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

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  • caz
    replied
    Originally posted by Herlock Sholmes View Post
    I'm not necessarily suggesting that Anne deliberately misled Keith Skinner, or allowed him to be misled, although it strikes me that she might have done, but I do wonder why she didn't help him and let him know that although the cheque was dated 18th May 1992 this was because it was a late payment and the 1891 diary had been received some weeks earlier. Any thoughts on that?
    Yes. What do you not understand by Anne's admission to Keith that she thought the red herring - sorry, the red diary affair - began "pre-Doreen"?

    That would have helped him and let him know that although her cheque stub was dated 18th May, she thought Mike's attempt to obtain this genuine Victorian diary had dated back to before 13th April, when Doreen was sufficiently impressed by what she saw to set the publishing wheels in motion. I can't see how "pre-Doreen" could reasonably be interpreted to mean after that date, or why Anne would have used those words if that is what she wanted to imply.

    Just to add one final comment. When responding to Roger's statement that it was wildly unlikely that Anne knew about the advertisement, you comment that this would mean it was wildly unlikely that Mike "was keeping Anne fully informed in March 1992" and you refer to "Mike's advertisement". Might I suggest, though, that Mike probably didn't know of the existence of the advertisement himself. Why would he? Why would Earl have told him how he sourced his books? And, if Mike didn't know, it's not just wildly unlikely that Anne knew about the advertisement but pretty much a certainty that she did not.
    That's absolutely fine with me, Herlock. The less they both knew about it, the more Anne knew she didn't know, when giving Keith the means to find out everything there was to know.

    Assuming Mike knew at the time who he was going to call, and what he was going to ask for, it doesn't matter to me how little he knew about the procedure, or how many people might become directly involved in the search, or how widely his request might be broadcast, but it ought to have mattered to anyone attempting to source the raw materials for faking Jack the Ripper's diary. Forewarned is forearmed, but if it is pretty much a certainty that Anne knew considerably less than Mike could have told her, or ever did tell her, about who he contacted and what he had actually asked for, she was arguably in more danger from what she didn't know about it, if she had helped Mike to turn a photo album, bought from an auction sale, into Maybrick's diary, after the red diary had to be rejected for being 'very small'. Even Mike must have realised the folly of revealing to Alan Gray that it had 365 printed dates in it for the year 1891.

    A call to 'M Earl', when Anne was able to retrieve the cheque with the name of the payee, was bound to reveal details that she didn't know in 1995, but if Mike had had forgery in mind she'd have known it, and would have been enabling Keith to uncover potentially incriminating evidence. Her best bet in that case would have been to call Mr Earl herself to ascertain all the facts. Assuming she didn't do that, she may have considered the tiny 1891 diary, with all its 1891 dates, to be proof positive, if anyone should need it, that it had not been purchased to fake Maybrick's diary, so she was more than happy to hand it over along with the means to investigate further. Had she destroyed it, Mike's description of it as merely being 'very small' might have been left in limbo, with no physical evidence to challenge his claim that it had been purchased for forgery purposes.

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  • Lombro2
    replied
    Thanks, Caz. I always wondered what Mike was thinking when he asked for a 1880-1890 Diary.

    I thought it was because he didn't want to give it away to the sellers that he was trying to forge a Ripper Diary or had a real Ripper Diary in hand already. Both are dumb ideas, even for Michael.

    If he wanted to hide his intent, he would have just asked for a Victorian Diary and then asked what year it was made.

    Instead he asked for a specific decade. That was, in all likelihood, because he didn't know how far back the entries went. Most Diaries last a few years to a decade or more. He could have penned any respective part of the Diary into any diary from any year of that decade.

    And he added 1890 and accepted 1891. Why?

    Because he had no clue when James Maybrick died even at that late stage in the game. Or completely forgot after reading Tales Of Liverpool, his supposed primary inspiration and source book. You’d think that book would mention he died in 1889 since it had two chapters on his death.

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  • caz
    replied
    Originally posted by Herlock Sholmes View Post

    This is the sequence of events:

    1. Mike is told about the availability of an 1891 diary over the telephone.

    2. Mike agrees to purchase the 1891 diary.

    3. Mike is sent the 1891 diary.

    4. Anne, on Mike's behalf, pays for the 1891 diary.

    As at no.2, Mike has not seen the diary. So "Prior to purchasing it, Mike hadn't seen it".

