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

[caz]

I agree with your sentiment, Baron, but one could say the same thing about writing wildly speculative fiction designed to 'stich up' Charles Allen Lechmere, the 'dogwalker' who found Polly Nichols.

To each his own, I suppose. The hourglass does indeed drain.

Discussing the now thirty-odd year old Maybrick Hoax IS a strange hobby--all the more so because it has degraded into a battle of wills among a tiny number of combatants who don't like each other very much and have no hope of ever getting a concession.

Whether this is worse than the on-going debate over the dogwalker is a matter of opinion.

No self-awareness then, of just how long Palmer has spent wasting his irreplaceable hours in 'a blatant fake like the Maybrick Diary'. He has announced his retirement from the field only to return to it, many more times than can ever be taken seriously.

I know what I'm doing here. Does he?

[caz]

Hi Caz,

I don’t know why my answer has come out like this…I typed it on Pages first which is something I regularly do and this has never happened before. Gremlins
[INDENT]The question you've asked me is the easiest one I've had to answer so far. By way of reminder, the question is:

"In that case, why do you suppose Mike stated in his confessional affidavit that the red diary was purchased and rejected in January 1990, quickly followed by the purchase of the photo album and the eleven-day diary creation, but the finished forgery was effectively 'hidden pointlessly' for over two years, because Tony Devereux, who was a party to the whole project, became severely ill."

It's all easily explained by dating errors, failure of memory and by the fact that Michael Barrett didn't, apparently, write the affidavit himself so that the author of it didn't have first hand knowledge of all the facts, and could easily have been confused by the chronology of events.

So I think it's really simple and feel that your focus on the dating issues in the affidavit, and your insistence on reading it like it's the Holy Bible whereby not a single mistake could have been made by its author (presumably Alan Gray), is preventing both you and Ike from getting to the bottom of this issue.

Ike and I don't need to get 'to the bottom of this issue', Herlock.

If you are prepared to accept there is a basic truth in Mike's affidavit, by explaining away all the problems with it, which make it less of a sworn statement, and more the dog's dinner that could never have been used in a court of law against anyone, there's nothing more to say about it. Who on earth gave you the impression that I was insisting on it reading like the Holy Bible before I could believe a word of it? How much of the Holy Bible do you think is believable anyway?

It's also disappointing to find you continuing to say things like "Mike Barrett would have been taking one hell of a risk....". What was the risk? I thought we'd established there was no risk. He had never vouched for its authenticity. Or, if you prefer, all forgers take the risk of exposure. So why should Michael Barrett have been any different?

You keep leaving out the bit about Mike taking Anne's handiwork to London, allegedly against her will and better judgment. That's the theory we have been discussing. The fact that he wasn't vouching for its authenticity is neither here nor there, because nobody could have done that, could they? He would have been taking the risk of exposing his own wife, not knowing if she'd made a rubbish job of disguising her handwriting, and exposing himself as the fraudster behind a cunning plan that would have been on a par as cunning goes with any of Baldrick's. If a forensic handwriting examiner had been commissioned as part of the initial testing process and had positively identified the writing as Anne Barrett's, all the money thus far invested would have been repayable, and if Mike had already pissed it up against the wall, he and his wife would have risked prosecution and jail time. You can't use the fact that this didn't happen as evidence that there would never have been any risk regardless, because there'd have been no risk if neither Anne nor Mike penned it, or had any idea who did.

You quoted me:

"The risk, from Anne's point of view, would have been massive in those circumstances, and yet after failing to destroy her own work when she finally twigged Mike's true intentions for it, she didn't have the three brain cells required to come up with a Plan B that would stop it getting into expert hands? Really? Is this what you believe, Herlock?"

I find it strange that you found my question 'strange', Herlock.

It's a matter of record that Anne didn't stop the diary from being published, despite RJ Palmer's strange insistence that the prospect 'terrified' her, on account of her alleged role in creating it. We are discussing this theory because there isn't another one currently being debated as far as I know - unless you would like to suggest one and open a thread for it.

If Mike had involved Anne against her will, by taking the diary to London and pretending not to know that his wife had written it, she had ways and means of making sure it never went there again and was never released for testing. Do you disagree?

I also don't get your next point which concludes "He has committed no crime". I thought your argument was that he had received stolen goods. So he's taking it to London for it to be published to expose his crime to the unknown owner of the diary? It's not making much sense to me.

I meant the crime of trying to publish a diary which could prove to be a fake. It wasn't a crime if Mike didn't know who wrote it.

If Mike got it from an electrician, in March 1992, he wouldn't have known where it had come from, so it would be the electrician potentially committing a crime if he had taken it without permission from someone else's property. Assuming the electrician wouldn't have admitted this if it was true, it would have been hard to prove that Mike had knowingly received stolen goods. It would have been the same if he'd got it the year before from a dead friend who had similarly refused to admit where he got it from. Tony could in theory have nicked it from anywhere, and Mike could not have been accused of receiving stolen goods. Even harder if it turned out later that "no effing bugger alive" had known it was ever in their own property.

