Maybrick Diary Typescript 1992 (KS Ver.)

[caz]

To reiterate, I was not running with Melvin's "duff information" because Melvin never suggested it.

Ironic, when we consider that Melvin's duff information was that Robbie and Albert had lived at No.37 Goodwin Avenue, and therefore not No.160, while Feldman had never suggested they did. In fact, he candidly admitted that no link could be established between the family at No.160 and our Johnson brothers.

You're getting us off topic (again)...

Sounds like my ex, when he expected me to share the blame for all the booze in our shopping trolley, which somehow ended up in his glass.

I've been the one trying to steer us back to the typescript. Trying and failing is better than making no attempt at all.

...but if Carol Emmas is correct, and Robbie did live in Goodwin Avenue in the 1960s...

You mean if the electoral register is correct, and I would never accuse you of doubting it, although I did wonder if Feldman may have doubted the register's accuracy when it came to its spelling of Johnstone.

...then an explanation is in order why Olga Maybrick Ellison already knew by the mid-1980s (at the latest) that someone in Goodwin Avenue had had Maybrick's watch, when Albert, formerly of Goodwin Avenue, claims he didn’t buy the watch until 1992.

There is an assumption here that IF [the biggest IF on the Wirral] Olga told Norma that 'someone' in Goodwin Avenue had James Maybrick's watch, it would have been the same watch that Albert Johnson went on to covet and buy in 1992, three decades after he had lived there himself, with its distinctive JO monogram engraved on it. While I have little doubt that a man like Maybrick would have owned at least one pocket watch of some sort and at some point in his life, that's as far as it goes. How, when and why his own watch would have left his possession and ended up with this unknown person in Goodwin Avenue, before eventually being sold to Albert in 1992, is not something I consider remotely worth exploring. If others feel the need, go for it.

I have two explanations, and neither is good news for your theories.

1. Mrs. Meagher's memory was polluted by Feldman and his team, and she never actually mentioned Goodwin Avenue. The street name was inadvertently 'planted.'

2. Someone in Goodwin Avenue did have Maybrick's genuine watch in the 1960s, and unless you're willing to swallow an enormous coincidence, this was the inspiration for Robbie Johnson's later hoax.

Let's go with No. 1, since it seems to be your preferred explanation.

Whoa, slow down there boy. The only explanation I need is that Olga and Norma both had genuine family connections back to the Maybricks and Olga's birthday book happened to have an entry for someone named Johnstone who had genuinely lived in Goodwin Avenue. Norma could well have recalled her Auntie Olga mentioning Goodwin Avenue in the context of one of her relatives, friends or acquaintances [Mrs Johnson sounds too formal for the first two, and she'd have known the correct spelling if this was a close friend or near relation], given the existence of that birthday book. Had the surname in common been Smith, Brown or Jones, would this have seemed beyond coincidence? You seem to be suggesting that Robbie could have known that someone in the Johnstone family had James Maybrick's watch in the 1960s, so when he learned in April 1993 that a diary had turned up, claiming to be Maybrick's, he suddenly had the brilliant idea to use the watch his brother had bought the previous year to create a bandwagon hoax, not knowing if the diary would resist being tossed in the same skip as the Hitler Diaries before it could even be published.

This would mean that on three known occasions Feldman and/or Feldman's team managed to elicit false information from the people they had interviewed, whether through 'pollution,' leading questions, or from people telling Feldman what he wanted to hear.

1. Mrs. Meagher.

2. Anne Graham.

3. Billy Graham.

Three strikes and one is usually out, but you're banking on Feldman eliciting genuine information from the electricians--not a great bet considering Feldman's track record for the other three--as well as the irony that with the electricians even Feldman himself believed that his own clumsy interviewing techniques had led to false leads, a rumor mill, and (ultimately) one of the electricians offering to the give the diary a bogus provenance "for the right price."

Considering all that, it's going to be a tough sell, Caz. Good luck with it!

I don't consider luck to have anything to do with it. Evidence only is required, and only one strike is needed against the combined evidence for a 9th March 1992 emergence of the diary, for me to crack a whole box of eggs on my own face. I think I'm safe to consume the box I have, and several future boxes, while waiting for that one strike.

If Feldman's instincts were wrong concerning Anne Graham and Billy Graham - which is something we can both believe in - then the chances are good that his instincts were also wrong when he dismissed the electricians only to go charging down the Graham rabbit hole. Perhaps he was judging all workmen by his own standards, when he assumed that the one offering to reveal all wanted money for old rope.

As for Norma Meagher, I'm not sure we can say with any certainty whether she only said what she said because of what Carol Emmas said first, or whether she would have said it anyway.

