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

[Lombro2]

The diary was clearly a recent creation so we need look no further than the Barretts.

Polly Nichols was clearly only recently dead so we need look no further than Charles Lechmere.

[Herlock Sholmes]

And that is precisely the point, Herlock.

How could he not have been in the you-know-what IF the diary HAD been created and handwritten by his wife as a bit of creative fiction, and IF he had presented THIS [instead of what he did present] as a possibly genuine confessional diary written by JM/JtR?

But you are probably right in a way, because IF that had been the case, he'd have been out of Doreen's door with a flea in his ear and her boot up his arse, faster than he could ejaculate the proverbial: "Oh, sugar lumps!", and Anne and her father would have wasted their money on the return train fare to London and the various raw materials, and the time and effort would all have been for nought.



See above.



Which, I guess, is why it's more comfortable to keep the Barretts in custody, so everything can be argued from the point of view of their involvement and you don't need to go any deeper - except that the evidence doesn't stack up, because the people in the story were real, and not complete fools. Do you seriously imagine that Martin Fido, for one, would have agreed to get involved in the first place IF he'd been presented with a genuine Barrett version of the diary? Have you the faintest idea what that would have looked like, in comparison with the one you are stuck with? Oh, I forgot. It doesn't matter, because if you shut your eyes and only believe hard enough, then the one you are stuck with can BE a genuine Barrett, and you don't need to know if that is true or even likely.



No s..t, Herlock. My point was directly linked with your argument that this was a forgery created for financial gain. Forgers don't generally try to destroy a forgery that they are expecting to get 'authenticated' and make them loads of money - another of your arguments.



I don't expect you to read and absorb every post here, but I have gone into this one recently, Herlock. I don't recall anyone suggesting that Anne had 'insisted' on the diary being put in the bank, which would have implied it was against Mike's wishes, and the evidence we do have isn't clear if it was his idea or hers. We only know that when Anne first spoke to Doreen, a few days after the London trip, she explained it was a precaution in case of fire or theft.

My hunch, which I am happy for people to reject - and they will - is that Anne simply didn't want the bloody thing in the house, one way or another. And who could blame her? It was a destructive force in Mike's hands from day one of its known existence. It has destroyed marriages and friendships, caused financial ruin and continues to this day to make a small handful of internet hoax busters fired up and angry.

Love,

Caz
X

Hi Caz,

You haven't paraphrased me correctly. He would NOT in my view have been in the you-know-what "IF the diary HAD been created and handwritten by his wife as a bit of creative fiction, and IF he had presented THIS [instead of what he did present] as a possibly genuine confessional diary written by JM/JtR?". I said he would have been in the you-know-what if he was proven to have created the diary in those circumstances. That's the bit you missed out. Even if he presented it as possibly genuine it didn't matter because his story was that he'd received it from Tony and thus didn't know if it was genuine or not. And I don't suppose he cared for one second if he'd been out of Doreen's door with a flea in his ear and her boot up his arse. Why do you even think that mattered to him? Sure, a bit of time and effort, and some money, would have been wasted but nothing ventured nothing gained, as they say. It's not what we were talking about, though, which was the legal risk or peril to him of exposure. We're back to the fact that such risk was minimal. I think you're agreeing with me about this, even if you're not saying it expressly. So nothing about the fear of failure itself would likely have prevented him going ahead with the forgery.

You ask me: "Do you seriously imagine that Martin Fido, for one, would have agreed to get involved in the first place IF he'd been presented with a genuine Barrett version of the diary?" My answer is: I don't know why not. I'm seriously contemplating that very possibility. Can you articulate, though, what you mean by "a genuine Barrett version of the diary". I thought that was the very thing we were discussing! How do we know that's not what the photograph album contains? (If you're talking about a diary which was written out in Barrett's handwriting, though, don't bother replying, no one's suggesting that's what we have).

