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

[Iconoclast]

Are you saying Keith Skinner gave you permission to post a partial extract of the Feldman/TMW telephone call but refused permission to post it in its entirety?

How extraordinary! What is it that you think he's trying to hide?

Do you want me to PM you his email and you can ask him yourself what terrible secrets he's keeping from everyone?

[Herlock Sholmes]

Yes, the simplest explanations are the best. It's just a matter of how one interprets them compared to somebody else.

Well, Scott, let's look at your great solution to this mystery.

At some point around the turn of the 20th century, someone, for a completely unknown reason, bizarrely created what you refer to as a "spoof" journal of James Maybrick. Whether that journal involved Maybrick being Jack the Ripper seems to be an open question which presumably revolves around the toss of a coin. Heads it did, tails it didn't. Then, for reasons totally unexplained, that journal somehow gets into the hands of Michael Maybrick who bizarrely decided to hide it either in his dead brother's old house or his old office to which he couldn't possibly have had access so long after his brother's death, or perhaps it was somewhere else "associated with Maybrick" (of which you don't seem to be able to come up with examples), but you don't explain why he decided to do this rather than, say, burn it.

Then it was found in around the 1970s, although you don't say by whom or under what circumstances it might have been found. At a very minimum, if this is supposed to be a journal written by James Maybrick, it's an interesting and valuable historical document but, if it's a journal in which Maybrick claimed to be Jack the Ripper, it's sensational. Your theory doesn't seem to explain which one it is but the unknown person who found seems to have thought it was important enough to take to the Liverpool Echo where, for some bizarre reason, it was "left on a shelf", because, of course, newspapers always just leave valuable historical documents on shelves. The person who found the journal doesn't seem to care about this nor does the person at the newspaper who received it. Tony Devereux simply took it, apparently. Another way of describing that, I assume, would be that he stole it.

Then Tony Devereux does a bizarre thing with the document which one can only assume he believes to be a genuine journal written by James Maybrick, although you don't confirm this. Rather than try to sell it, he does nothing with it for about 10 or 20 years. Then at some point after 1988 he decides to spend money and time creating an expanded fake version of the diary in which James Maybrick is definitely Jack the Ripper. Why he does so is baffling because, once completed, he then does nothing with it other than give it away to Michael Barrett. We're not told if he leads Barrett to think it's genuine or tells him its something he knocked up himself based on an earlier document but that is part of the wonderful convoluted nature of the theory where we are left to use our collective creative imaginations to put it all together ourselves.

Then Michael Barrett sits on it for over six months. He doesn't seem to show it to anyone or tell anyone about it apart from an electrician called Eddie Lyons of whom there is no evidence he's ever spoken to before in his life.

And then this is where the whole thing goes wonky because on 9th March 1992: "While at Dodd's house on March 9, 1992, Eddie overhears electricians discussing a document that had been found there some time before". But, according to your theory, they're talking about a document found in the house (or somewhere else) in the 1970s, perhaps more than 20 years earlier. No explanation is provided as to how these electricians know about the discovery of this document so many years earlier which had been taken to the Liverpool Echo where it had vanished or how they could possibly have known about it.

I should comment here that you can't even keep your story straight. In your #1866 on 7th August you told me that the original spoof was "not necessarily a diary" (which is why I've referred to it as "a journal") whereas in your earlier #1861 you said that on 9th March 1992, "Eddie tells Mike what he was told about the diary being found somewhere in the house." So it was a diary that was found "somewhere in the house" or, as you now tell us, somewhere else.

Then the story gets even more bizarre because, astonishingly, despite having what must appear to be a genuine, completed and signed diary of Jack the Ripper, and despite a literary agent in London expressing great interest in seeing this diary of Jack the Ripper, Mike, by pure coincidence, has the exact same thought as Tony Devereux had had in the 1970s that he could improve on Maybrick's journal, so he decides to spend £25 buying a genuine Victorian diary so that he can embark up a hopeless plan of creating a second replica of the diary for no apparent reason other than "ego". But "ego" can hardly explain it in circumstances where it's going to be presented as James Maybrick's diary, not authored by Michael Barrett. Apparently, we're now told that paranoia and jealousy are also involved but paranoia of what and jealousy of whom is not explained.

