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

[caz]

In a candid moment, Dr. B apparently told Chittenden (I say apparently because it is based on Chittenden's reporting, and we don't have a direct quote that I'm aware of) that the diary's ink had been applied about 2-3 years before August 1992. Baxendale was clearly more cautious in his initial report to Smith and Harrison.

He was 'clearly more cautious'? Isn't that the understatement of the century? He went from considering it 'likely' that the ink was applied 'since 1945', based on not knowing that nigrosine had been in general use in writing inks since the 1870s, to [if Palmer relies on Chittenden's reporting] throwing all caution to the wind and settling on since 'about' 1989 or 1990 - miraculously in line with the books Mike and Anne are meant to have consulted for their funny little forgery, and also with the year 1990, later supplied by Mike himself in his affidavit. Still two years before the Awesome Auction of 31st March 1992, so even Baxendale might not have considered that 'likely'.

Dr. Nickell, having lost all faith in the analysis of his own team member, Rod McNeil, opted for the far simpler test conducted by Dr. B. This is when he said that the diary's ink must have been 'barely dry' in 1992.

'Barely dry' is still dry. Does something barely dry drip? Does ink even an hour old drip?

As a professional, Nickell ought to have known better than to indulge in this kind of supposedly hilarious hyperbole. Palmer can hardly blame anyone for picking Nickell up on it, when his funny little 'barely dry' quip has been repeated so often by Barrett hoax believers that it has become part of their own flat-pack furniture. I can't say I've ever seen Palmer disowning it before, but better late than never.

What Nickel knew is that paper fibers and iron gall ink permanently bond over time, and indeed, iron gall ink will eventually eat into the paper. The diary's ink and paper were observed to behave radically different than the exemplars that Dr. B knew were genuinely old. He--a document examiner for many years at the Home Office--knew then that something was seriously wrong, and confronted by Harrison, he would not back down from this knowledge.

A quote would be useful for Dr. B's claim to have used 'genuinely old' exemplars to determine that the diary ink's behaviour was 'radically different'.

We know that Nicholas Eastaugh used genuinely old reference material, as well as modern inks, for comparison purposes, and his main report was dated 2nd October 1992, three months after Baxendale's first report. Eastaugh later wrote that it had been 'clear' to him that 'the solubility of the ink was similar to the Victorian reference material and unlike the modern inks dried out for reference'.

[Geddy2112]

So in short is the diary a fake or not?

[Iconoclast]

Yes, but Ike, when I asked you if the recording was available, all you did was give me a link to 15 audio recordings without further comment and without identifying the one I should be listening to, let alone the time stamp. The only information I had to go on was your belief that it was November 4th. So that's the one I listened to. What else was I supposed to do?

In my post #466, I clarified that Seth Kinder had said November 5, 1994 and I added that my memory was that it was November 4, 1994.

In your post #468, you quoted my post #466 and asked: "Is the recording available to listen to, please?".

In my post #469, I gave you the link which took you to this post:



The information you had to go on was clearly stated - either November 5 (Seth Linder's stated link) or November 4 (my recollected alternative). You ask "What else was I supposed to do?". Well, given the information to hand, I would have suggested that you listen to one or both of those recordings which - interestingly - is what I believe you did so I must have been very clear indeed so not sure where your confusion lay. Now, you also say that you didn't find the "fifty-fifty" comment in either. As a kindness to you, I am currently sitting here listening to the one and a half hour recording on November 5, 1994, because you said you couldn't make anything out. Hopefully I won't have to sit here too long and miss my tea. Hopefully it won't be a crappy copy of a copy and the critical bit be inaudible.

I don't know what your expectation was, but I have to say I feel I fulfilled it to the best of my knowledge.

[caz]

I find your response very strange, Ike. If we assume he's looking to forge a Ripper diary, he's got to start and end somewhere, hasn't he? What's wrong with the decade in which the murders occurred? 1880 to 1889 is no problem for a Ripper diary and, if we try to put ourselves in Mike's head he might not have wanted to flag the year 1889 so finished at 1890. After all, he might have hoped to have been offered a number of choices. Perhaps he was really hoping to find an 1888 diary but felt if he asked for that it would be too obvious what he was up to.

Sure an 1899 diary might have been okay but why extend the range so far? You've got to bear in mind that he must have been hoping for a diary as close to 1888 as possible. Surely he wouldn't have known at the time that whoever he bought it from wasn't going to be able to find any from the 1880s.

