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

[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