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

[Herlock Sholmes]

Hi Herlock -

There's seldom anything new in Diaryland, just the same tired 'stock' arguments repetitively regurgitated by the combatants, but a few months back Jon Menges uploaded, for the first time, images of the suspicious pattern of staining on the diary's inside cover.

This was something entirely new, but not one commentator (other than me) showed any interest in these stains, which I find a bit odd. What do you make of them?

Barrett claimed he tried to remove a stamp or mark of some sort, showing the photograph album dated to around 1909, but of course the Diary believers will simply argue that Barrett knew of the stains and exploited this detail in his secret, non-circulating confessional affidavit. They will also stick to a hard-nosed and literal interpretation of the Barrett/Gray affidavit when it states that Mike soaked the 'whole' cover, when it is just (in my opinion) a figure of speech.

I'm not sure that helps them, though. The pattern of staining is not consistent with an accidental spill. There is no splash pattern, for instance, and no pattern of where a bottle or can of oil upended; it appears that the oily substance was deliberately applied while the photo album was open and flat. Based on my experiments, it is also clear that something was rubbed on the oil after it was allowed to soak into the papers---so vigorously that it wore away part of the end paper in the upper left corner, exactly where one might expect to find a name or some other identifying feature. The second pattern of oil, in the center of the endpaper, looks like the oil was deliberately dribbled from above. Again, this hardly looks like what one would expect to see from an accidental spill.

Can you come up with any innocent explanation for these strange patterns?

Here is Barrett's description.

"When I got the Album and Compass home, I examined it closely, inside the front cover I noticed a makers stamp mark, dated 1908 or 1909 to remove this without trace I soaked the whole of the front cover in Linseed Oil, once the oil was absorbed by the front cover, which took about 2 days to dry out. I even used the heat from the gas oven to assist in the drying out."

My experiments also showed that the claim that linseed oil would emit a strong odor is the usual poppycock of people who seldom if ever test any of their dogmatic and unlettered pronouncements. I used a new, pure bottle of linseed oil/flaxseed oil and there was no discernible odor.

I even heated, for a short time, the experimental book cover in an oven, and I noticed that the oil pattern spread out and enlarged when heat was applied--which could be consistent with the patterns on the inside cover. I am particularly interested in the double outline of the 'kidney' shape because it is quite similar to the pattern that appeared when I reheated my own book cover. What I assume happened is that the oil, as it heated up, began to become fluid again, and then further spread into the paper fibers.



What do you make of it, if anything?

Hi Roger,

I remember seeing a number of posts saying that applying linseed oil to the diary would have created a smell lasting for days or weeks, so it is certainly interesting to know from your experiment that there might not have been any smell at all.

I'm thinking that anyone who isn't concerned that a large number of pages have been ripped out from the photograph album also isn't going to be concerned that something appears to have been removed from the inside cover.

Like you say, it could be argued that Barrett wove a story around those marks but I certainly can't see anything implausible about that part of the affidavit.

[Iconoclast]

But at least you now concede that perhaps it suggests Barrett wasn't there at the time. Thank you.

Take the win - there won't be many ...

[Herlock Sholmes]

The great news for you, RJ, is that Herlock has researched this for almost ten minutes and he has discovered that the affidavit signed by Mike Barrett on January 5, 1995 was never actually read by him and certainly not written by him - it was all from the fertile mind of Alan Gray - so you don't need to ask questions about it or worry about whether linseed oil would have warped the cover because Alan Gray pretty much just made it all up.

According to Herlock, that is ...

PS We can therefore skip the bit in his affidavit where Mike explains how he "made a mark 'kidney' shaped, just below centre inside the cover with the Knife" and go back to believing one of my personal favourite Mike moments, the bit where he explains away the kidney shape as occurring when Anne dropped an actual kidney on the inside cover of the book! Now, give Herlock a few minutes research inside his head and I'm sure he'll come back to us and confirm that that little gem was also made up by Alan Gray and Mike just repeated it for funzies.

Ike, I can't fathom why you've decided to misrepresent what I said to Roger of all people who isn't going to fall for it for one second.

You posted a letter yourself from Gray to Linder which stated that Barrett's statements were "read to" him. Which is exactly what I said likely happened. Why do you think Gray didn't tell Linder that Barrett read them himself or wrote them, if that's what had happened?

You also posted a summary of a claim by Barrett that he signed his affidavit while drunk, which I can well believe.

So everything I've said about the the way the affidavit was created is supported by the available evidence.

Nowhere have I said that it was "all from the fertile mind of Alan Gray". In fact I already told you this in an earlier post. I'm sure Gray was doing his very best to tell the story as Barrett told it to him but that needed him to understand what Barrett meant when he used ambiguous terms such as "writing" the affidavit which could include drafting it, typing it or doing the manuscript. It also needed him to understand the chronology, but if Barrett's own dates were out of kilter due to poor memory he had no chance.