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

[Iconoclast]

As always, Ike, I'm surprised that you are unaware of the important minutia, but I suppose that being so laser-focused on Maybrick's guilt you've never given the Barrett/Graham hypothesis the attention it deserves.

From a timeline created by Shirley Harrison & Keith Skinner in 1999:

"The cheque was not paid until May 18th 1992 and the bookseller has Mr Barrett marked as a "late payer". The cheque was signed by Anne Barrett but the rest was filled in by Michael.

Anne's explanation of this is, that when Michael asked her for the money, she was so "bloody mad" at such extravagence, when they were so broke, that she signed her name and threw the cheque across the floor for him to complete. This is probably why the cheque stub merely has written on it "book - £25".

Notice also the reference to the Barretts being broke.

Wasn't your argument that the Barretts had no money motive?

Regards.

Well Mike's handwriting must have gone to pot after May 1992 because that cheque looks to me like it's in the same handwriting as the stub. Plus, there are no Mike-related strangenesses about the spelling.

[Iconoclast]

So Ike, Mike got the invoice for £25 and then paid Eddy £25?

I'm going to have to work hard to come up with a seamless narrative to compete with you for these Barrett Believers who don't want to help because it's so bloody "obvious" what took place. (Then they complain to me and demand a seamless narrative for Mary Jane Wilson)... I guess they're afraid you'll pick it apart at the seams if their story even has any seams to been picked.

So far they just turn to the affidavit and say it has the ring of truth to it, like the George Damon affidavits for Carrie Brown. Yup. In a world of Diaries with No Dates but a lot of Sugar Lumps.

Their narrative is seamless because they are self-imposed emperors wearing no clothes ...

[rjpalmer]

Well Mike's handwriting must have gone to pot after May 1992 because that cheque looks to me like it's in the same handwriting as the stub. Plus, there are no Mike-related strangenesses about the spelling.

Feel free to upload the image to this site.

The quote I supplied was written by Keith Skinner and Shirley Harrison and he or they had clearly asked Anne about the two different handwritings and Anne apparently confirmed it was Barrett who filled out the main cheque.

It would, of course, be of general interest to your readers to see a sample of Barrett's handwriting pre-1994 (when he began to confess).

Mike's signature on the receipt for the word processor was quite fluid and confident.

[rjpalmer]

According to Herlock, Barrett's affidavit was the creation of Alan Gray.

What is your point? It was drafted by Gray based on conversations with Barrett. The quote in the affidavit is from Barrett.

There is no contradiction. Stay focused, Ike!

Here is another entry from the same Skinner/Harrison 1999 timeline:

"Around that date (March 9th 1992) a well established secondhand book company had a call from a Mr Barrett who asked them to find him a Victorian Diary. We contacted the company who advertise in Yellow Pages (not in The Writers' and Artists' Yearbook). They cannot recall if he asked for an unused diary but they confirm that the request was extremely unusual and that it would have taken them two or three weeks to fulfill. They found an 1891 diary and it was sent to Mr Barrett on Thursday March 26th 1992, reaching him presumably for the weekend March 28th/29th 1992.

Thus, seven years after Barrett ordered the diary, Mr. Earl could no longer even remember if Mike had specifically asked for a blank diary.

I think that puts to rest any suggestion that in 2020 Mr. Earl would recall making any specific desciptions of the blank pages. So we can happily agree that he was just passing along his general policies and business model.

No one is denying that Barrett received a 1891 diary, Ike.

Regards.

[rjpalmer]

Well Mike's handwriting must have gone to pot after May 1992 because that cheque looks to me like it's in the same handwriting as the stub.

That was Martin Fido's suggestion: that the M.J. Barrett of 1995 may have been a shadow of the 1992 Mike.

It would be quite a turn of events if Barrett had the ability to simulate someone else's handwriting. Is that your suggestion?

[Herlock Sholmes]

It was in an email, yes. It was a simple question, very direct, and it was answered emphatically with a 'No'. There was no equivocation and - of course - there couldn't be regarding something so utterly fundamental to the survival of his business. I think you and I both know this.



You're trying far too hard here, RJ, and far too easily swayed by your own argument - so much so that I will be asking my elder friend from the park if he would say a prayer for me that I never end up in the dock and - if I do - that you are not a member of the jury. The notion that the jury would not be influenced by what Barrett accepted is a strange one - I think an even average lawyer could drill home to them the implications! And let's not talk about covers on diaries when we know that the date 1891 was printed numerous times on every page.



Sorry, you guys can't keep having it every which way you want. According to Herlock, Barrett's affidavit was the creation of Alan Gray. I hope my dear readers are taking note here, though, as I am the lawyer and they the jury here.



What I would say is that you Diary Debonkers need to get your stories aligned.

Just a couple of things, Ike.

