The Diary — Old Hoax or New or Not a Hoax at All?​

[caz]

Eddie said in 2018 that Feldman had called him on the phone and spent some two hours trying to get an admission out of him that he had found the diary in Dodd's house. I believe him because that was typical Feldman, bombarding people with lengthy phone calls, wearing them down until they admitted what he already believed to be true. Eddie could have hung up at any time, but he let Feldman carry on talking interminably, possibly to learn what this stranger already knew about the diary, and what evidence had led him to assume that Eddie knew more, given that few details were in the the pubic domain at the time and there was no indication of when, or if, it would be published in book form.

Following on from this...

Finally, when Eddie sensed this stranger's growing desperation over the phone, to get what would be a potentially incriminating admission, he allegedly asked what it was worth to Feldman to hear what he was spending so long on the phone hoping to hear. Feldman appears to have interpreted this - either at the time or with hindsight - as a sign that Eddie would "talk" if the price was right, regardless of the truth.

I don't know who first mentioned "financial inducement" - or words to that effect – but it must not have worked. Eddie never did cough up a confession, a diary or even a gold watch, and when the phone went dead Feldman had achieved nothing. Perhaps it didn't dawn on him that money was no flipping use to an electrician serving time for effectively pleading guilty to theft.

When Feldman called Mike Barrett, to claim that an electrician was prepared to admit the diary was removed from Paul Dodd's house, Mike was adamant that it never came from the house and went haring down to Fountains Road to have it out with Eddie, believing he was Feldman's informant, although it's not clear if Mike was given an actual name or address. This was a couple of months after Mike's visit to Battlecrease in February 1993, with Feldman, Paul Begg and Martin Howells, when they were told by Paul Dodd that electrical work had been done by Portus & Rhodes.

It was in late April 1993 that Mike decided to swear an affidavit, to reinforce his original story, that Tony Devereux gave him the diary in 1991. What was he so worried about? If he'd hoaxed the diary in 1992, he could have bagged himself a potentially decent provenance by pointing out that anyone working in Maybrick's former home at any point in the past could have found the diary and passed it on to Devereux, without Paul Dodd ever knowing it was there. How was Mike supposed to have known otherwise, given that his story was that Devereux died without saying a word to him about where the diary came from? Mike's insistence that it was never in the house would have lasting consequences.

While Feldman rightly asked himself how Mike could have been certain it didn't come from the house, he took a logical leap in the direction of assuming Mike must know where it had really come from, and therefore Eddie and the Hot Rods could now take a flying leap up their own venal arses. Feldman didn't consider long and hard enough why a Battlecrease provenance might actually have been the worst possible outcome for Mike. If it had been removed from the house while Devereux was alive and had not been missed by its owner, it would have gone through at least two pairs of hands before ending up with Mike in 1991, who'd have been none the wiser.

But what if Mike already knew the electrician who was apparently going to tell Feldman where the diary came from, because he had received it from him many months after Devereux had died? If it crossed Feldman's mind that this could explain everything, it did so in a flash and was soon forgotten. It didn't help that Paul Dodd's apparent inability to provide accurate dates for the work done by P&R led to nobody connecting Mike's phone call to London about the diary on 9th March 1992 with electricians working in Riversdale Road that very morning.

One can hardly hold it against Dodd, for not actively assisting Feldman to make a connection, if there was one to be had, between the P&R electricians and a potential theft from his property. After all, he had a good relationship with Colin Rhodes, despite going on to marry Rhodes's ex wife, so if this very personal situation was awkward enough in 1993, when Feldman et al arrived on the doorstep asking questions about the electrical work, it would not have been helped by Dodd joining the dots for them and putting Rhodes's former employees squarely in the frame. By backdating the electrical work, Dodd was effectively keeping them out of it. Claiming ownership of the diary may have had a temporary appeal for Dodd, but in the long run his priorities appear to have been of the personal kind.

Unfortunately for Feldman, the inferences he chose to draw from what he was being told at the time led him away from the electricians and up the garden path with Mike until he reached Anne Graham – where he stopped dead.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

I don't suppose Mike Barrett missed the point that Jack the Ripper could have written his diary on paper manufactured before 1888 because he asked for a diary in the period 1880 to 1890. But the fact of the matter, Caz, it's that it's not likely to be possible to date paper to a precise year in the nineteenth century. Could Mike have known this? Sure he could. He had access to the full resources of the Liverpool Library, after all.