You mischaracterize my opinion when you say I think the Barretts were capable of forging the diary. I don't know their capabilities. But I don't know any reason why they wouldn't have been capable. I've asked the question but no-one has told me. Saying they are the obvious candidates has nothing to do with me knowing anything about their capabilities. It's because the diary came from their house in Liverpool and no-one is known to have seen or heard of it before this. Michael Barrett tried to obtain a genuine Victorian diary with blank pages and Anne lied about why he did so, amongst other lies she appears to have told about the diary. But let's just say you made an simple mistake in the way you expressed my views. To that extent, I'm lost as to why you think I've dismissed the views of people who knew the Barretts when I say that I don't know of any reason why they wouldn't have been capable of forging the diary. I'm not aware of the views of anyone who knew the Barretts personally who've said they weren't capable of this. So how can I possibly ever have dismissed those views?

Okay then, so without knowing if either Barrett would even have been capable of forging the diary, by themselves or together, you state they are the 'obvious candidates' because it 'came from their house' and Mike made a clumsy, unexplained attempt to obtain a genuine "diary" from the 1880s - which was doomed to failure as a suitable book for forging Maybrick's diary, but would have set up a thoroughly incriminating paper trail had the attempt succeeded.

Isn't it all a bit too much like a Lechmere theorist who has no clue what his capabilities were, but believes he is the 'obvious candidate' for murder because he was there when a victim was found 'freshly killed' and then behaved in what they argue was a suspicious manner, indicative of guilt? No alternative explanation is even considered, because they claim there isn't a plausible one.

Love,

Caz
X

[rjpalmer]

Every second that passes is one they will never get back, yet they willingly pour their energy, intellect, and precious hours into analyzing, debating, and dissecting a transparent fraud like the Maybrick Diary.

I agree with your sentiment, Baron, but one could say the same thing about writing wildly speculative fiction designed to 'stich up' Charles Allen Lechmere, the 'dogwalker' who found Polly Nichols.

To each his own, I suppose. The hourglass does indeed drain.

Discussing the now thirty-odd year old Maybrick Hoax IS a strange hobby--all the more so because it has degraded into a battle of wills among a tiny number of combatants who don't like each other very much and have no hope of ever getting a concession.

Whether this is worse than the on-going debate over the dogwalker is a matter of opinion.

[The Baron]

It baffles me how some people fail to grasp the true value of their own lives and the limited time they have on this earth.

Every second that passes is one they will never get back, yet they willingly pour their energy, intellect, and precious hours into analyzing, debating, and dissecting a transparent fraud like the Maybrick Diary.

What drives this obsession with the meaningless? Do they not realize that every moment wasted on something worthless is a moment stolen from something real, something that could have enriched their minds and their souls, or even the world?

How many of them will look back years from now and regret the time they sacrificed for nothing?

Why would anyone so generously waste their irreplaceable hours in a blatant fake like the Maybrick Diary?

Do they not realize that time spent on the worthless is time they'll never get back?



The Baron

[caz]

Do you have any idea who the people who actually knew the Barretts personally, presumably prior to 1992, whose views I've supposedly been dismissing, that she keeps talking about, are? It's beyond me.

This wasn't addressed directly to me, but I am the 'she' in this context - and also the cat's mother, as Monty is reminding me because I'm not paying him enough attention.

I merely meant people who had ever known either Mike or Anne on a personal basis, socially or otherwise, before or after 1992, who would have been more qualified than most of us here to comment on whether or not these two individuals would have been willing, able or likely, to collaborate on a literary hoax at any point during their marriage. Usually you get a few coming out of the woodwork as a result of a big local story, whether it was when the first diary book was published in October 1993 and became a bestseller, or when Mike hit the headlines again in June 1994, with his claim to have forged it. But in this case, nobody who knew Mike wanted a piece of the action by publicly supporting his claim, with any relevant inside knowledge about him as a person, and nobody who knew Anne as a person is known to have said that she would have been loyal enough to stand by Mike and say nothing, let alone help him to make it less of a complete shambles, all the while he had supposedly been planning and trying to pull off a diary scam more audacious than Konrad Kujau before him.

Love,

Caz
X

[rjpalmer]

Hi Herlock -

I doubt this will interest you, but regarding the claim that Barrett "immediately" subjected the diary to an examination by "experts", I thought the following statement made to me by Keith Skinner might be of interest. (2-16-2018 'Acquiring a Victorian Diary' my emphasis added in bold).

