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

[Lombro2]

I’ll admit I got the Provenance wrong. It didn’t come from Anne’s family. It came from Battlecrease.

[caz]

Well, Caz, I think you're plain wrong. I believe I'm the Johnnie-come-lately who needs to correct you on the facts.

You can 'think' what you like; it won't alter Martin Earl's own recollections and information.

To say Mike "ordered" the diary is misleading. He was offered it - being the only Victorian diary with blank pages which Martin Earl had been able to source - and he agreed to purchase it. The word "order" implies that it was specifically what he wanted, which clearly wasn't the case.

Martin told us that items would have been ordered from the supplier and 'in many cases sent directly from supplier to customer to avoid a second postage cost'. He could not remember whether the 1891 diary 'went direct or not'.

'Normally one would ask for payment with [the] order so in this case it is likely that the customer specifically wanted to see it before sending payment. Given the time taken before the cheque was sent to us it is highly likely I had to chase it, probably by phone. From memory normal settlement time was the standard 30 days so I would have chased up after that period.
Customers could always return items if they were not as described.'

'Always contacted customer to talk through an item and get agreement for me to purchase from supplier. Suppliers provided full descriptions and if needed one would go back to them for any additional info needed/asked for.'

'The system worked like this

• Customer orders book, I send order to supplier in the post comprising payment from me to supplier for the amount they wanted, a pre-written address label for the package and a compliment slip from me to insert in the book. Supplier then packages book and send direct to the customer.

If the book had come to me first I would have packaged and sent to customer.
Cannot remember what route this one took.'

It's also false to say that he ordered (or purchased) it "on approval". That's just wrong. It suggests he could send it back if he didn't like it. That's not how Martin Earl conducted his book selling business. Mike could only have sent it back, within a limited time frame, if the item had been misdescribed to him. As the item had almost certainly not been misdescribed, he was on the hook. He legally had to pay for it.

Well clearly you think you know more about this than Martin Earl was able to recall, but you could always write to him for clarification. He was the one describing the item to Mike over the phone, so it was either his own description or the supplier's. Either way there was a case for Mike to return the 1891 diary if it was not 'as described' or if the description had been anything less than 'full'.

It would not have been the fault of the supplier or Martin Earl if they had misunderstood what Mike had meant by 'blank' pages, and had failed to mention that they were plastered with printed dates for a year he had not asked for, but he could have argued that he would never have ordered it to be sent to him had it been described "fully". We don't know how fully it was described to him, but more fool Mike if he had been told exactly what to expect and then had no good reason for returning it - unless it was never intended for the purpose he claimed in his affidavit, so when it arrived it was just stuck in a drawer and forgotten about. If he merely wanted to see how easy it would be for someone to pull his leg with a diary like the one he'd been shown on 9th March, he'd want to see whatever Martin Earl had located, but once seen he'd have his answer.

I don't know what you mean when you say "if Mike was only told it was for the year 1891" he was under no obligation to purchase it. Of course he was under an obligation to purchase it. He could only return it if it wasn't as had been described to him. That's what was stated in Martin Earl's terms and conditions. How have you still not understood this?

See above, and try to think what Martin Earl might have meant by 'full descriptions', and how that compares with a theoretical scenario in which Mike was only told the year of the diary located. Do you not think he'd have had a reasonable case for returning it in that event?

To be continued - if I think there's any point.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Or yet more powerful evidence of Mike's capacity for telling porkies - and the capacity of others to make excuses for him.

Have you ever considered that the reason the diary is 'clearly' not in Anne's handwriting may be because she didn't write it?

Mike knew he had no chance of being believed if he said the handwriting was his, so who else was he going to try and throw under the bus, if not the woman who had betrayed him for a second time, by ripping his precious diary from his grasp and claiming it had belonged to her father?

There is no 'simple' explanation if Anne had disguised her normal hand to write the diary, because she'd have known it didn't remotely resemble Maybrick's and would therefore have needed to be confident that if a document examiner had then been asked to compare the diary with Mike's handwriting or her own, they would have found no evidence or any obvious points of similarity. In short, without being a document examiner herself, what are the chances that Anne knew what signs would be looked for, and how to avoid leaving any that would have identified her as the likely culprit, if not the culprit?

What would complicate matters further is if Anne had been persuaded by Mike that she was merely creating a marketing 'gimmick' for a fictional story - not one of RJ Palmer's brighter ideas, if she didn't need the diary to look like it 'clearly wasn't in her handwriting', but achieved that remarkable feat anyway, with no special effort or skill.

