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

[caz]

Indeed, think of that sketch, and know your place.

What did I say regarding pedants? Enter the dragon .....oops, slip of the tongue, enter the pedant. If you were paying attention, it was only my opinion that he belonged to the upper middle classes, therefore better than an individual of the lower middle class. Of course I should have said I considered him better off financially than an individual of the lower middle classes. I did say the whole class system was subjective though. So, know your place

Nice one, Obs.

Put it down to the pedant's revolt.

If you think the pedants are revolting, I may need to change my deodorant.

Love,

Caz of the Lowest of Lower Middles.
X

[caz]

If Mike simply "wanted to see how easy or hard it was" to source a Victorian diary with blank pages, surely when Martin Earl called him to tell him that no unused or partly used diaries could be found from 1880-1890, but that one, and one only, from 1891 was available, he had his answer. Why did he need Earl to send him the 1891 diary for which he'd have to pay £25?

The 1891 diary was located pretty quickly after the request was made and the advert appeared, so we don't know how many more Victorian diaries with blank pages might have been offered if Mike had only waited a while longer, or tried alternative sources. In the scenario of wanting to see how easy or hard it might have been for a scally to hoodwink Mike with the diary he had just promised to show Doreen - and using your own argument - an 1891 diary with blank pages could, in theory, have been usable for that precise purpose. But if the description given to Mike over the phone did not go into sufficient detail to tell him that this one would have been no use at all, he'd have needed to see it to believe it, wouldn't he? He'd then know that it wasn't as easy for a forger to source something suitable for hoodwinking purposes, as simply asking for any old Victorian diary with at least 20 blank pages and snapping up the first one offered.

And that, of course, was just via one second hand bookseller in Oxford. Surely Mike must have been aware that a forger could have sourced a Victorian diary from many other sources, including antique shops, auction houses and small ad sections of newspapers, plus, of course, other second hand booksellers around the country. So why engage on such a futile exercise in the first place, which could never tell him anything useful in a million years, and then why pay £25 unnecessarily?

Er, because if Mike wasn't a forger, he would not have been as aware as a forger might have been of all these alternative sources, and of the futility of thinking a suitable genuine Victorian diary could be had from a single source in a matter of days? You seem to be arguing against yourself again, Herlock. If Mike was a forger, where is the evidence that he did try any other sources besides Martin Earl until the 1891 diary let him down, assuming he was in a bit of a hurry by then to satisfy Doreen's curiosity before she suspected 'Mr Williams' of having her on and lost interest? Why no mention in the affidavit, if he did try more than the two sources claimed? If he was a forger, why engage on such a futile exercise in the first place, by asking Martin Earl for something that no forger who knew his Maybrick onions would have done in Mike's place? Why pay £25 unnecessarily? You've already mansplained me into a coma why it was necessary for Mike to ask Anne for the £25, regardless of the futility of the exercise, so again you seem to be arguing against your own arguments.

How did he even know that the old photograph album/scrapbook/diary was Victorian, let alone from the 1880s? The only evidence of a date is in the text. If he thought it might have been a fake, it could have been a twentieth century item couldn't it?

He didn't. That's why he'd have wanted to compare a personal diary, claiming to be by Jack the Ripper, which was undated apart from the handwritten one for 1889 after the final entry, with one that was genuinely from the right period, so he could better judge if the former was likely to be the work of a scallywag, who could have used the blank pages in any old book for hoodwinking purposes - Victorian, Edwardian or later - for all Mike knew, or if it looked as if it might, just possibly, be the real deal. A forger, passing on his own handiwork to someone like Mike Barrett for a bit of a laugh, would not have had anything like the same concerns as Mike would have had, if he was the victim of someone's idea of a joke, or the receiver of stolen property - possibly both - or as the forger himself, when contacting a London literary agent and committing himself to showing her what he claimed to have in his possession.

And if it was important to Mike to see how easy or hard it was to source a Victorian diary, why did he keep the whole process secret from Shirley Harrison with whom he, and his wife, signed a collaboration agreement before the diary had even been paid for?

