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

[Herlock Sholmes]

Morning Herlock,

Just catching up and saw this one. Had Mike's affidavit been presented to a court of law, and all the dating errors corrected, the whole house of cards would have collapsed under the weight of the impossible chronology. Yes, the court could have given him the benefit of the doubt that his stated order of events was all over the place due to his heavy drinking and grief over his very recent divorce, but that wouldn't change the fact that his 'confession' - as sworn - was wholly unreliable. It most certainly could not have been used in evidence against his wife, for instance, when it became clear that the little red diary was not ordered and received until March 1992, despite Mike stating on oath that Tony Devereux was very much alive, if not literally kicking, throughout the forgery process, from sourcing all the raw materials to blotting the last page of writing.

In short, Mike was lying. There is no other explanation, plausible or otherwise. He only involved Tony in the process after Anne claimed to have given him the diary to give to Mike.

There is a choice here. If you think Mike told the truth about Tony living to see the day when the diary was completed, but made an innocent mistake over his date and year of death [8th August 1991], you have to toss out the red diary as unconnected to the forgery process.

If you think the red diary is proof that Maybrick's diary had yet to be created in late March 1992, you have to toss out Mike's entire chronology of the forgery process.

Love,

Caz
X

Morning Caz,

But if all the dating errors were corrected, how would the chronology have been impossible? Can you elaborate? Wouldn't the story then have been the same as the one Barrett told at the 1999 meeting for which the chronology is straightforward?

How can your statement about Devereux being alive to the blotting of the last page of writing possibly be correct once the chronology is corrected?

It seems to me that you are falling into the trap of claiming "despite Mike saying on oath" when it was really Alan Gray's understanding of events contained in the affidavit. Did Mike actually ever say that Devereux was alive when the diary itself was "completed" other than, perhaps, a first draft being completed? I don't mean did he say in the affidavit, I mean say in his own words.

If you want to persist in the fiction that Barrett diligently say down and wrote his affidavit, giving full consideration to all the facts, then you will undoubtedly come to the conclusion that he was lying. If, on the other hand, you were to take the view that Alan Gray was fully responsible for the contents of the affidavit which a drunken Barrett carelessly signed, you might come to a different, more realistic, conclusion.

[caz]

No, Ike, I don't agree that Barrett should have sought an undated document from earlier than 1870 or later than 1900. He couldn't have been sure it wouldn't be scientifically dated to those (incorrect) periods. I certainly wouldn't have known if I was in his position; As you put it yourself, he wanted a diary from around the time of the Ripper murders. What's so difficult to understand about that?

How would Mike have known that the photo album was of the right period, if he had obtained this from an auction sale just a few days after the disappointing 1891 diary arrived in the post? Did he learn something about scientific dating of old paper in the interim?

Even Baxendale could find nothing iffy about the paper.

So Mike originally thought he needed a diary dating from 1880-1890, but then had to settle for the undated old book he should have asked for in the first place?

Or did he ask for an unused or partly used diary from the 1880s, having just seen the year 1889 at the end of the last entry in an old book that had been partly used as a diary?

Love,

Caz
X

[Iconoclast]

Thought for the day, Ike: On Saturday 11th April 1992, Liverpool were down in balmy Birmingham, being thrashed by Aston Villa, 0-1.
So pretty much any spotty red teenager at a loose end in Anfield could have been invited like the fly into the parlour by Mike 'Spider' Barrett to spend that dreary afternoon writing Maybrick's diary.
I'm warming to this one...
Love,
Caz
X

You might have just cracked the case wide open, Caz!

[caz]

Sorry, Geddy2112, you mustn't spend much time on the Maybrick threads as I was actually being ironic. It's too convoluted to go into but gan canny man am not losin it like a knew exactly what a was sayin me bonnie lad.

We've just lost at home to Fulham and Arsenal have just thrashed the reigning Champions of the Universe 5-1 so I'm taking nothing for granted. Fourteen years ago TODAY, it was Newcastle 0, Arsenal 2 in the time it teks uz te make a ******* saveloy and pease pudding scottie man (just 3 minutes), 0-3 after just 9 minutes and 0-4 after half an hour so am tekkin nowt for granted.

Obviously, it didn't end 0-4 ...

Thought for the day, Ike: On Saturday 11th April 1992, Liverpool were down in balmy Birmingham, being thrashed by Aston Villa, 0-1.

So pretty much any spotty red teenager at a loose end in Anfield could have been invited like the fly into the parlour by Mike 'Spider' Barrett to spend that dreary afternoon writing Maybrick's diary.

I'm warming to this one...

Love,

Caz
X

[Iconoclast]

It was all an utterly embarrassing failure on the part of Robert Smith in 2017 but the fact that you still rely on it eight years later may be even worse.