And then we have Mike, quietly confident when he brings the photo album home from the auction sale, that Anne will have the will and the skill to disguise her hand well enough, and whose confidence is rewarded a few days later when he sees that she has done so over 63 pages.

How would he have known an effective disguise from one that an expert could see through?

Hi Caz,

When it comes to the handwriting, didn’t you say in a post on 7 July 2017 (#3655 of "One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary" thread):

"But everyone who has a hand and a pen gives away their identity by merely looping their letters in a certain way, at a certain angle, etc."

You said that, right?

You then expressly invited a comparison with Anne's documented writing.

At that time, I don't think any examples of Anne's handwriting were publicly available (other than the test sample provided to Keith Skinner in 1995) but in 2018 we saw a few pages of Anne's writing which showed that she looped some of her letters in a certain way, similar to the diarist.

Have you changed your mind that the forger will have given away their identity by the way they looped their letters?

I also note that, according to a 2005 post by John Omlor, Dr David Baxendale wrote this in his report of July 1, 1992 about the diary handwriting:

"The handwriting shows considerable variation in fluency and letter design, and I have noted that some of the letter designs have been altered. This shows that the writing has not all been naturally written.

"For the most part, the handwriting is in a looped cursive style, in other words the letters are connected to each other and have prominent loops. There are however many instances where individual letters have been written in a script style, i.e. plain letters written separately. For example, there are instances of script styles for the letters A, h, k, L, N, t, T and x."

That the expert considered that the "writing has not all been naturally written" suggests that it was written in a disguised hand.

You keep saying that Anne would have "known" that the handwriting in the diary didn't "remotely resemble" Maybrick's. But please explain how she would have known this? At what time in her life would she ever have seen Maybrick's handwriting?

I also don't think Anne needed to be a document examiner to know that it's impossible for an expert to positively identify the author of disguised handwriting. Surely that's common knowledge isn’t it? It just can't be done, for obvious reasons, although clues can be found in the way a person loops their letters, as you identified in 2017.

But can I please ask you to explain why the handwriting sample Anne provided to Keith Skinner in 1995 looks so different to her normal handwriting in her correspondence? Do you not find that suspicious?

[Herlock Sholmes]

You can 'think' what you like; it won't alter Martin Earl's own recollections and information.



Martin told us that items would have been ordered from the supplier and 'in many cases sent directly from supplier to customer to avoid a second postage cost'. He could not remember whether the 1891 diary 'went direct or not'.

'Normally one would ask for payment with [the] order so in this case it is likely that the customer specifically wanted to see it before sending payment. Given the time taken before the cheque was sent to us it is highly likely I had to chase it, probably by phone. From memory normal settlement time was the standard 30 days so I would have chased up after that period.
Customers could always return items if they were not as described.'

'Always contacted customer to talk through an item and get agreement for me to purchase from supplier. Suppliers provided full descriptions and if needed one would go back to them for any additional info needed/asked for.'

'The system worked like this

• Customer orders book, I send order to supplier in the post comprising payment from me to supplier for the amount they wanted, a pre-written address label for the package and a compliment slip from me to insert in the book. Supplier then packages book and send direct to the customer.

If the book had come to me first I would have packaged and sent to customer.
Cannot remember what route this one took.'



Well clearly you think you know more about this than Martin Earl was able to recall, but you could always write to him for clarification. He was the one describing the item to Mike over the phone, so it was either his own description or the supplier's. Either way there was a case for Mike to return the 1891 diary if it was not 'as described' or if the description had been anything less than 'full'.

It would not have been the fault of the supplier or Martin Earl if they had misunderstood what Mike had meant by 'blank' pages, and had failed to mention that they were plastered with printed dates for a year he had not asked for, but he could have argued that he would never have ordered it to be sent to him had it been described "fully". We don't know how fully it was described to him, but more fool Mike if he had been told exactly what to expect and then had no good reason for returning it - unless it was never intended for the purpose he claimed in his affidavit, so when it arrived it was just stuck in a drawer and forgotten about. If he merely wanted to see how easy it would be for someone to pull his leg with a diary like the one he'd been shown on 9th March, he'd want to see whatever Martin Earl had located, but once seen he'd have his answer.



See above, and try to think what Martin Earl might have meant by 'full descriptions', and how that compares with a theoretical scenario in which Mike was only told the year of the diary located. Do you not think he'd have had a reasonable case for returning it in that event?

