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

[Herlock Sholmes]

Does anyone have any idea what this article on The Mag means about Alexander Isak "having had an off afternoon"? I'm totally confused.

Does it mean, like, 'a one 'off' afternoon?'. Is it even possible for someone to think in that way never mind vocalise, write, or type it?

It just feels all wrong, doesn't it? And yet someone has done so ...

Ike
Desperately Seeking Clarity & Hoping Isak Doesn't Have an 'Off' Evening Tonight

Surely you've heard of the expression "having an off day", Ike. Maybe your cold is causing you to have one? . It's the same as that with "afternoon" replacing "day".

And, no, it doesn't mean the same as having a one off afternoon. If someone said that it would mean they were having a unique afternoon.

[Iconoclast]

Yes, thankfully Roger made that point. Frankly, the idea that if Barrett had asked for a blank diary from the period 1870-1900, Tom would have said, "Oh yes, now I have to concede the point, Mike was clearly looking to forge a Maybrick diary" is too ludicrous for words. Yet, that's he would seem to have us believe!

Herlock,

I kid ye not, mate, I am genuinely worried about your ability to understand what is being said.

If Barrett had sought a dated document from 1870-1900, it could not have been to forge a Maybrick diary for reasons that he was brown bread by the middle of 1889. He could have sought an undated one from earlier than 1870 or later than 1900 if he'd wanted to maximise his chances of getting one, obviously (I assume you agree).

As his advert did not say he would accept an undated document, but mentioned 1890 (and the one he finally accepted was a dated one from 1891), then that is overwhelming evidence that he was not seeking to hoax a Maybrick diary.

[Herlock Sholmes]

You can't refer to The Sunday Times, Herlock, because that was October 1993. Baxendale made his '1945' comment in his various reports to Robert Smith of June and July 1992 and it doesn't matter what he was 'instructed' to do because what he did do was state that the ink was 'fully soluble' and then state that it must have been laid down after the Second World War which - of course - could have also meant "a few short months ago" but it is a genuine problem to resolve in one's mind why the hell he didn't just say that.

Instead, he behaved as though he had been piqued by Smith and Harrison's challenges (which he had to accept were correct), and then waited over a year and then appeared to get his own back on Robert Smith by allowing Maurice Chittenden to claim that he had told him it had literally just been laid down on paper very recently -something he had most certainly not stated a year earlier when it would have been extremely useful for Smith and Harrison to understand what he was actually implying. Zero integrity there but at least he didn't claim he had any.

It was you who first referred to the Sunday Times, Ike, so I don't know why you're now telling me I can't refer to it.

It surely must matter what Baxendale was instructed to do because that will have determined what he put in his report. Like I said, if he just needed to inform his client whether the diary was real or fake, a post-1945 date sufficiently answered the question.

I think your evidence-free questioning of Baxendale's motives is uncalled for. Might he simply not have been asked by a reporter what he discovered when he examined the diary and he told the truth about his test result?

[Herlock Sholmes]

I am getting there, Herlock, thank you.



"Obsessing over a typo"???? This was an affidavit, man! If you have a typo in an affidavit, it is hardly still a reliable document sworn on oath, is it? And (I'm losing track here), is your 'typo' the inclusion of 'December 1993' when Barrett actually meant - what? - 'December 1994', just a month earlier when he had actually started his campaign in June 1994, or did you mean that he meant 'June 1994' but inexplicably recorded 'December 1993'? Honesty, dear readers, does anyone find that plausible? In a post, yes. In a sloppy newspaper article, yes. In a tweet, of course. But in an affidavit sworn on oath (required in the absence of actual evidence) to claim that "all this is factually true"?

Why does this matter? I hear the question being carved out of stone in someone's head. Well, because an affidavit cannot be true "in those bits I really like". It has to be true in the whole, otherwise what meaning does swearing it on oath actually contain??? It's either true in the whole or else it could be full of holes. And this one most obviously was (please please please don't ask me to enumerate what these were, Herlock).