Well it certainly sounds like a failure, but it certainly doesn't sound like I am relying on it! I very clearly stated I didn't know the details and - because of that - I asked if anyone could fill me in on them.

Hey, looks like we can all get bits wrong from time to time, eh?

[Iconoclast]

One off instance proved categorically, beyond all doubt that the diary is a fake. [#513]

https://www.etymonline.com/word/one-off

"Ngrams are probably unreliable" (see line immediately beneath graph, above). Surely not? Surely Ngrams is the very tool we use to establish exactly when words and phrases entered the lexicon?


(Same source.)

David Barrat has shown categorically that the term 'one-off' was used way back in the Victorian period as a manufacturing term - long long long long long before 1927.

Does this mean that we should anticipate a figurative use of the term long long long long long before 'later' than 1927?

Barrat cites July 1 1884 as his first printed example of the term 'one off' (no hyphen) in The American Journal of Railway Appliances. This does seem extraordinary as I have just read a short article in The New York Times from 2010 (https://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/m...anguage-t.html) in which American confusion with 'one-off' is explained as their not understanding its British manufacturing roots.

If 1884 was the first time the manufacturing term went into print (or, at least, the earliest occasion so far uncovered), then the question is simply, "What does 'later' mean?" because we are told that the term 'later' gained figurative extension. I ask the question because we know the term later gained figurative extension (because we use it in that way) and we know that words and phrases enter spoken language often well before they are ever documented in dictionaries. If they can be spoken before they enter dictionaries, they can also be handwritten or typed before they enter dictionaries (without ever remaining on the record for Ngrams' all-seeing eye to detect a hundred years later and more).

So we can not unreasonably assume that the term 'one off' was being used figuratively at some point 'later' than 1884 (and possibly earlier than some point 'later' than 1884). When was that 'later' point? Was it later than 1927? Or later than 1884? And - if it was the latter - how much 'later'? A few years? Or a few decades?

I'm not claiming that we know how much 'later'.

But, then, that's my point ...

[caz]

And no, an affidavit does not have to be true as a whole or it is full of holes. Any lawyer or judge will know that mistakes can occur. If the situation ever arose when the affidavit was used in a court of law, the dating errors would have been corrected.

Morning Herlock,

Just catching up and saw this one. Had Mike's affidavit been presented to a court of law, and all the dating errors corrected, the whole house of cards would have collapsed under the weight of the impossible chronology. Yes, the court could have given him the benefit of the doubt that his stated order of events was all over the place due to his heavy drinking and grief over his very recent divorce, but that wouldn't change the fact that his 'confession' - as sworn - was wholly unreliable. It most certainly could not have been used in evidence against his wife, for instance, when it became clear that the little red diary was not ordered and received until March 1992, despite Mike stating on oath that Tony Devereux was very much alive, if not literally kicking, throughout the forgery process, from sourcing all the raw materials to blotting the last page of writing.

In short, Mike was lying. There is no other explanation, plausible or otherwise. He only involved Tony in the process after Anne claimed to have given him the diary to give to Mike.

There is a choice here. If you think Mike told the truth about Tony living to see the day when the diary was completed, but made an innocent mistake over his date and year of death [8th August 1991], you have to toss out the red diary as unconnected to the forgery process.

If you think the red diary is proof that Maybrick's diary had yet to be created in late March 1992, you have to toss out Mike's entire chronology of the forgery process.

Love,

Caz
X

[Herlock Sholmes]

Robert Smith in his History of the Diary of Jack the Ripper claimed that Jonathon Green's Dictionary of Jargon contained the claim that the prison service used the term 'one-off duty' in the LVP/early Edwardian period. Caveat: Let me stress that I'm typing this over a cup of tea at breakfast downstairs and the Smith book is upstairs so I may have got some of the latter details wrong.

But - if the claim is true - why would 'one-off duty' be 'embarrassing? I'm intrigued. I don't have the source material so - if anyone does - please let us all know what the truth of Smith's claim is because 'one-off duty' for a prison officer does sound rather like the use of 'one-off' and an event which we are told is impossible.

Anyway, we'll know more when someone explains this in more detail.

Come on Ike, this was all explained by David years ago. Jonathon Green's 1984 book is a dictionary of modern or contemporary jargon, not Victorian or Edwardian. The entry in Green's book is not "one off duty", it's "one on/one off" which should immediately tell you that's it's got nothing to do with the expression "one off". As Green explained it, when a prisoner is moved around a prison, passing from one set of officers to another, the officer bringing the prisoner announces "one off" as he hands him over to another officer who in turn announces "one on". It’s about prison officers always needing to have a count of how many prisoners were in each area of the prison for the roll calls which occur at certain times throughout the day. So when a prisoner is moved from one area to another one officer tells another that he has to take “one off” the overall count. So the expression doesn't even have anything to do with a type of duty, and Green never said anything about it having a nineteenth century, or even early twentieth century, origin. It was all an utterly embarrassing failure on the part of Robert Smith in 2017 but the fact that you still rely on it eight years later may be even worse.

