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

[caz]

Hi Mike,

I suspect your comment has flown right over Caroline's head.

Rather than debunking Professor Murray's 1888 dictionary entry, showing that 'bumbling' was regional and obsolete, Gary's research has, to my thinking, confirmed it.

If the adjective was truly in circulation, we'd expect to find dozens if not hundreds or thousands of examples of its use in print in the millions of pages of Victorian and Edwardian writing and literature now digitized.

Instead, he has found a single example and a strange and uncertain one, and you're quite right to point out that the context does not allow us to be confident that the writer in question meant bumbling in the sense of 'bungling'---that's merely an assumption on his part and Caroline's part.

One meaning of 'purveyor' is a someone who promotes something (a purveyor of the Christian faith, for instance) and could not a promoter bumble around like a bee? How do we know that the writer in question was not dropping a hint to the person's identity? A rival who wrote for The Bee, for instance?

Coming up for air, if the arguments for the diary being a genuine Victorian or Edwardian document are this obscure and tedious is it not likely that they are also wrong?

Anyone who believes the diary is a late 20th Century hoax can merely point to hundreds and thousands of examples of 'one off instance' and 'bumbling buffoon' in print. "Here they are, LOOK!!" It's that simple. There is no room for doubt.

By contrast, anyone who wants to suggest the text is Victorian is forced to guide us through a laborious and labyrinthine set of obscure and tedious and questionable arguments all designed to obscure the fact that these same phrases can't be found in print anytime between 1800 and 1935 or so.

Something's not quite right there, is it? Does the public even have the patience for it?

Have a great afternoon.

I don't know why I bother.

So many points were missed in this post that I gave up counting. It's as if Palmer didn't bother to read a single word of what I actually wrote, and was responding to something I didn't.

A bit like Herlock not bothering to read any of Gary's examples of 'bumbling' and Palmer now thinking he only found 'a single' example.

I made the point myself about the small number of examples of 'bumbling' found to date, and how that magnifies the odds against finding it attached to 'buffoon' or indeed any other noun in the dictionary.

What is the relevance of what Roach meant by 'bumbling'? I'm not 'assuming' anything about this, nor am I the one making assumptions about what the diary author meant by the same word. Could Maybrick's doctor not have been bumbling around like a bee, if Roach's purveyor could have been?

Perhaps Palmer will do me the courtesy one day of actually addressing what I have posted instead of making assumptions about my thought processes.

And perhaps pigs might fly.

[caz]

No, the Skip Story came from Eddy in 1993. He told Robert Smith he threw a book in a skip in June of 1992. That's according to Robert Smith.

Maybe Eddy did do that in June and, if that makes it true, then it's true. But it's not the Diary.

So why is Eddy talking about a different book in a different month thrown in a real skip, or talking about a phantom book in a different month thrown in a phantom skip.

It's called muddying the water or "scrambling history", if you will, so no one will know that he stole a Diary and a Gold Watch from Battlecrease.

Hi Lombro2,

I don't think Eddie gave Robert any idea of when he was supposed to have thrown a book into a skip that was never there while he was working in Dodd's house.

There is also no evidence that Eddie was at the house in June 1992. He was there in March 1992 [on his own insistence - not from remembering the date, but from the details he was able to recall, which correspond with the documentary evidence for that job and no other] and again in July 1992, according to the timesheets and other independent witness testimony.

The skip story must have served some purpose for somebody, and you have offered one plausible explanation if Eddie was as worried as Mike Barrett was at the time about the Battlecrease rumour mill and where it might lead if unchecked. But nobody seems able to provide another reason why Eddie - or anyone else - would have agreed to meet a total stranger, Robert Smith, in a pub and would have told that story. The diary was in this stranger's possession by then, but very little information about the book itself was available to the public.

Eddie claimed to have only ever met Mike Barrett on the one occasion, when he knocked on his door to confront him about the diary and it didn't end well. He naturally had to deny the rendezvous in the Saddle, which Mike had arranged at Robert's request, or else admit to lying about only meeting Mike the once.

Love,

Caz
X

[rjpalmer]

If the label on the tape had been in Anne's handwriting, the natural response from Mike would have been to correct Gray and say: "You've tumbled Anne at last! That's what I keep telling you: I wrote the diary on my word processor and Anne copied it out by hand. That label proves it."

When did Mike Barrett ever give a 'natural response'?

Barrett's behavior and reactions were anything but predictable and rational.

I'd have to see the cassette tapes with my own eyes.

[rjpalmer]

I have to wonder Caz, why do you attribute the words "bumbling purveyor" to a "theatre man in Liverpool"? Who are you referring to? To me, it looks like those words were written by a man in London.