You say that "we know that the date 1891 was printed numerous times on every page". Of course we do. But was Barrett told that by Martin Earl? That's the question. I'm quite sure that Barrett was told that it was an 1891 diary, but would Earl's supplier have gone into more detail than that about the contents? We know now that the dates being on the page is an important issue, as would Keith Skinner when he described the diary, but would that have been regarded as an important point by Earl and his supplier in March 1992? After all, Keith Skinner didn't think the font, font size or font colour of the dates was important to include in the description, so might the supplier not have thought it important to mention the number of dates on each page? I can easily see Barrett being told the size, colour and condition of the diary, that it was from 1891 and that it contained mainly blank pages. I'm pretty sure he would have been told about the blank pages because that's what the advertisement asked for. But can we be sure he was told about printed dates on each page? I don't think we can. Not at all. If he wasn't, it would absolutely explain why he agreed to buy it, having been told that most of the pages were blank.

You claim that I have said that "Barrett's affidavit was the creation of Alan Gray". It occurs to me that you may not be aware that the usual way an affidavit is created is for a witness give his account to a solicitor who then writes up the account into an typewritten affidavit on the basis of what his or her client has told him. But it's not a dictation. The solicitor is supposed to use the words of the client but isn't required to transcribe what they say verbatim. Their job is to put it all together in a sensible order to provide a coherent narrative for the court. Irrelevant jibber-jabber and argument should be excluded. It's the same process for a witness statement in civil proceedings. I'm suggesting that Alan Gray took on the role of a solicitor in this process. It's very normal. It would be rare for a witness to write out the thing themselves in their own words. That's what their solicitor is for. It is the actual job of the solicitor to prepare the affidavit or witness statement which is then read by or read to the witness/deponent and signed by the witness/deponent. I don't know how much clearer I can be. I'm not saying that Alan Gray invented the narrative in the affidavit. I'm saying that if he misunderstood what he was being told by Barrett it would explain why what he typed up might not accurately reflect what Barrett was actually telling him.

[Lombro2]

Hey Ike, can I ask these naked emperors if they have any change on them?


Change of heart, of course.

[rjpalmer]

The information you had to go on was clearly stated - either November 5 (Seth Linder's stated link) or November 4 (my recollected alternative). You ask "What else was I supposed to do?". Well, given the information to hand, I would have suggested that you listen to one or both of those recordings which - interestingly - is what I believe you did so I must have been very clear indeed so not sure where your confusion lay. Now, you also say that you didn't find the "fifty-fifty" comment in either. As a kindness to you, I am currently sitting here listening to the one and a half hour recording on November 5, 1994, because you said you couldn't make anything out.

Hi Ike,

Housekeeping.

Now that you've admitted in another post that there seems to be a missing tape, can you possibly help clear up the confusion and perhaps even help locate this tape before it is lost forever?


On Post #99 of the 'Diary Transcript' thread, 6 Jan 2024, Keith is quoted as saying that the authors of Inside Story "only had three tapes available to us - the most useful covering the period between November 6th 1994 and November 7th/8th 1994"

That is interesting because there were only TWO tapes provided by Keith via Jon Menges which cover that period, one labelled 6 November 1994 and the other labelled 8 November 1994 (which is evidently mislabeled, as the tape itself refers to 7 November 1994).

If you're still in contact, can Keith clarify which three of the 15 tapes posted by JM were being referred to in his message to JM of Jan 2024?

My theory is that there were two tape recordings made by Gray on 6th Nov and one of them is missing. If Keith knows what he's looking for he might be able to find it more easily.

What I'm also wondering is if the 15 tapes obtained by Keith were from a different source to the source who gave him the three tapes in or before 2003. Having received the 15 tapes, Keith seems to be assuming that they included the three that Seth Linder listened to in 2003. But has he actually checked? There is something wrong, somewhere.

It seems likely that the three that Seth Linder listened to were of much better quality (and of course included one which isn't among the 15). I'm guessing that Keith now doesn't now know where those three tapes are, but we need clarification on this point. Or perhaps Seth Linder still has them, but Keith hasn't asked? Can this explain why you have never heard the missing tape referred to by Mr. Linder?

Can you send a message to Seth Linder and find out if he still has those three tapes?

Thanks, RP

[caz]

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.

This simply makes no sense in the context of Anne having put in all the hard yards to produce this thing - for whatever purpose she thought Mike was going to use it - only to have 'the living hell' scared out of her when he wasn't sent home to Goldie Street with a flea in his ear, plus the worthless piece of crap she had just created for him. There would be no 'success' for Mike until after the second trip to London with the diary, and only if the prospective publisher was suitably impressed by what he saw.

Did Anne similarly hope or expect that Robert Smith would send Mike packing on that day in June, before a single test was commissioned? If not, why not? Why take the risk, and fork out for two return train fares this time, for Mike and Caroline to go back to London with the diary, if the prospect of success was scaring the living hell out of her?