"I know that people who have met Anne Graham find this very difficult to believe as she is a bright, intelligent lady and would have surely realised the potential value of a family heirloom. She may not have connected it to Maybrick although she did know the Granny Formby association with the Maybrick trial. But against this seemingly irrational behaviour of secreting, via a third party, the diary to her husband, has to be factored in the state of her marital situation and relationship with Mike. I had wanted to know why it had taken Mike about 5 weeks to take the diary to London to which I think Anne said it was just to do with arrangements for Caroline. But Anne had also told me how hard she tried to persuade Mike to drop the idea of bringing in people from the outside to examine the diary as she feared it would lead to the discovery that she had given it to Devereux to give to Mike, on the basis their marriage was at a point where Mike had lost all of his self esteem and was rejecting anything that came from Anne in her efforts to restore it. I remember Anne telling me that, once she had resigned herself to the reality that Mike was definitely going to take the diary to London, she thought the business appointment might as well be done professionally with an accompanying transcript. This is why I had assumed Mike had taken a copy of the transcript, printed off from his word processor, with him to London on April 13th 1992."

Make of it what you will.

Anne's rationale--a highly strange one--is that an examination of the diary would lead back to her alleged gambit with Devereux, which is bizarre. How could it? Devereux was dead and they were hardly close associates. It's sounds like another one of Anne's evasions.

Could there have been a more fundamental and obvious reason why Anne didn't want the diary examined by anyone? (Dismissing, for the moment, the possibility that she wasn't just lying to Keith. But then we have to factor in her distraught behavior to Audrey Johnson, etc).

I have my own reasons for rejecting the following suggestion, but Paul Begg once floated the theory that the Diary was created by Anne Graham and Tony Devereux as a scheme to occupy Barrett's time, so he would stay out of the boozer and focus again on the writing career that we now know he had in the mid-1980s.

Martin Fido, as previously mentioned, believed Anne wrote the diary, apparently as a work of fiction, but Barrett was the moving force behind the fraudulent relic.

Alan Gray, in rejecting Barrett's authorship, also believed Anne and Devereux wrote it.

I'm not insisting that any of these people were necessarily correct, but I do dismiss any insinuation that the idea is far-fetched and insane rubbish dreamed up by people who were not there in 1993-1996.

They were there--unlike every current contributor to this discussion.

[caz]

Can I ask you to clarify one thing about your post. When you say "I don't believe the handwriting is Maybrick's, but I don't believe it's Anne's either" are you simply saying that you don't believe it's Anne's normal handwriting or are you saying you also don't believe it's Anne's disguised handwriting? If the latter, how can you possibly know what Anne's disguised handwriting would look like? Or are you not actually making a handwriting point at all but just saying that you don't think that Anne would have written it because you don't think she would have got involved?

I don't believe Anne penned the diary, Herlock, in either her normal handwriting, or so heavily disguised as to become unrecognisable and unidentifiable as her own. It's not for me to prove she didn't have the skill or the motivation, any more than it's up to us to prove the real James Maybrick didn't write it.

It's my personal conclusion that it's not Anne's handiwork, based on the entirety of the evidence to date, from 9th March 1992 where our story begins. There is no reliable independent evidence that anyone knew about the diary, in physical or theoretical form, prior to that Monday.

You are, of course, free to dispute my conclusion by reaching a different one, based on your own knowledge of the subject and the people most closely involved. But questions along the lines of: 'But why don't you believe it was Anne?', followed by: 'It was a simple enough question, so if you won't answer it, is it because you can't?' are not useful, because the answer may be very far from simple, and based on more factors than we've both had hot dinners.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Hi Caz,

Yes, to answer the first part of your question, a diary containing authentic paper which would be scientifically indistinguishable from paper from the time of the Ripper murders was precisely what Barrett asked for.

I don’t understand what you mean when you say that it wasn’t?

'Precisely', Herlock? What is your definition of that word?

Are you claiming that the advert read:

'A diary containing authentic paper which would be scientifically indistinguishable from paper from the time of the Ripper murders'?

My understanding of events was that Barrett didn't "order" the 1891 diary. Rather it was offered to him, sight unseen, because the supplier couldn't source one from the 1880s and it was the only one available. So it was the 1891 diary or nothing.

Mike did "order" the 1891 diary - quite literally - or Martin Earl would not have sent it to him. It was located, fully described to Mike, ordered by him and sent to his home address within just a few days of the advert appearing, so he could have waited to see if a more suitable diary would turn up, or put in a second request, specifying a minimum page size and no printed dates for example. Instead, he went ahead and ordered this 'too small' diary, which was not only three years too late for Maybrick's first entry, but had the days/dates printed on every tiny page.

When he saw it - assuming he was the forger - he must then have realized that the paper couldn't be made scientifically indistinguishable from paper from the time of the Ripper murders but only because it had printed dates on it.