YOU HAD ME AT 'YES', HERLOCK!



So it isn't an affidavit by Mike Barrett, is it? It's an affidavit by Alan Gray (almost certainly influenced by that viper Melvin Harris) and Mike Barrett which we can see is immediately potentially full of holes (and is!) to the point where it is reasonable to ponder if Barrett intended it to be full of holes.



OMG, don't ever sign an affidavit, Herlock - no-one will believe it if this is the standard by which you would write one! By the way, what exactly do you mean by "so the Dec 1993 date is an obvious mistake"? You don't know what you're referring to, do you? What was to stop Barrett claiming to Harold Brough in June 1994 that he had been trying to expose the hoax he had created since December 1993? He claimed it in January 1995 and you evidently take no issue with this, so why could he not have claimed it in June 1994? He didn't, but why would his doing so be "an obvious mistake"?

How can it possibly be of significance??? He's asking us to believe his word on oath, man!



I think I'm feeling iller again. When exactly did you recently land on Planet Maybrick?



If it were for that reason, I'd have to put Duracell batteries in the word to keep it going. He claimed to be acting in the name of integrity when he had a huge vested interest to protect. That's evidence which compromises his use of the word 'integrity' in my book and he should never have appropriated it to himself nor assumed he had the right to use it without criticism. A man of integrity would have realised the contraction in terms and used a different word whilst he was insanely racing around trying to influence as many people as possible to come to his view that the Maybrick scrapbook must be a hoax in the year before his book on Stephenson was due out.



I don't believe that this is known for certain but - almost certainly - it was January 6, 1995 (the day after it was sworn).



Alan Gray, Ace Detective.



No, not one, and given his misuse of the word 'integrity', I honestly don't think he'd be bothered if there had been. He just wanted the diary killed stone dead and he was so certain he was right that he didn't care by which means he achieved it. The viper.



I think he should have put it in his drawer and gone, "**** me, what a load of mince" which - interestingly - is exactly what he appears to have done.

Ike, mate, you're living in another reality if you think that typos and other mistakes can't be and aren't, made in affidavits. What is it about the word "affidavit" that makes you think they must be error free? They're just documents created by humans, even if they end up being sworn on oath. You'll find typos in them all the time and, yes, dating errors. It happens. Did you ever watch any of the Post Office IT inquiry? The witnesses produced signed witness statements which were all supposed to be true and accurate but pretty much every single witness started off their evidence by correcting mistakes in their statements. All you're doing is obsessing about such errors which are obvious errors. We know the month and year when Barrett started to claim the diary was a forgery. We don't need the affidavit for that. What advantage do you think Barrett could possibly have gained by lying about a date which was a matter of public record? The answer is that there was no advantage to him which is how we know it's just a mistake. Obsessing about it is a waste of your time.

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.

I asked you who is relying on Barrett's affidavit and, rather than answer, you tell me you feel ill. That's not an answer. As far as I know, nobody is relying on Barrett's affidavit for anything.

If you don't know when Harris received a copy of the affidavit, why do you say it was almost certainly on 6th January 1995? Is it a guess, or based on something? How do you know Gray gave it to him? And how do you know there were no confidentiality conditions attached? You told RJ Palmer to cite his sources. Could you please cite yours?

Just saying "viper" over and over again just seems like you bear him a grudge. I repeat my question. Why do you keep calling him a viper? Is it just because he didn't think the diary was genuine. Is there a reason why you're not answering this question?

[Herlock Sholmes]

And I find yours deeply unsettling. Right, at this point, dear readers, I have to explain. to Herlock what I mean by this because he does not appear to be able to infer anything from what I write. So here goes: I find your response very unsettling because it is so obviously misses the point (which I wish I had been more explicit about).



Only if you need help to understand how much in error you are, Herlock, I suppose.