Who was the "bumbling purveyor" in question and why was he "bumbling"? If you can't answer this question, it may be that the word "bumbling" meant something different in this usage to what it means in "bumbling buffoon". In which case, it would be misleading to say "Clearly, 'bumbling' was used in print to describe a person or persons, a character or personality type". What seems far more clear to me, because we have it in print, in a dictionary, is that the word "bumbling" to describe an incompetent person was obsolete in England in 1888 except in some regional dialects.

Hi Mike,

I suspect your comment has flown right over Caroline's head.

Rather than debunking Professor Murray's 1888 dictionary entry, showing that 'bumbling' was regional and obsolete, Gary's research has, to my thinking, confirmed it.

If the adjective was truly in circulation, we'd expect to find dozens if not hundreds or thousands of examples of its use in print in the millions of pages of Victorian and Edwardian writing and literature now digitized.

Instead, he has found a single example and a strange and uncertain one, and you're quite right to point out that the context does not allow us to be confident that the writer in question meant bumbling in the sense of 'bungling'---that's merely an assumption on his part and Caroline's part.

One meaning of 'purveyor' is a someone who promotes something (a purveyor of the Christian faith, for instance) and could not a promoter bumble around like a bee? How do we know that the writer in question was not dropping a hint to the person's identity? A rival who wrote for The Bee, for instance?

Coming up for air, if the arguments for the diary being a genuine Victorian or Edwardian document are this obscure and tedious is it not likely that they are also wrong?

Anyone who believes the diary is a late 20th Century hoax can merely point to hundreds and thousands of examples of 'one off instance' and 'bumbling buffoon' in print. "Here they are, LOOK!!" It's that simple. There is no room for doubt.

By contrast, anyone who wants to suggest the text is Victorian is forced to guide us through a laborious and labyrinthine set of obscure and tedious and questionable arguments all designed to obscure the fact that these same phrases can't be found in print anytime between 1800 and 1935 or so.

Something's not quite right there, is it? Does the public even have the patience for it?

Have a great afternoon.

[caz]

Unless Keith Skinner’s vast collection of archival material contains the original cassette tapes that Gray was describing, ie., tapes from the years of Mike’s secret career as a freelance writer in the 1980s, it is pure conjecture that the handwriting was Mike’s.

At one point (in Inside Story) Barrett claims that Anne wrote those articles, so, if true, she would naturally have listened to the cassette tapes. We are further told by Keith Skinner in his introduction to Anne’s book that she was a meticulous organizer of the Maybrick documents and that her finding aid is (or was) still used at Kew.

Who was more likely to have labeled these tapes, Anne or the heavy drinking Bomgo Barrett?

As far as I know, Gray recognized Anne’s lettering!!!

Context is so important. If you are happy to trust Seth Linder to have heard and transcribed what Barrett is claiming about Anne at that point on the tape, and was not just going to guess if he found any words hard to hear or inaudible, then be happy to trust him with the rest of it, where Gray says: "By Christ, I've tumbled you at last. You wrote the manuscript." If the label on the tape had been in Anne's handwriting, the natural response from Mike would have been to correct Gray and say: "You've tumbled Anne at last! That's what I keep telling you: I wrote the diary on my word processor and Anne copied it out by hand. That label proves it."

There would have been no ambiguity and no possible reason for Gray's continued confusion, if Mike had not owned that letter Y on the label. Gray tells him: "You said Anne did it.... you're still saying it's all her handwriting." That's the context in which Mike responds by saying it was "fifty-fifty". He'd been too quick to go along with Gray's aha! moment to think of the implications. Realising his mistake, Mike makes another one by attempting to explain how his letter Y could be in a diary in his wife's handwriting. I'm only surprised he didn't add the word "simple" for emphasis. The following day he is back to his claim that it was all in Anne's handwriting.

This man-child doesn't care about lies he told yesterday not matching the lies he tells the same people today, or the lies he will tell tomorrow, next week or next year. He can count on having enough followers who will believe him at least some of the time, and will make excuses for even the most transparent examples of his mendacity.

Lucky fellow.

[caz]

When Roach continued his theatrical career in London, did he get blank looks from everyone if he dared to use the word "bumbling" ever again?

Did he check in a dictionary and feel really embarrassed to find it was obsolete down south by 1888?

Have I just arrived on a different planet??

[caz]

I have to wonder Caz, why do you attribute the words "bumbling purveyor" to a "theatre man in Liverpool"? Who are you referring to? To me, it looks like those words were written by a man in London.