So I find your objection a bit strange and a bit ironic considering your arguments about the 1891 diary. If Barrett had asked for a diary from 1880 to 1899 wouldn’t you have mocked the fact that he was interested in a diary from 10 years after Maybrick's death. So I truly can't see any other date range he could have chosen than 1888 to 1889 which would satisfy you but this would not only have unnecessarily limited his options but flagged to the seller something he might not have wanted to flag.

I have to ask you why he could possibly have wanted a diary from 1880 to 1890 of any size and colour as long as it was entirely blank or had a certain number of blank pages. Any thoughts?

According to the script, dear Herlock, what Mike did ask for made it patently 'obvious' what he was up to. Apparently he could not have made it much more obvious if he'd requested a diary that would be suitable for his wife to create a bogus confession by Jack the Ripper.

Had Mike used anything he had obtained as a result of the advert, to fake such a document, it would have been yet another case of "Be careful what you wish for" when he 'flagged to the seller' precisely what he'd been up to, by having a bestseller published in October 1993, based on what he - Michael Barrett - had been thankful to receive in the post in March 1992.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

They must be coddin' us, Dear Boss.

Now the 'mental vegetable' Bongo Barrett is an expert on paper fiber and paper manufacturing!

Let's return to reality, folks. Shall we?

All Bongo knows, from reading Celebrity magazine, is that his German counterpart Konrad Kujua was tripped up by something he didn't know about paper manufacturing!!

And knowing that he doesn't know what he doesn't know, Bongo plays it safe and requests a diary with paper manufactured in the same general 'ballpark.'

'Bongo plays it safe'? How was he playing it 'safe' by setting up a paper trail for this request, for a diary containing genuine paper dating back to the 1880s? Palmer's whole theory rests on his argument that there can be no possible explanation for anyone making such a request unless they were planning to forge Maybrick's diary with it.

There could have been no avoiding the paper trail if the advert - with its "unusual" request - had produced the goods without Mike looking any further. Imagine Martin Earl's face when he read about Mike Barrett's diary, and recognised it as the only item which had been sourced, which he had duly ordered and sent off to Goldie Street, waiting patiently for his £25. If Palmer thinks this was Bongo's idea of how a forger 'plays it safe', remind me who is accusing the clown in 2025 of having been a 'mental vegetable'.

I remember a time when the Barretts were too dim to have created a document that had (supposedly!) "fooled the experts."

Well, Mike was apparently dim enough to think he was 'playing it safe' by advertising for the raw materials using his real name and address, and Anne was apparently dim enough to leave him to it. There is no evidence that she learned her lesson from leaving Bongo to his own devices.

[caz]

Sorry Caz, but this is a complete misrepresentation of what I said.

All I said (see my #165), was that, " I would have thought that any forger worth his or her salt would have wanted it looked at and authenticated as soon as possible."

As you can see, I used the word "wanted" not "expected".

It was you who introduced the word "expected" into the discussion, in your #265, when you said, "even someone like Mike Barrett could not have expected his wife's 'blind' forgery to be authenticated as Maybrick's handiwork from 1888/9."

In response (#259), I simply asked you why someone like Mike Barrett could not have expected it to be authenticated. When you replied in #364, you said that if I couldn't work it out myself "then I really can't help you".

At no time, therefore, have I ever said that I thought Mike Barrett would be expecting the diary to be authenticated. All I've suggested, hypothetically, is that if he was the forger (and one worth his salt), he would surely have wanted it to be authenticated. As I said in my #187, for a forger, that is "the dream scenario".

It’s simpler if we stick to what was actually said Caz

Not sure I can see any significant difference, Herlock, considering the argument is the same either way: whether he 'wanted' or 'expected' the diary to be looked at and authenticated, your forger would surely have appreciated that this could only happen at all if it was subjected to testing, and if he wanted it to happen 'as soon as possible', he would need that testing to be conducted 'as soon as possible'.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

The Maybrick Will -- The Crucial Key to a Shabby Hoax
Melvin Harris

I first saw the 'Maybrick Diary' long after 'the experts and advisors' had had their say. But before seeing it I made three predictions; it would be written in a simple iron-gall ink, which could not be dated; it would be written in an old journal with its front pages torn out; the handwriting would not match the known handwriting of James Maybrick. With time all three forecasts proved correct, but when first shown this document I was assured by Paul Feldman that no significant examples of Maybrick's handwriting existed. There was just one signature on his marriage lines, but nothing else:--"We have checked."