Now look at it from the point of view that Anne is initially scared because she is not a stupid woman and knows Mike must have got the diary from a dodgy source. March turns to April and nothing happens, and Mike's reassurance that "no effing bugger alive" knows about it might actually be true, as far as a legitimate owner with a claim is concerned. By June, three months after the brown paper package came into their lives, there is still not a whisper from anyone, including whoever may have passed it on to Mike.

Anne is no longer 'terrified', but naturally reluctant to get involved any more than necessary in the publishing process. She has a big row with Mike in Dale Street in March 1993 when he wants to hand over the physical diary to Robert for a nominal £1 coin. He is effectively offloading something that he must now suspect was stolen from Battlecrease, having learned in the February about the electrical work done in the house. Once more, Anne has failed to stop the physical diary from going into other hands.

[caz]

On reflection, it does sound like Paul or Martin did ask Caroline a leading question (or a series of leading questions): "Do you remember the row when your dad told your mum he was going to get it published?"

What had prompted Paul or Martin to ask that question?

Somehow, an account of the row must have prompted Caroline being asked about it. But if Feldman can be believed (and who knows) it was Caroline who added the detail about an attempt to burn the diary.

I learned that relying on one of Feldy's accounts to be wholly accurate and objective is quite likely to lead one up the garden path.

IIRC, Caroline, Anne and Mike all at one time or another spoke of this row, independently of each other, but none of them put it in context of what was happening at the time, which might have given us a rough date. I suspect it came about when Anne twigged that Mike was intent on taking the physical diary to London. She may even have helped to type up the transcript in the vain hope that he would agree to post this to Doreen instead - and if he got a "Dear John" letter by return of post, it would save her from being 'terrified' and save a return train fare to London into the bargain.

[caz]

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?

Could I ask you something, Herlock? If Anne was involved in creating the diary, either by helping to compose the text or penning it herself, can you think of a reason why it would not have dawned on her that Mike might actually want to get it published, and why she'd have got upset when he did? What would it all have been for, in that case? Did she have no plans of her own for it? Was it meant to be put it in a drawer and forgotten?

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Hi Caz,

With the greatest of respect, you seem to be entirely missing the point.

Lombro (#183) put forward an argument that it made sense to him that Maybrick would have written his diary in a disguised hand. He gave his reasons.

In response (#184), I asked him whether it might not also have made sense to a forger, thus explaining why the diary is not in Maybrick's handwriting.

That was the only purpose of that post.

I later clarified (#214), for the avoidance of doubt, that his argument made no sense to me, and I gave my reasons. Perhaps you never went back and read those reasons?

The reason I added this clarification was because I felt someone might think I agreed that Lombro's argument made sense. Indeed that's exactly what you seemed to think when you posted a reply to my #184 (in your #254) without, apparently, having read my #214.

That's all that happened.

For you to now suggest that all discussion is futile because Lombro sometimes says things which make no sense. He gave his reasons and I gave mine. That is how a discussion works. I don't believe it's futile.

What is disappointing to me is that you have asked the question, "How would each of us judge what would make sense or no sense to an unidentified forger?", without considering the reasons Lombro gave and the reasons I gave.

But that wasn't even the question. The question was whether something MIGHT have made sense to an unidentified forger. Because if something makes sense to Lombro it could potentially make sense to anyone else, couldn't it?

I didn't suggest that 'all discussion' is futile. I suggested that any discussion involving what makes sense to one person, but no sense to another, is unlikely to be productive - and that's from long experience on these boards, holding my own hands up to having had many fruitless discussions along those same lines.

I was talking generally, not specifically, so I'm not going to get into the minutiae of one such discussion.

Love,

Caz
X

[Herlock Sholmes]

Could I ask you something, Herlock? If Anne was involved in creating the diary, either by helping to compose the text or penning it herself, can you think of a reason why it would not have dawned on her that Mike might actually want to get it published, and why she'd have got upset when he did? What would it all have been for, in that case? Did she have no plans of her own for it? Was it meant to be put it in a drawer and forgotten?

Love,

Caz
X

I'm really surprised you've asked me this question, Caz, because you already posted an answer to it, showing you didn't have any problem with the idea of someone writing the diary for a purpose other than publication earlier in this thread (#174), when saying to Mike JG:

"…it might have been a literary exercise by a Maybrick and/or JtR enthusiast, who wanted to see if they could combine these two infamous cases and provide a 'solution' to the former using the latter. If they didn't intend it for publication under their own name, but couldn't bring themselves to discard it either, could they not have planted it somewhere in Maybrick's former home and left the chances of its discovery to fate?"

