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

[Iconoclast]

From you point of view, evidence of arsenic or strychnine abuse on the album would be a boon for your beliefs, while I think it would be a relatively simple matter to determine what type of oil had damaged the inside cover. Wouldn't it be something if it was related to the plant Linum usitatissimum?

Yes not yes, RJ.

Imagine someone spends many hundreds or even thousands on the research and - lo! - arsenic is detected in significant amounts, say, on the cover, the spine, and the back. Whoopi-doo, you might think? Well, yes not yes because of one huge flaw in the challenge and one created and perpetuated by folks such as your good self: if Robert were to submit the scrapbook for the type of analysis suggested by you and arsenic was discovered, then the argument would be made that Mike Barrett had simply smeared it on the scrapbook himself. I'd give it the Planck length before the posts were being made here on Casebook.

And if the research claimed that the arsenic was very very old indeed? No problem at all: with absolutely no reference whatsoever to any actual authority on the subject, I can confirm for you now that if you rub arsenic with an old rag doused in linseed oil and sugar lumps, it will gradually age in appearance.

Yours is a no-lose position, it seems to me. Yes not yes?

PS If you are looking for evidence of arsenic in connection with Jack the Ripper, you need to exclude Mike the Barrett from the evidence chain. There is a way to do this: if we knew where 'Eddowes'' red leather cigarette case was and tested that positively for strychnine and/or arsenic, I've always believed that that would be game over. Unless you can think of a way Mike managed that minor miracle (possibly during that wet weekend when he was in London planting the September 17, 1888, 'Dear Boss' letter in the official record?)?

[rjpalmer]

Prego.

Good afternoon, Ike.

Speaking of our friends the Italians, I don't know if you've hear about this, but a chemist named Maria Gaetana Giovanna Pittalą of the University of Catania made some interesting discoveries while analyzing proteins found on the correspondence of Vlad the Impaler--Dracula.

She found peptides, which suggests that old Vlad may have secreted blood in his tears and also found "proteins linked to an inflammatory disease and a genetic respiratory disorder known for chronic lung and sinus infections."

Advances in science have made it possible to find out quite a lot of what is on the surface of old documents--sometimes with surprising results.

And Dr. Pittalą used mass spectrometry--there was no harm to the documents at all. Other scientists used the same techniques to find tuberculosis on a typed letter by George Orwell, arsenic on the 17th Century notebooks of Kepler, and evidence of morphine use while analyzing a letter by the Russian novelist Bulgakov.

Dracula may have wept blood on tear-stained letters, chemical analysis reveals | Salon.com

A friend of yours likes to talk about people having the "courage of their convictions," and I would think that a courageous Robert Smith might wish to submit is confessional photo album for an analysis of this type.

From you point of view, evidence of arsenic or strychnine abuse on the album would be a boon for your beliefs, while I think it would be a relatively simple matter to determine what type of oil had damaged the inside cover.

Wouldn't it be something if it was related to the plant Linum usitatissimum?

Regards.

[Iconoclast]

Grazie.

Prego.

[rjpalmer]

It was 2002.

Grazie.

[Iconoclast]

Why was Alan Gray writing to Seth Linder in November 1994? Are you sure you got that right?

No, I got that wrong. It was 2002.

[rjpalmer]

While I'm on a roll, Gray also stated in his November 23, 1994 letter to Seth Linder:

Why was Alan Gray writing to Seth Linder in November 1994? Are you sure you got that right?

[Scott Nelson]

Did Tony write in block lettering all the time? How well did his daughters know what he was up to from the late 1980s to the time of his death?

[rjpalmer]

Whether Anne or Mike wrote on that cassette tape, it was only one letter which 'gave the game away'. Gray was not claiming that all of the writing was reflective of the scrapbook's - just the letter 'Y' (presumably in 'Dorothy').

So what you should have claimed was that 'As far as I know, Gray recognized Anne’s letter!!!'.

Ike, Old Man, if you strain any harder at my meaning you might get a hernia!

I wrote Anne's "lettering"--ie., her handwriting. I did not mean to imply multiple individual letters were recognized (but see Lord Orsam's 'handwriting' thread for further discussion on this interesting topic).

You're quite right to be concise, though: one letter is all it took, much like Jay Hartley and the "Special K" on the 'Maybrick' watch convinced him that he had found the scribe.

What's good for Hartley is good for Gray.

