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

[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?

[Herlock Sholmes]

As an aside first, just back from Coventry (not Liverpool, RJ) with a Midlands cold starting and reading Robert Smith's True History of the Diary of Jack the Ripper again in bed last night with half a cup of hot milk stirred into my half a cup of 10-year old malt, I was struck by this comment:

"On 22nd June [this is 1994, by the way], just five days after Montgomery's note to Anne [Barrett], Shirley Harrison and Sally Evemy, her business partner and researcher, were paying a visit to Jenny's [a new friend of Mike Barrett] home, where Barrett was staying. It was at that moment when he first dropped the bombshell, claiming that he himself had forged the diary. Harrison described his shocking announcement in her book: "He was bitter and angry that he had not seen his daughter and threatened to tell everything to the national press." Fuelled by alcohol, he didn't care that he was giving the lie to the diary being handed to him by Tony Devereux. In his manic state, he was determined to "get back at Anne" (as he would later explain) and destroy Feldman's theory that the diary "had been in Anne's family for years", even if it meant smashing the diary's credibility as an authentic Victorian document, as well as the book's publication prospects and his future income from it. Revenge on Anne for leaving him, for interfering in his relationship with Jenny, and for depriving him of Caroline (as he believed), had tipped him over the edge into irrationality."

Barrett had claimed that he had been trying since December 1993 to reveal the truth through Shirley Harrison. She mustn't have had very good hearing, I guess. Take home message? The January 5, 1995 affidavit signed (but almost certainly not solely authored) by Mike Barrett is a worthless piece of mince and should never be relied on for anything. The evidence for this reaches right to the heart of that viper Melvin Harris who had done so much to kill the scrapbook at source because of all that integrity he was building up inside him as he saw the prospects of his 1994 work on Stephenson go gradually down the pan. The viperous viper had the affidavit in his hands in January 1995 and he did absolutely nothing with it. All that integrity and he sat on this explosive 'truth' about the scrapbook which he had courted for so long through Alan Gray!

Anyway, back to your original question, I do not believe that I implied that I myself was not also guilty of hoisting up the old canards? I think I used the term 'we' at least once. I am frequently wrong about details and sometimes I do not practice what I preach, and therefore perhaps I am inadvertently hypocritical. This is not because I don't care about the truth but because my memory occasionally lets me down when I post and occasionally it bedfellow - logic - too.

Anyway, just a quick post back form me in between the Lemsips and the water of life ...

Ike

Hope you’re feeling better?


Ike, mate, you're basically obsessing over a typo. Yes, the affidavit contains some dating errors but, as you've pointed out, it wasn't solely authored by Barrett. 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?

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

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?

In respect of your criticism of Harris for doing "nothing" with Barrett's affidavit, can you kindly answer some questions for me. When did Harris receive a copy of Barrett's affidavit? Who gave it to him? Assuming he was given a copy, were there any confidentiality conditions attached to his being given it which prevented him from circulating it? What exactly do you think he should have done with it?

[rjpalmer]

Why are you citing how long ink takes to dry, RJ? What possible insight are you offering us here? The issue in question is how quickly ink separates.

I'm getting whiplash, Ike.

The insight I'm offering is that both you and Jay Hartley have made the ridiculous assertion that Baxendale meant the ink would have been 'dripping' (your word) off the page when he never said any such thing and ink dries in a matter of seconds.

If you were concerned with how quickly the ink separated from the paper during the ink solubility test (conducted fully 4 months after the diary was brought to London) why didn't you say so, instead of insinuating that Orsam, Chittenden, and Co. believed something so ridiculous as ink dripping off a page when this was nothing more than your own mischaracterization of their beliefs?

As I've noted, it wasn't even Baxendale that made the statement. 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.

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?

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.

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.

Enjoy your afternoon.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Yes, indeed, I have, Herlock, and - whilst it is instinctively a good challenge on the surface - it does fail rather quickly in the mind for this reason: if Barrett was seeking 'authentic paper which would be scientifically indistinguishable from paper from the time of the Ripper murders' he would not need to start at 1880 and end at 1890. He unnecessarily started late (he could have used a scrapbook from 1830 if that was all he could get his hands on) and he unnecessarily ended early (a scrapbook from 1891 to, say, 1899 would presumably be just as indistinguishable as one from that other impossible year, 1890).

So, if you want that notion to be convincing, you have to argue that Barrett either didn't think it through properly or else he didn't actually make that specific request but the guy who placed the ad for Barrett is on the record (SocPill202?) as stating that he would never add defining detail which his client had not explicitly requested of him.

So, defence of this argument requires Barrett to have not thought it through sufficiently and that's good news for the argument because - let's face it - it wouldn't have been the only example on record which makes Barrett's achievement all the more astonishing in my book.

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?

[Iconoclast]

Let's again return to reality.



20 to 25 seconds, folks.

Is this an admission by Ike (and to be fair, we've seen Mr. Hartley make the same comment) that he believes ink will be 'dripping' off the page 24 to 72 hours after it is written? Has he ever used a pen and ink? Has he observed this remarkable phenomenon?

The wit who said the diary's ink was 'barely dry on the page' in reference to April 1992 was Dr. Joe Nickell, a man who has written two books on document examination.

He said it for comic and dramatic effect. He was not speaking literally.

Dr. Nickell knew full well that ink dries to the touch in a matter of seconds but will further bond with the paper fiber at a chemical level over a period of months and years.

Thus, he was quite rightly shocked and amused when he later learned from the description of Dr. Baxendale's solubility test how the ink and the paper had so fully and easily separated in the solvent.

I'm no longer certain if these are serious comments or whether we are being wound-up, but it's early morning here and I have chores, so I bid y'all a good day.

Now that we know the diary was very young indeed in 1992, any progress in learning the author must be grounded in this fact.

Why are you citing how long ink takes to dry, RJ? What possible insight are you offering us here? The issue in question is how quickly ink separates.

Can you please provide a citation for Nickell’s comment? His two books are very expensive now an ID like to buy the right one.

[rjpalmer]

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.

Let's again return to reality.



20 to 25 seconds, folks.

Is this an admission by Ike (and to be fair, we've seen Mr. Hartley make the same comment) that he believes ink will be 'dripping' off the page 24 to 72 hours after it is written? Has he ever used a pen and ink? Has he observed this remarkable phenomenon?

The wit who said the diary's ink was 'barely dry on the page' in reference to April 1992 was Dr. Joe Nickell, a man who has written two books on document examination.

He said it for comic and dramatic effect. He was not speaking literally.

Dr. Nickell knew full well that ink dries to the touch in a matter of seconds but will further bond with the paper fiber at a chemical level over a period of months and years.

Thus, he was quite rightly shocked and amused when he later learned from the description of Dr. Baxendale's solubility test how the ink and the paper had so fully and easily separated in the solvent.

I'm no longer certain if these are serious comments or whether we are being wound-up, but it's early morning here and I have chores, so I bid y'all a good day.

Now that we know the diary was very young indeed in 1992, any progress in learning the author must be grounded in this fact.