Jack the Ripper could hardly have been recording his thoughts at the time of the murders using a diary not manufactured until after 1888. I suspect even Mike Barrett could have worked that one out within five minutes of arriving at Liverpool Central Library. But why would he waste his time looking into changes in paper manufacture and when they occurred, if he was wicked and lazy enough to have simply requested a diary for no later than 1888 and be done with it? Would he bother to ascertain whether paper made in 1890 would be indistinguishable from paper made in 1880, just so he could extend his requested date range to include years that would inevitably require an invisible mending job to remove all physical traces of the date or dates?

If you are arguing that Mike did his research before satisfying himself that 1890, and indeed 1891, would be just fine as long as the actual dates were easily removable, what is your explanation for him not going the whole hog and expanding the date range further, from 1870 to 1900 and beyond, to give himself the best possible chance of getting something he could use, in the fastest possible time? Knowing that any dates would need to be physically removed with some care in all but the best-case scenario, Mike would have been no worse off tackling an 1899 diary than an 1889 one, as long as the paper wasn't going to let him down.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Jack the Ripper could hardly have been recording his thoughts at the time of the murders using a diary not manufactured until after 1888. I suspect even Mike Barrett could have worked that one out within five minutes of arriving at Liverpool Central Library. But why would he waste his time looking into changes in paper manufacture and when they occurred, if he was wicked and lazy enough to have simply requested a diary for no later than 1888 and be done with it? Would he bother to ascertain whether paper made in 1890 would be indistinguishable from paper made in 1880, just so he could extend his requested date range to include years that would inevitably require an invisible mending job to remove all physical traces of the date or dates?

If you are arguing that Mike did his research before satisfying himself that 1890, and indeed 1891, would be just fine as long as the actual dates were easily removable, what is your explanation for him not going the whole hog and expanding the date range further, from 1870 to 1900 and beyond, to give himself the best possible chance of getting something he could use, in the fastest possible time? Knowing that any dates would need to be physically removed with some care in all but the best-case scenario, Mike would have been no worse off tackling an 1899 diary than an 1889 one, as long as the paper wasn't going to let him down.

It looks like Mike Barrett did go the whole hog and expand his date range beyond 1900 because he ended up using what would appear from its contents to be an Edwardian photograph album.

[caz]

So, if the diary was as had been described, Barrett could not have returned it. He'd thus obviously already agreed to pay for it. Legally, he was on the hook.

What is it about this process that you don't get? It's very straightforward Caz.

But it's Mike Barrett we are discussing here, Herlock. You remember, the same Scouse scally who snatched an old lady's handbag in his youth. Legally, he was on the hook then too, but he didn't even stop to draw breath on that occasion before allowing the hook to hurt him good and proper. That is about as straightforward as it gets.

You can argue that he learned his lesson after that, and would never have dared renege on an oral agreement to pay £25 for a diary he had not yet seen, while supposedly in the process of faking one for long-term profit, but the fact remains it was Anne who came to his aid and saved him from himself. Had she done the sensible thing and left him by then for being a serial liar and a serious liability, do you seriously imagine he was the sort to take shifts down the pub to earn the £25 he was being chased for, or to cower in a corner by May 1992, dreading the arrival of the bailiffs? There is more than enough evidence from when Anne could finally take it no more, that he'd have done neither.

[caz]

It looks like Mike Barrett did go the whole hog and expand his date range beyond 1900 because he ended up using what would appear from its contents to be an Edwardian photograph album.

How predictable.

But we were discussing Mike's only known request for a diary, which you argued was based on him having researched the history of paper manufacture and setting his date range accordingly. That was your explanation for him asking for anything between 1880 and 1890 and accepting 1891.

[Herlock Sholmes]

But it's Mike Barrett we are discussing here, Herlock. You remember, the same Scouse scally who snatched an old lady's handbag in his youth. Legally, he was on the hook then too, but he didn't even stop to draw breath on that occasion before allowing the hook to hurt him good and proper. That is about as straightforward as it gets.