He would have known this when Martin Earl fully described the item over the phone, as he always did with any item located, because there was no point in ordering anything from a supplier and getting it sent to the customer if it didn't fully suit their requirements. Did Mike not bother to listen to the description? If it was only described as a diary for 1891, surely he'd have asked for more information than that, given the impossible year. Or didn't he care by late March, because his original pressing need - whatever that had been - had diminished or been resolved?

Absent that, it seems to me, and I'm not sure how you can possibly dispute it, the wording of the request for a diary from the decade of the Ripper murders containing blank pages is consistent with an attempt to get hold of was authentic paper which would be scientifically indistinguishable from paper from the time of the Ripper murders.

Surely?

That's not what I'm disputing, Herlock. While the precise wording of the advert appears on the surface to be consistent with an attempt by Mike to obtain something with the potential to become Jack the Ripper's diary, there is also a lot wrong with the advert, if it had been worded for the purpose of faking Maybrick's diary, which would not have been conducive to finding anything to fit the bill.

Love,

Caz
X

[Lombro2]

So watch, shawl and dairy all fakes. Cross is innocent... what's next?

You can alway go to the Carrie Brown boards and discuss that. That case also has a Ripper, and affidavits and a businessman and an immigrant and maybe a “fake” artifact.

[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.

[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]

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.

[Herlock Sholmes]

I'm not sure it matters too much either way but - yes - I will concur that Barrett sitting there like he died three weeks ago would not in my book be classed as dictation.



Good lad. You know it makes sense.



I haven't ignored it at all - I just haven't had cause to address it yet.



Well, if you permit me the licence that you evidently afford yourself in spades, it may have something to do with our not having every interaction between Mike Chuckle and Alan Chuckle either recorded or available to hear. For all we can ever know now, there was a recording made and it has since either been lost or not made public. I know I don't have it but maybe someone does. To apply a little more of your licence, perhaps we might imagine that that recording was too incriminating and therefore has been suppressed from public consumption. Who knows?



See above, but perhaps it does suggest that Barrett wasn't there. Their recordings were primarily in Barrett's house(s) as far as I can recall, unless they were travelling somewhere. If Barrett wasn't in attendance at the creation of his January 5, 1995 affidavit, I'm really not sure where to go from there regarding his role in any mooted hoax.

It probably doesn't matter now anyway if Kosminski has been given the win and top spot on the podium, as it were ...

What on earth will I do to fill my days now???

Your claim that you haven't had "cause" to address the absence of a recording of the creation of Barrett's Jan 5th affidavit is surprising because I did ask you about it yesterday in my #537.

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

[Iconoclast]

I'm afraid I can't agree, R.D.

Now, there's a surprise!

Only the inside of the front cover is damaged. The outside of the cover is not, nor the binding nor the edges of the papers. The damage occurred when the photo album was open and flat, which wouldn't be the case if the book was in storage.

I think that goes without saying.

Also, enlargements of the damage are consistent with an oily substance. It doesn't look like water damage; it looks like oil (if I recall, Jon Menges thought the same thing), but I'm more than willing to hear the opinions of those who have seen the album up close, such as James Johnston.

Well, it is one of the great tragedies in this case that I have not yet seen the darn scrapbook for myself, but I am willing to engage in the debate around whether it is oil or not which caused the damage. Indeed, I'd happily accept that it was oil - it certainly looks like it (though I am no oilist despite being a fervent supporter of 'Saudi Arabia United' as many non-NUFC fans have renamed the club). The question is (assuming it's oil), why????

I think it's safe to say that Orsam (God rest his soul in retirement) and his unctuous acolytes would say that it was the handiwork of one Michael Barrett, but let us consider our options here ...

Is it possible that everything Michael Barrett is accused of doing with his tin of Castrol GTX could equally be applied to James Maybrick? Without developing the theory any further right now, is there any action that Michael Barrett could have taken that it would not have made equal sense for James Maybrick to take?

I'm thinking whatever might have identified the scrapbook as being owned by Maybrick & Co., Cotton Merchants, for example?

Obviously I don't know. I wasn't there in 1888, and neither was anyone else despite RJ's chronically advancing age, but all we need to understand is whether Barrett could have done something with the scrapbook that Maybrick could not. If Maybrick could do everything Barrett did then the discussion over the oil is unresolvable and we should go back to discussing whether it is fair of Saudi Arabia to win the right to host the 2034 World Cup and then (afterwards) clarify that there'd be no Tennants 70/- on sale throughout the tournament, nor indeed any other alcoholic beverages, prompting one UK newspaper this morning to carry the wonderful headline, "A Game of No Halves". Genius!

[Observer]

It's as undeniable as the FM on Kelly's wall.

It is indeed Mr Palmer. A line of thought going through the minds of Iconoclast's many Dear Readers, as we speak.