    When he purchases it, he still hasn't seen it.

    He only sees it after he purchases it. By that time, for a period of 30 days, he can only not pay for it if it was misdescribed to him (which it probably wasn't, but, even if it was, he never raised that as an issue). By no. 4, the 30 day period is over so he has to pay for it whether it's been misdescribed or not. Anne helps him out.

    I truly cannot make it simpler than this.
    Er, no. Agreeing to purchase something over the phone is not the same as actually purchasing it. I'm pretty sure Mike Barrett of all people would have appreciated the difference even if you don't or if Martin Earl considered it a done deal. It was probably not even a binding contract to complete the purchase if Mike's spoken agreement over the phone was not recorded. If Anne hadn't honoured an agreement by Mike to purchase it - you know, with actual money - it would not have been a purchase, but a case of Mike receiving goods under false pretences, which is not a world away from receiving suspected stolen property. Maybe you think Mike was not the sort of chap to go back on any spoken, or gentleman's agreement, and risk the consequences.

    The reason Mike didn't raise it as an issue with Martin Earl would be simple enough if the 1891 diary was never intended to be used for faking Maybrick's and he would still have asked to see it regardless of how it was described. If he stuck it in a drawer with the invoice and forgot all about it when arrangements were being made for him to take the scrapbook to London and nothing else mattered, then yes, I can see why Anne was so cross about having to bail him out when she learned about the overdue payment for an 1891 diary he didn't need, which he had 'agreed' to purchase unseen.

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  • Scott Nelson
    replied
    Originally posted by Herlock Sholmes View Post
    All the evidence, taken as a whole, points in only one direction, Scott.
    But you just said in post #1114 "Because the evidence isn't available, Scott.

    Not everyone wants to invent stuff and speculate without evidence in this case.
    "

    So what evidence were you talking about?

    I guess it just matters whose evidence one wants to believe. Or if it's even "evidence."
    Last edited by Scott Nelson; 07-08-2025, 10:23 PM.

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  • caz
    replied
    Originally posted by Herlock Sholmes View Post
    The imaginary conversation you've set out between Earl and Barrett entirely misses the point that an undated journal or an unwritten journal (whatever that means) could ALSO have been an 1891 diary, as long as the diarist had written at least one dated entry during 1891.

    Keith Skinner tells us that "nearly" all the pages of the 1891 diary were blank so there must have been some writing somewhere in it, which one would naturally assume consists of diary entries. It would only have needed someone to have written an entry for a day in 1891 which would mean that any book or journal (of whatever description) would then have become an 1891 diary. I'm not sure you understand this. You don't seem to know what a diary is. You seem to have a fixed notion of an appointments diary. But people write diaries in all sorts of things. Indeed, your entire argument is based on James Maybrick having written his personal diary in an old photograph album. So it's really odd that you seem to be able to hold these two contradictory notions in your head at the same time about what a diary must look like.
    This one was addressed to Ike, but it misses one rather crucial point: Mike had asked for an "unused" or "partly used" diary dating from 1880-90. We know exactly what he got, and what Anne paid through the nose for, regardless of what he had been led to expect by Martin Earl's 'full' description, and regardless of its intended purpose.

    So how would Mike be expecting anyone to date an entirely 'unused' diary, if one were to become available, unless it came with a printed date or dates?

    The one located, for the year 1891, met the definition of a 'partly used diary', with nearly all its pages unused, so in theory it could have had no printed dates, as long as at least one of the used pages had contained a diary entry dated by hand. But that would have been a pretty loose definition of a 'diary' if it was just a book that had barely been used as one. Fine for a forger, perhaps, if they only needed to tear out the odd used page here and there, but would anyone have defined it, let alone described it, as an 1891 diary in that case? How is 'a string of images of old diaries which are dated only by the dates of their handwritten entries' relevant, if Mike was told that nearly all the pages of the 1891 diary were "unused" or "blank" and he simply assumed these were all undated? He still needed to know how this diary showed its actual age and where.