"A Victorian document with twenty blank pages" would have given him a lot more options than "A document from 1880-1890 with twenty blank pages". That's what I meant. Do you still find my response very strange? I wonder, does anyone?



It depends what his objective was but assuming it was to maximise his chances of success, what was 'wrong' about his request has just been answered, above.



I would say that I found this ironic, Herlock, but I won't because I can't be bothered to then have to explain to you why it was ironic (because you won't have worked it out from the words alone).



Dear readers, this is the sort of logic I have to deal with on your behalf pretty much daily. And, no, Herlock, I will not be explaining what I mean by this so please don't ask. No-one else will fail to understand it so I'm not making you the special one.



Dear readers, this is what is called seeking to have your cake and eat it. If Barrett had anticipated receiving a document with dates in, he clearly would not have requested 1880 to 1890 (as Maybrick was dead in 1890 - that was for Herlock's benefit, by the way) so we have to infer that he was expecting a document without dates in it which means that he had a much better chance of success if he widened the search to as large a window as might be perceived as possible. An 1890 diary with dates in it would have been disastrous, of course, but an 1899 one might be what he would need. The issue is simply that he restricted his options unnecessarily.



Well that would be true if he was certain his request would elicit a document with dates in it so it will have been obvious to my dear readers that I was referring to the possibility of his receiving a document with no dates in it and - if this were the case (as logic dictates) - as wide a period as realistically possible would be the better choice to make.



Could he not have written in a diary with dates in if it was from, say, 1830? What would stop him using such a document? "It must be a hoax - it's from 1830!". "Oh, hold on, Holmes, is it vaguely possible that he wrote in the 1830 diary in 1888 and 1889?". Bang goes Holmes brilliant career.



Are you seriously taking the piss, Herlock? As old canards go, this is positively prehistoric. Did you just stumble on the Maybrick threads last month? Are you seriously asking me to repeat what others have proposed, what I have proposed, and WHAT RJ ITERATED BARELY A HANDFUL OF POSTS AGO ON THIS VERY THREAD?????????

The key point here, dear readers, is that Barrett's request reveals what his motivation was.

Anyone still wondering what that might be? Shall I tell you? I may as well because I'm just about to be asked again by Herlock to explain it. He asks the question as if he can't use a quantum of initiate, so here it is for everyone's delectation - for the trillionth time:

1) It has been proposed that Barrett was concerned that he had a hoax on his hands so he was checking to see how easy it would be to source a genuine document from around the time of the murders with sufficient blank pages to have created a hoaxed Jack the Ripper diary (which - remember - he might have had in his very hands that very moment). Now, a wider timeframe would have been logically more productive for him but - in selecting 1891 - he was 100% stating that he was not seeking a document to create a hoax himself in. If he had been, he'd have had to specify that he needed an undated document for reasons which I trust even Herlock will not need to have laboriously explained to him.

2) It has been proposed (by me) that Barrett was concerned that he had the diary of Jack the Ripper on his hands which he was understandably very reluctant to give up (imagine it was a bar of gold) so he was checking to see if he could source a genuine document from around the time of the murders with sufficient blank pages to pass off as the real one if anyone ever knocked on his door saying, "I believe you have just taken possession of a book from around the Victorian period and it was stolen so you will need to return it and therefore lose the windfall you think you have in your hands". Now, a wider timeframe would have been logically more productive for him but - in selecting 1891 - he was 100% stating that he was not seeking a document to create a hoax himself in. If he had been, he'd have had to specify that he needed an undated document for reasons which I trust even Herlock will not need to have laboriously explained to him.

At this point, Herlock (amongst others) will respond, "What a stupid pair of theories" - not because they are actually stupid theories but simply because they both contradict what he wants to do with the truly stupid Barrett confession theory.

I think you might be playing a joke on me if your position is that had Barrett requested "a Victorian document with blank pages" you would have held your hands up and said "I admit it, Barrett must have been seeking such a document in order to create a forged diary of James Maybrick".

