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

[rjpalmer]

This is at least supported by the fact that he didn't ask for it back and wasn't given it back, not even at Tony's funeral, when asking the family for something to remember his old friend by.

That's just an interpretation, and certainly not the only one.

Here's what Keith wrote:

I recall being told by one of Tony's daughters, (it should be on tape), that Mike went round to the family and asked for something of their father's to remember him by. They were surprised and I wondered why Mike had done this.

By writing 'round to the family,' I was unsure whether Keith meant at the funeral itself or to the family's homes in the immediate aftermath of the funeral. Perhaps it doesn't matter.

But Barrett was a scammer, so I'm inclined to trust the instincts of the Devereux family when they smelt something fishy in the air.

Yes, Mike asked for something of "their father's" but this could have been a subtle reminder that their father had something of Mike's.

So maybe Mike really did want his 'Maybrick' booklet back...but didn't want to draw attention to that fact.

If Devereux was somehow involved in the conception of the fake, as Barrett later claimed in his secret affidavit, and Barrett remembered leaving a booklet relevant to the fake at Devereux's house, the funeral may have looked like the last bus to Woodstock, his last chance of retrieving it. This could have been Mike's way of 'fishing'---to see if he could get the booklet without drawing attention to it.

It would have been a perfectly natural way of broaching the subject, without actually broaching the subject...

As I see it, Barrett was later evasive during his interview with Martin Howells. When asked about RWE's book he deflected the subject by asking 'sorry? Which daughter?' as if that bloody mattered. A bit like Anne's "anyone want more tea?"

Meanwhile, the Barretts combined to give us three different accounts as to how Mike came to own the book. WH Smith's. The library. A Christmas present. That doesn't bode well for either their honesty or the book's irrelevancy.

But hey, the diary was found under Dodd's floorboards months later, so it has to be a coincidence, right?

[rjpalmer]

We were also told that Anne Graham remembered--or thought she remembered---buying Mike Murder, Mayhem, and Mystery 'for Christmas.'

Was Anne in the habit of remembering buying Mike books that were actually owned by Tony Devereux?

Or do you think Anne was lying about buying the booklet for Mike in order to bolster her claim of having given the diary to Tony, and by a stroke of enormous good luck, Janet Devereux had a false memory of her father also identifying it as Barrett's copy?

It all comes across as doubt-weaving when there is no actual doubt.

[caz]

Personally, I don't think there is any reasonable doubt that the booklet was Barrett's. Scotland Yard told Martin Fido that it was Barrett's, Devereux's daughter had a specific memory of her father identifying it as Barrett's copy, and Paul Feldman even reported that Barrett's name was written on the inside cover.

It could have been Mike's, but Feldman was wrong about his name being written anywhere on or in the copy Janet Devereux eventually handed over to Bonesy. Keith established this, in addition to the fact that Janet had stated in October 1993 that she had borrowed the book from her father in January 1991. Bonesy didn't know the book was originally Mike's before Tony lent it to his daughter. This was just a reasonable presumption based on her account.

It does seem a little strange that a non-reader who owned no books would have had this one - regardless of how it ended up with Tony. Did Mike read the relevant chapters aloud to him, in connection with his secret plan to fake Maybrick's diary? Or did he just spot it sitting on the shelf in Goldie Street and think of Tony, housebound and bored to tears, without appreciating that books - even this wee collection of short stories - were not normally his thing? Was Janet surprised to see it in her father's house, but not surprised that he let her borrow it straight away? Presumably he wasn't in the middle of reading it at the time. The other strange thing is that she still had the book seven months later when her father died, if he'd asked her to return it promptly because it belonged to Mike.

Against this, we have Barrett's shifting account of seeing the book for the first time several months after Devereux's death.

During an interview given to Keith Skinner on 14 April 1994, Barrett claimed he bought the booklet after seeing it in the history section of WH Smith's bookstore (Ripper Diary, p. 85)

But several months earlier, in September 1993, Barrett had told Martin Howells a different account: that he had found the booklet at the Liverpool Library and had merely 'got it out.'

MH: Did you at this stage know who had written the diary?

MB: No. Right. What happened was...

MH: Just start, “at this stage I didn’t know”.

