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

[Iconoclast]

No, Ike, I don't agree that Barrett should have sought an undated document from earlier than 1870 or later than 1900. He couldn't have been sure it wouldn't be scientifically dated to those (incorrect) periods. I certainly wouldn't have known if I was in his position; As you put it yourself, he wanted a diary from around the time of the Ripper murders. What's so difficult to understand about that?

What's difficult to understand is why a scrapbook from, say, 1837-1888 would be incorrect? (I'm not sure what I meant with 'later than 1900', though - I thought I'd suggested 1890-1899 as I assumed no test could possibly date a document that precisely that those years of manufacture would have mattered but I must have mistyped I guess.)

I would have thought a scrapbook from, say, 1837-1888 would be ideal for Barrett when he was looking for a vehicle for his 'hoax'. Any one of those years (1837-1888) would have been perfectly legitimate as each would have tested 'authentic' as a genuine 'Victorian' document. Just because it was made in, say, 1866 would not have stopped James Maybrick writing in it, would it?, so Barrett unnecessarily restricted his options at a time when he was really under the cosh to produce the goods, I'd say.

Not sure you thought that one through, to be honest ...

[Iconoclast]

How would Mike have known that the photo album was of the right period, if he had obtained this from an auction sale just a few days after the disappointing 1891 diary arrived in the post? Did he learn something about scientific dating of old paper in the interim?

Caz,

Why do you think Barrett didn't widen his search to all those years before 1880 which would have produced far more options for documents Maybrick could have legitimately written in in 1888 and 1889?

Cheers,

Ike

[caz]

I knew exactly what you meant when you said you felt ill, Ike. Likewise, I expected you to know what I meant when I asked the question because the answer is that no-one is relying on Barrett's affidavit, so who cares if it contains some dating errors?

Now you're going to have to forgive me for asking for a silly little thing like supporting evidence but please provide me a direct quote in which Alan Gray says on tape in December 1994 that Harris is seeking an affidavit. I do hope you're sure about this Ike and are not misremembering something to suit your narrative? Are you quite sure it wasn't Harris simply suggesting to Gray that it would be in Barrett's interests for Barrett to prepare a statement, as opposed to Harris wanting it himself?

And let me get this right, on the basis of Harris suggesting that Barrett prepare a statement or affidavit in December 1994, and nothing else, you are prepared to tell me as a fact that Gray then gave this statement/affidavit to Harris, almost certainly the day after it was sworn, and attached no confidentiality to that document? It's kind of beyond belief if that's all you've got. It's just a complete guess on your part, in other words, right?

But, frankly, unless you can (sensibly) tell me what you think Harris should have done with the affidavit in the two years or so before it was made public on the internet, even if he felt he could do what he liked with it without the permission of its author, it's all meaningless anyway.

Here's one I started to prepare some time ago but didn't get around to posting until I saw your post just now, Herlock:

Alan Gray is on tape telling Mike on 12th December 1994: "What he [Melvin Harris] was saying to me was as soon as Mike comes out [he is being treated in hospital for a self-inflicted injury to his hand, just 5 days after Anne divorced him], it's in the best interest of everyone to take a concise statement and all the newspapers will [take it] and at the end of it we go down together and swear it as an affidavit and that will be it nailed down, right. It will take a few hours."

Interpret Melvin's role in this as you wish. But my take is that Melvin is waiting with bated breath by this point to 'read all about it' - whatever Alan Gray manages to get Mike to swear to. If the newspapers take it, so much the better. On 8th December the Evening Standard quoted Melvin saying: "There is now no doubt whatsoever that they [the diary] are a recent fake...The identities of the three people involved in the forgery will soon be made known."

If Melvin was always going to wash his hands of Mike's affidavit personally, I wonder what he was hoping to achieve in December 1994, if not to coerce someone else – Mike presumably, with Gray's encouragement - into going public with it? What would that say about Melvin's ethics, considering that Mike was a physical and emotional wreck by this point? If Mike had gone to the papers again this time, as he had in June 1994, his solicitor would have been even quicker to retract this new statement on his behalf, given the Barretts' very recent divorce and the libel implications, in addition to Mike's continued downward spiral. Did this not dawn on Melvin? Or didn't it bother him, because once the story was in print the damage would be done, and the mud would stick to the Barretts, while his own hands would remain squeaky clean in the background?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Caz,

Why do you think Barrett didn't widen his search to all those years before 1880 which would have produced far more options for documents Maybrick could have legitimately written in in 1888 and 1889?

