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

[Scott Nelson]

Without bias. Impossible.

[Herlock Sholmes]

We believe the journal existed for decades with pictures of WWI and a donkey in a cemetery, and was in a lot in a creditable auction house with a square compass and sold to Michael.

Just like we believe the gold watch was being worn and kept somewhere for the better part of a century before being in Stewart’s stock transferred after retirement to the Murphys and then stuffed in a sock drawer until 1992.

We just can’t prove any of it.

On the other hand we can prove that the diary wasn't written by James Maybrick.

We can also prove that Michael Barrett secretly attempted to acquire a genuine Victorian diary with blank pages in March 1992.

That's good enough for me and anyone else that looks at it without bias.

[Lombro2]

We believe the journal existed for decades with pictures of WWI and a donkey in a cemetery, and was in a lot in a creditable auction house with a square compass and sold to Michael.

Just like we believe the gold watch was being worn and kept somewhere for the better part of a century before being in Stewart’s stock transferred after retirement to the Murphys and then stuffed in a sock drawer until 1992.

We just can’t prove any of it.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Hi Mike.

Shouldn't C.A.B.'s statement more correctly be 'no evidence prior to 13 April 1992 and not a day before'--the first date that an independent set of eyes confirmed the diary's existence?

Or does she consider claims made over the telephone by the serial liar Mike Barrett to be 'evidence'?

I suppose she could be leaning on the 'evidence' of Eddie Lyons--except that Lyons himself denies emphatically that he had found a diary on 9 March 1992.

Maybe that's not what she's referring to, but I can't grasp how Lyons' denial carries more evidential weight than Anne Graham's insistence that she had seen and handled the diary in the 1960s, or William Graham's that he had seen it as far back as World War II. I don't particularly believe any of them, but the methodology used seems a bit queer. No one in the Portus & Rhodes rumor mill had actually laid eyes on the physical diary, either.

If we deny all unsupported claims made by the various 'witnesses' then surely there is no unambiguous evidence that the diary existed in its entirety before 13 April 1992.

RP

Hi Roger,

I was assuming that Caz was talking about the evidence in Rupert Crew's file which at least records what Mike said at the time. But is interesting is that she evidently discards the note typed by Anne of her husband's supposed research notes which is headed "Transferring all my notes since August 1991". Those notes, if accurately titled, would provide evidence of the existence of the diary prior to 9th March 1992 but, if they don't, and Caz doesn't seem to think they do, it means they are fake, which means that Anne was complicit in creating a fake document on Mike's behalf in support of the historic nature of the diary.

I don't think we've ever been provided with a satisfactory explanation as to why, absent her having been involved in forging the diary, she would do this, have we?

[rjpalmer]

It's interesting that you should mention Anne Graham's handwriting. Ike, not surprisingly, has reduced the similarity to the diarist's hand to the single letter 'F' which is not at all accurate.

It so happens that very recently a correspondent has sent me a rare gem: a genuine example of Anne Graham's handwriting dating to well before 1992. It is a rather small sample, but even so, it is of considerable interest for one idiosyncratic element. It struck me immediately.

There was nothing nefarious about how this sample was obtained--it's a matter of public record--so I don't think there would be anything illegal or unethical about posting it here.

I'll have to give it some thought, though.

I wonder if it's worth the bother, as any observations would be dismissed as 'amateur opinion.' But then, when it comes to Anne's handwriting or Kane's etc, that's all we've ever had. Accredited handwriting experts dismissed Maybrick's handwriting. The same cannot be said of any of our modern suspects, so the oft made comparison is a false equivalency.