Harris also claimed that the Barretts were the handlers and placers of a document forged by others, and that the forger was most probably schooled in the 1930s.

How about his predictions that it would be written in an old 'journal' and the ink could not be dated?

I've always seen it as a bizarre and desperate argument. Pointing out the handwriting doesn't even match is like saying, "the forgery is so bad it must not be a forgery! No one would risk it."

I tend to agree with this - don't faint! I have always said that the handwriting sticks out to me as the only factor anyone should ever have needed to argue against it being an original document by James Maybrick - and yet here we are, drowning in a sea of weaker arguments made in support of the same conclusion.

It's like a forensic scientist, who had DNA evidence ruling out a murder suspect back in 1992, spending the next 30 plus years looking for more and more reasons to defend his original, unassailable 'not guilty' conclusion.

Puts me in mind of Baxendale again, making nigrosine his killer blow, that made the diary 'likely' to have originated since 1945, and not his famous solubility test, if that ought to have date stamped it conclusively to not a day before 1992.

Midsomer Murders: Dr Fleur Perkins is called to a male found dead one morning in his arm chair. She finds an empty pork chop wrapper in the kitchen bin, with a use-by date of two months ago, and reports to Barnaby that she considers it 'likely' that the victim's wife has poisoned him with out-of-date meat. But the wife has already told him that she froze the chops after purchase and had eaten her chop with no adverse effects after thawing and cooking them both.

D'oh! Poor old Fleur. Perhaps she should have made more in her report of the cup of tea, half empty and still warm, which she found bedside the corpse's arm chair, smelling strongly of bitter almonds. If only she had not poured it down the sink.

P.S. Oh, and I'm still waiting to hear about Mike "immediately" submitting the diary to forensic tests. I've been following the diary debacle for 20 years and this is the first I've heard of such tests. It will be fascinating to learn about them.

Palmer will be waiting a long while, since I have seen nobody claiming that Mike immediately submitted the diary to 'forensic tests'.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Herlock thought Mike would be expecting the diary to be 'authenticated',

Sorry Caz, but this is a complete misrepresentation of what I said.

All I said (see my #165), was that, " I would have thought that any forger worth his or her salt would have wanted it looked at and authenticated as soon as possible."

As you can see, I used the word "wanted" not "expected".

It was you who introduced the word "expected" into the discussion, in your #265, when you said, "even someone like Mike Barrett could not have expected his wife's 'blind' forgery to be authenticated as Maybrick's handiwork from 1888/9."

In response (#259), I simply asked you why someone like Mike Barrett could not have expected it to be authenticated. When you replied in #364, you said that if I couldn't work it out myself "then I really can't help you".

At no time, therefore, have I ever said that I thought Mike Barrett would be expecting the diary to be authenticated. All I've suggested, hypothetically, is that if he was the forger (and one worth his salt), he would surely have wanted it to be authenticated. As I said in my #187, for a forger, that is "the dream scenario".

It’s simpler if we stick to what was actually said Caz

[caz]

Hi Herlock,

I don't want to drag you into my longstanding argument with Caroline Brown, and I've put her on 'ignore' to keep the peace moving forward (and I hope she has reciprocated) but since you quoted her, I was able to see her post, and I really do feel the need to respond to her remarkable attempt at rewriting history:

"The very fact that Mike brought the diary 'into the light', and immediately invited the experts to examine it, makes me highly sceptical that he'd have done this knowing he was 'perpetuating a hoax', especially if his wife had only just finished dotting the i's and crossing the t's - which appears to be the only working Barrett theory these days."

Hold the phone, here. Who are these experts Mike invited to examine the diary? What are their names and qualifications? Doreen Montgomery, a literary agent, was a forensic document examiner?

Does the above description bear any resemblance to what actually took place?

We currently have two examples of men who, in all probability, acquired hoaxes created by someone else. No one believes they are the hoaxers.

Tim Atkinson bought the 'Tilly' letter on eBay. What did he do with it? Mr. Atkinson invited experts (or at least people he believed to be experts) to examine the letter, including a scientist at Liverpool John Moore University who made an analysis.

Barrett, by contrast, did nothing of the kind.