When you say, "Forgers don't generally try to destroy a forgery that they are expecting to get 'authenticated' and make them loads of money - another of your arguments", you're somewhat confusing two different people with two possible different motivations. For all I know, Mike was expecting the dairy to get authenticated but Anne was not. If all Anne did was write out the diary at her husband's dictation (which is just one possibility of what happened) she was less a forger than a scribe, carrying out instructions rather than caring about what would happen to the diary. It was the person who drafted the narrative as if it was by Maybrick and then ensured it was written out in an old photograph album with Victorian style ink who was the real forger. Sure, if Anne did write it out she could be said to have attempted to replicate Victorian handwriting but I would still say less forger than scribe. Ultimately, though, it's certainly true that forgers don't generally try to destroy a forgery that they are expecting to get authenticated and make a lot of money from but the story we are told is that Mike was desperately trying to prevent it from being destroyed - which is exactly what you are saying the forger would have done - while Anne was trying to destroy it. So the story involves one forger wanting one thing and the other forger (if we can call her that) wanting another. I can certainly see a scenario in which Anne was unhappy to discover that Mike wanted to fraudulently induce a literary agent to help him publish the diary. And perhaps she would have tried to burn the diary on that basis, especially if all she had done was write out the words at her husband's request. But my problem is that it makes it difficult to understand why she wanted it placed in a bank for the very reason that it would be protected from fire. So, for that reason, I'm not at all convinced that she ever did try to burn it. If the only evidence of this is what the Barretts said, I'm not sure it's reliable.

As to Anne wanting to protect the diary from fire, after quite a lot of searching on Casebook, I've finally managed to track down the source of the story (and thanks to no one for helping!). Keith Skinner posted it in a thread entitled "Acquiring a Victorian Diary" on February 21, 2018. It was in a letter from Doreen Montgomery to a Sally Evemy dated April 22 ,1992. The key passage is this:

"I spoke with Mrs Barrett last evening, and she sounded a very chirpy, friendly woman. I think they are genuine people and her only anxiety in asking her husband to place the Diary with the bank was because of the fact that they have had a couple of burglaries and she is also frightened of fire. Understandable."

That's a little bit different to the way you summarized it for me, Caz. You see, according to Anne herself, it was Anne who asked Mike to place the diary in bank. And it was partly because, she said, she was "frightened" of fire. That's a contemporary record which I see no reason to doubt. It strikes me as a rather odd thing for her to have done if she'd been desperately trying to burn the thing only a few weeks or days earlier. I also find it difficult to believe she was lying to Doreen Montgomery, if that's the suggestion.

[John Wheat]

It's clearly a hoax by the Barretts.

[Iconoclast]

During this period when we were writing the Diary, Tony Devereux was house-bound, very ill and in fact after we completed the Diary we left it for a while with Tony being severly (sic) ill and in fact he died late May early June 1990.

Just in case anyone is wondering, Tony Devereux sadly died on August 8, 1991.

[Iconoclast]

So suddenly the supposed initials that you've circled in bright red ink on the Kelly photo --on the wall and her forearm--are NOT what was 'predicted' in the text, but instead the text refers to other initials on other walls that are conveniently out of sight?

Do I have that right?

You've abandoned the citadel at the first hint of danger.

I think you are surely judicious and intelligent enough to realise that I can't possibly know what else Maybrick could have left around the room that would point to his wife's initials. Like everyone else, I only have MJK1 to inform me.

[rjpalmer]

I also find it anything but judicious and intelligent for a professor to be so inflexible of mind

So suddenly the supposed initials that you've circled in bright red ink on the Kelly photo --on the wall and her forearm--are NOT what was 'predicted' in the text, but instead the text refers to other initials on other walls that are conveniently out of sight?

Do I have that right?

You've abandoned the citadel at the first hint of danger.

[Iconoclast]

I think Geddy's comment was interesting, and it reminded me of the very judicious and intelligent remarks by Professor Chisholm.
I think it is undeniable that the hoaxer knew of the Kelly photograph and wanted his readers to refer to it. This doesn't pose as debilitating a problem for you (though it IS a problem for you) as it does for the 'old hoax' theorists, though I've been told there are no longer any old hoax theorists in these parts.

