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

[Herlock Sholmes]

Hi Herlock -

I'm afraid I can offer no insight into why another poster is attributing beliefs to you that you do not hold; I can only confirm that my own beliefs are often mangled and rephrased into vague parodies of what I actually wrote or believe.

Unless we are being mightily deceived, none of the diary researchers knew Barrett or Graham before Barrett turned up in London, and some didn't meet either of them until some years later.

On page 138 of Feldman's book there is an account of Caroline Barrett telling Paul Begg that her mother tried to burn the diary. This is while she was alone with Begg and away from her parents. I suppose one could argue that she was coached to say this, but it seems a pointless thing to coach her to say, unless you can think of how it would benefit the Barretts. What would be the purpose of it?

I think it only raised questions in the minds of the researchers, for they later asked Mike and Anne about it. I do think I need to correct one point, as I think it was Anne, and not Caroline, who mentioned the struggle taking place on the kitchen floor. But if she was going to burn the diary, wouldn't the kitchen be the logical place to do so? Still, Anne's own daughter would be the only one approaching 'corroboration.'

The reasons I think Graham was a reluctant participant are many, but they are by no mean conclusive. They include her complaint to her friend Audrey; her reluctance to attend the book launch; her behavior during the visit by police; the refusal of her royalty checks after splitting with Barrett. There may be others. Against this, it was Anne Graham who kept the diary afloat after Barrett started spilling the beans, and she did sign the collaboration agreement (though not, I understand, the publishing contract). I fully appreciate that one could argue that she was a full and willing participant. I just don't believe she was. I think Barrett's success in London scared the living hell out of her, and she had previously operated on the principle that nothing would come of the diary anyway.

Thanks for the Feldman extract, Roger, much appreciated. Shame there's no direct quote there by Caroline but one thing really strikes me about that extract. I may be a newbie to all this, although I'm trying to get up to speed as fast as I can by reading old threads and online articles, but do my eyes deceive me where Caroline is supposed to have said, "She remembered her dad pestering Tony"? This is supposed to be after "the day her dad came home with the diary". Maybe I've got this all wrong but who is the Tony she's talking about? Is it Devereux? But didn't he die long before March 1992, or have I misremembered? If he did die long before March 1992, does this mean that Barrett brought the diary home before March 1992? I'm really confused.

If what Caroline was saying was true. I do see what you mean about Anne getting upset that her husband wanted to get the diary published which, perhaps, she had never thought he would do. But can I ask you this, Roger, because the others don't seem to want to help me. Did I read somewhere that Anne wanted to have the diary put in a bank vault in order to protect it from a house fire? Or did I imagine this?

[Patrick Differ]

I have little to add to this thread but after recently reading this diary twice I can only provide personal observations.
As an avid reader and writer I found this work extremely difficult to follow. That could be my problem. If the attempt to make the writer appear insane there may be some success there. However the work appears contrived. Meaning what?

One of the first things I did once I discovered the Casebook was to read as many press reports as possible. I had already read over 20 books on this subject and used the internet to research the East End in 1880 to 1890's. Not an expert by any means but definitely informed. What struck me about this work was the references to specific information found in the Press reports. For example, the witness George Hutchinson references seeing " the man he saw with Kelly the night of her murder", after the murder on Middlesex Street. So in the diary Maybrick gets a room on Middlesex Street.This is one but there are quite a few others. In my mind I thought, why would this man rent a room on Middlesex Street, and immediately thought , was this real, was it to make it seem real or was it so he could blend in with the Sunday Market? Trying to be objective with the subject matter. Then I realized this was a pattern in the writing, hence for me, contrived.

If Maybrick lived on Middlesex Street the question for me would be..What Police jurisdiction..London City or Metro. That would likely matter in this case but it does not state. The pattern with Press Reports seems to obvious to me but I have not studied it like most of you fine folks.

In terms of when it was discovered it is likely that there is much to discover still. Jacob Levy wasn't discovered until 1999 and for me he is the Prime Suspect.

in any case if we are voting I would call this an interesting work of fiction.