MB: At that stage I didn’t and what happened was I kept on looking throughout the library for Jack the Ripper, Jack the Ripper, Jack the Ripper. I was looking in all the books, Jack the Ripper, Jack the Ripper. Well the opening page of the diary has got ‘Whitechapel Liverpool Whitechapel London’, so I thought to myself “hang on a minute Mike stop,” but this is after many months – I emphasise many months. Stop looking at Jack the Ripper and start looking at Liverpool murders. Right and I got a book out by Richard Whittington Egan. Right, and in that book, its got quite a lot of short stories, short stories, just very small short stories – Springheel Jack and everything else what have you, and I come across Florence Maybrick, the murder, right, I think it was called Poison and Motive[?] if I’m not mistaken, and I come across that and then I come across that and I found Battlecrease House, which is very important – Battlecrease House. I suddenly realised Battlecrease House is in the diary. So consequently it had to be. So instead of looking for the Ripper I went all the way for James Maybrick, and this is what started to convince me.

MH: Did you ever show any of these books to Tony Devereux?

MB: No. Well Tony Devereux was dead.

MH: Yeah. It’s just that one of the daughters has apparently said that in fact she remembers that book Murder Mayhem and Mystery being lent to the younger daughter. Tony Devereux’s.

--

So, which was it? Did Barrett buy it at WH Smith's, or did Barrett check it out from the library?

Barrett couldn't keep his story straight and I see no reason to believe either account.

Yes, it's certainly a muddle. Copies of the book could undoubtedly have been picked up multiple times in either place and by anyone, whether it was prior to January 1991, between August 1991 and April 1992, or between the spring and summer of 1992.

It's also worth noting that Barrett gave this account in September 1993 but his research notes already mentioning the same booklet were turned in to Shirley Harrison the previous Spring/Summer.

Although Shirley couldn't put a precise date on when she got the notes from Mike, she did think it was around July or August 1992, with no suggestion that it was as early as the spring.

This means the discovery that Devereux---described by his own daughters as a non-reader who 'owned no books'--having the exact same booklet that appears in the research notes--and apparently Barrett's own copy to boot--is far too coincidental to ignore as meaningless.

If it's a coincidence that can be ignored as meaningless, that a Fountains Road resident was working in Maybrick's former home on 9th March 1992, the day of Mike Barrett's first known mention of the unique, unrepeatable one-off that is the Maybrick diary, why would it be 'far too coincidental' to ignore as meaningless, that a copy of an extremely popular collection of Liverpool tales could have found its way innocently into the home of another Fountains Road resident over a year previously?

There was a connection between Devereux and the Maybrick case and, for some reason, Barrett didn't want anyone to know about it...even though he had otherwise inextricably linked Devereux to the diary though his provenance.

Didn't want anyone to know about it? Or simply forgot all about taking a copy of this same book round to Tony's, because it meant nothing to him at the time? This is at least supported by the fact that he didn't ask for it back and wasn't given it back, not even at Tony's funeral, when asking the family for something to remember his old friend by.

[caz]

Hi Scott,

while I personally don't give much if any credence to Melvin Harris's Kane/Devereux theory anymore, there is a bit of 'housekeeping' that might be worth passing along.

When you presented your theory on the 'Google Ngrams' thread early this year, Caroline Brown's raised the objection (and not for the first time, if I recall) that Devereux and Billy Graham may not have even known one another:

"I'm not sure if Billy Graham would have had occasion to meet Tony Devereux. It would have been a reasonably easy walk for Mike and young Caroline, between Goldie Street and Fountains Road, but Billy was elderly by then, and lived close to the Barretts - Sleepers Hill if memory serves." -- C.A.B. 3-13-2025

This appears to be just an assumption, however, and not an established fact, for I recently noticed a statement made by Keith Skinner back in 2017 that might potentially challenge any suggestion that the two men were complete strangers:

"A thought which has just occurred to me is I remember Mike telling me that he, his father-in-law and 'Railway John' (don't even ask) all went to Tony's funeral in August 1991 - and I recall being told by one of Tony's daughters, (it should be on tape), that Mike went round to the family and asked for something of their father's to remember him by. They were surprised and I wondered why Mike had done this. At the time it crossed my mind that perhaps Mike was trying to create an impression of how close he was to Tony in order to make it seem the most natural thing in the world for Tony to have given him the diary and thereby secure his ownership of it. But if that was Mike's intention, then it supports his story he had been given the diary by Tony - which leads us back to Anne Graham's account of provenance. And means that March 9th 1992 date has to be just a bizarre coincidence? "

Mr. Skinner does not tell us if he ever attempted to confirm Billy's presence at Devereux's funeral, but if correct it would certainly suggest that the two men DID know one another. Why else would the 'elderly' Billy Graham have attended the funeral of a complete stranger, especially since Barrett had someone else to accompany him?

