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

[Herlock Sholmes]

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

Hi Ike,

Was Baxendale instructed to provide a date of authorship or was he just asked to state whether the diary was fake or genuine? If the latter, might that not explain why a conclusion that it was likely created after 1945 was sufficient for the report whereas he could informally give the Sunday Times more information?

And is it really the case that we need to "believe the likes if RJ and Orsam"? Can't we just look at the relevant edition of the Sunday Times to see what Baxendale was reported as saying?

[Herlock Sholmes]

As an aside first, just back from Coventry (not Liverpool, RJ) with a Midlands cold starting and reading Robert Smith's True History of the Diary of Jack the Ripper again in bed last night with half a cup of hot milk stirred into my half a cup of 10-year old malt, I was struck by this comment:

"On 22nd June [this is 1994, by the way], just five days after Montgomery's note to Anne [Barrett], Shirley Harrison and Sally Evemy, her business partner and researcher, were paying a visit to Jenny's [a new friend of Mike Barrett] home, where Barrett was staying. It was at that moment when he first dropped the bombshell, claiming that he himself had forged the diary. Harrison described his shocking announcement in her book: "He was bitter and angry that he had not seen his daughter and threatened to tell everything to the national press." Fuelled by alcohol, he didn't care that he was giving the lie to the diary being handed to him by Tony Devereux. In his manic state, he was determined to "get back at Anne" (as he would later explain) and destroy Feldman's theory that the diary "had been in Anne's family for years", even if it meant smashing the diary's credibility as an authentic Victorian document, as well as the book's publication prospects and his future income from it. Revenge on Anne for leaving him, for interfering in his relationship with Jenny, and for depriving him of Caroline (as he believed), had tipped him over the edge into irrationality."

Barrett had claimed that he had been trying since December 1993 to reveal the truth through Shirley Harrison. She mustn't have had very good hearing, I guess. Take home message? The January 5, 1995 affidavit signed (but almost certainly not solely authored) by Mike Barrett is a worthless piece of mince and should never be relied on for anything. The evidence for this reaches right to the heart of that viper Melvin Harris who had done so much to kill the scrapbook at source because of all that integrity he was building up inside him as he saw the prospects of his 1994 work on Stephenson go gradually down the pan. The viperous viper had the affidavit in his hands in January 1995 and he did absolutely nothing with it. All that integrity and he sat on this explosive 'truth' about the scrapbook which he had courted for so long through Alan Gray!

Anyway, back to your original question, I do not believe that I implied that I myself was not also guilty of hoisting up the old canards? I think I used the term 'we' at least once. I am frequently wrong about details and sometimes I do not practice what I preach, and therefore perhaps I am inadvertently hypocritical. This is not because I don't care about the truth but because my memory occasionally lets me down when I post and occasionally it bedfellow - logic - too.

Anyway, just a quick post back form me in between the Lemsips and the water of life ...

Ike

Hope you’re feeling better?


Ike, mate, you're basically obsessing over a typo. Yes, the affidavit contains some dating errors but, as you've pointed out, it wasn't solely authored by Barrett. Didn’t he claim that he forged the diary in June 1994, so the Dec 1993 date is an obvious mistake. How can it possibly be of any significance?

Who, in any case, is relying on Barrett's affidavit for anything?

Can you explain why you keep referring to Melvin Harris as a viper? Is it simply because he didn't think the diary was genuine?

In respect of your criticism of Harris for doing "nothing" with Barrett's affidavit, can you kindly answer some questions for me. When did Harris receive a copy of Barrett's affidavit? Who gave it to him? Assuming he was given a copy, were there any confidentiality conditions attached to his being given it which prevented him from circulating it? What exactly do you think he should have done with it?

[rjpalmer]

Why are you citing how long ink takes to dry, RJ? What possible insight are you offering us here? The issue in question is how quickly ink separates.

I'm getting whiplash, Ike.

The insight I'm offering is that both you and Jay Hartley have made the ridiculous assertion that Baxendale meant the ink would have been 'dripping' (your word) off the page when he never said any such thing and ink dries in a matter of seconds.

If you were concerned with how quickly the ink separated from the paper during the ink solubility test (conducted fully 4 months after the diary was brought to London) why didn't you say so, instead of insinuating that Orsam, Chittenden, and Co. believed something so ridiculous as ink dripping off a page when this was nothing more than your own mischaracterization of their beliefs?

