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

[Lombro2]

One missing auction ticket constitutes the proof for your provenance, along with Michael’s stories of a square compass and a picture of a donkey beside a grave, both also missing.

Talk about beating a dead donkey!

[rjpalmer]

If someone grabbed an old photo album, it would have a Provenance.

The provenance was never competently checked until after the records were pulped.

I've always been leery of Kevin Whay's statement, too. No one wants their business, no matter how innocently, connected to a fraud, a scam, a counterfeit. That goes double if the business deals in antiques.

[Lombro2]

If someone grabbed an old photo album, it would have a Provenance. One that doesn’t involve things like pictures of donkeys, and non-existent auction tickets.

If it was in the wall or the floor, and was stolen and fenced, it wouldn’t.

[Scott Nelson]

What about a plastered-over cupboard? Attic? Safe? Locked drawer in old desk? Buried in the ground? etc.... etc....

Or someone just grabbed an old photo-album to write in.

[Lombro2]

We’ll never know where it came from?

That’s a strong mark for the floorboard theory.

[Scott Nelson]

Devereux’s daughter saw the book in Tony’s possession and asked if she could borrow it. He told her it was Barrett’s. Why on earth would he have invented that lie many months before the diary emerged?

Paul Feldman went further and said that Mike’s name was written inside the front cover. No one has been able to show that was misinformation.

Either way, it’s a strong mark against the floorboard theory.

Maybe it wasn't a lie? It could have belonged to Tony. Could Devereux have been compiling research notes or a draft diary?
I agree about the origin. We'll never know exactly where the diary came from.

[rjpalmer]

RJ, I suggested that Anne's 'in her family for years' claim could have meant that Billy owned the photo album and gave it to the forger after removing the photos and scrap paper clippings. Billy Graham's involvement was possibly nothing else beyond that.

Devereux may be a different story. Can we be sure Tales of Liverpool wasn't his book instead of Mike's? I thought Devereux's daughters didn't live with him at that time (early 1990s). Would they necessarily have known what their father was up to most of the time?

Devereux’s daughter saw the book in Tony’s possession and asked if she could borrow it. He told her it was Barrett’s. Why on earth would he have invented that lie many months before the diary emerged?

Paul Feldman went further and said that Mike’s name was written inside the front cover. No one has been able to show that was misinformation.

Either way, it’s a strong mark against the floorboard theory.

[Scott Nelson]

Scott Nelson has thrown out a couple of names, but--with apologies to Scott--I simply can't take them seriously; accusing Tony Devereux or Billy Graham is like ignoring the twenty-pound note on the sidewalk and instead reaching for a farthing. Graham was barely literate, and Devereux didn't own a single book. His daughters said he wrote in block lettering like Barrett. The one book Tony did have in his possession--with two chapters on the Maybrick case--belonged to Mike Barrett.

RJ, I suggested that Anne's 'in her family for years' claim could have meant that Billy owned the photo album and gave it to the forger after removing the photos and scrap paper clippings. Billy Graham's involvement was possibly nothing else beyond that.

Devereux may be a different story. Can we be sure Tales of Liverpool wasn't his book instead of Mike's? I thought Devereux's daughters didn't live with him at that time (early 1990s). Would they necessarily have known what their father was up to most of the time?

[Lombro2]

According to Mike, she might have become untechnically Feldman’s wife. She was playing both.

She was confident it was a real document or an old document and not a shoddy hoax she cooked up. Otherwise why throw two boyfriends and exes under the bus?

[rjpalmer]

My husband is a budding filmmaker and my family had this film lying around for ages.

Ah, but when Anne Graham began spreading these porkies (and she persisted in this malarky for years) she was only technically Mike's wife. She had left him six months earlier (very soon after the book launch) and had filed for divorce the day after he began to spill the beans to the Liverpool Post.

There was no love lost between the two and if the diary was something Barrett had bought down at the pub it was no skin off Anne's nose; she would have tossed him under the bus in Soho second. There certainly doesn't appear to be any evidence that the diary ever brought their marriage anything but misery.

Her behavior does make sense, though, if she had been up to her elbows in the diary's creation. That she was sticking her neck out to cover for Ed Lyons and her ex-husband's thievery has no credibility at all.

And the Battlecrease Caper is bosh, anyway.

According to his children, Tony Devereux was a non-reader. According to Harrison, he didn't own a single book.

Yet of all the hundreds of thousands of books Barrett could have lent this non-reader, the book he did lend him in 1991 had two chapters on the Maybrick case.

That means Barrett already had Maybrick on his mind long before Dodd had the electrical work done.

That's one hell of a coincidence for you to swallow.

Bon appetite!

[Lombro2]

With the cat out of the bag, Anne incorporated Barrett's writing aspirations into her own cover story. That's how I see it.