As an aside, I'm at a lost to understand Keith's reasoning. If Barrett hitting up the sisters for a memento was his way of 'trying to create the impression' of a close relationship with Tony (that didn't actually exist) how does this 'support' Mike's story of having been given the diary by Tony?

Doesn't it suggest the exact opposite--that he was laying the groundwork for a bogus provenance? And the whole gesture is rather absurd. If Devereux had genuinely given Mike the Diary of Jack the Ripper surely that would have been something to 'remember him by' as opposed to a bowling ball or an ashtray or whatever knickknack Mike had in mind.

Another bizarre anecdote in a bizarre saga.

It's all in the interpretation, I suppose.

Now it looks like we are back to having no evidence that Anne's father would have met or got to know Tony Devereux, we can look at this again with new eyes.

Mike's fear in the early days after taking the diary to London was that Shirley would naturally contact Tony's family to see if they knew anything about the diary. Regardless of whether his story was true or not, that Tony had given it to him as a reward for being a good mate, Mike's fear - expressed on the record - was that his daughters could have tried to claim the diary as rightfully theirs. In the event they didn't do so and doubted their father ever had it.

I read Keith's observation in that context, so if Mike was 'gifted' the diary by Tony before his death in August 1991, he might have seen a need to justify this act of generosity to the family at the funeral. In this scenario Mike wouldn't have known if they knew about the diary and were expecting it to be among Tony's effects, and to ask them would have been to tempt fate. Better to sow the seeds of a closer relationship than may actually have been the case, to prevent any potential resentment.

As it is, the very fact that Mike asked Tony's family for something to remember him by would tend to argue against him having already been given the diary - and I have it in the back of my mind that this thought did actually occur to one of the daughters: why would Mike have asked for something else of their father's, if he had recently given him this diary, of which they had no knowledge?

There is some evidence that Billy Graham didn't have much time for Mike, and Mike for his part resented the move to Goldie Street so Anne could be closer to him. So a question mark hangs over whether Billy would have given anything to Mike, or lent him any money with or without Anne's approval, for any unspecified spending, including a certain photo album.

There is also the question of who else could have been roped in to do the diary handwriting if Mike's famous 'practice runs' - whenever they are meant to have taken place - had revealed Anne's handwriting to be no less 'distinctive' than his own, or similarly impossible to disguise effectively for the duration of the task. What if she had pretended not to be up to it, in order to get out of it? No amount of domestic abuse can give the victim skills they didn't already possess.

This couple seemed to have few close friends between them, and none in common as far as I know. Would Mike have abandoned the plan if there was no obvious third conspirator he could recruit? Who you gonna call, when you need hoax buddies who can be trusted not to turn hoax busters when you give them the brief?

Not Tony, if he thought Mike a clown, barely knew Anne if at all and was pushing up the daisies by the time the 'practice runs' took place; not Billy, if he wouldn't have given Mike the time of day and didn't like the way he treated Anne; ditto any of Anne's friends. One of Mike's sisters, perhaps? Or, in a parallel universe, one of Tony's daughters?

Was Railway John a sleeper?

[erobitha]

Keith was kind enough to email me with his response:


I checked the transcript of my interview with Mike Barrett (Liverpool Library - April 14th 1994)...



MB: Oh yeah, I attended the funeral [Tony Devereux]. Yeah myself, Railway John

and my dad - my dad. Yeah the three of us.



So my error of memory.

[rjpalmer]

Yes, it might have been a mental hiccup on Keith's part, but he did write 'father-in-law.'

From my view on the "outside" I get the faint impression that there was no love lost between Barrett and Billy Graham, so Keith's statement rather surprised me.

[erobitha]

I can't speak for Keith, but my belief is that it was Stanley Barrett (Mke's father, who later died in 1998) and Railway John who attended Tony's funeral alongside Mike. I believe Mike's dad also enjoyed the odd pint with Tony in The Saddle Inn.

I could be wrong, and I'm sure someone will correct me soon enough if I am.

[rjpalmer]

Personally, I don't think there is any reasonable doubt that the booklet was Barrett's. Scotland Yard told Martin Fido that it was Barrett's, Devereux's daughter had a specific memory of her father identifying it as Barrett's copy, and Paul Feldman even reported that Barrett's name was written on the inside cover.

Against this, we have Barrett's shifting account of seeing the book for the first time several months after Devereux's death.

During an interview given to Keith Skinner on 14 April 1994, Barrett claimed he bought the booklet after seeing it in the history section of WH Smith's bookstore (Ripper Diary, p. 85)

But several months earlier, in September 1993, Barrett had told Martin Howells a different account: that he had found the booklet at the Liverpool Library and had merely 'got it out.'