Dear readers, please pay attention to what Professor Chisholm was quoted as saying:

This is an erudite point first raised by Professor Alex Chisholm, a lecturer in history from Wales, when he commented on the diary decades ago.
"'Left it in front for all eyes to see' confirms that our diarist is patently informed by the main police photographer's perspective. The diarist does not claim to have left in front of 'them' or the 'fools' but only in front for all eyes to see.' The wall on which these initials were supposed to have been written [and let's also add Kelly's forearm] was at the right side of the room on entry, to the right side of Kelly. The only thing the initials could reasonably be described of as 'in front of' being the police photographer's lens."
Regards.

At no point does Professor Chisholm tell us about the 'F' and 'M' clues Maybrick may well have left to Professor Chisholm's left as he walked hypothetically into Kelly's room, nor those on the wall in front of him, nor those on the wall to his right (but away from the camera's angle), nor those behind him (but also away from the camera's angle).

There may have been none, of course, but how are we to be so certain that there could not have been given that none of us were in that room, hypothetically or otherwise?

I also find it anything but judicious and intelligent for a professor to be so inflexible of mind that he or she is unable to take a reference anything other than 100% literally. How many of us speak and write only with considered and unremitting exactitude?

"I got the eight o'clock bus to town".
"You can't have done. No bus stopped at eight o'clock last evening. We have it on the record that the nearest bus stopped and collected passengers at 8.03 last evening".
"You've got me, officer. I've been tumbled right enough".

If the only initials left were right next to the slaughtered woman, I'm willing to give the author a tiny bit of licence when he stated that he had left them in front for all eyes to see. After all, he might not unreasonably have thought to himself, "Where the hell else will they be looking, for gawd's sake???".

[rjpalmer]

a concerted campaign by RJ to squeeze every single piece of information (whether known or rumour) into a Barrett hoax theory.

Hilarious, Ike!

Compared to what? Your concerted campaign to squeeze every single piece of information into a Maybrick wrote-it theory?

Why am I not allowed to fight my corner while you fight yours?

I think Geddy's comment was interesting, and it reminded me of the very judicious and intelligent remarks by Professor Chisholm.

I think it is undeniable that the hoaxer knew of the Kelly photograph and wanted his readers to refer to it. This doesn't pose as debilitating a problem for you (though it IS a problem for you) as it does for the 'old hoax' theorists, though I've been told there are no longer any old hoax theorists in these parts.

[Iconoclast]

"'Left it in front for all eyes to see' confirms that our diarist is patently informed by the main police photographer's perspective.

No, it absolutely does not.

In other words, the hoaxer was aware of the Kelly photograph.

No, this does not logically follow unless you are illogically working from the premise that the only view available in that room was the one the photographer caught when he (or she) took MJK1.

I would add that the hoaxer is almost begging his or her readers to refer to the Kelly photograph in order to look for the 'clue' that the 'fools' could not find.

This is simply not correct. The author of the scrapbook is clearly saying that his wife's initials had some role to play in Kelly's room by the time he left it.

It is a puzzle for the reader to solve, and Barrett, infamously, was a maker of children's puzzles for Look-In before he came forward with the hoaxed diary.

It is a puzzle which the best we can hope to do is solve through the lens of MJK1 because we have no other lens with which to view Kelly's room (I exclude the photograph of the table here - others might wish to add it back in).

The hoaxer also assumed that the reader would have access to the police photograph in order to solve this puzzle ...

This is not correct. There is no evidence that the author even knew that a photograph had been taken. His (or her) comment about Florence's initials could have referred to any number of other locations in Kelly's room, but we only have one lens into it, not five or ten or twenty, so most of her room is not recorded on film for us to view in detail.

... which again rationally dates the diary to the 1960s or later, when the photograph first obtained wide circulation.

Self-evidently not so.

Before that date, the photo was either in the off-limits City of London Police materials or in one exceedingly rare book in French--so rare that to this day only one library in the UK owns a copy, and that Library was only founded after the diary was published.

It doesn't matter where the photograph was or is stored. The fact that there is a photograph tells us nothing about what else Maybrick could have left 'for all to see' in Kelly's room which was unfortunately not photographed.