To be continued - if I think there's any point.

All you've done by reproducing Martin Earl's words is that you've proved you were wrong to say that Mike received the 1891 diary "on approval". Nowhere does Martin Earl say this. It's just your misinterpretation of what he said.

Martin Earl was very clear wasn't he:

"Customers could always return items if they were not as described."

Pretty straightforward?

It means customers could not return items if they were as described.

If Martin Earl had correctly described the 1891 diary to Mike based on the full description provided by Earl's supplier, which I'm sure he did, then Mike had no basis upon which to return the diary. He'd already purchased it and Earl would have sent him an invoice.

The fact that Barrett "specifically wanted to see it before sending payment" makes no difference to the terms and conditions. If the diary was "as described" Mike was legally obligated to send the payment on the basis of the invoice. It makes no difference that the money was due after receipt of the item.

It's all very simple, Caz. That's the only way a telephone bookseller could operate. He couldn't be sending out books on approval.

I don't need to write to Martin Earl for clarification because he was very clear. It's just that you don't seem to be reading his words properly.

Then when it comes to Earl's statement about "Customer orders book", yes that's how it was normally done with books with titles and authors. If, say, I wanted a first edition of "Oliver Twist", and Earl could source it, I would place an order for it. I wouldn't expect Earl to come back and offer me a first edition of "Great Expectations" instead. But that's what happened in this case with the diary. Mike wanted or, if you prefer, ordered, a diary with blank pages from the period 1880-1890 (although, of course, he wasn't obligated to purchase it if Earl found one). But Earl couldn't source one. So, instead he offered him a diary from 1891. Mike agreed to purchase it even though it wasn't what he had wanted. So it's very different from Earl's usual trade. For that reason, you are mis-using the word "ordered" in this scenario which provides a misleading picture, suggesting that an 1891 diary was what Mike wanted. Mike never really ordered an 1891 diary. He simply agreed to buy it.

Yes, Earl technically placed an "order" with his supplier for the 1891 diary on Mike's behalf, because that's how the system operated, but it's just an alternative word to "purchase".

But to repeat, although the diary is different from a normal book with a title and author, Earl's normal terms and conditions would still have applied. Hence, Mike wasn't sent the book on approval.

I note that you haven't dealt with my point about Earl having already paid the supplier (which is something Earl confirms he would have done) and thus HE could only have got his money back from the supplier if the diary hadn't been properly described to him by the supplier. That's a fatal blow to your claim that Mike could have sent it back simply if he didn't like it. You say your post is possibly "To be continued" which suggests to me that you can't actually answer this.

You can argue a (poor) theoretical lawyer-type point that Mike could have made a bad faith attempt to wriggle out of paying for the diary because, with the dates being on every page, it wasn't truly "blank", until you're blue in the face. It will get you nowhere for two reasons. The first is that Mike would have had to have appreciated that he could make this terrible argument. There's no reason to think it would ever have occurred to him. The second is that this entire debate commenced because you said that Anne could have declined to pay for the diary in May 1992. As you now seem to accept, by May the standard 30 day period to pay Earl's invoice had passed. She was out of time. There was no way out of paying for the diary at that stage. So your argument fails.

I don't think there's any point in continuing this discussion because it's so crystal clear what happened, but I can't stop you if you want to.

[Iconoclast]

If Martin Earl had correctly described the 1891 diary to Mike based on the full description provided by Earl's supplier, which I'm sure he did, then Mike had no basis upon which to return the diary. He'd already purchased it and Earl would have sent him an invoice.

"If Martin Earl had correctly described the 1891 diary to Mike based on the full description provided by Earl's supplier, which I'm sure he did ...".

Either Martin Earl was not told by his supplier the tiny red diary was for 1891 or he was and he failed to tell Michael Barrett or Michael Barrett wanted that tiny red diary for some other reason than creating a hoaxed diary from the period 1888-1889.

Does anyone seriously think any other possibility is possible?

What does everytone think happened? Here's my two pennyworth:

Barrett: I'd like to locate a Victorian diary.
Earl: That's about 64 years - do you want to be more specific?
Barrett: Yeah, make it 1880 to 1890.
Earl: Okay, I can give that a go.
Barrett: It needs to have at least twenty blank pages.
Earl: Okay, so at least twenty pages which have no writing in.
Barrett: Yeah.
...
Supplier: In response to your ad, I have an 1891 diary which has almost no writing in.
Earl: 1891?
Supplier: Yes, 1891.
Earl: Dated '1891' or printed in 1891? Is it a diary or a notebook?
Supplier: It's a diary - it's got the days of the year printed on every page.
Earl: One page a day?
Supplier: No, it's tiny - it's like a week-to-view diary.
Earl: Okay, I'll let my client know.
...
Barrett: 1891? But it's got at least twenty blank pages?
Earl: Yes.
Barrett: That's fine, I'll have that.