MH: Did you at this stage know who had written the diary?

MB: No. Right. What happened was...

MH: Just start, “at this stage I didn’t know”.

MB: At that stage I didn’t and what happened was I kept on looking throughout the library for Jack the Ripper, Jack the Ripper, Jack the Ripper. I was looking in all the books, Jack the Ripper, Jack the Ripper. Well the opening page of the diary has got ‘Whitechapel Liverpool Whitechapel London’, so I thought to myself “hang on a minute Mike stop,” but this is after many months – I emphasise many months. Stop looking at Jack the Ripper and start looking at Liverpool murders. Right and I got a book out by Richard Whittington Egan. Right, and in that book, its got quite a lot of short stories, short stories, just very small short stories – Springheel Jack and everything else what have you, and I come across Florence Maybrick, the murder, right, I think it was called Poison and Motive[?] if I’m not mistaken, and I come across that and then I come across that and I found Battlecrease House, which is very important – Battlecrease House. I suddenly realised Battlecrease House is in the diary. So consequently it had to be. So instead of looking for the Ripper I went all the way for James Maybrick, and this is what started to convince me.

MH: Did you ever show any of these books to Tony Devereux?

MB: No. Well Tony Devereux was dead.

MH: Yeah. It’s just that one of the daughters has apparently said that in fact she remembers that book Murder Mayhem and Mystery being lent to the younger daughter. Tony Devereux’s.

--

So, which was it? Did Barrett buy it at WH Smith's, or did Barrett check it out from the library?

Barrett couldn't keep his story straight and I see no reason to believe either account.

It's also worth noting that Barrett gave this account in September 1993 but his research notes already mentioning the same booklet were turned in to Shirley Harrison the previous Spring/Summer.

This means the discovery that Devereux---described by his own daughters as a non-reader who 'owned no books'--having the exact same booklet that appears in the research notes--and apparently Barrett's own copy to boot--is far too coincidental to ignore as meaningless.

There was a connection between Devereux and the Maybrick case and, for some reason, Barrett didn't want anyone to know about it...even though he had otherwise inextricably linked Devereux to the diary though his provenance.

[Scott Nelson]

Thanks RJ. I don't agree with the idea of a bogus provenance, but I don't rule it out entirely. I've always wondered if Tales of Liverpool was actually Devereux's book and Mike is the one who borrowed it. Retelling of the account may have shifted ownership of the book to Mike instead.

[rjpalmer]

Caroline Brown's raised the objection....

In anticipation that the Apostrophe Police may drop by, the above line originally read Caroline Brown's objection, hence the unnecessary apostrophe s.

If Barrett was up to some sort of monkey business in asking the Devereux Sisters for a memento in August 1991, as Keith Skinner suggested, this would obviously mean that the concept of marketing the Diary of Jack the Ripper was now "in the works."

It could also mean that Tony's sudden death finally gave Barrett the provenance he needed, and his demise kicked the plan into motion.

[rjpalmer]

*I may count Gerard Kane, Billy Graham and Mike Barrett in this group. But Mike only given a peripheral role in supplying writing materials, Graham probably supplying the photo album and contributing to the story, Kane doing the handwriting and Devereux mainly the storyline.

Hi Scott,

while I personally don't give much if any credence to Melvin Harris's Kane/Devereux theory anymore, there is a bit of 'housekeeping' that might be worth passing along.

When you presented your theory on the 'Google Ngrams' thread early this year, Caroline Brown's raised the objection (and not for the first time, if I recall) that Devereux and Billy Graham may not have even known one another:

"I'm not sure if Billy Graham would have had occasion to meet Tony Devereux. It would have been a reasonably easy walk for Mike and young Caroline, between Goldie Street and Fountains Road, but Billy was elderly by then, and lived close to the Barretts - Sleepers Hill if memory serves." -- C.A.B. 3-13-2025

This appears to be just an assumption, however, and not an established fact, for I recently noticed a statement made by Keith Skinner back in 2017 that might potentially challenge any suggestion that the two men were complete strangers:


"A thought which has just occurred to me is I remember Mike telling me that he, his father-in-law and 'Railway John' (don't even ask) all went to Tony's funeral in August 1991 - and I recall being told by one of Tony's daughters, (it should be on tape), that Mike went round to the family and asked for something of their father's to remember him by. They were surprised and I wondered why Mike had done this. At the time it crossed my mind that perhaps Mike was trying to create an impression of how close he was to Tony in order to make it seem the most natural thing in the world for Tony to have given him the diary and thereby secure his ownership of it. But if that was Mike's intention, then it supports his story he had been given the diary by Tony - which leads us back to Anne Graham's account of provenance. And means that March 9th 1992 date has to be just a bizarre coincidence? "

Mr. Skinner does not tell us if he ever attempted to confirm Billy's presence at Devereux's funeral, but if correct it would certainly suggest that the two men DID know one another. Why else would the 'elderly' Billy Graham have attended the funeral of a complete stranger, especially since Barrett had someone else to accompany him?