Who was the "bumbling purveyor" in question and why was he "bumbling"? If you can't answer this question, it may be that the word "bumbling" meant something different in this usage to what it means in "bumbling buffoon". In which case, it would be misleading to say "Clearly, 'bumbling' was used in print to describe a person or persons, a character or personality type". What seems far more clear to me, because we have it in print, in a dictionary, is that the word "bumbling" to describe an incompetent person was obsolete in England in 1888 except in some regional dialects.

Further, the expression "bumbling buffoon" is twentieth century. While "one off instance" is twentieth century, after the second world war.

You might, incidentally, want to ask Lombro for his 1919 example of "one off basis" because, as you say, facts is facts, and I'm sure you'll want to apply the same rigour to Lombro's posts as you do to mine and RJ Palmer's, in case he's ‘imagined’ it.

You surely must have read Gary Barnett's thread over at the forums, entitled 'The bumbling impresario'. It was referred to a fair bit when we were all here just three or four months ago discussing how 'obsolete' the b word wasn't in Maybrick's Liverpool. How could you have contributed without even bothering to see the examples in print? Sometimes words fail me...

The man who broke the mould (he was a true one-off) by describing someone as a Bumbling Purveyor of inane doggerel in 1888 was John Thomas Pengelly Roach, the propietor of the Grand Theatre of Variety in Paradise Street, Liverpool.

Quite a character it would seem, and well known to Liverpool society. He lost his licence in Liverpool in 1892 and subsequently became bankrupt, but he later continued his theatrical career in London.

The reason he lost his licence? Something to do with there being, allegedly, up to 50 prostitutes at his theatre on occasion.

He deserves looking into, I believe.

You can revisit the various examples Gary found here:

https://www.jtrforums.com/forum/persons-of-interest-or-actual-suspects/james-maybrick/the-maybrick-diary-forum/621837-the-bumbling-impressario

[caz]

Hello Caz,

I see from the sarcasm that you, like Ike, still see this thread as a closed shop where only certain people should be allowed to post or comment. Or is it just anyone that happens to agree with David Orsam on anything?

He says “I may return to Battlecrease,” he calls himself “Sir Jim” and the diary is dated 1889. He also mentions the Exchange Floor. No one, as far as I’m aware, is ever christened ‘Jim.’ It’s always short for James so we have a man living in a house called Battlecrease in 1889 called James who is familiar with the Exchange. Not hard to work out for anyone looking at the diary for the first time.

You’re right of course that he doesn’t mention his son’s name or his wife’s or Alfred Brierley’s and I was in error to mention them. I’ll stand correcting of course but wasn’t it known elsewhere (other than the diary) that James jnr was known as Bobo? If so then Bobo is mentioned in the diary more than once. It’s also clear that Bobo was a sibling of Gladys. “I worry so over Bobo and Gladys.” Mrs Hammersmith inquired about Gladys and Bobo.

I can’t recall if it’s known that Florence was known as Bunny outside of the diary but it’s clear that the diarist is talking about his unfaithful wife. So, yes I certainly take your point on Florence and Alfred Brierley but my original point was in relation to the pointlessness of disguising handwriting when the author is giving so much information out that clearly reveals his identity.

Whatever.

[Lombro2]

It was 1921. Easy enough to find these days.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Well it's like 'bumbling buffoon', isn't it? Until we had examples in print of 'bumbling' from the 1880s, and in Liverpool no less, used as an adjective, we were confidently assured that the word was obsolete by then and could not have been used to describe the ever popular Victorian 'buffoon' or anyone else. Funny how the obsolete b word survived to become as popular by the middle of the next century as the old familiar b word, but that's language for you: funny.

How many other examples of a 'bumbling purveyor' would anyone have expected to find in print, if the diary author had chosen these two words instead? Did the theatre man in Liverpool who put them together in a sentence realise he was at the cutting edge of language in November 1888, and may well have come up with a one off instance of this exact two-word combination?

Clearly, 'bumbling' was used in print to describe a person or persons, a character or personality type, and most likely in conversations and correspondence too, but the examples known to have survived to date are so few in number that nothing useful can be said about who could or could not have been described in that way. There must be literally scores of nouns in use in the 1880s that could have been chosen to follow 'bumbling' depending on the circumstances: bobby, bureaucrat, busybody, butcher, councillor, magistrate, medico, official, purveyor, stationmaster - I could go on [and I frequently do] but you get my drift. If the first word was rarely seen in print back then, with each example describing someone different, the chances of a 'buffoon' popping up as the second word were always going to be negligible, with so many other possibilities all vying with each other for the few opportunities available.