In your post you say, "in selecting 1891 - he was 100% stating that he was not seeking a document to create a hoax himself in", while, at the very same time, telling me he should actually have been asking for a document up to as late as 1899 (or 1901 to include the entire Victorian period) if he wanted to fake a Ripper diary. So the logic of your position is utterly baffling.

This game you want to play of criticising the wording of the request is just silly. No doubt, with hindsight and thirty or forty years to think about it, a better request could have been worded. But if you assume that Barrett has decided to write a fake diary of Jack the Ripper. the first thought that would surely and naturally have popped into his mind would have been that he needed to obtain a genuine Victorian diary with blank pages on which the text could be written. Then he would have thought that he needed one from around the time of the Ripper murders. Because he surely wanted his fake diary to look authentic and, ideally, pass scientific tests. Does he really need to have given it any more thought than that?

This over-analysis of the wording of the request is ridiculous.

And the irony of it is that when explaining why you think he made the request, you say "he was checking to see if he could source a genuine document from around the time of the murders with sufficient blank pages" . I mean come on Ike. In terms of the time period, it's the exact same thing I said, yet when I say it, you ask why he chose a period from around the time of the murders!!!

Your own explanation makes no sense because, under your theory, he had seen the photograph album-cum diary. But that photograph album is undated and could have come from any time period. Barrett couldn't have known what century it came from let alone what decade. So why did he need to limit himself to 1880 to 1890 if he wanted to replicate what he'd seen? That makes zero sense. Nor is the photograph album or scrapbook, or whatever you want to call it, an obvious diary. So why did he only ask for a diary? Using your own logic, how could a little red 1891 diary have ever passed itself off for a diary of Jack the Ripper?

And then who could possibly have come knocking at his door asking for the diary back? Wouldn't it have been someone who knew what the diary looked like? So how could any other substitute which looked nothing like the large black photograph album possibly suffice? And wouldn't that person have known it was a diary of Jack the Ripper? Wouldn't they have expected about 60 pages of Victorian style writing in it? How would handing over a blank diary from, say, 1882 have possibly helped Barrett achieve what he wanted to achieve?

Honestly, what a stupid theory. While the other one you mention (but don't adopt) is equally stupid. What a stupid pair of theories!

[Geddy2112]

Does anyone have any idea what this article on The Mag means about Alexander Isak "having had an off afternoon"? I'm totally confused.

Does it mean, like, 'a one 'off' afternoon?'. Is it even possible for someone to think in that way never mind vocalise, write, or type it?

It just feels all wrong, doesn't it? And yet someone has done so ...

Ike
Desperately Seeking Clarity & Hoping Isak Doesn't Have an 'Off' Evening Tonight

Surely as a Local to the North East, sorry I've heard you are a Geordie, then you should know the term 'having an off afternoon' and what it means. Basically it means he was not at his best.

I'm driving through to Newcastle shortly to drop my daughter off in the Bigg Market. Surely you can't let a two goal advantage slide. I know if you did it would not be a 'one off' but surely it can't or should not happen.

[Iconoclast]

Does anyone have any idea what this article on The Mag means about Alexander Isak "having had an off afternoon"? I'm totally confused.

Does it mean, like, 'a one 'off' afternoon?'. Is it even possible for someone to think in that way never mind vocalise, write, or type it?

It just feels all wrong, doesn't it? And yet someone has done so ...

Ike
Desperately Seeking Clarity & Hoping Isak Doesn't Have an 'Off' Evening Tonight

[Herlock Sholmes]

The fact that they were under no threat for their supposed "creative writing" project doesn't help you.

1. It's still a stupid thing to do so who cares if there was a legitimate threat or not

2. The real threat that they obviously seemed to fear would come from ratting out or exposing a thief or a gang of thieves. That helps the Fence Theory again.

Yes, thankfully Roger made that point. Frankly, the idea that if Barrett had asked for a blank diary from the period 1870-1900, Tom would have said, "Oh yes, now I have to concede the point, Mike was clearly looking to forge a Maybrick diary" is too ludicrous for words. Yet, that's he would seem to have us believe!