Seriously though, my only point was to dispute the insistence that Gray thought he recognized Barrett's handwriting, which might influence any analysis of the rest of the conversation.

Anyway, it's stupid. Why pretend that Mike meant he wrote half the diary and handed the pen to Anne. He consistently identified her as the penman, or penwoman rather.

No one is forcing you to accept this, but there's no point in pretending otherwise.

It is worth bearing in mind that Mr. Gray ultimately concluded that the diary was created by Tony Devereux and Anne Graham. According to his children, Tony wrote in block lettering, so who does that leave as Gray's pen person?

Regards.

[Yabs]

I edited the part of the tape you’re discussing and had another try at slowing it down and cleaning it up a bit.
Not the best, but it’s there for ease of reference.

https://streamable.com/6yaxed?src=player-page-share

[Herlock Sholmes]

We need to be clear about this - Alan Gray was not basing his brilliant detective insight on the entire entry written on the cassette recording of one of Barrett's interviews with clairvoyant Dorothy Wright. He was basing it upon a single letter - the letter 'Y'. From Seth Linder's notes which paraphrase what he eventually wrote on page 152 of Inside Story:

Suddenly there is a breakthrough. MB shows him a letter he has written to Doreen Montgomery. AG is struck with the handwriting. ‘I’ve seen that Y somewhere else. I haven't seen that in the Ripper Diary, have I. By Christ I've tumbled you at last. You wrote the manuscript'.

Whether Anne or Mike wrote on that cassette tape, it was only one letter which 'gave the game away'. Gray was not claiming that all of the writing was reflective of the scrapbook's - just the letter 'Y' (presumably in 'Dorothy').

So what you should have claimed was that 'As far as I know, Gray recognized Anne’s letter!!!'.

Why are you relying on Seth Linder's notes, Ike? Why not just quote directly from the tape, now that Caz has identified the passage? She seems to be able to hear it all as clear as crystal. So just quote directly from the tape.

Perhaps, while doing so, you could also clear up for us if Gray was commenting on a letter Mike had written to Doreen Montgomery, as Seth Linder apparently says in his notes, or was remarking on the "y" in the name "Dorothy Wright" written on a cassette tape, which is what is stated on page 152 of Caz's book. They can't both be correct, can they? I'm so confused.

[Iconoclast]

Unless Keith Skinner’s vast collection of archival material contains the original cassette tapes that Gray was describing, ie., tapes from the years of Mike’s secret career as a freelance writer in the 1980s, it is pure conjecture that the handwriting was Mike’s.
At one point (in Inside Story) Barrett claims that Anne wrote those articles, so, if true, she would naturally have listened to the cassette tapes. We are further told by Keith Skinner in his introduction to Anne’s book that she was a meticulous organizer of the Maybrick documents and that her finding aid is (or was) still used at Kew.
Who was more likely to have labeled these tapes, Anne or the heavy drinking Bomgo Barrett?
As far as I know, Gray recognized Anne’s lettering!!!

We need to be clear about this - Alan Gray was not basing his brilliant detective insight on the entire entry written on the cassette recording of one of Barrett's interviews with clairvoyant Dorothy Wright. He was basing it upon a single letter - the letter 'Y'. From Seth Linder's notes which paraphrase what he eventually wrote on page 152 of Inside Story:

Suddenly there is a breakthrough. MB shows him a letter he has written to Doreen Montgomery. AG is struck with the handwriting. ‘I’ve seen that Y somewhere else. I haven't seen that in the Ripper Diary, have I. By Christ I've tumbled you at last. You wrote the manuscript'.

Whether Anne or Mike wrote on that cassette tape, it was only one letter which 'gave the game away'. Gray was not claiming that all of the writing was reflective of the scrapbook's - just the letter 'Y' (presumably in 'Dorothy').

So what you should have claimed was that 'As far as I know, Gray recognized Anne’s letter!!!'.

[rjpalmer]

Gray had just seen an example of Mike's handwriting, which he thought looked the same as the writing in the diary itself, so he said: "By Christ I've tumbled you at last."

Unless Keith Skinner’s vast collection of archival material contains the original cassette tapes that Gray was describing, ie., tapes from the years of Mike’s secret career as a freelance writer in the 1980s, it is pure conjecture that the handwriting was Mike’s.

At one point (in Inside Story) Barrett claims that Anne wrote those articles, so, if true, she would naturally have listened to the cassette tapes. We are further told by Keith Skinner in his introduction to Anne’s book that she was a meticulous organizer of the Maybrick documents and that her finding aid is (or was) still used at Kew.