    Another point that seems to be missed is that Jack the Ripper would have been writing his diary using paper manufactured before 1888, regardless of whether Mike knew at the time that the diary would identify him as a real person who had died in May 1889. Lessons learned from Konrad Kujau's downfall should have warned any forger in 1992 that there could be another '1955' moment in paper manufacture around the next corner, just waiting to strike anyone using any book containing paper that could not have been manufactured a day earlier than, say, 1890. Requesting anything later than 1887, and accepting one for 1891, for the purpose of faking Jack's diary, would have been asking for trouble unless anyone thinks Mike was some sort of expert in this field. Back in a world that isn't flat, a better argument would be that he was some sort of c word instead, and just lucky to have dodged the paper bullet.

    An infinitely more likely explanation is that Mike didn't need the paper to date from before 1888, when the ripper murders began, or he'd have made that his minimum requirement. Seeing just the 1889 date after the last entry in the scrapbook, he'd have been guessing when phoning Bookfinders whether the first entry was meant to have been written earlier the same year, or possibly several years earlier, in which case his request for a diary from 1880-90 might at least have made some sense to him if he wanted to know if something comparable and genuinely from that decade could have been obtained and used by a prankster in 1992.
    Last edited by caz; 07-08-2025, 10:29 PM.

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  • Herlock Sholmes
    replied
    Originally posted by Scott Nelson View Post

    We're just talking past one another. All the evidence doesn't point that way. And I don't think you're the one who can be helped.
    All the evidence, taken as a whole, points in only one direction, Scott.

    I also don't want or need to be helped. If you don't know by now why RJ, John Wheat and myself seem "pretty adamant" (your words) that Mike and Anne wrote it, you haven't been paying attention.

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  • Scott Nelson
    replied
    Originally posted by Herlock Sholmes View Post

    Only because that's what all the evidence points towards, Scott.

    If you don't know what that evidence is by now, I don't think anyone can help you any further.
    We're just talking past one another. All the evidence doesn't point that way. And I don't think you're the one who can be helped.

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  • Lombro2
    replied
    There is infinitely more evidentiary weight in long-standing rumours than in all the old and rotten dredged up cherries of the last 30 years.

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  • Herlock Sholmes
    replied
    Originally posted by caz View Post

    We got there in the end! He didn't 'purchase' it until he'd seen just how utterly useless it would have been for Maybrick's 1888-9 diary if that's what he had wanted it for.

    That's the whole point.
    This is the sequence of events:

    1. Mike is told about the availability of an 1891 diary over the telephone.

    2. Mike agrees to purchase the 1891 diary.

    3. Mike is sent the 1891 diary.

    4. Anne, on Mike's behalf, pays for the 1891 diary.

    As at no.2, Mike has not seen the diary. So "Prior to purchasing it, Mike hadn't seen it".

    When he purchases it, he still hasn't seen it.

    He only sees it after he purchases it. By that time, for a period of 30 days, he can only not pay for it if it was misdescribed to him (which it probably wasn't, but, even if it was, he never raised that as an issue). By no. 4, the 30 day period is over so he has to pay for it whether it's been misdescribed or not. Anne helps him out.

    I truly cannot make it simpler than this.

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  • Herlock Sholmes
    replied
    Originally posted by caz View Post

    Well, if you and others can see these similarities, presumably you would have to agree that Mike could have recognised them too, with no luck involved?

    He'd have had a motive to look for any similarities before claiming she wrote it, by comparing letters she had sent him with the facsimile in Shirley's book. But did he consider the possibility back in April 1992, of any glaring similarities pointing to his wife's poorly disguised hand - and miles away from Maybrick's, natural or unnatural?

    Or were both Barretts on safe ground because they knew that no expert could identify a forger from their handwriting, as long as some attempt was made to disguise it?

    Jesus, I've just noticed your signature, Herlock. It's not much of a compliment, is it? Clever Trevor probably thinks anyone who is his intellectual equal must be a genius, which would make clever clogs of 90% of the population.
    Well this is very interesting, Caz. So you think that Mike, in scrutinizing the original diary, noticed that the handwriting of the diarist resembled the handwriting of his wife in some respects? Well he must have got rather frustrated that he kept saying that the dairy was in his wife's handwriting and not a single bloody person manged to spot what he'd seen. And he didn't even bother to tell anyone about those little similarities either. It wasn't until years after his death that the similarities were even noticed.