Now, if I'm right, why would a tiny red 1891 diary do the job for Michael Barrett in that moment? Make it make sense, dear readers: why would the ex-scrap metal dealer and long-since aspiring writer agree to purchase a tiny 1891 diary for £66.21 that the Barretts appear to have ill-been able to afford?

Personally, I can think of two or three reasons - none of which involve Barrett or his wife creating anything, writing anything, or perpetrating a hoax onto the world of Ripperology, and all of those reasons would justify the cash-strapped (or so we are assured) Michael Barrett agreeing to purchase a tiny red 1891 diary for the eye-watering sum of £66.12 ($90.63).

Ike
Always Seeing It More Clearly Than the Naysayers

[caz]

Morning Ike,

I haven't got the stomach yet this morning to read Herlock's latest excuses, but Martin Earl was adamant that Mike would have been told that the year for the only diary located thus far was 1891 - pretty obvious really, when he had asked for one for the previous decade. It would have been up to Martin to query it with the supplier if their "full" description had not even included a date, or any reference to the customer's other minimum requirements.

Where did you get the £66.12 figure from? I thought Anne paid £25 in May 1992?

I wonder if Herlock thinks Mike would have had a problem with lying about the red diary had Anne refused point blank to sign that cheque:

"It must have got lost in the post, lad, because

a) I never received it, or

b) I posted it back because it wasn't as you had described it [in an unrecorded phone call], or

c) I posted it back because you didn't mention how tiny it was, or that all the blank pages had 1891 dates printed on them, which I hadn't asked for and didn't want, and certainly wasn't expecting when I ordered the little piece of shi*e."

Would it have been worth anyone's while taking legal action against Mike if there was any possibility that this tiny package had got lost in the post, either on its way to Mike or on its way back to the source?

Is Herlock going to say that Mike was more than cunning and crooked enough to have obtained a diary for the purpose of committing fraud, but not cunning or crooked enough to have tried to obtain one by fraud, if Anne had put her foot down with a firm hand [thank you, late ma-in-law]?

The fact that Anne paid up is a sign of honesty in this instance. It's not a sign that she had sent Mike off the previous month with a hoax of their own creation and was covering their tracks. Quite the reverse, because an avoidable paper trail was created with that cheque, had it paid for anything incriminating.

Love,

Caz
X

[Herlock Sholmes]

"If Martin Earl had correctly described the 1891 diary to Mike based on the full description provided by Earl's supplier, which I'm sure he did ...".

Either Martin Earl was not told by his supplier the tiny red diary was for 1891 or he was and he failed to tell Michael Barrett or Michael Barrett wanted that tiny red diary for some other reason than creating a hoaxed diary from the period 1888-1889.

Does anyone seriously think any other possibility is possible?

What does everytone think happened? Here's my two pennyworth:

Barrett: I'd like to locate a Victorian diary.
Earl: That's about 64 years - do you want to be more specific?
Barrett: Yeah, make it 1880 to 1890.
Earl: Okay, I can give that a go.
Barrett: It needs to have at least twenty blank pages.
Earl: Okay, so at least twenty pages which have no writing in.
Barrett: Yeah.
...
Supplier: In response to your ad, I have an 1891 diary which has almost no writing in.
Earl: 1891?
Supplier: Yes, 1891.
Earl: Dated '1891' or printed in 1891? Is it a diary or a notebook?
Supplier: It's a diary - it's got the days of the year printed on every page.
Earl: One page a day?
Supplier: No, it's tiny - it's like a week-to-view diary.
Earl: Okay, I'll let my client know.
...
Barrett: 1891? But it's got at least twenty blank pages?
Earl: Yes.
Barrett: That's fine, I'll have that.

Now, if I'm right, why would a tiny red 1891 diary do the job for Michael Barrett in that moment? Make it make sense, dear readers: why would the ex-scrap metal dealer and long-since aspiring writer agree to purchase a tiny 1891 diary for £66.21 that the Barretts appear to have ill-been able to afford?