This is supposed to be "simple" solution! Don't make me laugh, Scott. It could hardly be more bizarre and convoluted.

I wouldn't mind but you've obviously come up with this farrago of nonsense for two reasons. The first is that you seem to have fallen for the once popular but now discredited belief that the diarist must have had some intimate knowledge of the details Maybrick's life. I can only assume that this is how you think the diary once ended up in the hands of Michael Maybrick. The second is that you clearly still appear to be of the false belief that Barrett was diagnosed with Korsakoff Syndrome and suffered from this in March 1992 which would have made him incapable of creating the text of the diary. The last time we spoke about this you doubled down and insisted that you'd seen a document in Ripperana. I figure you're still looking for it and will continue to look for the rest of your life, oblivious to reason.

I note that you skipped over the point I mentioned about Anne's lies. Your theory doesn't explain why Anne told so many lies about the diary's origins. Whereas if she helped create it, it is self-explanatory.

Like I've said, Scott, you can put forward whatever creative fiction you like, although I would have thought that the creative writing board would have been a better place for this theory, which isn't supported by any evidence, but I trust you have resigned yourself to the fact that it's not going to be accepted by anyone. Mind you, there's always Lombro, I suppose.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Anne and Mike writing the diary is the most complicated and convoluted solution that exists and it answers no more or better than does their being fences.

Lombro, you may be surprised to know that simply saying something doesn't make it so. We're talking about a fake diary which Mike Barrett owned and produced. He told a literary agent about it on 9th March 1992 but didn't show it to her until over a month later. In the meantime, he secretly sought out a Victorian diary with blank pages. He made money out of it, as did his wife, and he even confessed to the forgery. All he needed was a few books, an old photograph album from which he could crudely rip out the pages with photographs, a commercially available ink and some nibs, plus someone who could disguise their handwriting and write in a sort-of Victorian style. It's about as simple a solution as it gets.

[Herlock Sholmes]

I have it from Keith so it's his call not mine, RJ, and - at the risk of you shooting the messenger again - I think that was recently asked and answered.

Are you saying Keith Skinner gave you permission to post a partial extract of the Feldman/TMW telephone call but refused permission to post it in its entirety?

How extraordinary! What is it that you think he's trying to hide?

[Lombro2]

Anne and Mike writing the diary is the most complicated and convoluted solution that exists and it answers no more or better than does their being fences.

[Scott Nelson]

Well Scott, I see your story's already changed three times in the past two days. Or I'm looking at a couple of scenarios.

First you told me that "While at Dodd's house on March 9, 1992, Eddie overhears electricians discussing a document that had been found there some time before". Now, maybe it wasn't found "there", i.e. at Dodd's house, but at Maybrick's office, but who found it there you don't say, nor, if it was "taken to the offices of the Liverpool Echo" why the hell it would have ended up with one of the printers but not a journalist (who would have revealed its existence in the newspaper), nor if so many people knew about it, why it was able to be kept a secret. It's bordering on conspiracy theory. In all likelihood it may have been found at the house, but I'm open to other places. As I've written the finder didn't know what to do with it, so it's dropped off at the newspaper, nobody is interested, and it sits on a shelf for some time until Devereux picks it up. Rather than giving it to a journalist, he takes it home.

Then you told me that, "it likely would have been Devereux or one of his colleagues who cracked the "costly intercourse" problem." Now the idea that they "cracked" anything is forgotten and they actually wrote it in. I didn't imply that. You brought up the quote, not me. It is possible that somebody else told Barrett where the quote could be found (one of the people working with Devereux?). In any case, I don't look on that quote as having anything to do with Mike, other than his being told where to look for it by the person who decided to put it in the diary.