    But at least you now appear to have answered one of the questions that I've been dying to know your answer to.

    You accept that those similarities exist!

    Hallelujah and praise the Lord.

    p.s. The signature is a joke - an obvious one I thought. Strange isn’t it that all that I’ve had to do is post on the subject of the diary to become an instant enemy there to be insulted. You and Ike. Maybe I should have applied for membership before posting?
    Last edited by Herlock Sholmes; 07-08-2025, 06:03 PM.

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  • Herlock Sholmes
    replied
    Originally posted by caz View Post

    You said in a previous post that it is impossible for a disguised hand to be positively identified and attributed to the individual actually responsible, so have you changed your mind already?

    What do you think would have been the point of trying to investigate Anne's potential role as a forger, if you can't see 'what type of evidence could possibly exist to prove her involvement'? How could it have been 'properly' investigated, using examples of her handwriting, if even the experts can't positively identify a forger that way?

    You seem to be arguing against yourself here, to make a pointless point about not being able to prove or disprove Anne's involvement on evidential grounds. Where does that get you? I don't need to get Anne off the hook as a potential forger, even if I wanted to. By your own argument, she is not on the hook and there can be no evidential grounds for putting her there or keeping her there.

    I don't think I've read so much unadulterated piffle since your previous post, Herlock. You write with the unique clarity of someone untroubled by any evidence.
    Yes, I did say it's impossible for a disguised hand to be positively identified by a handwriting expert and positively attributed to the individual actually responsible. What is it that makes you think I've changed my mind? There's nothing in my post which even suggests I think anything to the contrary.

    But you haven't answered this question:

    "Do you also accept that a number of sensible members of this forum have commented that they can see similarities between the way Anne loops and curls some of her letters and the way the diarist loops and curls those same letters?"

    Why are you ducking this?

    I didn't say about Anne that I can't see 'what type of evidence could possibly exist to prove her involvement'. I was asking you to tell me what evidence could exist which that proves her involvement. Have you forgotten already that you are relying on the absence of evidence of involvement to say she wasn't involved?

    I've noticed that you do this very often. I ask you a question. You don't answer but assume that by asking you a question I'm making a positive statement.

    Let me be clear. It's entirely possible that evidence exists which proves Anne's involvement. For example, she might have documents in her possession written in the same handwriting as the diarist. But what I'm saying is that there is no possible way that this evidence can be known to you or I or anyone else at this time. Hence, saying "there's no evidence of Anne's involvement" has no merit unless you can point to evidence which should exist (and be known about) but does not.

    A proper investigation would have required, at a minimum, the obtaining of samples of Anne's pre-1992 handwriting (and the same for Michael Barrett). The fact that she was asked to provide her own sample, which doesn't appear to have even been tested against her normal handwriting, is a clear demonstration of an investigation that was not properly carried out.

    For the avoidance of doubt, I'm not saying that's the only thing that a proper investigation would have entailed. But it simply demonstrates that one hasn't been done.

    I'm not arguing against myself. It's very simple. I'm asking how Anne can be ruled out as one of the forgers. Your only answer seems to be that there's "no evidence" of her involvement, although by saying that you entirely ignore (a) the fact that there are similarities in the way she loops and curls some of her letters and the way the diarist loops and curls those same letters and (b) the fact that Mike repeatedly claimed that the diary was in her handwriting despite the fact that, on the surface, it doesn't look like her handwriting.

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  • caz
    replied
    Originally posted by Herlock Sholmes View Post
    Prior to purchasing it, Mike hadn't seen it, that's the whole point.
    We got there in the end! He didn't 'purchase' it until he'd seen just how utterly useless it would have been for Maybrick's 1888-9 diary if that's what he had wanted it for.

    That's the whole point.

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  • caz
    replied
    Originally posted by Herlock Sholmes View Post

    I'm intrigued, Caz. What do you think a handwriting expert can do that Roger or the rest of us aren't able to do with our own eyes?