So you were positing a scenario whereby the diary's author wanted to see if they could combine the two cases but not for publication. Instead, you expressed the thought that they might, somehow, have planted it somewhere unspecified in Battlecrease, not even knowing if anyone would ever find it or, if someone did find it, whether the finder would do anything with it or throw it away or otherwise destroy it.

How come, then, you need me to tell you that Mike Barrett, a true crime enthusiast, might have had the same thought process in wanting to combine these two infamous cases but didn't intend it for publication?

Should you think that this answer doesn't bear any relation to how people behave the real world, another possibility is that Anne expected her husband to try to sell it privately, perhaps to a man in a pub, just like you think Eddie Lyons sold it to a man in a pub.

But I want to be clear to you that what I was saying to Roger was that the fact that Anne was so protective of the diary in April 1992, and asked Mike to put it into a bank for safety, as proved by the independent contemporary written evidence, suggests that the story about her wanting to throw it in a fire was a lie and that the reality is that she was not upset when Mike tried to get it published. Just as you say there is no "independent evidence" of the diary existing prior to March 1992, so there is no independent evidence of Anne having been upset when Mike wanted to get the diary published.

[rjpalmer]

Hi Herlock,

There is no doubt that Anne DID expect Mike to publish the diary, and no one has ever suggested otherwise. It’s difficult understand how such basic mis understandings occur. Indeed, according to Anne, she even ENCOURAGED Mike to publish.

With one caveat--that it would be a STORY about Maybrick-as--Jack and not as a physical artifact. (Bear in mind this was Anne's own account and thus it could be a lie).

This is nothing any theorist made up--it was Anne's own justification.

I don't know if you've missed it, but Anne made a particularly strange statement to KS (Keith Skinner) and SH (Shirley Harrison) on 18 January 1995, wherein she admits to having manipulated Barrett their whole married life, and further admits to have attempted to manipulate Barrett into co-writing (with her) a joint story about Maybrick.

Transcript courtesy Tom Mitchell. My emphasis in bold.

KS: Yes, so it must have been bizarre to hear a fortune, a possible fortune, to be made and all you wanted to do was to throw the thing on the fire.
AG: Well, that was actually, you know, organised through Doreen and that, you know.
SH: Yes –
AG: When I realised –
SH: He was serious –
AG: - that he was going to get the bloody thing published –
SH: Yes, yes.
KS: Yes.
AG: You see, I had to be very subtle in my approach in as much that I couldn’t say to him, we don’t get it published, we write a story around it. I just sort of give it to him bit by bit to try and make him understand it’s come from his idea, it was his idea. But I couldn’t do it! I had managed to manipulate him every, years, so many things, I just [inaudible] this one [laughs ruefully].
KS: I asked, erm, when you were out of the room about ‘O costly intercourse of death’, the Hillsborough disaster –
SH: Yes, yes, yes.
KS: - in which, erm –
AG: Anyone want more tea?

--

For those into the diary soap opera, this is a fascinating statement.

One possibility you might wish to consider is whether both Anne and Mike wanted the 'diary' published but had a different vision of what that would entail---one wanting a fictional story and one wanting an out-and-out forgery, hence the ALLEGED hint of conflict behind-the-scenes, though I can understand why the account given by Anne’s friend Audrey might be a weak peg on which to hang a theory.

Considering that Anne is admitting to manipulating Barrett, it does raise the possibility that everyone (me included) has misjudged Anne, and she was the driving force behind the hoax. Again, that's something you must decide for yourself.

I do suggest, however, to be on particular guard against people who attempt to project Anne's own contradictory words and deeds onto any theory of the Barretts' joint involvement, thus implying the theory must be flawed; that is certainly a very poor way to proceed, and involves an entirely different question altogether, but I trust you will recognize this subterfuge when it presents itself.

Also, it was Anne who claimed that the London literary agents (who turned out to be Doreen M.) would act as a sort of 'firewall' between Barrett and the forgery being published. Again, this is nothing I made up. Anne herself claimed to have assumed that Doreen would slam the door in Barret's face once she saw the diary. Once that firewall was breeched, and Doreen was interested, one can image that Anne was either deeply upset or utterly delighted by the development, depending on what you decide about Anne's true motivations.

I'm not as rigid in my view as some would have you believe; I think it is an open question who was manipulating whom, or whether they were both manipulating each other, or whether Anne was simply telling tales after Barrett began to spill and was a willing collaborator.

Best wishes.

[Lombro2]

So Anne wanted the Diary published as a novel? Well, there's the piece of the puzzle we've been waiting for!

Why not write a True Crime Ripper book? I'm sure it would sell more than a Florence Maybrick book. Maybe she wanted to write the story and not have a publisher get their own established writer.

Exactly how does this help the Barrett Forgery Theory more than the Barrett Fence Theory, other than being just an excuse for Anne's strange behavior that looks more like she's dealing with a stolen artifact.