Maybrick Diary Typescript 1992 (KS Ver.)

[rjpalmer]

[*]Was the book he gave to Ace Detective the same book Ace sold to Keith Skinner?.

As is often the case, your good friend David Barrat is several steps ahead of you and has posed these same questions.

Yes---how do we know?

You seem to be suggesting, or at least wondering about the possibility that when Keith approached Alan Gray with his desire to obtain what purported to be Barrett's copy of the Sphere History Volume II, Gray--by now disgruntled with Ripperologists--popped down to the local bookshop, found a dog-eared copy for £5, and sold it as the 'real McCoy,' pocketing £95 instant profit.

Do I have that right?

I would assume Keith would have attempt to receive some assurance from Gray that the book's provenance was legitimate, but I wasn't there; Barrat has made the interesting observation that the last known whereabouts of Mike's book was in the possession of Melvin Harris sometime around 2002.

Since Barrett and Gray had bitterly dissolved their association some years earlier, one would think that this would have also ended any casual contact between Gray and Harris. It's unclear to me. So how did Gray retrieve the book from Harris, if he did so?

It's all rather murky, but perhaps Keith has answers for you.

To the readers: The cassette is the one dated 6 December 1994, as has been stated twice. Why Tom now gratuitously refers to it as the 6 November tape, I do not know, other than business as usual.

It can be found here, but it's rough going.

Alan Gray & Michael Barrett Cassette Recordings 1994-1996 - Casebook: Jack the Ripper Forums

[caz]

I wonder about the accuracy of this statement. The audio tape for 6 December 1994 certainly sounds like Gray is describing, in real time, a visit to Barrett's solicitor. There is a short break in the tape and Gray then describes The Sphere History, Volume II, as he holds it in his hand.

I've now addressed this one on another thread, where Palmer was again posting off topic.

Just for clarification, the offices [plural] on Dale Street were housed in a large building, and were not exclusively for Mr Bark-Jones, who had the misfortune to count Mike Barrett among his clients. In my experience as a receptionist and telephonist for a group of solicitors, in the early 2000s, clients always needed a timed appointment in advance to see their own solicitor, whose personal assistant would collect them from reception on arrival and escort them to their own solicitor's office. While I had to record every phone call that came into the offices, with the time, date and name, actual appointments would have had to be recorded, for obvious reasons, in the diary of the assistant. Casual visitors or potential new clients could be seen briefly if one of the solicitors happened to be free at the time, but clients who already had their own solicitor and walked in off the street expecting to see him/her, would find they'd had a wasted journey.

The 'short break' in our comedy duo's tape, followed by the book being placed in Gray's hand, suggests that he did not accompany Mike into the building to see where he was actually going, much less that he went up to Bark-Jones's office, or that of his assistant, to check that Mike was either welcome or expected. If that had been the case, the tape could have been kept running to capture their footsteps and more of Mike's chatter, until the right door on the right floor was reached.

It took a while, but the scales eventually fell from Gray's eyes, when he woke up to the reality that he should never have trusted Mike Barrett as far as he could throw him. And yet here we have Mike's antics being held up as more trustworthy than the recollections and records of his solicitor. I just don't get it. How many other witnesses, who were in a position to see right through Mike over the years, have been considered less reliable than this liar because the alternative - that Mike never told the truth about the circumstances in which he acquired the "old book" - simply can't be contemplated?

[caz]

I would assume Keith would have attempt to receive some assurance from Gray that the book's provenance was legitimate, but I wasn't there; Barrat has made the interesting observation that the last known whereabouts of Mike's book was in the possession of Melvin Harris sometime around 2002.

Since Barrett and Gray had bitterly dissolved their association some years earlier, one would think that this would have also ended any casual contact between Gray and Harris. It's unclear to me. So how did Gray retrieve the book from Harris, if he did so?

The last 'known' whereabouts of the book handed over to Gray in December 1994 was 'in the possession of Melvin Harris sometime around 2002'?

This is 'known' by whom and how? Not just by inference, I hope?

If it's unclear to Palmer, it's as clear as mud to me. I had long understood that the book now in Keith's possession went directly from Mike to Alan Gray in December 1994 - with no support for a detour to Bark-Jones's office or Melvin Harris's bank vault. The latter's comments on the old message boards indicated that he knew of its condition, but he was kept well informed by Gray, so that would be no surprise. Did Harris provide any actual evidence that he and Gray ever met up in person, or that Mike's book left Gray's possession - even temporarily - before he sold it to Keith and finally got a little something out of his disastrous relationship with Mike?

I'm assuming Mike's book was not among Melvin's other diary-related material when he died, so why would he have had this supposedly vital evidence of a Barrett hoax in his grasp 'sometime around 2002', only to let it slip through his fingers?

I must say, if I had what I considered to be solid evidence of someone's fakery, I like to think I'd be a bit more careful with it.

[caz]

Returning to topic, has anyone found solid evidence of Barrett fakery in the typescript?

Love,

Caz
X

[rjpalmer]

I'm assuming Mike's book was not among Melvin's other diary-related material when he died, so why would he have had this supposedly vital evidence of a Barrett hoax in his grasp 'sometime around 2002', only to let it slip through his fingers?

You can, of course, "assume" whatever you wish to assume, but it is often the case that the spouses of those interested in the Whitechapel Murders case, not to mention its more marginalized off-shoots, have no interest in the subject themselves, and Melvin was the sort of man who would have owned hundreds of books.

Melvin died suddenly, and unless his widow was 'up' up on the obscure and tedious details of the Maybrick Scam, she would not have recognized the book's significance. It would have been just another book on the history of English Literature on a shelf.

In other words, I doubt Melvin kept a 468-page hardbound book in a file folder titled 'Evidence of The Maybrick Hoax,' any more than Mike Barrett kept a copy the same 468-page book stuffed down his trousers on the odd chance that Alan Gray would offer him a lift to his solicitor's office.