I'm not sure it was desperately important if Mike made the phone call on impulse, to test the waters when he hadn't a clue if the diary was fake or legit, or where it had been. There is no evidence that Anne even knew what he was up to until she learned he was being chased for the payment and threw the cheque at him. Not so much a deliberate attempt to 'keep the whole process secret' at all costs, but more a damp squib that turned out to be of no consequence once Doreen and Shirley, followed by the chaps from the British Museum and Jarndyce respectively, had seen the diary for themselves, without "sending Mike packing" for showing them a Scouser's idea of a sick joke. But it would have been wiser not to advertise the fact, if the Barretts had suspected the diary was faked, stolen or both, when they had first set eyes on it, and Mike's call to Martin Earl was a direct consequence.

You asked Jay what he made of the following quote attributed to Keith Skinner by Shirley Harrison, concerning Anne's "in the family" claim:

"I was involved from the very first and I was present at most of the meetings of Paul and Billy. If the story had been forced I would have detected it by now."

Only Keith can clarify this, but are you perhaps reading too much into the word 'forced'? Having known Feldman and Anne better than anyone commenting today, didn't Keith simply mean he would have detected it if Feldman had 'forced' the story from the lips of Anne and Billy? Keith has never doubted Feldman's sincerity in his search for the truth, in which case a lie that had to be 'forced' out of anyone would have been of no possible use or interest to him. He was only interested in proving his beliefs to be true; not in forcing anyone to say anything for the sake of it, true or false.

But it seems that he does now think that the story had been forced, so that his contemporary view and interpretation was totally wrong.

It 'seems', does it?

How about 'it seems' that Keith, after testing the various claims and theories against the evidence for longer than anyone else alive, has been forced to consider the very real possibility that when Feldman thought he was finally getting the truth out of Anne, partially supported by Billy, she knew it wasn't true, but banked on it being believed and impossible to disprove?

This is all about Feldman, and whether he was in the business of 'forcing' or 'buying' a story, which he either had no faith in himself, or knew to be false. This was not the man Keith knew, regardless of the woman in the frame. Simple as that.

I’m sorry it Jay but you are being disingenuous when you say that Mike claimed in his affidavit that the diary was purchased while Tony Devereux was still alive. This is not stated at all in the affidavit. You appear to be referring to a dating error which says that a decision was made to write the diary of Jack the Ripper around January or February 1990 but it should be obvious to you that "1990" was a mistake.

Spot the 'deliberate' mistake. If the diary was not created until April 1992, and had been conceived and written by a Barrett, what was Devereux doing in the affidavit at all, dead or alive? What is he meant to have contributed before his timely/untimely death in August 1991? If Mike owned the copy of Tales of Liverpool, which Janet Devereux had borrowed from her father back in January 1991, what did the Barretts need from Devereux in order to go ahead and forge the diary? Why did they need to wait until he had been dead for many months before proceeding?

[Herlock Sholmes]

For some reason, a hole beginning with A is all I can think about right now.

You can word it any way you like and continue doing so until we all die of boredom. It still won't make the diary emerge from an auction beginning with A for Awesome.

It may be that all you can think of is arseholes but it still doesn't explain how a diary created after 1945 could possibly have ended up under the floorboards of Battlecrease. The fact that there isn't even a working theory means we can dismiss the idea out of hand. As for the possibility of the old photograph album having been purchased at an auction of Victorian and Edwardian effects, it's such a shame that the records of Outhwaite & Litherland for March 1992 were never examined before they were destroyed, isn't it?

[Herlock Sholmes]

A match is a match, even when the argument is spent.

I thought I had just addressed your argument about the sample given to Keith, and the only reason I find it 'strange' is the one I gave, that a forger would have to have a screw loose to deliberately change their handwriting again, showing off an ability to do so, particularly in the immediate wake of a vengeful spouse swearing that affidavit and shoving it through their letter hole.

Anne didn't shy away from writing letters to Mike, presumably in her usual hand, so he could have submitted much larger and more representative samples to Keith at any time, for a handwriting expert to compare directly with the diary, if he had really wanted to expose his own wife. The samples Anne herself supplied on request would have proved nothing in that event, and they still prove nothing.