Then you told me that you couldn't see that the diary is full of Mike's quirky expressions, now you say that they were maybe Devereux's or "someone else's" even though Mike is the only person with whom they are identified. I said, if there were quirky expressions in the diary (and none stood out to me), they could be attributable to someone other than Mike. Others have pointed out the aspects of the quirky expressions, not me.

You still haven't explained why Mike hid from Shirley his knowledge of Ryan's book in notes he gave her in the summer of 1992. But I have. When Mike dropped the idea of writing his version of the diary, he left out Ryan's book because it wasn't necessary to include it since he wouldn't be using it. The research notes would have followed specific things Shirley told him to look into, and not to consult Ryan's book.

The other funny thing is that you posted in your friend Orsam's "Diary Handwriting" thread in 2018, in which he demonstrated examples of Anne's characters being similar to the diarist's, yet didn't say you couldn't see the similarities. Not a squeak out of you about that. All you mentioned was a different slant. That was an odd comment to make if you couldn't see any similarities in the first place. If you couldn't see the similarities, you had the perfect opportunity to tell Orsam but, strangely, didn't take it. As I recall, I did comment on the overall appearance of her writing, not the little "similarities" other people had brought up, because I couldn't see any. It's funny how beliefs lead to absolute commitments as to what is actually there as opposed to what may is actually there. Anne Graham is a left-handed writer, and I don't think she disguised her writing.

To my mind you still haven't provided a convincing explanation as to why Mike felt the need to replicate what he already had in front of him (let's not quibble about the word "replicate" again). Just saying "ego" explains nothing. As far as I can see, you seem to have decided to produce an imaginative, complicated, convoluted, fictional account which doesn't seem to be based on anything at all. It's based on human emotions, like paranoia and jealousy. It's not convoluted, but an attempt to put oneself into the mind of Mike Barrett given the circumstances he was experiencing. I don't believe he ended up pushing his creation, but someone else's. If you can't see how Mike's "ego" couldn't have come into play, that's your problem.

But the thing that I really don't get is why you dismiss the notion of the Barretts having created the diary themselves. I don't. As Roger and a couple of others know. But the idea of the Barretts creating the thing from scratch and pushing it out into a publishing world is a somewhat too far-fetched for me, but not impossible. It's surely the simplest and most likely solution. It explains Mike's desire for a Victorian diary with blank pages (yes). It explains the handwriting similarities (problematic), the quirky expressions (more problematic), the fact of Mike finding "costly intercourse" (a non-issue), the hiding of Ryan in the research notes (unnecessary), it explains all the lies Anne told and, above all, explains the provenance of an item which is known to have come out of 12 Goldie Street. The diary ultimately came out to there, but I think it was created elsewhere. Whether you want to call it Occam's razor or Orsam's razor, the simplest explanation is usually the right one.

Yes, the simplest explanations are the best. It's just a matter of how one interprets them compared to somebody else.

[rjpalmer]

No one is saying that Feldman handed out a copy of the diary the electricians so he could "feed them the answers".

The accusation that Feldman was deliberately "feed[ing] them the answers" doesn't make any sense considering that Feldman himself rejected the provenance. But then, most of Lombro's comments aren't tethered to either reality or logic.

It's more reasonable to conclude that Feldman inadvertently polluted his investigation through clumsy interviewing techniques (which is not an anti-Diary slur but was one of Shirley Harrison's constant concerns and she didn't shy away from voicing it) and that Feldman eventually came to realize this himself. Indeed, the relevant passage in Feldman's book seems to be a tacit admission from a man who realized his own clumsiness had created a 'false positive.'

[Iconoclast]

Indeed, it does.
What could be more natural than Feldman showing a photocopy of the diary (which we know he owned) to see if it would trigger the electrician's memory of the 'old book' supposedly thrown into the non-existent skip.
And it is Feldman himself who is so obviously confused and worried about a reference to a 'copy' rather than to the thing itself.
Of course, we aren't told what Feldman said next, nor how the phone call ended, since Ike hasn't transcribed the remainder of the conversation.
If I recall, Ike's rationale is that my concerns over such minutia are 'tangential' to the main feast (as he sees it). Lift not the painted veil.
I suggest that the devil is in such details.
P.S. Ike - are you at liberty to post the remainder of the phone call?