Personally, I can think of two or three reasons - none of which involve Barrett or his wife creating anything, writing anything, or perpetrating a hoax onto the world of Ripperology, and all of those reasons would justify the cash-strapped (or so we are assured) Michael Barrett agreeing to purchase a tiny red 1891 diary for the eye-watering sum of £66.12 ($90.63).

Ike
Always Seeing It More Clearly Than the Naysayers

I don't think you're understanding this discussion, Ike.

Of course Mike was told it was an 1891 diary. There's no doubt about that.

But, as his request was for a diary with blank pages, he was also likely to have been told that nearly all the pages of the 1891 diary were blank, which is how Keith Skinner described it.

So he was told that an 1891 diary with blank pages was available. He agreed to buy it. There were no other options available at that time. On receiving it, he realized it was useless for the purpose of forging a Ripper diary. But he'd already committed to buying it, the diary having been correctly described, so he had to pay for it.

I'm not sure what difficulty you have in understanding this very simple sequence of events.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Morning Ike,

I haven't got the stomach yet this morning to read Herlock's latest excuses, but Martin Earl was adamant that Mike would have been told that the year for the only diary located thus far was 1891 - pretty obvious really, when he had asked for one for the previous decade. It would have been up to Martin to query it with the supplier if their "full" description had not even included a date, or any reference to the customer's other minimum requirements.

Where did you get the £66.12 figure from? I thought Anne paid £25 in May 1992?

I wonder if Herlock thinks Mike would have had a problem with lying about the red diary had Anne refused point blank to sign that cheque:

"It must have got lost in the post, lad, because

a) I never received it, or

b) I posted it back because it wasn't as you had described it [in an unrecorded phone call], or

c) I posted it back because you didn't mention how tiny it was, or that all the blank pages had 1891 dates printed on them, which I hadn't asked for and didn't want, and certainly wasn't expecting when I ordered the little piece of shi*e."

Would it have been worth anyone's while taking legal action against Mike if there was any possibility that this tiny package had got lost in the post, either on its way to Mike or on its way back to the source?

Is Herlock going to say that Mike was more than cunning and crooked enough to have obtained a diary for the purpose of committing fraud, but not cunning or crooked enough to have tried to obtain one by fraud, if Anne had put her foot down with a firm hand [thank you, late ma-in-law]?

The fact that Anne paid up is a sign of honesty in this instance. It's not a sign that she had sent Mike off the previous month with a hoax of their own creation and was covering their tracks. Quite the reverse, because an avoidable paper trail was created with that cheque, had it paid for anything incriminating.

Love,

Caz
X

Hi Caz,

On the one hand you disrespectfully say that you haven't read my reply to you while, at the same time, commenting on what you say I appear to think.

The argument you are putting forward now doesn't make any sense. If Mike had wanted to commit fraud by pretending he never received the diary, he could have done that for whatever reason he wanted it. So if you say he wanted the diary for [insert reason here] you need to explain why he didn't pretend not to have received it in order to avoid paying for it, which, you seem to think, he could easily have done.

This entire theoretical argument about what Mike could have done or what lies he could have told Martin Earl in a parallel universe, is a waste of time. Let's just deal with what happened.

What happened is that Mike received the diary at the end of March but didn't pay for it. Perhaps he could have sent it back immediately, and avoided payment, unlikely, but he didn't do that. He was chased for payment in May and Anne sensibly realized that there was no option but to write a cheque.

That's all there is to it. I appreciate that Mike's secret attempt to acquire a genuine Victorian diary in March 1992 is such damning evidence which causes you such distress that you are desperately trying to come up with some far-fetched reason why we should discount it but this strange theoretical argument of yours about things which didn't happen takes us nowhere.

[caz]

Continued from yesterday...

You ask a silly question when you say "Would Anne have taken out a mortgage in 1988 for their move to Goldie Street, if it meant having to come up with a new and improved writing project for Mike to take on, in the hope of making some serious money this time?". How could Anne possibly have known in 1988 what the global financial situation, as well as her own family's financial situation, would be like four years in the future?

What do you mean, 'four years in the future'? That takes us from 1988 to 1992. If Mike's motive for allegedly faking Jack the Ripper's diary in the first place had been so they [or more accurately, Anne, as the breadwinner] could afford the monthly mortgage repayments, when do you suppose their financial struggles began, and how quickly after that did this unusual remedy first present itself? Are you having trouble with the diary's alleged chronology, from sperm to worm? It has been suggested that the Barretts drew inspiration for their money-making scheme from watching the Michael Caine mini series, which would put a speculative date on when the idea may have originally been planted if they saw it on tv when first broadcast. So what time period would you put on the whole process, from first thoughts to fruition, when the diary was finished and fit to be seen in London, on 13th April 1992? Or have you not really thought about it?