Dear readers, I implore you all to think long and hard before assuming that these terrible simplicities are anything other than a concerted campaign by RJ to squeeze every single piece of information (whether known or rumour) into a Barrett hoax theory.

[rjpalmer]

Hi Herlock.

I'm still amused, twenty-four hours later, that I make one suggestion, one brilliant and perceptive suggestion to use Ike's vernacular, that the diary's text contains puzzles to solve, and Barrett was a puzzle maker for Look-In Magazine, and Ike loses his mind, screaming it is unfair, prejudicial, close-minded, etc. etc.

Can you imagine if it was recently discovered that Maybrick wrote puzzles for a Victorian magazine? Just imagine the ecstasy of delight from Ike if this was discovered--another jewel to be included in Society's Pillar.

And yet, compared to my simple suggestion, Ike has written a whole book arguing the text was written by Maybrick, using everything from anagrams to false statements about the alleged obscurity of his parents' graves, and Ike promotes this as judicious, intellectual, open-minded, etc.

This is what we are up against and why discussing anything with someone this fanatical and pot/kettle/black-ish is a very poor choice of morning hobbies.

Cheers.

[Iconoclast]

Again, Ike, I was being overly generous regarding Baxendale and his considered 'opinion' in that report. I'll go further than that and say that I was being less than accurate in my interpretation of Baxendale's own words.
In case Herlock is still labouring under a misapprehension - which I may inadvertently have helped to provide - that Baxendale was putting the year 1946 as the earliest possible date of origin for the diary, I must clarify this before it becomes embedded and repeated in posts droning on until the crack of doom.
Baxendale stated that nigrosine was in the diary ink and this was not used in writing inks before the First World War.
He was wrong.
Baxendale didn't have any information on when it began to be used after the first war, but stated that it didn't become common until after the second: hence his opinion that the diary likely [only 'likely', mind - not 'most probably' or 'certainly'] originated since 1945, when nigrosine was commonly used in inks.
He was wrong.
Nigrosine - assuming he correctly detected its presence in the diary ink - had been in general use in writing inks from the 1870s.
It's another 'topping myself' moment, like the one which proved the phrase had appeared in print back in the 1870s, and hadn't waited until 1958 to make its sparkling debut, as originally claimed by another expert.
I wonder if experts feel like topping themselves when the amateurs have a dabble and expose them for being out of their professional depth. Having their pants pulled down and facing humiliation is not designed to make them feel all warm and cuddly towards the person who has done it to them.
If the ink being 'freely soluble' had been uppermost in Baxendale's brain back in 1992, as a clear indicator of a very recent forgery when he first examined it, his biggest mistake was to date the diary using nigrosine as the killer blow.
But needs must when the devil drives, so poor old Baxendale has been chastised ever since by having his priorities switched round by more amateurs, to make the ink's solubility the killer blow instead, and a better fit for the magical but obligatory April Fools' Day Creation.
Love,
Caz
X

I know I'm heavily invested and biased, but this is still a brilliant post in my opinion, Caz. I appreciate that we aren't supposed to reply with superlatives (and certainly not with the entire post re-posted), but both seem fair on this occasion.

That said, let me justify my actions by posing this question: How likely is it that Baxendale would have laboured his 'freely soluble' comment to Chittenden which he so blatantly underplayed in his second report to Smith a year earlier if Smith's dealings with Baxendale had not been so unexpectedly confrontational (and by 'confrontational', I mean challenging from an academic and 'expert' perspective)?

That is, was Baxendale's ego so thoroughly piqued that he leapt into Chittenden's corner once the latter had presumably assured the former that he (Baxendale) had been dealing with a hoax all along and should therefore feel on safe ground when commenting in a way he certainly didn't the previous year?

[Iconoclast]

Oops a daisy - a rather obvious gaff here:

During this period when we were writing the Diary, Tony Devereux was house-bound, very ill and in fact after we completed the Diary we left it for a while with Tony being severly (sic) ill and in fact he died late May early June 1990.