Cheers,

Ike

In short, Ike, I don't believe Mike had a scooby-doo what he had at that point, and didn't even know if 'Jack the Ripper' might be identifiable as a real person within its pages. He only saw 3rd May 1889 and went from there. Had he known there was a real person to identify, who had died a few days later, that would have informed his immediate decisions.

His request came hot on the heels of his first conversation with Doreen, claiming to have JtR's diary, so it all hangs on what she asked him on that occasion about the physical diary - its condition and so on - and what seeds of suspicion may have been sewn in his mind as a result, prompting his call to Bookfinders, when he had told Doreen he was off to York later in the week.

If Mike hadn't even sourced a book yet for Anne's creative writing, he would have had no answers for Doreen and I think I would have smelled a very large rat in her shoes [I'd be in the shoes, not the rat, in case Herlock is confused] if he refused to say another word until his return from the city formerly known as Eboracum.

Love,

Caz
X

[Iconoclast]

If you want to persist in the fiction that Barrett diligently say down and wrote his affidavit, giving full consideration to all the facts, then you will undoubtedly come to the conclusion that he was lying. If, on the other hand, you were to take the view that Alan Gray was fully responsible for the contents of the affidavit which a drunken Barrett carelessly signed, you might come to a different, more realistic, conclusion.

Our little escapade with tapes over the last couple of days has taught us one thing: Alan Gray typed Barrett's November 5, 1994 report to the police on Barrett's word processor (you can clearly hear him typing all of those long spaces at the start of each paragraph) and Barrett is right next to him, apparently sober. Gray can be clearly heard reading out the statement word for word (which he has come up with) and Mike can be clearly heard agreeing with him. We even get the exquisite addition at the end by Barrett which explains why the last sentence ends with a full stop and then immediately picks up again with a comma. Wonderful. It was like being in the room when it all happened and - in a sense - we all can be, can't we?

We can assume that this same process was followed for Barrett's infamous January 5, 1995 affidavit. Gray typing-up what he thinks is the story and reading it back to Barrett for his confirmation.

On November 23, 2002, Gray wrote to Seth Linder and stated:

I refute completely his [Barrett's] claim that his affidavits were made by him when he was drunk and that he was unaware of their contents. Every written statement made by him was read over to him when he was stone cold sober and before he signed. One such statement was in fact read to him and witnessed by a police detective [the November 5, 1994 report to the police, presumably], The others were read to him by solicitors who checked every paragraph with him. At no time did he state that he wanted even a single line aitered [the example I gave above was one where Barrett asked for an addition not an alteration].

But then you get a line or two of Sgt. Abrahams' recollections of his meeting with Barrett and Gray on November 5, 1994 (source needing to be confirmed):

SH [Shirley Harrison] confirmed with Det Sergeant Abrahams, “now in charge of the case”, that MB had been there with the detective and signed statement about receiving death threats, which has been passed on to Det Sergeant Thomas at New Scotland Yard. Abrahams knew almost nothing of MB but was worried about the detective and wasn’t sure which one of them, or both, were drunk.

So nothing in this case is ever categorical, it seems. Nothing unequivocal. Nothing undeniable. The search for the truth of the matter goes on ...

[Iconoclast]

While I'm on a roll, Gray also stated in his November 23, 1994 letter to Seth Linder:

In the first week of September 1994 he came to me with fresh instructions which involved the dairy [sic] which he swore was a fake. This new approach to me came after he had received a letter from his wife's solicitors Deacon Goldrein Green on Sept 2nd. He was very angry with the tone of the letter and went in person to Urquhart Knight and Bromley to make his views plain. This visit to his solicitors was in the first week of September. Before he visited his solicitors he commissioned me to find him a newspaper or television company willing to pay for his story about the faking of the diary.