[Iconoclast]

... and quit referring to the dead as viperous.

I know that it is an old tradition to eulogise the departed but I shan't be influenced by someone's inability to fight back and not point out where they had attempted to ascribe a quality to themselves which I believe their actions betrayed.

By the way, that trick (eulogising the dead) is not applied in the case of the bad guys so let's not assume it is a crime to keep reminding people of what he appropriated to himself. I'd hate his self-imposed halo to keep getting shined every few years without the occasional qualification from me.

[Iconoclast]

Hi Ike,

Was Baxendale instructed to provide a date of authorship or was he just asked to state whether the diary was fake or genuine? If the latter, might that not explain why a conclusion that it was likely created after 1945 was sufficient for the report whereas he could informally give the Sunday Times more information?

And is it really the case that we need to "believe the likes if RJ and Orsam"? Can't we just look at the relevant edition of the Sunday Times to see what Baxendale was reported as saying?

You can't refer to The Sunday Times, Herlock, because that was October 1993. Baxendale made his '1945' comment in his various reports to Robert Smith of June and July 1992 and it doesn't matter what he was 'instructed' to do because what he did do was state that the ink was 'fully soluble' and then state that it must have been laid down after the Second World War which - of course - could have also meant "a few short months ago" but it is a genuine problem to resolve in one's mind why the hell he didn't just say that.

Instead, he behaved as though he had been piqued by Smith and Harrison's challenges (which he had to accept were correct), and then waited over a year and then appeared to get his own back on Robert Smith by allowing Maurice Chittenden to claim that he had told him it had literally just been laid down on paper very recently -something he had most certainly not stated a year earlier when it would have been extremely useful for Smith and Harrison to understand what he was actually implying. Zero integrity there but at least he didn't claim he had any.

[Iconoclast]

Hope you’re feeling better?

I am getting there, Herlock, thank you.

Ike, mate, you're basically obsessing over a typo.

"Obsessing over a typo"???? This was an affidavit, man! If you have a typo in an affidavit, it is hardly still a reliable document sworn on oath, is it? And (I'm losing track here), is your 'typo' the inclusion of 'December 1993' when Barrett actually meant - what? - 'December 1994', just a month earlier when he had actually started his campaign in June 1994, or did you mean that he meant 'June 1994' but inexplicably recorded 'December 1993'? Honesty, dear readers, does anyone find that plausible? In a post, yes. In a sloppy newspaper article, yes. In a tweet, of course. But in an affidavit sworn on oath (required in the absence of actual evidence) to claim that "all this is factually true"?

Why does this matter? I hear the question being carved out of stone in someone's head. Well, because an affidavit cannot be true "in those bits I really like". It has to be true in the whole, otherwise what meaning does swearing it on oath actually contain??? It's either true in the whole or else it could be full of holes. And this one most obviously was (please please please don't ask me to enumerate what these were, Herlock).

Yes, the affidavit contains some dating errors ...

YOU HAD ME AT 'YES', HERLOCK!

... but, as you've pointed out, it wasn't solely authored by Barrett.

So it isn't an affidavit by Mike Barrett, is it? It's an affidavit by Alan Gray (almost certainly influenced by that viper Melvin Harris) and Mike Barrett which we can see is immediately potentially full of holes (and is!) to the point where it is reasonable to ponder if Barrett intended it to be full of holes.

Didn’t he claim that he forged the diary in June 1994, so the Dec 1993 date is an obvious mistake. How can it possibly be of any significance?

OMG, don't ever sign an affidavit, Herlock - no-one will believe it if this is the standard by which you would write one! By the way, what exactly do you mean by "so the Dec 1993 date is an obvious mistake"? You don't know what you're referring to, do you? What was to stop Barrett claiming to Harold Brough in June 1994 that he had been trying to expose the hoax he had created since December 1993? He claimed it in January 1995 and you evidently take no issue with this, so why could he not have claimed it in June 1994? He didn't, but why would his doing so be "an obvious mistake"?