Thousands of people take on mortgages which it later transpires they can't afford, often because of rising interest rates or a change in their personal financial situation. So, yes, absolutely, Anne and Mike might easily have taken on a mortgage in 1988 which they found it difficult to keep up the payments on. Unless you can provide some evidence of the Barretts' healthy financial position between 1988 and 1992, how can you possibly say that a need to keep up the mortgage payments wasn't Mike's motive for creating a forged diary in 1992?

See above. The diary didn't just get 'created' out of nowhere in April 1992, by a husband and wife in urgent need of a second income, in spite of Mike's 11-day claim - which his affidavit dated back to early 1990. Did Mike really have so little idea of whether this financial struggle to keep the roof over their heads had gone on for two years or more, or just for a few belt-tightening months until he had something to take to the bank?

If, in October 1993, Mike "asked himself what was the point of paying the mortgage on a house that was no longer a home, and which he never wanted to move to in the first place",so what? How could he possibly have predicted what the future held for his marriage in March 1992?

Not in October 1993. Anne was still paying the mortgage then. I meant when she left Mike, in early January 1994, I can well understand how paying the mortgage after that would no longer have been a priority for him, if it ever had been.

Given that Mike received thousands of pounds from the diary during 1993 and 1994, it seems to me like it was an effective way to meet monthly mortgage payments.

So how much of that money do you suppose Mike gave to Anne before she left him, to help her meet the monthly repayments? And how much of it did he use to pay the mortgage at any time afterwards? It might have been an effective way, had Mike been the least bit financially aware and prudent, and if he'd made even a single repayment in 1994, but the evidence shows that thousands of pounds left his bank account in the May shortly after arriving there, which got spent on God knows what or whom, leaving him in the red and with less than nothing to put towards the mortgage on 12 Goldie Street.

So I repeat: the idea that Mike would have been itching to help pay the mortgage prior to April 1992 is not one I'd be banking on.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Continued from yesterday...



What do you mean, 'four years in the future'? That takes us from 1988 to 1992. If Mike's motive for allegedly faking Jack the Ripper's diary in the first place had been so they [or more accurately, Anne, as the breadwinner] could afford the monthly mortgage repayments, when do you suppose their financial struggles began, and how quickly after that did this unusual remedy first present itself? Are you having trouble with the diary's alleged chronology, from sperm to worm? It has been suggested that the Barretts drew inspiration for their money-making scheme from watching the Michael Caine mini series, which would put a speculative date on when the idea may have originally been planted if they saw it on tv when first broadcast. So what time period would you put on the whole process, from first thoughts to fruition, when the diary was finished and fit to be seen in London, on 13th April 1992? Or have you not really thought about it?



See above. The diary didn't just get 'created' out of nowhere in April 1992, by a husband and wife in urgent need of a second income, in spite of Mike's 11-day claim - which his affidavit dated back to early 1990. Did Mike really have so little idea of whether this financial struggle to keep the roof over their heads had gone on for two years or more, or just for a few belt-tightening months until he had something to take to the bank?



Not in October 1993. Anne was still paying the mortgage then. I meant when she left Mike, in early January 1994, I can well understand how paying the mortgage after that would no longer have been a priority for him, if it ever had been.



So how much of that money do you suppose Mike gave to Anne before she left him, to help her meet the monthly repayments? And how much of it did he use to pay the mortgage at any time afterwards? It might have been an effective way, had Mike been the least bit financially aware and prudent, and if he'd made even a single repayment in 1994, but the evidence shows that thousands of pounds left his bank account in the May shortly after arriving there, which got spent on God knows what or whom, leaving him in the red and with less than nothing to put towards the mortgage on 12 Goldie Street.

So I repeat: the idea that Mike would have been itching to help pay the mortgage prior to April 1992 is not one I'd be banking on.

I tried to explain this to you last time, Caz. Mike didn't say he was in financial difficulty in 1988 nor did he say he started to plan the diary in 1988. He simply placed the origins of the diary in the death of Anne's stepmother which led to the move to Goldie Street which meant he needed to keep up payments on the mortgage. I don't know precisely when the idea popped into Mike's head to start to write the diary, assuming, of course, that he and his wife were responsible. How can I possibly know this? All that can be said is that it was definitely by March 1992. But if it was in 1991, the point is the same. The Barretts couldn't have known when they took out the mortgage what their financial position would be three years in the future, or, indeed, at any time in the future.