As an aside, I'm at a lost to understand Keith's reasoning. If Barrett hitting up the sisters for a memento was his way of 'trying to create the impression' of a close relationship with Tony (that didn't actually exist) how does this 'support' Mike's story of having been given the diary by Tony?

Doesn't it suggest the exact opposite--that he was laying the groundwork for a bogus provenance? And the whole gesture is rather absurd. If Devereux had genuinely given Mike the Diary of Jack the Ripper surely that would have been something to 'remember him by' as opposed to a bowling ball or an ashtray or whatever knickknack Mike had in mind.

Another bizarre anecdote in a bizarre saga.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Why do you need any additional information, which is not my research to share publicly in any case, if you have already decided that Tim can't help in any useful way with your speculation about when and how Mike Barrett obtained his diary?

I'm not trying to be difficult; I'm genuinely wondering if there is any point?

I’m not saying that you're being difficult Caz but I don’t understand why you’ve avoided answering my question about Tim saying that he saw a copy of Jack the Ripper's diary in a pub. What do you make of it?

You also didn’t answer my question about how the incident could have had anything to do with Tim's birthday when he initially placed it within a 6 month date range. How would you explain it?

If you don't think there's any point in anyone releasing further information I'm very surprised because you appear to think that the incident is of importance, whereas I don't. But I can only go by what has been placed into the public domain from which nothing about Tim's birthday or Christmas is connected with the incident in any way. That takes me back to my original point, which you seemed keen to challenge, which is that the estimate of "close to Christmas 1992" must be based on pure mathematics relative to the date of the opening of the APS Bootle store. If you have evidence suggesting otherwise I'm all ears but Caz, if not, I can't, for the life of me, see why you posted your #1939.

[Admin]

We are receiving Report Post after Report Post in the last few days, all on Diary threads. Anyone who is reported from this point on for cause will be banned from posting on the Diary threads for a year.

Knock this **** off. Apologies to all who are impacted.

[caz]

I don't know if you missed it Caz but I set out all the known accounts of the story in my #1915 and at no time is the Incident linked in any way to Tim's birthday, whenever that may be. He presumably knows the exact date of his birthday but when he first told the story he placed it within a six month date range. How do you explain that?

Even in one of his later accounts it was in a two month period. This strongly suggests that there is nothing about the story which relates to his birthday and he surely wouldn't need an appointments diary to remind him when his birthday was.

Now that you've joined in this conversation, how do you account for Tim saying that his employee saw a copy of Jack the Ripper's diary in a pub?

I think I already told you that I'm not suggesting any kind of conspiracy, just an understandable failure to recollect the date an incident occurred. As far as I'm aware, only Tim and Dodgson (but not Davies) have suggested a 1992 date for this conversation but it wouldn't be in any way surprising if they discussed this with each other.

Given the importance you attach to this incident, would it not be good idea to produce the entire transcript of Tim's 1994 conversation with Feldman, the full note of Tim' 2004 conversation with Keith and any transcripts of interviews with Dodgson and Davies?

Why do you need any additional information, which is not my research to share publicly in any case, if you have already decided that Tim can't help in any useful way with your speculation about when and how Mike Barrett obtained his diary?

I'm not trying to be difficult; I'm genuinely wondering if there is any point?

[rjpalmer]

Now that you've joined in this conversation, how do you account for Tim saying that his employee saw a copy of Jack the Ripper's diary in a pub?

I was about to ask the same question. The Diary Friendly Folks (as I prefer to call them) have made much of certain informants referring to 'the [old] book,' but there doesn't appear to be similar interest in Dodgson referring to a 'copy' of Jack the Ripper's diary.

Surely this wording greatly interested Feldman who pricked up his ears and repeated it twice.

What the heck did TMW's employee mean by 'copy'? Where and when could a 'copy' of the diary have been in circulation in the pubs of Liverpool? Why would anyone who had seen Mike's "old book" have referred to it as a 'copy'?