page 63 without a single screw-up would be to send Mike to make the tea and jam butties and leave me to copy directly from the document on the word processor, so I can keep a constant check on the process as I go. I can't see a two person operation working out in the way Mike tried to claim. However, if he was doing his usual thing of taking a truth and using it to fashion a lie, it doesn't take a genius to see why he might have reversed a more feasible two person job to make it fit his agenda at the time. Mike doing his best to read from the diary, while Anne typed it up and young Caroline watched the telly, was never going to be perfect, but it wouldn't end in total disaster either.

Love,

Caz
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