You can argue that he learned his lesson after that, and would never have dared renege on an oral agreement to pay £25 for a diary he had not yet seen, while supposedly in the process of faking one for long-term profit, but the fact remains it was Anne who came to his aid and saved him from himself. Had she done the sensible thing and left him by then for being a serial liar and a serious liability, do you seriously imagine he was the sort to take shifts down the pub to earn the £25 he was being chased for, or to cower in a corner by May 1992, dreading the arrival of the bailiffs? There is more than enough evidence from when Anne could finally take it no more, that he'd have done neither.

I'm sorry Caz but I can’t see any connection between Mike having once committed a criminal act in stealing a lady's handbag and him having a civil liability which obliged him to pay £25 or face the bailiffs coming round. It's got nothing to do with him learning his lesson from being caught stealing. It's that he wouldn't have wanted the bailiffs to come round and end up having to pay a fee of much greater than £25. Who would? I'm not sure what it is about this common and very well known procedure for debt recovery which causes you such difficulty in understanding the issue. Anne ended up paying the debt which Mike didn't pay himself. That's what happened. How does speculation about some other hypothetical circumstance assist us in any way?

[Herlock Sholmes]

How predictable.

But we were discussing Mike's only known request for a diary, which you argued was based on him having researched the history of paper manufacture and setting his date range accordingly. That was your explanation for him asking for anything between 1880 and 1890 and accepting 1891.

I don't think it's difficult, Caz. Mike was hoping to fake a diary from the 1880s so asked Martin Earl to source a diary from the 1880s. At that time, he couldn't possibly have known that no diaries from the 1880s would be available. When he discovered that no diaries from the 1880s were available he decided to widen the range. Doesn't one normally start off with the ideal item that one would like to have and then, if that can't be achieved, settles for second or third best? Seems like ordinary human nature to me. I can’t understand why you don’t get this?

[Lombro2]

Anything can make sense taken out of context.

Context is everything. The only context you give us is the presumed one that he wanted to fake a diary from the 1880s. That’s all the context you got or the only context that fits?

Try putting your story in more context and see how it flies!

[Herlock Sholmes]

Anything can make sense taken out of context.

Context is everything. The only context you give us is the presumed one that he wanted to fake a diary from the 1880s. That’s all the context you got or the only context that fits?

Try putting your story in more context and see how it flies!

Context or no context Lombro, your posts don't make sense.

If you haven't been concentrating, and really need the context for this issue, it's that Mike Barrett, out of the blue, one day produced a fake diary of Jack the Ripper, for which there is no evidence such a thing previously existed, after secretly attempting to acquire a genuine diary from the 1880s with blank pages. That error strewn diary contains quirky language which Barrett himself is known to have used, grammatical errors which his wife is known to have made and disguised handwriting which can be matched to his wife's handwriting. The further context is that no good evidence has been presented of anyone else having either written or discovered that diary. So you can take that context, chew on it and see how it flies.

[Lombro2]

The non-prior-existence of the journal and the watch don’t hurt me because I said they were in a hole. That hurts you.

But instead of trying to come up with something to prove it wasn’t in a hole, you think you can use that lack of provenance outside of the hole to pin it on the guy who got the diary a couple of hours after it was dug out.

[Herlock Sholmes]

The non-prior-existence of the journal and the watch don’t hurt me because I said they were in a hole. That hurts you.

But instead of trying to come up with something to prove it wasn’t in a hole, you think you can use that lack of provenance outside of the hole to pin it on the guy who got the diary a couple of hours after it was dug out.

It’s already been proven that the diary wasn't "in a hole". The inclusion in the diary of the expression "a one off instance" proves that it wasn't written until after 1945 and thus couldn't have been placed in any kind of hole.

[caz]

Context or no context Lombro, your posts don't make sense.

If you haven't been concentrating, and really need the context for this issue, it's that Mike Barrett, out of the blue, one day produced a fake diary of Jack the Ripper, for which there is no evidence such a thing previously existed, after secretly attempting to acquire a genuine diary from the 1880s with blank pages. That error strewn diary contains quirky language which Barrett himself is known to have used, grammatical errors which his wife is known to have made and disguised handwriting which can be matched to his wife's handwriting. The further context is that no good evidence has been presented of anyone else having either written or discovered that diary. So you can take that context, chew on it and see how it flies.