So Barrett was seeking to make money out his claims of forgery in September 1994 - almost a year after he was claiming that he had been attempting to reveal the hoax to everyone on the planet (though none of them ever mentioned it before June 1994 when he finally remembered that his local newspaper was also a member of the press and he 'confessed' to them - even after this, none of these bodies piped-up saying, "Actually, he's been trying to get us to believe this since December 1993 and we just ignored it").

Now, of course, he's entitled to make money out of his forgery but it's hardly in keeping with the spirit of his brave stand against the hoax itself, is it? It doesn't exactly smack of 'integrity', shall we say?

It sounds a whole lot more like he's trying to make more money yet by seeking a publisher for his hoax claims.

Melvin Harris must have kept all of his integrity to himself, unfortunately (or maybe used it all up attacking the scrapbook just before his book on Stephenson came out and apparently bombed). Barrett could certainly have done with some, the poor fallen hero of our tale.

But none of this backs up Barrett's pleas in his January 5, 1995 affidavit that "Since December 1993 I have been trying, through the press, the Publishers, the Author of the Book, Mrs Harrison, and my Agent Doreen Montgomery to expose the fraud of ' The Diary of Jack the Ripper ' ("the diary")."

This case just refuses to be a simple open-and-shut job, doesn't it?

[Iconoclast]

In short, Ike, I don't believe Mike had a scooby-doo what he had at that point, and didn't even know if 'Jack the Ripper' might be identifiable as a real person within its pages. He only saw 3rd May 1889 and went from there. Had he known there was a real person to identify, who had died a few days later, that would have informed his immediate decisions.

Hmmm. But we have been told in absolutely no equivocal terms that the Maybrick scrapbook was a hoax created by Michael Barrett so he must have been seeking a document to write his hoax into, mustn't he? (All those claimants can't be wrong, surely - remember, they are in the majority and the popular view is actually always the right one [thank you, Spanish Inquisition].)

I know you don't think Barrett was the hoaxer so let me throw this question out to my wonderful dear readers who sit there reading this stuff day after day and posting **** all in reply: Why did Mike Barrett not seek a document from a great deal earlier than 1880 in order to massively increase his chances of success in sourcing a valid Victorian document with at least twenty blank pages?

Another question: Why does this story look so much more like he thought he might have a genuine confession from Jack the Ripper in his hands and he was desperate to know how easy it would be to source a genuine document from around that period in case he was being conned?

Another question: If that was the case, why did Mike Barrett not seek a document from a great deal earlier than 1880 in order to massively increase his chances of success in sourcing a valid Victorian document with at least twenty blank pages?

It really all just sounds like he didn't think it through - he was just knee-jerk reacting to what he thought he might have in his hands (or Eddie might still have in his hands) and he just wanted to know how easy such a document would have been to hoax, doesn't it? That might explain why he wasn't too fussed if the document came from the first full calendar year that James Maybrick was pushing up the daisies, mightn't it? After all, he didn't know the document was supposed to have been written by James Maybrick therefore he didn't know that he was brown bread come 1890.

Simples ...

[Herlock Sholmes]

https://www.etymonline.com/word/one-off

"Ngrams are probably unreliable" (see line immediately beneath graph, above). Surely not? Surely Ngrams is the very tool we use to establish exactly when words and phrases entered the lexicon?


(Same source.)

David Barrat has shown categorically that the term 'one-off' was used way back in the Victorian period as a manufacturing term - long long long long long before 1927.

Does this mean that we should anticipate a figurative use of the term long long long long long before 'later' than 1927?

Barrat cites July 1 1884 as his first printed example of the term 'one off' (no hyphen) in The American Journal of Railway Appliances. This does seem extraordinary as I have just read a short article in The New York Times from 2010 (https://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/m...anguage-t.html) in which American confusion with 'one-off' is explained as their not understanding its British manufacturing roots.

If 1884 was the first time the manufacturing term went into print (or, at least, the earliest occasion so far uncovered), then the question is simply, "What does 'later' mean?" because we are told that the term 'later' gained figurative extension. I ask the question because we know the term later gained figurative extension (because we use it in that way) and we know that words and phrases enter spoken language often well before they are ever documented in dictionaries. If they can be spoken before they enter dictionaries, they can also be handwritten or typed before they enter dictionaries (without ever remaining on the record for Ngrams' all-seeing eye to detect a hundred years later and more).