How can it possibly be of significance??? He's asking us to believe his word on oath, man!

Who, in any case, is relying on Barrett's affidavit for anything?

I think I'm feeling iller again. When exactly did you recently land on Planet Maybrick?

Can you explain why you keep referring to Melvin Harris as a viper? Is it simply because he didn't think the diary was genuine?

If it were for that reason, I'd have to put Duracell batteries in the word to keep it going. He claimed to be acting in the name of integrity when he had a huge vested interest to protect. That's evidence which compromises his use of the word 'integrity' in my book and he should never have appropriated it to himself nor assumed he had the right to use it without criticism. A man of integrity would have realised the contraction in terms and used a different word whilst he was insanely racing around trying to influence as many people as possible to come to his view that the Maybrick scrapbook must be a hoax in the year before his book on Stephenson was due out.

When did Harris receive a copy of Barrett's affidavit?

I don't believe that this is known for certain but - almost certainly - it was January 6, 1995 (the day after it was sworn).

Who gave it to him?

Alan Gray, Ace Detective.

Assuming he was given a copy, were there any confidentiality conditions attached to his being given it which prevented him from circulating it?

No, not one, and given his misuse of the word 'integrity', I honestly don't think he'd be bothered if there had been. He just wanted the diary killed stone dead and he was so certain he was right that he didn't care by which means he achieved it. The viper.

What exactly do you think he should have done with it?

I think he should have put it in his drawer and gone, "**** me, what a load of mince" which - interestingly - is exactly what he appears to have done.

[Iconoclast]

I find your response very strange, Ike.

And I find yours deeply unsettling. Right, at this point, dear readers, I have to explain. to Herlock what I mean by this because he does not appear to be able to infer anything from what I write. So here goes: I find your response very unsettling because it is so obviously misses the point (which I wish I had been more explicit about).

If we assume he's looking to forge a Ripper diary, he's got to start and end somewhere, hasn't he?

Only if you need help to understand how much in error you are, Herlock, I suppose.

"A Victorian document with twenty blank pages" would have given him a lot more options than "A document from 1880-1890 with twenty blank pages". That's what I meant. Do you still find my response very strange? I wonder, does anyone?

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.

It depends what his objective was but assuming it was to maximise his chances of success, what was 'wrong' about his request has just been answered, above.

After all, he might have hoped to have been offered a number of choices.

I would say that I found this ironic, Herlock, but I won't because I can't be bothered to then have to explain to you why it was ironic (because you won't have worked it out from the words alone).

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.

Dear readers, this is the sort of logic I have to deal with on your behalf pretty much daily. And, no, Herlock, I will not be explaining what I mean by this so please don't ask. No-one else will fail to understand it so I'm not making you the special one.

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.

Dear readers, this is what is called seeking to have your cake and eat it. If Barrett had anticipated receiving a document with dates in, he clearly would not have requested 1880 to 1890 (as Maybrick was dead in 1890 - that was for Herlock's benefit, by the way) so we have to infer that he was expecting a document without dates in it which means that he had a much better chance of success if he widened the search to as large a window as might be perceived as possible. An 1890 diary with dates in it would have been disastrous, of course, but an 1899 one might be what he would need. The issue is simply that he restricted his options unnecessarily.

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.

Well that would be true if he was certain his request would elicit a document with dates in it so it will have been obvious to my dear readers that I was referring to the possibility of his receiving a document with no dates in it and - if this were the case (as logic dictates) - as wide a period as realistically possible would be the better choice to make.

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.

Could he not have written in a diary with dates in if it was from, say, 1830? What would stop him using such a document? "It must be a hoax - it's from 1830!". "Oh, hold on, Holmes, is it vaguely possible that he wrote in the 1830 diary in 1888 and 1889?". Bang goes Holmes brilliant career.