[Iconoclast]

Bonkers!

Diary-Debonkers?

Now that is funny ...

[Iconoclast]

Years of embarrassing efforts like Robert Smith totally unrelated prison attempt

Robert Smith in his History of the Diary of Jack the Ripper claimed that Jonathon Green's Dictionary of Jargon contained the claim that the prison service used the term 'one-off duty' in the LVP/early Edwardian period. Caveat: Let me stress that I'm typing this over a cup of tea at breakfast downstairs and the Smith book is upstairs so I may have got some of the latter details wrong.

But - if the claim is true - why would 'one-off duty' be 'embarrassing? I'm intrigued. I don't have the source material so - if anyone does - please let us all know what the truth of Smith's claim is because 'one-off duty' for a prison officer does sound rather like the use of 'one-off' and an event which we are told is impossible.

Anyway, we'll know more when someone explains this in more detail.

[Lombro2]

Since when does writing out a story in pen constitute doing 50% of the work?

[Lombro2]

If One Off was definitive, you should be quite happy to hear the true and honest and provable story of how the forgery was fashioned--not going to every effort imaginable to prove it all over again by proving that your creation narrative might be possible, that your creator was consistent once in his life, and providing a string of excuses for the proven lies and nonsense and asking why your excuses can't be excused.

Some people, for some reason, have a linear approach to language where everyone is lumped together and published print is king rather than original and creative people who can be found anywhere and whose words and phrases can be found floating in the air or hidden in the pages of a diary.

The debunk is bunk.

But Gary B said it best:

Bonkers!

[Herlock Sholmes]

I guess it's fifty-fifty if Michael Barrett was consistent for once. That's how you discern the truth from his lies. A one-off instance of consistency.

This is the fun you have when you're a debunker debunking bunk. If it wasn't bunk, I'd probably get all agitated and knit-picky. Instead, I'm calm, collected and comical.

One off instance proved categorically, beyond all doubt that the diary is a fake. Neither you nor anyone else has ever, not once, come up with an even vaguely plausible explanation for this impossibility. No one has ever had the courage of their alleged convictions to consult an etymologist to ‘disprove’ this and there’s only one explanation for that. They know that David’s point can’t be disputed. Years of embarrassing efforts like Robert Smith totally unrelated prison attempt, to stuff about horses, people still separating the phrase ‘one off’ and wittering on about that irrelevance, then Ike invents his own phrase an ‘off instance.’ Years and years of effort and not one single solitary example in the entirety of literature can be found of a phrase of this type used in the same way that the forger used it. Surely even you can’t think that this isn’t a bit ‘strange,’ a bit ‘worrying?’ But no. You plough on regardless. You obfuscate, you bring up unrelated suggestions, you base your opinion entirely on wish thinking because you don’t want to face what everyone else knows. That you can’t dispute a fact. And it’s a fact that James Maybrick couldn’t have used ‘one off instance’ in 1888/9. Therefore the diary is a proven forgery.

David has produced:

One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary


Job done…hand David a cigar…and let’s all move on.

[Lombro2]

So I was right. Mike said Anne had a multiple personality which explains her handwriting. I guess he knew no one could disguise their handwriting like that for 63 pages. Or he had to explain away the handwriting analysis. The handwriting doesn't match anyway, so when doesn't it matter? Oh.... right!.....

MB The person who write this diary, according to Anna Koren, the world’s [greatest] handwriting expert and what have you, has got a multiple, and I mean multiple, because I’m quoting,-

KS A multiple personality.

MB Thank you.

KS That’s Anne?

MB: That’s Anne.

KS: She says whoever wrote this has a schizoid personality. That is Anne Graham. So, therefore, Anne Graham, when she actually wrote the Diary, she wrote in her other personality. Does she become schizoid to order then?

MB: Well put it this way. I haven’t seen my daughter for six years.

None of this helps the Barrett Hoax theory. Unless you believe Anne was a schizo and Jack the Ripper wasn't.

[Lombro2]

I guess it's fifty-fifty if Michael Barrett was consistent for once. That's how you discern the truth from his lies. A one-off instance of consistency.

This is the fun you have when you're a debunker debunking bunk. If it wasn't bunk, I'd probably get all agitated and knit-picky. Instead, I'm calm, collected and comical.