[caz]

If Feldman's instincts were wrong concerning Anne Graham and Billy Graham - which is something we can both believe in - then the chances are good that his instincts were also wrong when he dismissed the electricians only to go charging down the Graham rabbit hole. Perhaps he was judging all workmen by his own standards, when he assumed that the one offering to reveal all wanted money for old rope.

Just a quick addition before we go back - cough, cough - on topic, to what the evidence is for the Barretts' typescript being faked to make it appear like a genuine transcript made from the diary itself. In the absence of any evidence, I suppose the argument - albeit a circular one - would be that as they had so little trouble faking the actual diary between them, it follows that faking the transcript to accompany it to "that London" would have been a piece of cake by comparison. Except for the fact that there was never any need to do one at all. All Mike needed to say to Doreen, in the event that she had actually asked him to produce a transcript, was that the task would be beyond him, as a humble ex scrap metal dealer, and his wife was too busy to help him. Job done - or not done in this instance. But from the context it looks like Mike rashly went and told Doreen he had transcribed the diary - partly to impress her, and partly to impress upon her that he had spent some time working on the diary, and hadn't just been working on Eddie Lyons to part with it. Naturally enough, Doreen asked Mike to bring the transcript to her office with the diary.

The addition is in connection with the theory that the Battlecrease electricians - to a man - were lying to Feldman with the intention of screwing money out of him for a false confession to removing the diary from Paul Dodd's house.

But only one of them, when he answered the phone in Fountains Road and Feldman accused him of theft, asked what his confession was worth. This was Eddie Lyons.

So what motivated Eddie to meet Robert Smith and Mike Barrett in the Saddle just a couple of months later, and come out with an obviously invented story in which he had indeed removed a book from Paul Dodd's house but had thrown it in a skip - that was never on the premises? And why did Eddie lie again, by denying he had ever met Robert Smith or told this story?

Allowing that Eddie was not a clone of Mike Barrett - nor indeed a clown like Mike Barrett - one would have expected him to have reasons for lying that actually made some sense. This time, Eddie was not telling lies in the hope of screwing money out of Feldman, Smith or anyone else, and there was nothing to be gained by telling them, so what was the point? Something else was going on here, but what? Only if he had something to lose - or something to hide - would it have been in Eddie's own interests to lie, not once but twice, over this imaginary skip. What was the worst that could have happened if he'd had no provable connection with Mike Barrett or anyone's diary prior to Feldman coming along in 1993 and putting temptation in his way? What was Eddie doing in late June 1993, injecting himself into a second Battlecrease fantasy, if he'd been the one to sow the seeds of the first? If he'd merely told Feldman what he had wanted to hear, but had not gone on to make a confession because there was nothing to confess, what damage had he done, which then needed to be undone with something the size of a skip?

Compare this with Feldman's promise of filthy lucre dangled in front of Anne Graham the following year, in return for confirming his latest hunch that the diary was a family heirloom, and not someone else's property that was too hot to handle. His previous scepticism concerning revelations for financial rewards simply melted away on encountering Lady MacBarrett - a gentlewoman in whom he built an absolute trust.

[rjpalmer]

If Feldman's instincts were wrong concerning Anne Graham and Billy Graham - which is something we can both believe in - then the chances are good that his instincts were also wrong when he dismissed the electricians only to go charging down the Graham rabbit hole.

If we apply this same logic to everyone else whose instincts were wrong concerning Anne and Billy Graham, who will be left to defend the Eddy Lyons provenance?

It's a fair question, isn't it?

Why do you hold Feldman to a different standard than the others who were taken in by Anne and Billy?

[Scott Nelson]

What if Anne's 'in her family for years' story actually meant the photo album (without the diary handwriting) that may have belonged to Billy Graham?

Billy then gives it to Tony Devereux and they compose the diary story together? No?

[erobitha]

What if Anne's 'in her family for years' story actually meant the photo album (without the diary handwriting) that may have belonged to Billy Graham?

Billy then gives it to Tony Devereux and they compose the diary story together? No?

I don’t believe there is any evidence at all that Billy knew Tony directly. However, we do know Mike’s dad Stan did on occasion drink with Mike and Tony in the Saddle.

[caz]

If we apply this same logic to everyone else whose instincts were wrong concerning Anne and Billy Graham, who will be left to defend the Eddy Lyons provenance?

It's a fair question, isn't it?

Why do you hold Feldman to a different standard than the others who were taken in by Anne and Billy?

My observation was not about logic in general, as it may apply to other people's 'instincts', but how Feldman's mind worked in individual situations - specifically in 1993 compared with 1994 and beyond. He never knew about the Maybrick related events of 9th March 1992, so his instincts were necessarily confined to what he was being told and by whom, and their 'information' was rejected or accepted accordingly. If he disbelieved what the electricians were telling him merely because one of them had asked what was in it for him, he should not have tempted Anne with what was in it for her, if she told him something he didn't know but was already primed to believe. Feldman held himself to a different standard in each case, which ought to put a question mark over his conclusions in both.