Similarly, some years ago Russell Edwards obtained the dubious 'Eddowes' shawl and consulted various experts, including an expert on silk dying and Dr. Jari Louhelainen, a scientist at the same Liverpool university. Only then did Edwards publish his book.

Again, Barrett didn't do anything even remotely similar.

Rather than 'immediately inviting the experts to examine' the diary, Barrett called up a literary agent in London with the obvious intention of getting the diary published as well as to tell his story of how it has affected his life. According to Maurice Chittenden, Barrett had previously contacted various publishers. Not forensic experts--publishers.

There is not a jot of evidence that Barrett ever submitted the diary to any forensic examinations at all. It was Robert Smith and Shirley Harrison who consulted Dr. David Baxendale after they decided to move forward with publication.

Indeed, Barrett later complained that he was a greenhorn about such things and also pissed and moaned bitterly that he was charged for his share for various forensic tests. Unlike Atkinson or Edwards, Barrett hadn't even taken the diary to an auction house to get a non-expert opinion.

My apology for the interruption, but one really ought to stick to the facts. I guess I'll just have to stop reading altogether.

Ciao.

P.S. I also think the insinuation that Barrett wasn't a risk taker is a deeply misguided one--if that is indeed what is being insinuated. Isn't this the same Mike Barrett who mugged an old lady in broad daylight and was almost immediately captured? And the mastermind behind the 'Loot' magazine scam. If I didn't know it was John, I'd think Barrett's middle-name was Audacious.

A bit of housekeeping is required here:

I was referring to what happened on 13th April 1992, because Mike did invite two relevant experts to give their professional opinions on the diary that very day. I didn't claim these were forensic examinations, and it would be nitpicking to point out that it was Shirley's idea. Mike went along with it, not knowing who might be shown the diary, what qualifications and experience they would have, what tests they might be able to carry out on the spot and what they would make of it. If his wife had only just put the finishing touches to the handwriting, what expectations could Mike have had, realistically, of coming away with one, let alone two initially positive reactions? Herlock thought Mike would be expecting the diary to be 'authenticated', so who did Mike think would be doing the authenticating? Doreen's cat?

As I wrote previously, Mike was a 'chancer' [I don't know how Palmer translated this as not a risk taker], so while he could have bluffed his way out of letting Shirley take the diary anywhere else on 13th April, if he thought the 'freshness' of the ink might have been a dead giveaway - he could hardly have Googled it - and insisted on total confidentiality until he knew her and Doreen better and could fully entrust them with it, he couldn't have expected it not to be subjected to testing when he was relying on someone else to invest in it financially. Mike didn't have a pot to piss in, did he?

According to Palmer, Maurice Chittenden claimed that Mike had 'contacted various publishers' before finally phoning a literary agent on 9th March 1992. That might have suited Palmer's argument regarding Mike's approach, but what Chittenden actually wrote was this: "For months he haunted the publishing houses of London, clutching a dusty black ledger in his hand". Had Mike named any of them, Chittenden could have checked easily enough. Pan Books had no record of Mike's telephone call, making it more likely that Chittenden would have pressed him for the names of who else he had contacted, although I suspect the answer would have been: "I don't remember."

Palmer would doubtless have been a very happy bunny if he'd had confirmation of any other telephone calls about the diary prior to 9th March 1992, but if one of these London publishing houses had a record of a visit by Mike in person, clutching the diary, and leaving again two minutes later with a "thanks but no thanks" ringing in his ears - which is what Chittenden was implying - then it would be going, going, gone for the Awesome Auction Activists along with the Battlecrease Buglers, and we'd all be left scratching around for a new theory.

[Iconoclast]

My apologies. I've done it again. I'm going to have to start posting directly rather than typing into Pages and then cutting and pasting because I've just re-posted something I'd already posted after I'd had to change it. I was thrown a little by Ike's reference to Barretts father until I realised that I'd given the wrong time stamp.

A lesson to me to not post whilst doing other things

I see you have now spotted what actually occurred. Skip the Pages, mate - just type into the editor like the rest of us ...

[Iconoclast]

Can we just stick with the handwriting point please, Ike? What's Barrett's father got to do with that?

So desperate to make my posts seem irrational or meaningless! Such an Orsam/RJ trick. At 11.14am TODAY, you quoted me from my post at 10.47pm YESTERDAY (#472) in which I was simply saying that at 23:58 in the tape you were quoting from, Barrett appears to be telling Gray that his (Barrett's) father had died. You then realised your error because you replied at 11.24pm YESTERDAY (#475) to say:

Apologies, Ike, I mis-typed. That should have been from 24:58 on the tape.