So we can not unreasonably assume that the term 'one off' was being used figuratively at some point 'later' than 1884 (and possibly earlier than some point 'later' than 1884). When was that 'later' point? Was it later than 1927? Or later than 1884? And - if it was the latter - how much 'later'? A few years? Or a few decades?

I'm not claiming that we know how much 'later'.

But, then, that's my point ...

Your post is very confused Ike. The earliest example David Barrat has traced of "one off" to potentially mean a single example manufactured product, in the sense of a unique or not to be repeated product, is 1912 when the expression "one off job" is found in print, although as David says, the meaning of this expression at the time is not entirely certain.

The 1884 example is an engineering reference to a quantity only, with nothing unique or singular about it. Although "one off" became known within manufacturing jargon in the UK and US during the early 20th century to mean a unique item, it didn't enter the wider English language until the 1950s when that figurative extension occurred, but only in the UK. The Americans didn't adopt it until around the turn of the century. That explains the New York Times article.

If you want to understand the evolution of the expression, you need to grasp that the 1884 "one off" is a different expression to the 20th century "one off". But even in 1912, when "one off job" existed as a manufacturing expression, no-one would have used "one off" figuratively or metaphorically because it hadn't yet developed it's own standalone meaning in the English language to enable such expressions to be formed and we know that they were not, in fact, formed until after the Second World War.

There is no way, in other words, that a person in 1888 could have referred to anything as a "one off instance".

[Herlock Sholmes]

How would Mike have known that the photo album was of the right period, if he had obtained this from an auction sale just a few days after the disappointing 1891 diary arrived in the post? Did he learn something about scientific dating of old paper in the interim?

Even Baxendale could find nothing iffy about the paper.

So Mike originally thought he needed a diary dating from 1880-1890, but then had to settle for the undated old book he should have asked for in the first place?

Or did he ask for an unused or partly used diary from the 1880s, having just seen the year 1889 at the end of the last entry in an old book that had been partly used as a diary?

Love,

Caz
X

If Barrett was the forger Caz, who knows if he learnt something about dating paper. He had access to a library and he knew how to use it. His request for a diary from 1880-90 must have been made almost immediately after his first telephone call to Doreen Montgomery. He could have discovered at any time after this, from a book, that he didn't need paper from that exact decade.

Or he might have decided to take the risk and gamble that an Edwardian photograph album (if that's what it is) would pass muster because he was, by that time, utterly desperate and out of options.

Will we ever get anywhere by asking ourselves questions like this? I don't think so.

As for your question to me asking if he asked for a diary with blank pages "from the 1880s" having seen the year 1889 in another diary, you'll have to explain to me why he would have wanted another diary from the 1880s, especially one with blank pages, because I can't think of a single reason.

[Herlock Sholmes]

What's difficult to understand is why a scrapbook from, say, 1837-1888 would be incorrect? (I'm not sure what I meant with 'later than 1900', though - I thought I'd suggested 1890-1899 as I assumed no test could possibly date a document that precisely that those years of manufacture would have mattered but I must have mistyped I guess.)

I would have thought a scrapbook from, say, 1837-1888 would be ideal for Barrett when he was looking for a vehicle for his 'hoax'. Any one of those years (1837-1888) would have been perfectly legitimate as each would have tested 'authentic' as a genuine 'Victorian' document. Just because it was made in, say, 1866 would not have stopped James Maybrick writing in it, would it?, so Barrett unnecessarily restricted his options at a time when he was really under the cosh to produce the goods, I'd say.

Not sure you thought that one through, to be honest ...

I honestly have no idea what you're talking about Ike. If anyone is wanting to create a forged diary of Jack the Ripper why would their first thought not be to obtain a blank diary from the 1880s? Why would they think they might be able to use one from 1837?

The problem with your argument is that it had no logic. If Barrett's request had been for a diary from 1885 to 1890 you could have asked why didn't he go back to 1880. If he'd started at 1880 (as was the case) you could have asked why he didn't start at 1870 0r 1860. If he'd started at 1840 you would presumably have asked why not 1837. But if he'd started at 1837 you would undoubtedly have asked why he wanted an 1837 diary to forge a diary from 1888!