It's not an argument against a hoaxer who was familiar with the modern coupling of the two words and wrongly assumed they'd been commonly seen going out together in Maybrick's day. It's simply pointing out that there was nothing stopping that Liverpool theatre man from describing his "bumbling purveyor" as a "bumbling buffoon" instead. No know-it-all there to inform him it would be decades before anyone had public permission to do so. I wonder what the argument would have been, had he disobeyed this golden rule?

We are now assured, with goalposts groaning from all the shifting, that the 'one off instance' smoking gun is not remotely like the 'bumbling buffoon' silver bullet that went down like a lead balloon.

Love,

Caz
X

I have to wonder Caz, why do you attribute the words "bumbling purveyor" to a "theatre man in Liverpool"? Who are you referring to? To me, it looks like those words were written by a man in London.

Who was the "bumbling purveyor" in question and why was he "bumbling"? If you can't answer this question, it may be that the word "bumbling" meant something different in this usage to what it means in "bumbling buffoon". In which case, it would be misleading to say "Clearly, 'bumbling' was used in print to describe a person or persons, a character or personality type". What seems far more clear to me, because we have it in print, in a dictionary, is that the word "bumbling" to describe an incompetent person was obsolete in England in 1888 except in some regional dialects.

Further, the expression "bumbling buffoon" is twentieth century. While "one off instance" is twentieth century, after the second world war.

You might, incidentally, want to ask Lombro for his 1919 example of "one off basis" because, as you say, facts is facts, and I'm sure you'll want to apply the same rigour to Lombro's posts as you do to mine and RJ Palmer's, in case he's ‘imagined’ it.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Revealed in the diary we have…

First name - "Jim" e.g. p.18, 32, 37, 43, 44, 47, 56
Partial surname - "Jimay" on p.53, "it's only May playing his dirty game" p.22, "This Mayspreads Mayhem" p. 23
Name of House - "Battlecrease" p.2
Wife's (nick)name - "Bunny" p.60 & 63
Daughter's name "Gladys" p.1, 6 & 24
Son's (nick)name "Bobo" p.6 & 24
Brother's name "Michael" e.g. p.1
Brother's name - "Edwin" p.5, 25, 58 & 61
Brother's name - "Thomas" p.5 & 47
Brother's name - "William" p. 8

To which we may add:

His doctor "Hopper" p.33 & 58
His place of employment "the Exchange floor" p.46
His employee - "Lowry" p. 8 & 43
His bookkeeper -"Smith" p.3
His best friend "George" p. 7 & 31

The simple point is that, in revealing all this personal information, it would make no sense for him to have been deliberately disguising his handwriting to hide his identity. It seems an unarguable point to me, so nitpicking about whether he gave someone's full name or not is pointless. He freely gave his identity away in his diary, or rather, that forger did.

While we're chatting, do you think that you could respond to the outstanding questions I asked you earlier in the year? A few immediately spring to mind: How did a diary created after 1945 get into Michael Barrett's hands? Or, if you prefer, how did it get into Battlecrease to be discovered by Eddie Lyons? Can you actually hear Alan Gray saying: "You said Anne did it; you're still saying it's all her handwriting" on the 6th/7th November 1994 tape recording? Can you actually hear Barrett saying that he can't turn round and say Anne forged it and this takes time on the 16th August 1994 telephone call? Why did you previously say that the diary transcript was prepared by the Barretts after 13th April 1992 but you now say that it was prepared before this date? What made you change your opinion? That's for starters. Thanks in advance.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Hi Herlock,

You must know the diary inside out by now, but I haven't read it all the way through for quite some time, so could you remind me where the author gives Maybrick's first name as James? Or his son's name as James? Or his wife's name as Florence? Or the name of her lover - Alfred Brierley?

As you know, I don't personally think the handwriting can reasonably be attributed to James Maybrick, any more than I think it can easily be attributed to any of the usual suspects, even heavily disguised, but facts are facts. If you see any point at all in straying beyond 'one off instance' to the wider textual territory, it's not a bad idea to check what's in it and what isn't, so that all your peripheral arguments are seen to be based on an accurate reading of the content - and not on what you may only have imagined.

Love,

Caz
X

Hello Caz,

I see from the sarcasm that you, like Ike, still see this thread as a closed shop where only certain people should be allowed to post or comment. Or is it just anyone that happens to agree with David Orsam on anything?