I don't care if you 'understand' any of this or not. I don't have to answer to you. And nor, apparently, did Anne have to answer to Mike or anyone else, concerning her nonmatching handwriting. It's truly desperate to argue that a mismatch is actually a match by a missus.

No, I don't believe you have addressed it.


Why is Anne's handwriting in the sample so markedly different from her normal handwriting in her correspondence?

You seem to forget that the correspondence of hers that we have in her hand was written to Mike before Mike had accused her of forging the diary. The only letter of hers that we have after he did so is typewritten.

So, again, why was the handwriting in the sample she provided in 1995 so different from her normal handwriting from 1994?

[Herlock Sholmes]

It started off well with: 'It looks like...', but substituting the word 'because' for 'if' is a better look for your argument.

If we knew Mike did end up using an auction find to create the diary, none of us would be here arguing the toss.

Just sayin'.

It was your premise I was responding to, Caz. You wanted me to explain why, if he was the forger, Mike didn't go "the whole hog". My answer was that, if he was the forget, he did. Given that you've now replied to my post twice, my answer must have really upset you.

[Observer]

Better than that, Observer? What would make someone who was, or considered themselves to be, upper middle class 'better' than someone who was happy to know their place, among the lower middle or working classes?

Reminds me of a sketch...

But I agree with you that Maybrick was no top toff. He just fancied himself as one, which, in my subjective opinion, made him a top snob.

Love,

Caz
X

Indeed, think of that sketch, and know your place.

What did I say regarding pedants? Enter the dragon .....oops, slip of the tongue, enter the pedant. If you were paying attention, it was only my opinion that he belonged to the upper middle classes, therefore better than an individual of the lower middle class. Of course I should have said I considered him better off financially than an individual of the lower middle classes. I did say the whole class system was subjective though. So, know your place[/QUOTE]

[caz]

Well, Caz, on 3rd February I asked Lombro in this thread (#235): "How did a diary created at some point between 1945 and 1992 inclusive end up beneath the nailed down floorboards of Battlecrease?" Answer came there none.

Funnily enough, it was a question I'd already asked you on 29th January (#161), and then again on 25th June (#895), but there was no answer from you on either occasion.

So let me try it again with this new wording: How could a fake Maybrick diary created after 1945 have found itself "in a hole" and then come out of that hole to end up in the hands of Mike Barrett?

Just to answer your own questions. Firstly, the expression "one off instance" was not an expression which entered the English language prior to 1945. The way you phrase it is a bit like a diary purporting to be from 1958 referring to the author having watched Coronation Street (first broadcast in 1960) and you asking if the words "Coronation" and "Street" didn't exist in 1958. Yes, it really is that daft! There were plenty of holes in England after 1945 but if you're not talking about a hole under the floorboards of Battlecrease you might as well be talking about a hole on the moon because your and Lombro's theory relates to one hole and one hole only.

For some reason, a hole beginning with A is all I can think about right now.

You can word it any way you like and continue doing so until we all die of boredom. It still won't make the diary emerge from an auction beginning with A for Awesome.

[caz]

So your argument now is that 1888 and 1889 were not in the 1880s?

Don't be so fatuous. It's another sign of your own desperate arguments.

Context, old boy. Context.

Without it you are just pissing in the wind.

[caz]

Did I say that the disguised handwriting can be positively matched to Anne's handwriting? No, I didn’t. If it could be positively matched, it's all over. Can it be matched though? Yes, it can.

When I speak of the handwriting match, I'm talking, as you know, about the examples of her normal handwriting which have been posted on this forum.

As for the handwriting sample that Anne provided to Keith Skinner in 1995, I asked you on 1st July (#948) to explain why this handwriting sample looks so different to her normal handwriting. I repeated this question the next day (#960) then again on 8th July (#1129) and then again on 23rd July (#1534). My question remains unanswered. Will you ever explain it? Don’t you find it ‘strange’?