That's how I see it too, with the Fence Theory.

If Roger Patterson stole the P-G Film and gave it to Gimlin to fence, isn't this is how Mrs Gimlin would react?

My husband is a budding filmmaker and my family had this film lying around for ages.

[Lombro2]

Hi, Caz,

Does the fact that Anne used Mike's writing in her family "cover story" make it look like Anne was actually confident that this was authentic document and not a forgery written by a literary forger? Or was she just confident that it was an old document?

RJ made a good point about Anne saying her husband was a budding writer when it's like saying he was a poor painter peddling a Picasso. She was obviously confident about something to stick her neck out so much.... If it was a forgery, why not just pretend ignorance. Not say "Oh I'm helping my husband write a book (don't read anything into that) but I didn't want him to know it came from me because I'm a good wife who walks three feet behind." She stuck her neck out with a strange story because she was confident about the diary.

Or with her tremendous forging ability.

[rjpalmer]

I was cleaning up one of my old laptops and came across the following photographs and thought I'd post them. These were discovered by David Barrat during his excellent research into Look-In and Celebrity and Chat magazines that had published Barrett's work in the 1980s. I don't recall if he ever posted these on his blog, but he was kind enough to send them to me a few years ago and he deserves the credit for their discovery. They represent a sort of snapshot in time--a rare glimpse at Barrett's happier days. My apologies if these have been posted before, but I don't recall they have been.

It will be recalled that Richard Whittington-Egan reported that Barrett once wrote a feature article about the singer Kylie Minogue but did not give a date for this. Barrett's claim was ridiculed by the diary's supporters, of course, who dismissed it as one of Mike's "tall tales," but Barrett did interview national celebrities--a fact on record. David B. discovered that Kylie was interviewed in six different issues of Look-in in the late 1980s, though no journalist was ever credited. It's possible these quotes came from an interview conducted by Barrett or that a full interview might still be located and RWE's claim was slightly garbled--not that it particularly matters, since the reality of Barrett's freelance writing career has already been established.

Anyway, the following photos and snippets appeared in Look-In Magazine on 15 July 1989, one of the vehicles for Barrett's work. I don't think it is a coincidence that the children discussing Kylie Minogue are none other than Barrett's own daughter Caroline and her cousin or stepcousin Christopher Grimes.

Enjoy.

[rjpalmer]

I certainly haven't seen a single other candidate put forward.

Scott Nelson has thrown out a couple of names, but--with apologies to Scott--I simply can't take them seriously; accusing Tony Devereux or Billy Graham is like ignoring the twenty-pound note on the sidewalk and instead reaching for a farthing. Graham was barely literate, and Devereux didn't own a single book. His daughters said he wrote in block lettering like Barrett. The one book Tony did have in his possession--with two chapters on the Maybrick case--belonged to Mike Barrett.

No; the Barretts were the writers who were (jointly or separately) submitting articles to magazines in the 1980s and kept it a secret. They were the ones telling shifting tales. They were the ones who made a profit. They were the ones who had (jointly or separately) tried to obtain the blank Victorian diary. Barrett both publicly and privately confessed--weird behavior for an innocent man---and Barrett, in my view, demonstrated inside knowledge.

Look at this way. If Barrett wasn't involved, and had no idea who wrote the diary, he was extremely lucky. He was lucky that the art shop he pointed out to Harold Brough did indeed sell an iron gall ink with nigrosine and chloroacetamide. He was lucky that his '11 day' boast fits the obscure timeline. He was lucky that his claim that Bernard Ryan's book was the only one he read conforms to a textual analysis of the diary--Christie or Moreland or RWE, etc. wouldn't have worked. He was lucky in that Anne's handwriting does contain some weird idiosyncrasies that we see in the diary. It far easier could not have. Barrett was abnormally lucky to have traced the 'O Costly' quote to an obscure essay and to have had a girlfriend who remembers the Sphere books being in his possession. It's far too much for me to swallow, but others apparently are satisfied that Mike was simply an unsuspecting dupe. His bizarre lies and strange habits of confessing and retracting were indeed strange, but I think explainable because he was a pathological liar, a heavy drinker, and a man who loved to hear himself talk and mess with people.

But Anne Graham is a free woman and is not required to talk to anyone or explain herself to anyone, so I believe we have reached the end of the line. She certainly has no intention of talking about the diary, least of all to a stranger. I strongly suspect there will be no final dénouement in our lifetimes.

[Mike J. G.]

The diary was clearly a recent creation so we need look no further than the Barretts.

Polly Nichols was clearly only recently dead so we need look no further than Charles Lechmere.

I'm sorry, Lombro, but Lechmere was in no way, shape or form, the killer of anybody.

But I agree with the Barrets being involved in the Maybrick scrapbook to some extent.