It was rather different for Keith Skinner, who was not involved with the electricians when Feldman had that particular bee in his bonnet in 1993. Keith only picked up where Feldman had left off in 2004, when he was as surprised as anyone to find himself staring goggle-eyed at the documented double event of 9th March 1992. Previously there had only been the one game in town for Keith, which was Anne's unevidenced "in the family" story. Mike's muddled hoax claims had failed to stand up to scrutiny to form one coherent, credible and supported explanation for how the diary came to exist. Tony Devereux was not only dead but, without Anne's belated attempt at life support, he was also a dead end. Now, in 2004, there appeared to be actual evidence pointing to an alternate possibility, which could be followed up and tested - to breaking point if it was all an illusion, consisting of not one but several unlikely but genuine, fact-based coincidences. [Where is "Ludwig" when we need him?]

I don't have to tell anyone that no such breaking point has yet been reached, and that consequently the Barrett hoax believers are still at war with Battlecrease, as it battles on regardless, its walls and secrets impenetrable.

[caz]

Back to the typescript...

Does anyone seriously buy into this ‘sales gimmick’ idea, in which Anne uses Mike’s doctored photo album, purchased at auction on 31st March 1992, to transfer the diary text by hand, in time to take it to London on 13th April with the ink barely dry? If so, they may wish to revisit the question of whether the text was adapted at the eleventh hour to account for the pages which Mike would have had to remove.

The apparent reference to missing pages [or ‘items’] within the diary text had to be subtle and plausible enough for ‘SirJim’ to have included in his personal diary, while providing a convenient explanation for the damage. But does it reflect a deliberate last-minute tweak by Anne, to excuse the state of the only book Mike had managed to find? Would she have bothered, if Mike had conned her into thinking it was only supposed to be a marketing gimmick, to tart up their fictional story? Or is it just a coincidence that lends itself to alternative interpretations?

If anyone still wants to take Mike’s affidavit seriously, there was all the time in the world to find the old book first, and then make the contents reflect its physical condition. According to the only formal written account we have from the horse’s mouth, this was all done back in early 1990, two years before he contacted Doreen with the finished fake ready to go.

It boils down to what Anne thought she was trying to achieve between 1st and 12th April 1992, and currently I’ve seen no evidence, and certainly no reason to believe, that it included transferring their own prepared text by hand into an old book bought at auction on 31st March.

The only solid evidence that exists for the Barretts ‘collaborating’ on anything in the period before 13th April 1992 would appear to be the typed transcript, which accompanied the diary to London. An argument can be made, based on what we know, for this collaborative process to have been a last-minute, sigh-inducing effort by Anne to control and limit the lies Mike had already told Doreen. I doubt Anne’s ‘professionalism’ would have kicked in for much less, even when it became clear that Doreen was going full steam ahead. But Anne’s sense of ‘doing the right thing’ could have been triggered by the big fat lie Mike had told Doreen, that he had bought his word processor for the purpose of transcribing the diary - three lies for the price of one, assuming it was not paid for with his own hard-earned money. It had not only arrived years before the diary, but Anne knew it simply wasn’t in Mike’s gift to produce a transcript unaided, even if he’d had months to work on it.

When Doreen naturally asked Mike to bring the fruit of his labours with him to London with the diary, he’d have felt a moment of mild panic before asking Anne to come to his rescue. After all, he’d made it clear to Doreen from the start that his wife "ruled the roost". The alternative would be that he had to lie again to everyone in London, to explain why he didn’t have the transcript with him [“the hamster ate it/I left it on the train/Anne forgot to put it in my briefcase”] or – and for Anne this didn’t even bear thinking about – he’d have to sit down at the word ‘prosser’ and do the best he could to produce something quickly, which resembled a study aid that he could have used over the previous months to make sense of the handwritten original. [Apologies to anyone spitting their tea out at this point.]

Anne’s sense of professionalism saved the day, and the resulting transcript survives as testimony to what a wife will do when her lying husband has roped her into something very much against her will and professional instincts. It is hardly evidence that this brief collaborative effort extended back in time to include the conception, research and composition of the text, and the unrecognisable handwriting stands firmly against both the marketing gimmick and deliberate scam theories.