    If there are similarities in the handwriting of Anne and the diarist, which there clearly are, as many people have agreed, that is surely enough for us to form our own opinion, especially in circumstances where Mike repeatedly said that the diary was in Anne's handwriting, even though on the surface it doesn't look like it.

    Do you believe that Mike just got very lucky that the diarist looped or curled certain letters in the same way Anne does? Or do you think he'd cleverly spotted this himself through careful examination and thus falsely attributed the writing to Anne?
    Well, if you and others can see these similarities, presumably you would have to agree that Mike could have recognised them too, with no luck involved?

    He'd have had a motive to look for any similarities before claiming she wrote it, by comparing letters she had sent him with the facsimile in Shirley's book. But did he consider the possibility back in April 1992, of any glaring similarities pointing to his wife's poorly disguised hand - and miles away from Maybrick's, natural or unnatural?

    Or were both Barretts on safe ground because they knew that no expert could identify a forger from their handwriting, as long as some attempt was made to disguise it?

    Jesus, I've just noticed your signature, Herlock. It's not much of a compliment, is it? Clever Trevor probably thinks anyone who is his intellectual equal must be a genius, which would make clever clogs of 90% of the population.

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  • Herlock Sholmes
    replied
    Originally posted by caz View Post

    So why do you suppose Martin Earl allowed some of his customers to receive an item without paying for it, when most items had to be paid for up front, sight unseen, once the customer had ordered them over the phone? What do you think might have made the difference in Mike Barrett's case, when he placed his order for the 1891 diary, but asked to see it before sending any money and Martin Earl agreed? Did it have anything to do with the description Mike was given? Or was he just trying it on, because Anne was the keeper of the cheque book and he had no means of paying for what was on offer without telling her what he was doing and getting her active agreement? A bit of both, perhaps?

    If, in spite of Martin Earl's claim that all items located were fully described to the customer before placing an order, Mike was only given the good news that a Victorian diary had been located, albeit for the year 1891, which was almost entirely unused, but was not told the bad news from his point of view as a budding forger, that it was a tiny appointments diary with printed dates throughout, did he forget he was a con man when it arrived in the post? Could he not have phoned Martin Earl straight away to complain that he had been misled by a description that didn't begin to tell him what to expect?



    Mike might have agreed to buy it, before he saw what it was, but he didn't end up buying it. Anne did. He already knew it wasn't what he had asked for, at least in terms of the date. You can't claim that it wasn't what he wanted, when you don't know what he wanted it for. He told Martin Earl he wanted to see it, so all we know for certain is that he wanted sight of what had been located, regardless of how it had been described over the phone. If he wanted to judge the availability to any practical joker in 1992 of suitable items for faking Jack the Ripper's diary, he needed to see how this genuine Victorian diary would compare with the one he had already promised to show Doreen, with its one handwritten date after the final entry. He'd have seen immediately that there was no comparison, and that would have been that. Anne would be paying for that privilege.

    And for the last time, Mike didn't 'order' a diary from the period 1880-1890, did he? And he wasn't asked to send any money, before a diary for the wrong year - 1891 - was sent to him, was he?



    If you say so, but if the customer was committed to paying for any item ordered on their behalf with their agreement, can you think of any reason why Martin Earl didn't ask for payment in advance for all items and from all customers?



    No, I merely ran out of time when I reached your 'money motive' argument, later in the same post, which had nothing to do with Martin Earl's terms and conditions. I did continue my post, by addressing that part of yours in a separate post.

    One can only suppose that Martin Earl paid the supplier, on the assumption that he had been given a full and proper description to pass on to his customer, and must have had some reason to trust "Mr Barrett" with a diary worth £25 in 1992, which he had not originally asked for, nor yet paid for. I'm still not entirely sure how Martin would have hoped to get his money back if Mike had not been married to someone who was willing and able to pay the debt, but that would have been Martin's problem if he'd been dealing with fraudsters.



    Either Martin was dealing with fraudsters or he wasn't. By May 1992, that would have included Anne if she had helped create a fake the previous month, which was being taken seriously by the people in London. Are you seriously suggesting that a pair of fraudsters could have seen 'no way out' of paying for that little 1891 diary, at any stage, but still managed to pull off a scam that would go on to make them thousands of pounds?