As for the Michael Caine miniseries, you must have missed Roger's post that it re-aired in Liverpool in January 1992.

It should be clear to you now that the 1990 date in Mike's affidavit was an error. Just like Paul Dodd thought he'd had the night heater installed in 1989 when it was 1992.

As for who paid the mortgage, I'm not aware of any documentary evidence that assists on this issue, or about the Barretts' internal finances, and I can't see the point in speculating. All I can do is note that Mike said in 1999 that the mortgage payments were "half and half" but that still means that it was 100% paid by the Barretts who, I would remind you, are both suspected of being involved in the diary forgery and who, as I understand it, both received money from the diary.

[caz]

Well the argument is that Anne's handiwork (i.e. the manual writing of the diary) was done after 9th March 1992 so there wouldn't be any evidence of her handiwork before 9th March 1992, would there? In fact, the argument is that the photograph album wasn't even purchased until late March 1992. So I'm not sure what "evidence" you think could possibly exist prior to 9th March 1992.

I don't. As I said, I was merely stating the fact that all the diary evidence that exists on the record begins with Mike's phone call on 9th March 1992. I wasn't reading anything in to that regarding the suspicions that the diary is Anne's handiwork. My only point was that I have seen nothing on that record which l would describe as evidence that the diary only exists today because Anne was an active participant in its creation.

To say "there's no evidence" for something is the weakest possible argument anyone can make unless there is good reason to say that if evidence existed we should know about it.

I see where you start from - a presumption of Anne's guilt, regardless of the lack of evidence, unless or until someone provides you with proof of her innocence. Not expecting any evidence to have survived if she was guilty is such a lazy cop out, because it's precisely the same if she wasn't. A lack of evidence against someone is not evidence, in any sense of the word, that they got rid of it all. If you think it is, you could have had a career in the police in the 1970s.

Is this because it's a modern story, as opposed to a historical one? How many times have you argued with Lechmere theorists, who have already hanged him in their imagination, despite the fact that "there's no evidence" that he was remotely capable of such crimes, but they expect others to come up with good reasons to rule him out? Is that the weakest possible argument anyone can make against Lechmere's guilt, because there is no good reason to think that if any evidence had existed it would have been known about? He wasn't likely to have left bloody body parts around the house for the wife and kiddies to find, was he? So by your own reckoning, you can't presume Lechmere to have been innocent on the basis of no evidence, because naturally the murdering swine got rid of everything that would have incriminated him. Guilty!

[caz]

As for the fact that Anne didn't manage to remove every trace of her own handwriting from the diary, that doesn't seem to be at all surprising.

How have you been led so far down the Barrett rabbit hole, Herlock? The 'fact' that Anne 'didn't manage to remove every trace of her own handwriting from the diary' doesn't seem all that surprising to you?

Do you wish to reconsider your definition of a fact? Or is there no hope for you?

[caz]

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'?

That phone call is the earliest 'evidence' we have on record that Jack the Ripper's diary was in anyone's mind. There is nothing on record prior to 9th March 1992 that anyone on the planet was aware of its existence in any form.

I wasn't counting any claims made retrospectively, in written or spoken form, because no proof has yet emerged of an earlier origin for any of them.

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.

Quite so, but I didn't claim otherwise.

[Iconoclast]

I don't think you're understanding this discussion, Ike.

Has anyone else noticed how Herlock is the only one who appears to have understood what's going on? The number of times he says the equivalent of, "You've been told ..." and the likes is truly astonishing for some who is only recently here at the party. It's the tone of a Lord Orsam preaching down at us all from his self-built pulpit not from the low-ground of someone who prior to 2025 didn't seem to have any skin in this game whatsoever. Astonishing.

No, I hadn't misunderstood the discussion - primarily because I don't read Sholmes 'discussions' (they land so hard on the head). Nope, I was merely passing through and saw this wonderful line and couldn't resist a response:

If Martin Earl had correctly described the 1891 diary to Mike based on the full description provided by Earl's supplier, which I'm sure he did ...

And that gem was followed by this gem:

Of course Mike was told it was an 1891 diary. There's no doubt about that.

It is literally like reading Orsam of five years ago or whatever. I imagine that I am about to be assailed by endless screeds of why the date of a diary doesn't matter but I doubt I'll read it. I read it all when he said it before he was 'resigned' from the Casebook back in the day.