As for Mike’s research notes, they were not handed over until the summer of 1992, so they cannot count as independent evidence that the Barretts were collaborating on them or anything else, before the magic date of 9th March. After the safe delivery of the transcript came the need for Mike to lie about how he had used it to research the diary ever since Tony Devereux had died the previous August, having told him precisely nothing about it. So Mike made a series of notes during the spring and early summer of 1992, over which Anne felt obliged to cast her professional eye, to correct any blatant typing or spelling errors and make sure any dates were in line with the story Mike was telling before he handed them over to Shirley. With every indication that Mike had begun his research alone, and continued when Shirley came on board in April 1992, the lines only had to be blurred between those two periods, so Mike could have spent months, not just a few weeks, tackling the diary text solo, before Shirley was able to inject her own professionalism.

That was the extent of the Barretts’ ‘collaboration’, if the object was inherently linked with Mike’s propensity for lying, and for dragging Anne in with his lies from the day he first saw the name Jack the Ripper in that old book and the chance of a lifetime opening up in front of him. ‘Be careful what you wish for’ could have been coined for the Mike Barretts of this world.

Love,

Caz
X

[Iconoclast]

Does anyone seriously buy into this ‘sales gimmick’ idea, in which Anne uses Mike’s doctored photo album, purchased at auction on 31st March 1992, to transfer the diary text by hand, in time to take it to London on 13th April with the ink barely dry?

No. Not for a moment. Almost certainly never in the future either.

There is not a scrap of conclusive evidence for anything whatsoever that supposedly happened before Monday, April 13, 1992. Other than Mike ringing Rupert Crew Limited on March 9, 1992, and the electricians from Portus & Rhodes Electrical working in Battlecrease House (and requiring a large number of floorboard protectors, whatever the hell they are or were but highly suggestive of floorboards having been raised that morning) also on March 9, 1992 there is nothing that we can say, 'That definitely happened'. The desperate tale told by Lord Orsam and subsequently RJ Palmer were pure fabrications designed to muddy the waters to give cheap credence to these utterly implausible fabrications (and they are fabrications because neither knows for certain that their claims have any basis whatsoever in reality). Lord Orsam (and subsequently RJ Palmer) have not peddled lies because that would require them to know the truth but they have certainly peddled fabrications in the sense of theories pieced together using whatever works and ignoring that which doesn't work or that which suggests they are wrong. And my dear readers have had to absorb this bombast (rather than metaphorical ballast) for year after year to the point where most seem to now just assume the fabrication is the truth.

I find it no different to the other Ripper tropes which have evolved into hard facts. My favourite is the 'fact' that the 'Dear Boss' letter dated September 25, 1888, was written by 'an enterprising journalist'. Always an enterprising journalist, mind, rarely just a common or garden one. The truth of this fabrication cannot now be known but that is irrelevant to those who care nothing for the absolute truth and care only for the appearance of it so that they sleep sounder in their beds.

The question which constantly bothers me about the 'sales gimmick' theory is simply 'Why ask the question at all?'. If the scrapbook was a sales gimmick because the scrapbook was a hoax, then what else could Mike Barrett (or Mike and Anne Barrett, or Mike and Anne Barrett and Tony Devereux, or Mike and Anne Barrett and Tony Devereux and Gerard Kane, et cetera) have taken to London? They would have had to have had an apparently-Victorian document so the notion of it being a 'sales gimmick' to persuade Anne to write it but she wouldn't realise what Mike was going to do with it seems utterly moot - a theory thrown together by Orsam or RJ or some other scrapbookphobe to keep Anne vaguely honest whilst steering her hand to the paper in all innocence of the consequences which would either soon unfold or which were planned all along by her cunning fox of an unemployed, ex-scrap-metal dealing, failed journalist husband (you know the type, the usual sort of hoaxer).

There is nothing concrete pre-April 13, 1992, other than that Mike Barrett talked to Lauren Negate and then Doreen Montgomery of Rupert Crew Limited about something which he thought might be the diary of Jack the Ripper - something which later was identified as intending to be James Maybrick's diary. Oh, and - of course - the small coincidence of a guy who drank in the same pub as Barrett working on the floorboards of James Maybrick's home eight miles away that very morning.

It's not conclusive (and maybe never now can be regardless of potential deathbed confessions and what have you) but anyone who thinks that Jack the Ripper can be identified conclusively so long after his crimes were committed probably over-estimates even the confidence levels of DNA analysis. There will always be doubts but we shouldn't use what we don't know as evidence pointing towards what we wish we knew. Unless, of course, you trust the inebriated, pompous, ugly, passive-aggressive - oh, and aggressive - ramblings of a Scouser on a bender with an audience full of eager listeners who foolishly imagine that he might be capable of delivering a consistent and conclusive proof of anything other than his interest in another pint, ideally paid for by some other mug.

Keith, if you bought Mike a pint that night at the Cloak & Dagger Club, my apologies for the sleight ...

Ike

[rjpalmer]

Methinks the ladies doth protest too much.