This should obviously have read:

During this period when we were writing the Diary, Tony Devereux was house-bound, very ill and in fact after we completed the Diary we left it for a while with Tony being severly (sic) ill and in fact he died late May early June 1990.

In truth, I think I'm right in saying that Tony Devereux was housebound in 1991 (not in 1990) but it's a small point and I'm willing to leave "During this period" as blue as I'm that kind of guy.

[caz]

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

Again, Ike, I was being overly generous regarding Baxendale and his considered 'opinion' in that report. I'll go further than that and say that I was being less than accurate in my interpretation of Baxendale's own words.

In case Herlock is still labouring under a misapprehension - which I may inadvertently have helped to provide - that Baxendale was putting the year 1946 as the earliest possible date of origin for the diary, I must clarify this before it becomes embedded and repeated in posts droning on until the crack of doom.

Baxendale stated that nigrosine was in the diary ink and this was not used in writing inks before the First World War.

He was wrong.

Baxendale didn't have any information on when it began to be used after the first war, but stated that it didn't become common until after the second: hence his opinion that the diary likely [only 'likely', mind - not 'most probably' or 'certainly'] originated since 1945, when nigrosine was commonly used in inks.

He was wrong.

Nigrosine - assuming he correctly detected its presence in the diary ink - had been in general use in writing inks from the 1870s.

It's another 'topping myself' moment, like the one which proved the phrase had appeared in print back in the 1870s, and hadn't waited until 1958 to make its sparkling debut, as originally claimed by another expert.

I wonder if experts feel like topping themselves when the amateurs have a dabble and expose them for being out of their professional depth. Having their pants pulled down and facing humiliation is not designed to make them feel all warm and cuddly towards the person who has done it to them.

If the ink being 'freely soluble' had been uppermost in Baxendale's brain back in 1992, as a clear indicator of a very recent forgery when he first examined it, his biggest mistake was to date the diary using nigrosine as the killer blow.

But needs must when the devil drives, so poor old Baxendale has been chastised ever since by having his priorities switched round by more amateurs, to make the ink's solubility the killer blow instead, and a better fit for the magical but obligatory April Fools' Day Creation.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Firstly, I'm glad you accept that there was no real risk the Barretts, assuming they were the forgers, in submitting the diary for publication
but when you say it was "a stupid thing to do" are you referring to not writing it in Maybrick's handwriting or creating the diary in general? Either way, a number of people wanted to pay them to publish it and I’ve always been under the impression that the book sold a lot of copies so perhaps the forgers were cleverer than you think?

If you believe that they "obviously seemed to fear" a thief or gang of thieves then of course you are likely to think that they obtained the diary from a thief but the idea that they were afraid of thief seems to derive from your imagination only Lombro.

There was no real risk to the Barretts, assuming they weren't forgers, so it's another argument that goes both ways.

The real risk in that case would have been that the diary's rightful owner might miss it and want it back. This would have been on Anne's mind when Mike first brought the diary home wrapped in its brown paper, regardless of what he chose to tell her about it.

There is some evidence that Mike feared being beaten to a pulp over the diary, which would be understandable if he had originally pinched it from the pincher. After all, Mike was already a fully unpaid-up and documented 'late payer'.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

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.

My hunch - which will no doubt be rejected - is that Mike conned Eddie out of the diary with no cash changing hands, on the pretext of having 'contacts' who would know how best to handle and place it. In short, he nicked it off the nicker. Mike promised to get back to Eddie when he knew more. When Eddie learned that Mike had only gone and hooked a book publisher, and not just some private collector who would pay in cash and ask no questions, he started to worry about the consequences, and had that conversation with Brian Rawes in the drive of Battlecrease on Friday 17th July 1992 - Eddie's second and final stint at the house, no doubt bringing back memories of the first.

In May 1994, Mike made several large withdrawals from his bank account, every other working day until he was back in the red again, with nothing paid off his mortgage by June, when he gave Harold Brough this as his motive for having written the diary in the first place.

"Go figure", as they say in the Land of the Free.

Love,

Caz
X