As I've noted, it wasn't even Baxendale that made the statement. In a candid moment, Dr. B apparently told Chittenden (I say apparently because it is based on Chittenden's reporting, and we don't have a direct quote that I'm aware of) that the diary's ink had been applied about 2-3 years before August 1992. Baxendale was clearly more cautious in his initial report to Smith and Harrison.

Dr. Nickell, having lost all faith in the analysis of his own team member, Rod McNeil, opted for the far simpler test conducted by Dr. B. This is when he said that the diary's ink must have been 'barely dry' in 1992.

'Barely dry' is still dry. Does something barely dry drip? Does ink even an hour old drip?

What Nickel knew is that paper fibers and iron gall ink permanently bond over time, and indeed, iron gall ink will eventually eat into the paper. The diary's ink and paper were observed to behave radically different than the exemplars that Dr. B knew were genuinely old. He--a document examiner for many years at the Home Office--knew then that something was seriously wrong, and confronted by Harrison, he would not back down from this knowledge.

As for which Nickell book, until you learn some manners and quit referring to the dead as viperous, I'll allow you the pleasure of conducting your own research.

Enjoy your afternoon.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Yes, indeed, I have, Herlock, and - whilst it is instinctively a good challenge on the surface - it does fail rather quickly in the mind for this reason: if Barrett was seeking 'authentic paper which would be scientifically indistinguishable from paper from the time of the Ripper murders' he would not need to start at 1880 and end at 1890. He unnecessarily started late (he could have used a scrapbook from 1830 if that was all he could get his hands on) and he unnecessarily ended early (a scrapbook from 1891 to, say, 1899 would presumably be just as indistinguishable as one from that other impossible year, 1890).

So, if you want that notion to be convincing, you have to argue that Barrett either didn't think it through properly or else he didn't actually make that specific request but the guy who placed the ad for Barrett is on the record (SocPill202?) as stating that he would never add defining detail which his client had not explicitly requested of him.

So, defence of this argument requires Barrett to have not thought it through sufficiently and that's good news for the argument because - let's face it - it wouldn't have been the only example on record which makes Barrett's achievement all the more astonishing in my book.

I find your response very strange, Ike. If we assume he's looking to forge a Ripper diary, he's got to start and end somewhere, hasn't he? What's wrong with the decade in which the murders occurred? 1880 to 1889 is no problem for a Ripper diary and, if we try to put ourselves in Mike's head he might not have wanted to flag the year 1889 so finished at 1890. After all, he might have hoped to have been offered a number of choices. Perhaps he was really hoping to find an 1888 diary but felt if he asked for that it would be too obvious what he was up to.

Sure an 1899 diary might have been okay but why extend the range so far? You've got to bear in mind that he must have been hoping for a diary as close to 1888 as possible. Surely he wouldn't have known at the time that whoever he bought it from wasn't going to be able to find any from the 1880s.

So I find your objection a bit strange and a bit ironic considering your arguments about the 1891 diary. If Barrett had asked for a diary from 1880 to 1899 wouldn’t you have mocked the fact that he was interested in a diary from 10 years after Maybrick's death. So I truly can't see any other date range he could have chosen than 1888 to 1889 which would satisfy you but this would not only have unnecessarily limited his options but flagged to the seller something he might not have wanted to flag.

I have to ask you why he could possibly have wanted a diary from 1880 to 1890 of any size and colour as long as it was entirely blank or had a certain number of blank pages. Any thoughts?

[Iconoclast]

Let's again return to reality.



20 to 25 seconds, folks.

Is this an admission by Ike (and to be fair, we've seen Mr. Hartley make the same comment) that he believes ink will be 'dripping' off the page 24 to 72 hours after it is written? Has he ever used a pen and ink? Has he observed this remarkable phenomenon?

The wit who said the diary's ink was 'barely dry on the page' in reference to April 1992 was Dr. Joe Nickell, a man who has written two books on document examination.

He said it for comic and dramatic effect. He was not speaking literally.

Dr. Nickell knew full well that ink dries to the touch in a matter of seconds but will further bond with the paper fiber at a chemical level over a period of months and years.

Thus, he was quite rightly shocked and amused when he later learned from the description of Dr. Baxendale's solubility test how the ink and the paper had so fully and easily separated in the solvent.

I'm no longer certain if these are serious comments or whether we are being wound-up, but it's early morning here and I have chores, so I bid y'all a good day.

Now that we know the diary was very young indeed in 1992, any progress in learning the author must be grounded in this fact.

Why are you citing how long ink takes to dry, RJ? What possible insight are you offering us here? The issue in question is how quickly ink separates.

Can you please provide a citation for Nickell’s comment? His two books are very expensive now an ID like to buy the right one.