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?

Are you seriously taking the piss, Herlock? As old canards go, this is positively prehistoric. Did you just stumble on the Maybrick threads last month? Are you seriously asking me to repeat what others have proposed, what I have proposed, and WHAT RJ ITERATED BARELY A HANDFUL OF POSTS AGO ON THIS VERY THREAD?????????

The key point here, dear readers, is that Barrett's request reveals what his motivation was.

Anyone still wondering what that might be? Shall I tell you? I may as well because I'm just about to be asked again by Herlock to explain it. He asks the question as if he can't use a quantum of initiate, so here it is for everyone's delectation - for the trillionth time:

1) It has been proposed that Barrett was concerned that he had a hoax on his hands so he was checking to see how easy it would be to source a genuine document from around the time of the murders with sufficient blank pages to have created a hoaxed Jack the Ripper diary (which - remember - he might have had in his very hands that very moment). Now, a wider timeframe would have been logically more productive for him but - in selecting 1891 - he was 100% stating that he was not seeking a document to create a hoax himself in. If he had been, he'd have had to specify that he needed an undated document for reasons which I trust even Herlock will not need to have laboriously explained to him.

2) It has been proposed (by me) that Barrett was concerned that he had the diary of Jack the Ripper on his hands which he was understandably very reluctant to give up (imagine it was a bar of gold) so he was checking to see if he could source a genuine document from around the time of the murders with sufficient blank pages to pass off as the real one if anyone ever knocked on his door saying, "I believe you have just taken possession of a book from around the Victorian period and it was stolen so you will need to return it and therefore lose the windfall you think you have in your hands". Now, a wider timeframe would have been logically more productive for him but - in selecting 1891 - he was 100% stating that he was not seeking a document to create a hoax himself in. If he had been, he'd have had to specify that he needed an undated document for reasons which I trust even Herlock will not need to have laboriously explained to him.

At this point, Herlock (amongst others) will respond, "What a stupid pair of theories" - not because they are actually stupid theories but simply because they both contradict what he wants to do with the truly stupid Barrett confession theory.

[rjpalmer]

It is customary - especially when challenged - to be clear on a citation but if you just want to make a claim here without backing it up, I guess there's little anyone can do (bar wonder ether you are correct or not)?

But please don't cite reasons why you won't when perhaps people are wondering whether in truth it is more that you can't.

Nice try, Tom.

I know exactly where it is.

The British examiner is another victim of your venom, Dr. David Baxendale.

[Iconoclast]

As for which Nickell book, until you learn some manners and quit referring to the dead as viperous, I'll allow you the pleasure of conducting your own research.

It is customary - especially when challenged - to be clear on a citation but if you just want to make a claim here without backing it up, I guess there's little anyone can do (bar wonder ether you are correct or not)?

But please don't cite reasons why you won't when perhaps people are wondering whether in truth it is more that you can't.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Hi Caz,

If we are to believe the likes of RJ and Orsam, Baxendale told Maurice Chittenden of The Sunday Times almost a year after he wrote his various reports that (and I paraphrase here) the ink was pretty much dripping out of the pages onto the floor they were that recently laid down.

Begs the question, though: why not just say that in your report? 'It was dripping wet', 'I got drenched in it', 'It must have been laid down a few months ago'.

I just can't understand why a guy who freely admitted he was very badly wrong about the properties of ink and therefore asked for his report to be kept from public view would not at least mention that it was clearly put on the paper in 1992.

I'm beat!

Cheers,

Ike

Hi Ike,

Was Baxendale instructed to provide a date of authorship or was he just asked to state whether the diary was fake or genuine? If the latter, might that not explain why a conclusion that it was likely created after 1945 was sufficient for the report whereas he could informally give the Sunday Times more information?

And is it really the case that we need to "believe the likes if RJ and Orsam"? Can't we just look at the relevant edition of the Sunday Times to see what Baxendale was reported as saying?