[rjpalmer]

Hi Herlock—

Since there are mischief makers in our midst, let me set the record straight. Obviously, based on an objective analysis, I believe the evidence shows that the diary is a very recent (1992) hoax, and that the Barretts are the only rational suspects.

Whether the primary author was Anne or Mike or if it was both of them equally involved is unknowable, and to some degree irrelevant, and I merely offered my own conjecture, based on what is available. That’s all it is, and I’m not married to any particular dynamic.

Others pretend that the Barretts couldn’t possibly be the hoaxers, but their arguments are so nonsensical and desperate that it becomes obvious that they have no valid objection.

The worst, perhaps, is the weird suggestion that Mike Barrett, known for being an entirety reckless person, would not hoax a diary without knowing if Maybrick had an alibi!

Can you make any sense of this? When did ignorance of a suspect’s known movements on four particular nights 103 years ago slow down a Ripperologist? Did Patricia Cornwell not accuse Sickert? Did Bruce Robinson not spend 10 years writing his accusation against Mike Maybrick, who was almost certainly in Redhill on the night or morning of Kelly’s death? How could Christer Holmgen have written his book without being petrified that a document might some day turn up, showing Lechmere was in St. Thomas’s in Lambeth with a broken ankle on September 30th?

How many years would the hoaxers check for an alibi before concluding the coast was clear? And what if Maybrick WAS in a business meeting in Liverpool on one of the four crucial dates? Can you imagine a scenario where Robert Smith or Tom Mitchell wouldn’t argue Maybrick took the night train? Where was the risk? Even now Sir Jim has no alibi.

If this is the quality of the objections against the Barrett “theory,” I’m confident I’m on the right track.

They have nothing.

Regards.

[rjpalmer]

Hi Ike - no offense, but my advice is to stick to sniffing for anagrams in the graffiti and seeking phantom images in grainy photographs based on your misreading of the text.

Not only am I not doing what you claim I’m doing, I find your entire approach to the diary singularly incompetent, so I would encourage you to abandon your habit of lecturing others on the very errors that you yourself are making, but then again, I see your recent outbursts as little more than an attempt to distract from the woeful results of the recent FM poll.

In reality, I don’t care one iota if Caroline Barrett was coached or not, and whatever the answer is, it plays no role in my conclusion that the diary is a very recent fake with only two rational suspects. One should objectively follow the evidence, and that’s where it leads.

I merely offered an honest question to which I have no answer, and neither do you, unless you would like to offer one now. What would be the point in coaching Caroline to say what she said? It’s a rational question to ask.

Regards.

[caz]

When you refer to "the Barrett theory" what exactly are you referring to Caz?

Why could someone like Mike Barrett not have expected his wife's blind forgery to be authenticated as Maybrick's handiwork from 1888/9? I don't understand why not. You don't explain it.

Haven't Robert Smith, Paul Feldman, Shirley Harrison, Doreen Montgomery and others (including our very own Ike) all held the belief that it was Maybrick's handiwork?

I'm the wrong person to ask, Herlock, because it's not my theory! If I could only worm my way into the brains of those who espouse it I might understand it myself.

But if you can't work out why Mike would have been a bit of a chump to think the diary could ever have been 'authenticated' as Maybrick's own work from 1888/9 IF IF IF it had been composed by his wife as a fictionalised interweaving of two historical murder cases, and penned in her own, albeit heavily disguised hand, then I really can't help you.

What you need to do is to stop presuming the Barretts created it between them and then conclude that Mike must have expected to get away with it, and would soon be laughing all the way to the bank. It's a circular argument. If it wasn't written by either of them, and they didn't know its origins, Mike would have been hoping it might prove to be authentic, but beyond that I have no idea how high his expectations were.

I'm not sure I understand your last question. But I have known Robert Smith for many years and I can tell you that if he had been shown a diary created by one or both Barretts, I am in no doubt whatsoever that he'd have wasted all of two minutes on it before showing Mike the door. He'd probably have sent the agent a bill for his time - but it wouldn't have been Doreen unless she had temporarily lost all her marbles.

Love,

Caz
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