I have it from Keith so it's his call not mine, RJ, and - at the risk of you shooting the messenger again - I think that was recently asked and answered.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Right! It couldn’t possibly be another doppelgänger, this time an imaginary one, for plausible deniability. There’s that term again.

Feldman handing out xeroxes makes much more sense!

PHF: “A copy… A copy of it? (Oh no why did I say that so sheepishly? Now they’ll know I was handing out xeroxes so I could feed them the answers that I wanted to get out of them. Why else would I ask him to confirm he saw a copy of all things? There’s no plausible deniability now for me!)”

No one is saying that Feldman handed out a copy of the diary the electricians so he could "feed them the answers". He might have wanted to earn their trust, so shared the secret information he had, hoping they would give him a secret in return.

[rjpalmer]

Feldman handing out xeroxes makes much more sense!

Indeed, it does.

What could be more natural than Feldman showing a photocopy of the diary (which we know he owned) to see if it would trigger the electrician's memory of the 'old book' supposedly thrown into the non-existent skip.

And it is Feldman himself who is so obviously confused and worried about a reference to a 'copy' rather than to the thing itself.

Of course, we aren't told what Feldman said next, nor how the phone call ended, since Ike hasn't transcribed the remainder of the conversation.

If I recall, Ike's rationale is that my concerns over such minutia are 'tangential' to the main feast (as he sees it). Lift not the painted veil.

I suggest that the devil is in such details.

P.S.

Ike - are you at liberty to post the remainder of the phone call?

[Lombro2]

Right! It couldn’t possibly be another doppelgänger, this time an imaginary one, for plausible deniability. There’s that term again.

Feldman handing out xeroxes makes much more sense!

PHF: “A copy… A copy of it? (Oh no why did I say that so sheepishly? Now they’ll know I was handing out xeroxes so I could feed them the answers that I wanted to get out of them. Why else would I ask him to confirm he saw a copy of all things? There’s no plausible deniability now for me!)”

[Herlock Sholmes]

I'd like to submit a small detail that I noticed.

Quoting Iconoclast:

"That said, there seems to be verbal evidence that Davies was specific when mentioning the diary to Alan Dodgson who passed the message on to Tim. Apparently, Davies had said (from a telephone called between Paul Feldman and Tim Martin-Wright the day after he found Shirley's book in the book shop in one of the Berwick's on the A1):

TMW: I have just been reading a very interesting book.
PHF: Yes, I heard. I understand you’ve got your story to tell about it.
TMW: Yes, in fact. I’ll go back to the first, the inception of my involvement in the story which is about two years ago, I think. A guy who worked for me said, um, he knows that I collect antiques and am interested in old books etc. He said; “I saw a really interesting book that you would like in the pub the other night”. I said, “Oh yeah”. He said; “It, um, is a copy of Jack the Ripper’s Diary.” I said, “Oh yeah?”
PHF: A copy, a copy of it?
TMW: Well I asked that, and he said it was a copy of Jack the Ripper’s Diary.

--

Although Mr. TWM "thinks" this took place "about two years ago," it is clear that Davies did not see the Diary of Jack the Ripper. He saw a copy of the Diary of Jack the Ripper.

I submit that this can only mean one of two things. He either he saw: 1) The facsimile of the diary reprinted in Shirley Harrison's 1993 book

or

2) he saw a photocopy of the diary that Paul Feldman had been waving around among the electricians.

An old post by Peter Birchwood has reminded me that Paul Feldman did indeed have a photocopy of the diary.



.

Was this the 'copy' of the diary that Davies saw, and is this why Paul Feldman comes across as a little sheepish when he repeats TMW's statement?