He says “I may return to Battlecrease,” he calls himself “Sir Jim” and the diary is dated 1889. He also mentions the Exchange Floor. No one, as far as I’m aware, is ever christened ‘Jim.’ It’s always short for James so we have a man living in a house called Battlecrease in 1889 called James who is familiar with the Exchange. Not hard to work out for anyone looking at the diary for the first time.

You’re right of course that he doesn’t mention his son’s name or his wife’s or Alfred Brierley’s and I was in error to mention them. I’ll stand correcting of course but wasn’t it known elsewhere (other than the diary) that James jnr was known as Bobo? If so then Bobo is mentioned in the diary more than once. It’s also clear that Bobo was a sibling of Gladys. “I worry so over Bobo and Gladys.” Mrs Hammersmith inquired about Gladys and Bobo.

I can’t recall if it’s known that Florence was known as Bunny outside of the diary but it’s clear that the diarist is talking about his unfaithful wife. So, yes I certainly take your point on Florence and Alfred Brierley but my original point was in relation to the pointlessness of disguising handwriting when the author is giving so much information out that clearly reveals his identity.

[caz]

Quietly confident on the safe and higher ground…

Just to highlight the “ignoring” and/or the ignorance, we have “one off standpoint” and “one off basis” at the turn of the century in print (1903 and 1919).

How these same people used “one off” in their personal diaries and correspondence going back to when they were born in the middle of the 1800s is beyond me at least, to know or to prove.

I think I’ve heard this type of argument before:

”But they never found a body!”

Well it's like 'bumbling buffoon', isn't it? Until we had examples in print of 'bumbling' from the 1880s, and in Liverpool no less, used as an adjective, we were confidently assured that the word was obsolete by then and could not have been used to describe the ever popular Victorian 'buffoon' or anyone else. Funny how the obsolete b word survived to become as popular by the middle of the next century as the old familiar b word, but that's language for you: funny.

How many other examples of a 'bumbling purveyor' would anyone have expected to find in print, if the diary author had chosen these two words instead? Did the theatre man in Liverpool who put them together in a sentence realise he was at the cutting edge of language in November 1888, and may well have come up with a one off instance of this exact two-word combination?

Clearly, 'bumbling' was used in print to describe a person or persons, a character or personality type, and most likely in conversations and correspondence too, but the examples known to have survived to date are so few in number that nothing useful can be said about who could or could not have been described in that way. There must be literally scores of nouns in use in the 1880s that could have been chosen to follow 'bumbling' depending on the circumstances: bobby, bureaucrat, busybody, butcher, councillor, magistrate, medico, official, purveyor, stationmaster - I could go on [and I frequently do] but you get my drift. If the first word was rarely seen in print back then, with each example describing someone different, the chances of a 'buffoon' popping up as the second word were always going to be negligible, with so many other possibilities all vying with each other for the few opportunities available.

It's not an argument against a hoaxer who was familiar with the modern coupling of the two words and wrongly assumed they'd been commonly seen going out together in Maybrick's day. It's simply pointing out that there was nothing stopping that Liverpool theatre man from describing his "bumbling purveyor" as a "bumbling buffoon" instead. No know-it-all there to inform him it would be decades before anyone had public permission to do so. I wonder what the argument would have been, had he disobeyed this golden rule?

We are now assured, with goalposts groaning from all the shifting, that the 'one off instance' smoking gun is not remotely like the 'bumbling buffoon' silver bullet that went down like a lead balloon.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Why would a diarist, who gives his first name, the name of his house, his wife’s name, her lover’s name and his brother’s and his children’s names then bother to disguise his handwriting? Again, we have to come up with some weird explanation but why ignore the obvious one…that it wasn’t written by James Maybrick?

Hi Herlock,

You must know the diary inside out by now, but I haven't read it all the way through for quite some time, so could you remind me where the author gives Maybrick's first name as James? Or his son's name as James? Or his wife's name as Florence? Or the name of her lover - Alfred Brierley?

As you know, I don't personally think the handwriting can reasonably be attributed to James Maybrick, any more than I think it can easily be attributed to any of the usual suspects, even heavily disguised, but facts are facts. If you see any point at all in straying beyond 'one off instance' to the wider textual territory, it's not a bad idea to check what's in it and what isn't, so that all your peripheral arguments are seen to be based on an accurate reading of the content - and not on what you may only have imagined.

Love,

Caz
X

[John Wheat]

Of the 12 threads on the first Maybrick page, all with replies in 2025, Ike started 3 and I started one.

I looked at 2 old threads that were revived this year. One was revived by RJ and one by Ozzy.

Talk about milking the dairy.

Yes I know it's getting boring. Too many pointless threads about an obviously fake diary. In all likelihood written by the Barretts.