Regarding your own question to me, I don't understand it. It seems like Anne wanted to ensure that a handwriting expert wasn't going to be able to compare her normal handwriting to the diary handwriting because she was worried it might be matched. I can't see why that means she has to be either manipulative or mentally deficient. Might she simply not have feared that her role in the forgery could be exposed if she provided a sample of her normal handwriting?

A match is a match, even when the argument is spent.

I thought I had just addressed your argument about the sample given to Keith, and the only reason I find it 'strange' is the one I gave, that a forger would have to have a screw loose to deliberately change their handwriting again, showing off an ability to do so, particularly in the immediate wake of a vengeful spouse swearing that affidavit and shoving it through their letter hole.

Anne didn't shy away from writing letters to Mike, presumably in her usual hand, so he could have submitted much larger and more representative samples to Keith at any time, for a handwriting expert to compare directly with the diary, if he had really wanted to expose his own wife. The samples Anne herself supplied on request would have proved nothing in that event, and they still prove nothing.

I don't care if you 'understand' any of this or not. I don't have to answer to you. And nor, apparently, did Anne have to answer to Mike or anyone else, concerning her nonmatching handwriting. It's truly desperate to argue that a mismatch is actually a match by a missus.

[caz]

Yes, I tried lower middle class but decided he was better than that, and he was in my opinion. But it's all subjective isn't it ? My point was - there's no way he was a top toff

Better than that, Observer? What would make someone who was, or considered themselves to be, upper middle class 'better' than someone who was happy to know their place, among the lower middle or working classes?

Reminds me of a sketch...

But I agree with you that Maybrick was no top toff. He just fancied himself as one, which, in my subjective opinion, made him a top snob.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

It wasn't a matter of Anne being "the only game in town," as Caroline likes to claim. He didn't have to go to bat for Anne, and he made no secret about the fact that he believed her. Perhaps he still does in some small way. I don't know.

It's not my phrase. It's Keith's, and it's also his claim. For him it was very much a matter of Anne's provenance being 'the only game in town' when she first gave her account to Feldman in July 1994, which gave Keith something at last that he could work with. I wasn't around back then, but up until that point, there was only Mike's claim to have been given the diary by Devereux to "do something with", with no information about its origins, and then came his complete change of story in June 1994, claiming to have forged it with no involvement from Devereux, which his solicitor quickly retracted on his behalf, sensing the wretched man's mental instability.

No, Keith didn't have to bat for Anne, any more than Palmer has to see her up to her elbows in Diamine ink around All Fools' Day 1992, appropriately enough. By 2004, Keith had an alternative possibility he could consider seriously, with evidence this time to support it. To give him credit, he conceded openly in 2007 that Anne could well have been lying to him and everyone else about the diary's origins since 1994. But regardless of how manipulative she could be, or how many lies or contradictions she could have come out with before breakfast, following her "in the family" claim, Keith would not to my knowledge count this as evidence that she must have created, or helped Mike to create the diary back in 1992. That would be a whole different game of test cricket. If forgery had been the only possible explanation for Anne telling lies about where the diary came from, things might have been different, but it wasn't and it isn't, despite all the usual denials and howls of protest.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Ah, so before 1946 the words 'one', 'off' and 'instance' had yet to be invented, and between 1946 and 1992, there were no holes of any kind anywhere, not even in Blackburn, Lancashire?

It's funny, but sadly not in the same way as the Edinburgh Fringe.

Well, Caz, on 3rd February I asked Lombro in this thread (#235): "How did a diary created at some point between 1945 and 1992 inclusive end up beneath the nailed down floorboards of Battlecrease?" Answer came there none.

Funnily enough, it was a question I'd already asked you on 29th January (#161), and then again on 25th June (#895), but there was no answer from you on either occasion.

So let me try it again with this new wording: How could a fake Maybrick diary created after 1945 have found itself "in a hole" and then come out of that hole to end up in the hands of Mike Barrett?