Who was more likely to have labeled these tapes, Anne or the heavy drinking Bomgo Barrett?

As far as I know, Gray recognized Anne’s lettering!!!

[Iconoclast]

Hi Caz,

Again bumped from the false dichotomy thread ...

In Mike's final days, it was all change again, when he tried to take sole credit for 'translating' the diary's contents using the word processor and claimed that Anne had had nothing to do with it. He was no longer claiming that he or Anne had written the diary; his only concern was to go down in history as the person who had single-handedly transcribed it. And even that was a lie.

If memory serves (prompted by your reference to 'In Mike's final days ...') you are referring to his pompous Last Will and Testament? Worryingly for those of us who assume Mike Barrett was a victim of circumstance and also of a cruel scam to do him out of loadsamoney plus his wife and daughter and that he was in fact a totally upright pillar of society who would never dream of telling anything other than the God's honest truth (and what have you) you appear to be implying that he was wont to change his mind and his accounts of things and just generally be a tad unreliable in his recall, masking the true underlying perfection of his intention and his memory of events?

I have to say that I think you're being a bit harsh on a man who went to prison but didn't go to prison, who hit his wife and daughter but didn't hit his wife and daughter, who had a stroke but didn't have a stroke, that had two days to live but didn't have two days to live, that might have had to lose two fingers but didn't lose any fingers, who wrote a hoax but didn't write a hoax, whose wife handwrote a hoax but didn't handwrite a hoax, who had a ticket for the purchase of the Victorian scrapbook but didn't have a ticket for the purchase of the Victorian scrapbook, and for whom no personal clarity of claim or even conversation was ever free of observers and listeners alike misinterpreting what he meant. He really was the ultimate victim here and I feel you should show him more respect.

What I find odd is that anyone would freely admit that they are still buying into Mike's 'alternative' diary 'facts'.

But, Caz, he confessed it was a hoax. Why can't you get that into your head? The guy confessed! Why would he lie about that?

Regards,

Mr Ike Iconoclast
Barrett-Believer

[caz]

You could be right, Ike, that it was Gray with all the "ah ahs", but it sounded to me like it was Mike cockily correcting what Gray thought he had gathered - from Mike - that the diary was all in Anne's handwriting. Gray had just seen an example of Mike's handwriting, which he thought looked the same as the writing in the diary itself, so he said: "By Christ I've tumbled you at last." Mike appeared to go along with this "Eureka" moment, upon which Gray had to remind him that he had previously said it was all Anne's handiwork - prompting Mike's rapidly shifting sands "fifty-fifty" rejoinder. The conversation was all about the handwriting at that point, not who composed the text.

Mike was soooo transparent and childlike in his responses to suit the moment, that it's little short of miraculous how he was able to render people incapable of seeing right through him.

Love,

Caz
X

[Iconoclast]

The tape labelled 6th November [a Sunday] features Mike's "fifty-fifty" claim at just before the 20 minute mark. I tracked it down by having Inside Story propped open at page 152 while listening. Alan Gray has just said to Mike that: "You said Anne did it; you're still saying it's all her handwriting." I can then hear Mike saying: "Ah ah ah ah ah, it was fifty-fifty."

On page 154, Seth recounts the events of the following day, Monday 7th November, when Alan and Mike are able to go to Outhwaite & Litherland, but Mike has given different years for his supposed auction attendance, initially claiming it was in 1987 - which was before the Barretts moved to Goldie Street and Mike met Devereux. Alan says: "Now we've had another date. We had 1990 the other day."

Bumping this from the false dichotomy thread, can I just add that - according to RJ Palmer's logic - it must have been Alan Gray who misunderstood what Mike had said that day and indeed 'the other day'". When Mike Barrett said 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, or 1991 instead of 1992, we all know that really he said 1992 but that Alan Gray misreported him.

Or was he lying every time his lips moved, when making claims about when and how the diary ended up in his hands?

No, no, no, no, no, Caz - Mike Barrett never spoke a word which wasn't true. But ears can be very unattuned to such virtue and wisdom and may - without malice, note - hear incorrectly from time to time to every time.

By the way, my own ears thought it was Gray saying "Ah ah ah ah ah" and then Mike replying "It was fifty-fifty". I could be wrong though.

Cheers,

Ike