So, yesterday, you directed us all to 23:58 in the tape and I pointed out at 10.47pm that that told us nothing to which you replied half an hour later acknowledging that you had made a mistake and that you should have typed 24:58. But this morning, you asked 'What's Barrett's father got to do with that?' as if I was some sort of imbecile!

I don't have a crystal ball so I couldn't know at 10.47pm last evening that you had made a mistake.

Seriously, you need to get your arguments (euphemism for what I first typed) together, man - you're all over the place.

[Herlock Sholmes]

My apologies. I've done it again. I'm going to have to start posting directly rather than typing into Pages and then cutting and pasting because I've just re-posted something I'd already posted after I'd had to change it. I was thrown a little by Ike's reference to Barretts father until I realised that I'd given the wrong time stamp.

A lesson to me to not post whilst doing other things

[Herlock Sholmes]

This is no wind-up, but it is too late in the evening to resolve it. Linder dated it as November 5 but I had recalled it as November 4. On the latter tape at 23:58, I can only hear Barrett telling Gray that his (Barrett's) father had passed away the night before?

Can we just stick with the handwriting point please, Ike? What's Barrett's father got to do with that?

I've persevered with the inaudible recording of 5th November. At 50 minutes, Gray appears to be typing out a statement on Barrett's behalf. You can hear the banging of the typewriter keys. He reads out one line which can, miraculously, just about be heard. It says: "My wife, Anne, wrote the Jack the Ripper diary, the actual manuscript".

How is that in any way consistent with Barrett saying, on the very same day according to Linder, that the handwriting was fifty-fifty? It makes no sense, Ike. He couldn't have been saying that he wrote half of the manuscript in view of what is in the statement. It must be a misunderstanding of the words "fifty fifty" by Seth Linder.

[Herlock Sholmes]

I'm about to try to unravel where the error is here and it's probably going to take me some time but - before I start - can I just remind my dear readers that what I actually said was:



I'm not denying for a moment that I thought (and still think it may have been) the recording on November 4, but - by the same token - I did not 'identify' it as the correct one; I simply stated that I recalled it being the November 4 tape.

This is not a huge point but points like this can later be used against you here on the Casebook if they are not clarified immediately.

Yes, but Ike, when I asked you if the recording was available, all you did was give me a link to 15 audio recordings without further comment and without identifying the one I should be listening to, let alone the time stamp. The only information I had to go on was your belief that it was November 4th. So that's the one I listened to. What else was I supposed to do?

I had to listen to the entire 47 minute recording to discover it wasn't there. But I've now also listened to the entire inaudible one-and-a-half-hour recording on November 5th and I can't hear it in there either. So where is it? If Seth Linder thought he did hear this being said, it makes me wonder if he misheard because I can't see how it's possible to get an accurate transcript from that recording.

You do also rely quite a lot on your memory for quotes which often seem to turn out to be wrong. Might it not be a good idea to check your facts before posting? Over the years I’ve made this mistakes numerous times when I’ve assumed that I’m remembering correctly leading me to not bother checking.

Nothing really makes sense of the Gray/Barrett exchange, especially because I can't see how a letter "Y" written by Barrett could have been confused by Gray with a letter in the diary. Barrett's child-like handwriting that I've seen doesn't look anything like the diary handwriting. Do you see the problem?

And have you actually ever heard this exchange yourself or have you always been relying on Seth Linder's summary transcription of it?

[Iconoclast]

I've just listened to all 47 minutes of the recording of November 4, 1994 which is the one you identified in #466 as being the correct one. The exchange in question is definitely not on there.

I'm about to try to unravel where the error is here and it's probably going to take me some time but - before I start - can I just remind my dear readers that what I actually said was:

This was from Seth Linder's transcription which was a mix of transcription and summary from him; however, I have heard the tape (Linder lists it as Barrett-Gray, November 5, 1994, but I seem to recall it was the day before) ...

I'm not denying for a moment that I thought (and still think it may have been) the recording on November 4, but - by the same token - I did not 'identify' it as the correct one; I simply stated that I recalled it being the November 4 tape.

This is not a huge point but points like this can later be used against you here on the Casebook if they are not clarified immediately.