Just to answer your own questions. Firstly, the expression "one off instance" was not an expression which entered the English language prior to 1945. The way you phrase it is a bit like a diary purporting to be from 1958 referring to the author having watched Coronation Street (first broadcast in 1960) and you asking if the words "Coronation" and "Street" didn't exist in 1958. Yes, it really is that daft! There were plenty of holes in England after 1945 but if you're not talking about a hole under the floorboards of Battlecrease you might as well be talking about a hole on the moon because your and Lombro's theory relates to one hole and one hole only.

[Herlock Sholmes]

No need to apologise for poor eyesight - unless you have ignored your eye test reminders.

Nobody wants the bailiffs to come round but they do, regardless, or it wouldn't be the 'common and very well known procedure for debt recovery' which you so eloquently describe, would it? There's even a reality show on Channel 5 tonight called: Call the Bailiffs: Time to Pay Up! Series 3, 9th out of 12 episodes.

Being a bailiff would be a cushy number if the mere threat of one beating a path to the door of the Mike Barretts of this world was enough to make them all roll over and cough up. But this is the real world, and you have rightly acknowledged the need for bailiffs to do more than growl from the sidelines at people who owe money.

If they ever come up with a show called: Repossession: Time to Pay Up - or find your locks changed while you were down the boozer pissing away your benefits, it would be a better fit for Mike Barrett and his circumstances after the breadwinner fled from his abuse, I'll grant you.

You may argue that this is all totally irrelevant, but you invoked the spectre of bailiffs, to put the willies up Mike Barrett, and have become bogged down by your own irrelevant argument.

What makes this relevant is the ease with which your argument can be refuted by the wealth of actual evidence we have about Mike's character and known behaviour.

This is nothing to do with speculation as far as I'm concerned; we all do that when the evidence is lacking, some more wildly than others. This, for me, is about how closely your arguments in general fit with the facts, the evidence and the known context. If your argument itself is irrelevant, but as easily refuted as this one, what does it say about arguments you make that are absolutely crucial to your own theory that the Barretts jointly created the diary in early April 1992?

I'm at a loss to know what you're even talking about. Is your argument that because bailiffs come round to houses of people who can't or won't pay their debts that Mike wouldn't have cared if bailiffs came knocking at his door over the sum of £25 which we know his wife had the funds to pay? It doesn't make any sense.

I guess I need to remind you that this all started because you misunderstood Earl's terms and conditions. You wrongly said that no payment needed to be made in May 1992, or at all. All I've done is draw to your attention that the red diary legally needed to be paid for or there would have been undesirable consequences. I can't think of anything more uncontroversial or less worthy of extended commentary.

[Herlock Sholmes]

It started off well with: 'It looks like...', but substituting the word 'because' for 'if' is a better look for your argument.

If we knew Mike did end up using an auction find to create the diary, none of us would be here arguing the toss.

Just sayin'.

So your argument now is that 1888 and 1889 were not in the 1880s?

The remaining tired old arguments in the rest of your post have been disposed of many times. There's nothing in them. They are obviously just a (very ineffective) way of you trying to get round the frustrating fact that you're unable to come up with a single plausible reason why Mike wanted those blank Victorian pages.

[Herlock Sholmes]

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?

Did I say that the disguised handwriting can be positively matched to Anne's handwriting? No, I didn’t. If it could be positively matched, it's all over. Can it be matched though? Yes, it can.

When I speak of the handwriting match, I'm talking, as you know, about the examples of her normal handwriting which have been posted on this forum.

As for the handwriting sample that Anne provided to Keith Skinner in 1995, I asked you on 1st July (#948) to explain why this handwriting sample looks so different to her normal handwriting. I repeated this question the next day (#960) then again on 8th July (#1129) and then again on 23rd July (#1534). My question remains unanswered. Will you ever explain it? Don’t you find it ‘strange’?

Regarding your own question to me, I don't understand it. It seems like Anne wanted to ensure that a handwriting expert wasn't going to be able to compare her normal handwriting to the diary handwriting because she was worried it might be matched. I can't see why that means she has to be either manipulative or mentally deficient. Might she simply not have feared that her role in the forgery could be exposed if she provided a sample of her normal handwriting?