"A copy....a copy of it?"

I submit this for your consideration.

Thanks.

Hi Roger,

What I find so odd about that extract is that Ike introduced it as "verbal evidence from Davies" but TMW sourced it to "A guy who worked for me", which must be Alan Dodgson, who saw a copy of Jack the Ripper's diary in a pub and, knowing that his boss collected antiques, mentioned it to TMW. That is so utterly different from the story told in Robert Smith's book, sourced to Dodgson, whereby Alan Davies is supposed to have come into an APS shop in Bootle where Dodgson worked and informed him that an old diary which an electrician had found at Battlecrease could be acquired for £25. In the story told by TMW, there is no mention whatsoever of Davies, although it's possible that he is the person who showed Dodgson a copy of the diary in the pub. But, if so, it's a huge problem because the incident didn't happen in the APS shop and Davies didn't just tell Dodgson that an old diary was available but showed him an actual copy of it. It may be, of course, that, after speaking to him in the shop, Dodgson met Davies in the pub where Davies had a copy of the diary but why hasn't Davies ever confirmed this? I also note that in TMW's account there is no mention of Battlecrease or the involvement of any electrician at all.

I agree entirely with you, Roger, that whatever the truth of this incident, it can't have occurred in late 1992 but must have happened at some point in 1993 when there may well have been unauthorized copies of the diary floating around. It would only have needed Feldman to have indiscreetly given a copy to a single electrician to explain why Davies might have been showing it to Dodgson in the pub in 1993.

[rjpalmer]

I'd like to submit a small detail that I noticed.

Quoting Iconoclast:

"That said, there seems to be verbal evidence that Davies was specific when mentioning the diary to Alan Dodgson who passed the message on to Tim. Apparently, Davies had said (from a telephone called between Paul Feldman and Tim Martin-Wright the day after he found Shirley's book in the book shop in one of the Berwick's on the A1):

TMW: I have just been reading a very interesting book.
PHF: Yes, I heard. I understand you’ve got your story to tell about it.
TMW: Yes, in fact. I’ll go back to the first, the inception of my involvement in the story which is about two years ago, I think. A guy who worked for me said, um, he knows that I collect antiques and am interested in old books etc. He said; “I saw a really interesting book that you would like in the pub the other night”. I said, “Oh yeah”. He said; “It, um, is a copy of Jack the Ripper’s Diary.” I said, “Oh yeah?”
PHF: A copy, a copy of it?
TMW: Well I asked that, and he said it was a copy of Jack the Ripper’s Diary.

--

Although Mr. TWM "thinks" this took place "about two years ago," it is clear that Davies did not see the Diary of Jack the Ripper. He saw a copy of the Diary of Jack the Ripper.

I submit that this can only mean one of two things. He either he saw: 1) The facsimile of the diary reprinted in Shirley Harrison's 1993 book

or

2) he saw a photocopy of the diary that Paul Feldman had been waving around among the electricians.

An old post by Peter Birchwood has reminded me that Paul Feldman did indeed have a photocopy of the diary.



.

Was this the 'copy' of the diary that Davies saw, and is this why Paul Feldman comes across as a little sheepish when he repeats TMW's statement?

"A copy....a copy of it?"

I submit this for your consideration.

Thanks.

[Lombro2]

Nein commentar.

I don't comment on cherry-picking either except to say it's cherry-picking for people have no content. But it might make for an interesting fictional Schtonk movie.

A bunch of Liverpudlians form a band of forgers after they hear about the Hitler Diaries. It's sort of like the Beatles listening to Buddy Holly and saying, "Hey mates, we can do that!... How about we do the Ripper Diary? Ripping good idea!"

[Iconoclast]

Is heavy criticism and denigration of members, who agree with you on your main conclusion, really a good strategy?

I think trying to make people on your side look stupid just reflects poorly back on yourself.

Maybe I should try it with Ike.

I'm perfectly capable of making myself look stupid, Lombro.