Oh, I didn't realise you had been corrected concerning your previous insistence that it is 'impossible' to positively match disguised handwriting to the individual using it.

Or is it only professional handwriting examiners who can't do this, while amateurs can 'match' whatever they like to anyone of their choosing? At least it would be consistent with the funny but sad argument that Alec Voller, who actually formulated his own ink - Diamine - wouldn't know it on the page from a bar of soap, while the amateurs saw it a mile off.

Have you been able to match the diary handwriting to Anne's? I trust you are not referring to samples she once wrote for Keith on the spur of the moment, which also look nothing like the diary handwriting. If so, I would gently suggest that if she had penned it, she'd have been mentally deficient to deliberately disguise her normal hand again for those samples, and show off a natural ability to change it at will, when she could simply have replicated her normal hand as easily as falling off a log.

So is she manipulative or mentally deficient in your view? Or both?

[caz]

I don't think it's difficult, Caz. Mike was hoping to fake a diary from the 1880s so asked Martin Earl to source a diary from the 1880s. At that time, he couldn't possibly have known that no diaries from the 1880s would be available. When he discovered that no diaries from the 1880s were available he decided to widen the range. Doesn't one normally start off with the ideal item that one would like to have and then, if that can't be achieved, settles for second or third best? Seems like ordinary human nature to me. I can’t understand why you don’t get this?

Oh, it's all too easy, Herlock, when you strip it all away from the context, as Lombro2 pointed out.

If Mike was hoping 'to fake a diary from the 1880s', it wasn't Maybrick's, was it? The text is concentrated on a limited and very specific period of his life, from the move to Battlecrease in February 1888 to his death there in May 1889. He even connects the brooding atmosphere of the house with his first murderous thoughts, shortly after moving in, and this sets the scene for all that follows.

You can dismiss the work in the house on the same day as Mike's call to London as a simple coincidence, to rid yourself of an inconvenient context, but your own context has Maybrick's personal Battlecrease diary, in the form of day-to-day entries that are undated except for the last, sitting on the word processor waiting for something suitable to house it. According to Mike's affidavit, the story was conceived and basically written while Devereux was alive, but even if you shift this part of the process much closer to March 1992, when Mike is ready to call Doreen about what will be Jack the Ripper's undated personal "diary", your context dictates that he has nothing to house the prepared text until 31st March 1992, after which it has to be handwritten into a photo album adapted for the purpose, followed by the transcript typed up from the handwritten version and printed off, for Mike to take to London with the diary itself. The available evidence favours this over the transcript being prepared and sent to Doreen after 13th April, and before the diary was deposited in the bank. Either way, your context doesn't allow much time for altering the text or the basic concept of Battlecrease 1888-9, as we get from the Maybrick diary.

Mike either researched his paper requirements before calling Martin Earl or he winged it.

With that research under his belt, an 1890 ceiling was needlessly low, as I think you would acknowledge, if grudgingly.

Without it, Mike's 1890 ceiling, upped to 1891, was too high for Maybrick datewise, and potentially too high for the paper, for all he could have known.

With just the briefest look into Konrad Kujau's biggest mistake, and how best to avoid it with Jack the Ripper's diary, it would become apparent that just one year in paper manufacture - 1955 - caught him out and got him sent to prison. All forgers take risks, I get it. But do they typically take risks that are 100% avoidable?

In Mike's case, I could believe it. But I would find it quite extraordinary if Anne didn't care whether her lying liability of a husband had covered the basics in risk limitation.

You mentioned that no diaries for 1880-90 were available, and only the tiny appointments diary for 1891, but that was just one week after a single advertisement appeared in a single issue of a single publication, so the odds were very much against Mike getting anything suitable for Maybrick's diary using that method and that wording, in such a limited time frame.

When asking for a "diary" to house whatever you believe was on the word processor by then, Mike's request for a minimum number of unused or blank pages was not particularly useful with no reference to page size - as he would soon find when the only one available by 26th March arrived in the post. It would be like asking for at least 20 pieces of string, and when asked: "How long do you want them?" Mike replies: "I want to keep them, you daft twat. I'll pay you later."