So he was told that an 1891 diary with blank pages was available. He agreed to buy it. There were no other options available at that time. On receiving it, he realized it was useless for the purpose of forging a Ripper diary.

No ****, Sherlock. We all know that the guy knowingly bought an 1891 diary. The last sentence, you just took from Orsam's playbook because you haven't got one of your own (that's my polite version) and can't stop saying even though there is absolutely no evidence for it bar your interpretation of what we all know doesn't then make sense.

I'm not sure what difficulty you have in understanding this very simple sequence of events.

But I don't. It's the very sequence of events I assume occurred. He knew it was an 1891 diary. I'm not sure what difficulty you have in understanding this very simple event. And he was willing to 'pay' (loosely speaking) £66 in today's money for it ($90, RJ). Sometimes I think as the years pass the £25 is ever diminished by inflation that we cease to think that it was very much at all - but it wasn't at all not very much at all; why would he continue with the purchase of such an expensive item which he clearly could do nothing with if you and your dad are to be believed? Make it make sense, man. He clearly still had a use for the diary which was created two years after his 'innocent' target died. Think it through. Don't just cut and paste the ideas of the most pompous poster ever to grace these boards.

Look, I know you think you have a smartarse excuse and apology for why Michael Barrett wanted an 1890 diary but settled for an 1891 diary even though both of these shatter Orsam's theories into quarks, but I for one do not think that anyone would have wanted an 1891 diary with at least twenty blank pages because I - unlike you perhaps - know exactly what an 1891 blank diary would look like. It would be an 1891 diary and its entries would not yet have been made.

But maybe that's too simple for you?

Or just too awkward?

[Herlock Sholmes]

I don't. As I said, I was merely stating the fact that all the diary evidence that exists on the record begins with Mike's phone call on 9th March 1992. I wasn't reading anything in to that regarding the suspicions that the diary is Anne's handiwork. My only point was that I have seen nothing on that record which l would describe as evidence that the diary only exists today because Anne was an active participant in its creation.



I see where you start from - a presumption of Anne's guilt, regardless of the lack of evidence, unless or until someone provides you with proof of her innocence. Not expecting any evidence to have survived if she was guilty is such a lazy cop out, because it's precisely the same if she wasn't. A lack of evidence against someone is not evidence, in any sense of the word, that they got rid of it all. If you think it is, you could have had a career in the police in the 1970s.

Is this because it's a modern story, as opposed to a historical one? How many times have you argued with Lechmere theorists, who have already hanged him in their imagination, despite the fact that "there's no evidence" that he was remotely capable of such crimes, but they expect others to come up with good reasons to rule him out? Is that the weakest possible argument anyone can make against Lechmere's guilt, because there is no good reason to think that if any evidence had existed it would have been known about? He wasn't likely to have left bloody body parts around the house for the wife and kiddies to find, was he? So by your own reckoning, you can't presume Lechmere to have been innocent on the basis of no evidence, because naturally the murdering swine got rid of everything that would have incriminated him. Guilty!

When it comes to evidence of Anne's participation in the diary's creation, things may become clearer when you deal with the question of why the handwriting sample she provided to Keith Skinner in 1995 seems to be so different to her normal handwriting Caz.

Do you also accept that a number of sensible members of this forum have commented that they can see similarities between the way Anne loops and curls some of her letters and the way the diarist loops and curls those same letters?

You incorrectly attribute to me a belief that I wouldn't expect any evidence of Anne's evidence to have survived. Read what I wrote again more carefully Caz. What I said was directed to whether, if that evidence has survived, we would know about it. By which I mean has her potential role as a forger been properly investigated? I don't think so. She was asked to provide a handwriting sample in 1995 but, if there had been a proper investigation, examples of her pre-1992 handwriting would have been examined. As it stands, we don't seem to have any (although Roger recently mentioned seeing some).

Other than that, though, if you are prepared to assume for the sake of argument that Anne was the forger who wrote out the text of the diary at her husband's dictation in 12 Goldie Street, please tell me what type of evidence could possibly exist to prove her involvement? The testimony of her husband? Well he repeatedly and consistently said that the diary was written by Anne but you discard that entirely. The testimony of her daughter? Well she refused to speak to you for your book, didn't she? And she apparently continues to refuse to speak.

So what else could there be? If you can't answer this there really is no merit in an argument which relies on the absence of evidence to rule out Anne's involvement.