    One very simple reason Earl might have allowed a customer to receive an item without first paying for it is if that customer wanted the item in a hurry.

    I think you need to understand that it made no difference whether payment was made up front or after receiving the item. The customer could still return it if it wasn't as had been described, but still had to pay for it if it was as described.

    So Earl could also have been allowing the customer to see for themselves that the item was as it had been described before they needed to physically pay for it. But, if it was as had been described, the customer did need to pay for it, and couldn't return it, per Earl's standard terms and conditions.

    I don't think I can make it any simpler.

    I can't tell you, of course, what Barrett was thinking. Perhaps he just wanted the diary in his hands and put aside any thoughts of how to pay for it until later, knowing he could rely on his wife. But that's just speculation which gets us nowhere.

    You italicise the word "fully", as in "fully described" but it really has no meaning in this debate. Earl, or more to the point, Earl's supplier, didn't know, and couldn't have guessed, that Mike wanted the diary in order to forge an 1888 diary, so information that might be relevant to a forger might not have been regarded as relevant by Earl's supplier at the time. As I said to Ike the other day, for a normal collector of diaries, as one would have assumed Barrett was, the key information would have been condition, year, size, colour and, of course, as Mike had specified a requirement for blank pages, the fact that the diary contained more than 20 blank pages. Whether Earl's supplier would have felt the need to say that the diary had the year 1891 emblazoned on the cover, or dates printed on every page, none of us can possibly say. I assume that Earl himself is unable to say after all these years, otherwise he would surely have told Keith. All he seems to confirmed is that he would have told Mike that it was an 1891 diary (or course he would!) but he evidently can't say more than this. To pretend otherwise would be wrong.

    I'm afraid I can't see the distinction between Mike buying it and Anne buying it, which you seem to be making. Surely Anne paid for the diary at Mike's request. There was no choice at that time but for the diary to be paid for. So that's where I think you went wrong in your earlier post on the subject. Plus Mike didn't receive the diary on approval.

    You don't seem to realize how contradictory, and indeed nonsensical, your argument is. You say, "If he wanted to judge the availability to any practical joker in 1992 of suitable items for faking Jack the Ripper's diary, he needed to see how this genuine Victorian diary would compare with the one he had already promised to show Doreen, with its one handwritten date after the final entry." But, if he'd been told by Earl that all he could source was an 1891 diary, with 1891 emblazoned all over it, wouldn't that immediately have told him that no such suitable Victorian diary was available? So why did he want to see it? Or do you accept that he might not have been told these things? And if he received the diary on approval, as you seem to think, why not just send it back once he'd looked at it?

    Do you think that Mike could possibly have thought that Victorian diaries only came in one shape, size and colour and were only sourced through a second-hand telephone bookseller in Oxford? If not, how could he possibly have judged "the availability to any practical joker in 1992 of suitable items for faking Jack the Ripper's diary?" from a single Oxford second-hand telephone bookseller only being able to locate an 1891 diary with blank pages? Surely it would have told him nothing. But, if you think that's what he was up to, he'd discovered that Earl was unable to source any Victorian diaries from 1880 to 1890 with blank pages, so why did he need to see one from 1891 that he would already have been told looked nothing like the large black old photograph album you think he possessed? I'm afraid it really makes no sense at all. Further, you seem to have forgotten that the advertisement placed on his behalf asked primarily for an unused Victorian diary. How would an unused, totally blank Victorian diary have enabled him to make any kind of comparison with the Ripper diary containing 63 pages of written entries?

    Then there's Roger's point. If he obtained the 1891 diary for the purpose of researching whether the Ripper diary was a forgery, why didn't he share the results of his research with Shirley with whom he'd signed a collaboration agreement? Why didn't Anne, who also signed the collaboration agreement, ever mention it? If Mike had thought it was important to compare a genuine Victorian diary with the Ripper diary, why not tell Shirley all about it?

