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

[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
X

[caz]

I think you misunderstood me Caz, I was confronting Lombro with the possibility, which didn't seem to have occurred to him, that if it made sense to him it could equally have made sense to the forger.

I didn't think it made sense. See my later #214 in which I wrote: "I would like to make clear for the avoidance of doubt that I don't think your statement makes any sense at all."

This is what makes such things futile to discuss, Herlock, because what makes total sense to one person, will make absolutely no sense to the next - ad infinitum et nauseam. There never will be a consensus, even if we all had an equal knowledge of the subject matter and the individuals concerned, so it's just arguing for its own sake.

How would each of us judge what would make sense or no sense to an unidentified forger?

How do we judge what would have made sense or no sense to Anne or Mike Barrett in the 1990s? They were individuals with minds of their own and very different personalities.

How can we possibly know what would have made sense or no sense to the real James Maybrick - or to the real Jack the Ripper?

Do you see?

Love,

Caz
X

[Iconoclast]

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?

RJ, can you honestly say that - if it suited your argument in this situation - you would not have claimed the opposite, that Caroline had obviously been coached by her parents to say this?

This is the glaring problem with theories which are profoundly predicated on a predetermined outcome - we just interpret events in that light to ensure that the theory is 'maintained' when in fact it has gone absolutely nowhere further. It just sounds more plausible when we chuck in the angles which suit us.

But if she was going to burn the diary, wouldn't the kitchen be the logical place to do so?

That might be so (would she have to pre-heat the oven for 20 minutes, I wonder?) but that tells us nothing about where the fight was. That would have occurred wherever Mike and Anne were standing with the scrapbook within grabbing reach, I'd maybe suggest. They had an electric fire judging from the photographs so outside in the garden in the metal rubbish bin might have been the ideal location for the encounter between the two Barretts but ultimately it makes little odds as the fight was over possession of the scrapbook not where it was to be incinerated.

The reasons I think Graham was a reluctant participant are many, but they are by no mean conclusive.

Of course they aren't, RJ, because they all come from your Bag of Selective Interpretation. If they were conclusive (any of them), you would not need to think Anne was a reluctant participant in a hoax you and Orsam have wedged into the tight corners of what little we know is true. You wouldn't need to think a hoax took place at all. The reason why you think it, is because there is no firm evidence during a sane person's jury service when they would even contemplate the possibility given the profound lack of compelling cause to do so. Barrett sought out a Victorian diary in March 1992 but the sane member of the jury hears both the defence and the prosecution explain it so it loses its impact and so-called predictive power. Barrett confessed he did it, but the prosecution shows how facile his explanations are and the jury sit there in astonishment that the defence are even daring to mention it.

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.

Too many 'I think's, RJ. Far too many. When we do the 'I think' thing, we labour all the things we think we can twist our way, and avoid all the things which don't fit the narrative, and then we pride ourselves on what grand job we have done making an argument out of literally the thinnest of air.

You'll note I'm not saying it's just you, RJ, but when anyone does it, we have to challenge it so that my dear readers don't run off down the street throwing rotten tomatoes at Mike Barrett's Black Maria because someone has said he was guilty of a hoax.

Ike