I said a while back that using hindsight to criticize the wording of the advertisement is silly. For all we know, Barrett, in his mind thought he"d be flooded with offers from which he could choose the ideal diary for his purpose. It's only now when we have the luxury of knowing that no diaries from the 1880s could be sourced that we can say that Barrett should have done this or that.

I wouldn't mind, Ike but on no theory that you have put forward have you even begun to explain why Mike chose the period 1880 to 1890. On your case, he'd seen a diary dated 1889. So why didn't he ask for an 1889 diary?

[Herlock Sholmes]

Here's one I started to prepare some time ago but didn't get around to posting until I saw your post just now, Herlock:

Alan Gray is on tape telling Mike on 12th December 1994: "What he [Melvin Harris] was saying to me was as soon as Mike comes out [he is being treated in hospital for a self-inflicted injury to his hand, just 5 days after Anne divorced him], it's in the best interest of everyone to take a concise statement and all the newspapers will [take it] and at the end of it we go down together and swear it as an affidavit and that will be it nailed down, right. It will take a few hours."

Interpret Melvin's role in this as you wish. But my take is that Melvin is waiting with bated breath by this point to 'read all about it' - whatever Alan Gray manages to get Mike to swear to. If the newspapers take it, so much the better. On 8th December the Evening Standard quoted Melvin saying: "There is now no doubt whatsoever that they [the diary] are a recent fake...The identities of the three people involved in the forgery will soon be made known."

If Melvin was always going to wash his hands of Mike's affidavit personally, I wonder what he was hoping to achieve in December 1994, if not to coerce someone else – Mike presumably, with Gray's encouragement - into going public with it? What would that say about Melvin's ethics, considering that Mike was a physical and emotional wreck by this point? If Mike had gone to the papers again this time, as he had in June 1994, his solicitor would have been even quicker to retract this new statement on his behalf, given the Barretts' very recent divorce and the libel implications, in addition to Mike's continued downward spiral. Did this not dawn on Melvin? Or didn't it bother him, because once the story was in print the damage would be done, and the mud would stick to the Barretts, while his own hands would remain squeaky clean in the background?

Love,

Caz
X

Surely you can’t seriously think that when Harris told Gray that it's in everyone's best interest for Mike to make a concise statement for the newspapers he meant to include his own interests? Wow, I've heard of literal interpretations but that takes the biccie Caz. Presumably, because he said "everyone" he must have included the president of Peru and a tramp sitting on the floor in Glasgow too? Because "everyone" means everyone in the entire world?

We got to this point because I asked Ike who gave Barrett's affidavit to Harris, when they did so and, most importantly, whether any confidentiality questions were attached. He gave me answers to those questions but when I pressed him for the source he admitted he was guessing on all counts. He then tried to claim that Harris had said on tape that he wanted to see Barrett's affidavit but when I asked him for the quote he couldn't do it.

The fact that in your imagination Harris was waiting "with baited breath" for the affidavit gets us nowhere. We need evidence.

As for what Harris was "hoping to achieve", that seems to be clear in the quote you provided. It was to be a statement to be given to "all the newspapers". But it wasn't for him to circulate it, it was for Barrett.

You speak of Harris washing his hands of Barrett's affidavit But how did he do this? You don't explain it. You quote something he said more than a month before the affidavit was sworn? How can that be relevant?

I honestly don’t know why you’re asking me about Melvin's ethics Caz?How would he possibly have known that Barrett was "a physical and emotional wreck" at the time? If that's even true. Was he still a physical and emotional wreck in January 1995 when Keith Skinner conducted a long interview with him? Was that interview ethical? How could Harris possibly have known in December 1994 what Barrett's solicitor would do in response to Mike making a concise statement? If that statement was true, as Harris presumably expected it would be, there were no libel implications.

But am I right in saying your criticism of Harris is for advising Gray that Barrett should put his story of the forgery into a written statement? That sounds like sensible advice to me but even if it wasn't good advice, is that what makes him a "viper"?

I had thought that Ike's criticism of Harris was that Harris didn't do something or other with Barrett's affidavit, but when I asked him what he thinks Harris should have done, he wouldn't give me a sensible answer.

But ultimately why does the behaviour of Harris matter?