    I'm afraid I don't understand your question: "And for the last time, Mike didn't 'order' a diary from the period 1880-1890, did he?" That is precisely what he asked for but none were available from Martin Earl. So I just don't know what you're getting at. Nor do I know what you mean by "for the last time".

    As for your question: "And he wasn't asked to send any money, before a diary for the wrong year - 1891 - was sent to him, was he?" I've already dealt with this but have to pick you up on your claim that 1891 was "the wrong year". It was not "the wrong year". It was certainly outside the decade Mike had originally asked for, but an 1891 diary could, of course, have been used to fake an 1888 Ripper diary, as I've already demonstrated in my posts to Ike. This should be uncontroversial.

    As for your question: "can you think of any reason why Martin Earl didn't ask for payment in advance for all items and from all customers?". Not only have I already answered it (i.e. item wanted in a hurry) but it's odd that you or Keith didn't ask this question of Earl himself. Regardless, I must repeat to you - because you seem strangely baffled by it - that it made no difference to Earl whether payment came before or after receipt of the item. The terms and conditions remained exactly the same.

    You can ask Martin Earl how he dealt with defaulters in his business, and it's odd that you or Keith didn't already enquire of him about this, but it's all totally hypothetical. We know what in fact happened. For whatever reason, Mike didn't pay for the diary within the 30 day required period and Anne paid for it in May. There's nothing more to this. It tells us nothingwhatsoever about why Mike wanted the diary in the first place.

    Your question about whether Mike and Anne could have seen a way out of paying for the diary is just ridiculous. You might as well ask me why they didn't shoplift all their groceries every week and carry out insurance frauds for a living. Honestly, Caz, by May, Barrett was legally obliged to pay for the diary and failure would have just led to a county court judgment being obtained against him and the subsequent arrival of the bailiffs at 12 Goldie Street. Paying the £25 was the most sensible option, and indeed, the only realistic one

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  • caz
    replied
    Originally posted by Herlock Sholmes View Post
    When it comes to evidence of Anne's participation in the diary's creation, things may become clearer when you deal with the question of why the handwriting sample she provided to Keith Skinner in 1995 seems to be so different to her normal handwriting Caz.

    Do you also accept that a number of sensible members of this forum have commented that they can see similarities between the way Anne loops and curls some of her letters and the way the diarist loops and curls those same letters?

    You incorrectly attribute to me a belief that I wouldn't expect any evidence of Anne's evidence to have survived. Read what I wrote again more carefully Caz. What I said was directed to whether, if that evidence has survived, we would know about it. By which I mean has her potential role as a forger been properly investigated? I don't think so. She was asked to provide a handwriting sample in 1995 but, if there had been a proper investigation, examples of her pre-1992 handwriting would have been examined. As it stands, we don't seem to have any (although Roger recently mentioned seeing some).

    Other than that, though, if you are prepared to assume for the sake of argument that Anne was the forger who wrote out the text of the diary at her husband's dictation in 12 Goldie Street, please tell me what type of evidence could possibly exist to prove her involvement? The testimony of her husband? Well he repeatedly and consistently said that the diary was written by Anne but you discard that entirely. The testimony of her daughter? Well she refused to speak to you for your book, didn't she? And she apparently continues to refuse to speak.

    So what else could there be? If you can't answer this there really is no merit in an argument which relies on the absence of evidence to rule out Anne's involvement.
    You said in a previous post that it is impossible for a disguised hand to be positively identified and attributed to the individual actually responsible, so have you changed your mind already?

    What do you think would have been the point of trying to investigate Anne's potential role as a forger, if you can't see 'what type of evidence could possibly exist to prove her involvement'? How could it have been 'properly' investigated, using examples of her handwriting, if even the experts can't positively identify a forger that way?

    You seem to be arguing against yourself here, to make a pointless point about not being able to prove or disprove Anne's involvement on evidential grounds. Where does that get you? I don't need to get Anne off the hook as a potential forger, even if I wanted to. By your own argument, she is not on the hook and there can be no evidential grounds for putting her there or keeping her there.

    I don't think I've read so much unadulterated piffle since your previous post, Herlock. You write with the unique clarity of someone untroubled by any evidence.
    Last edited by caz; 07-08-2025, 04:50 PM.

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