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

[caz]

While Anne did admit to Keith that Barrett had bought the maroon diary from Earl (what choice did she have?) and give him the cheque stub showing the ‘book’ was purchased in MAY (misleading in itself) it is not proven and wildly unlikely that Anne could have known that Earl had placed an advertisement back in March 1992 documenting exactly what Barrett had requested and when. So it is crass to imply that Anne had helped Keith trace the advertisement. That was his initiative, not hers. It is most unlikely that Anne had any knowledge of Martin Earl’s methods.

Indeed, the wording of Earl’s advertisement makes mincemeat of the idea that Barrett “wanted to see what a Victorian diary looked like”—-the claimed rationale of why the purchase was made and a rationale that satisfied the diary friendly folks for many a year. I know. I remember some of them repeating it and accepting it as plausible.

It would have been interesting to know what Anne’s reaction would have been if she was confronted by the advertisement itself. To this day, has that ever happened?

It's that housekeeping moment again...

Anne did not 'admit' to Keith Skinner that Mike had bought the maroon diary from 'Earl'. She didn't have that information on her in 1995. She gave him the diary and the relevant cheque stub and the means to trace the payment.

Palmer asks what choice Anne had, but there was always a choice. Anne chose to be open with Keith and give him all the information she had or could recall, including whatever Mike had chosen to tell her about it. She could have chosen to give Keith as little assistance as possible if she'd known, well before 1995, that Mike had had fraud in mind for the maroon diary, with herself as an active participant. She could have said she no longer had her old cheque books and couldn't remember when she signed the cheque or the name of the payee and, as Palmer admits, she was likely to have been genuinely unaware of how Mike had gone about obtaining it. None of this could have been held against her if the advert had surfaced by other means. Keith was not Bonesy of the Yard, so he couldn't access any of Anne's bank statements if she had chosen to keep them confidential.

Mike could have subsequently remembered that the cheque was made out to M Earl, in which case all the information we now have could have been obtained independently of any assistance from Anne, so denying all knowledge of the purchase would have been over the top, and an unnecessary lie if it had not represented an inept attempt by Mike to obtain the raw materials for Maybrick's diary.

A little problem for Palmer to grapple with, since he finds it 'wildly unlikely' that Anne could have known in 1995 that Earl had placed an advertisement back in March 1992, 'documenting exactly what Barrett had requested and when', is that she must have known if Mike had been looking for a Victorian diary for her to turn into Maybrick's. So I find it 'wildly unlikely' that it wouldn't have crossed her mind whether Mike had been discreet or had incriminated them both in the process, either over the maroon diary or the awesome auction find. If it's 'wildly unlikely' that Mike was keeping Anne fully informed in March 1992, because she'd never have helped Keith in 1995 if she'd seen the wording of Mike's advertisement, what did he tell her about his search for the raw materials? Why was she not bothered about details coming out as a result of helping Keith, which she never knew about because Mike had lied to her or kept them to himself?

I'd like to think Palmer had a choice too. We know he sees Anne's cooperation over the maroon diary as suspicious, and consistent with her involvement in the diary's creation. He makes no secret of it. But would he have found it more suspicious, or less suspicious, if Anne had responded differently to Keith's questions and had not gone that extra mile to help him look into it?

Or is it wildly unlikely that it would have made the slightest difference? Does Palmer have no choice but to find Anne's every action and reaction consistent with the diary being in her handwriting?

[Iconoclast]

There is only one thing we know for an absolute fact about Mike's knowledge of 19th century diaries. It is that he believed a 19th century diary could be written in an old undated book without any date on the cover or printed dates on the pages, with the only date being handwritten by the diarist.

Mike's amazing knowledge would not have been restricted to just the 19th century. Everyone knows that something used as a diary makes it a 'diary'. It's just a different use of the word 'diary'. We all know what a diary is - every one of us knows if we walked into a shop and asked for the diary section we would be directed to the place where documents with dated spaces in were. We would not be sent to the notebook section. And every one of us (including Mike Barrett) knows that if we use something to record our thoughts into can be referred most accurately as a 'diary' if we are referring to the writing. If we are referring to the document, of course, we have to revert to whatever that document's original purpose was: namely, a notebook, a photograph album, a scrapbook, a guard book, or even our boxes of Cornflakes.

So let's not pretend Mike Barrett thought diaries were blank documents simply on the basis that he had a 'diary' that was first manufactured as a scrapbook. Let's not be disingenuous with our worthy readers who are simply not as stupid as you want (and need) them to be.

How do we know this?

Because Mike Barrett was a human being and we all know it.

Simple.

Simple if you are desperate to be Lord Orsam's love child.

Because he told Doreen Montgomery on 9th March 1992 that he was in possession of Jack the Ripper's diary before presenting her on 13th April 1992 with an old undated book without any year on the cover or printed dates on the pages, with the only date being handwritten by the diarist.

But containing a record of someone's thoughts over a period of time that could be dated so something that every one of us would refer to as a 'diary' in retrospect? What was more important to Mike and Doreen in the course of that conversation, that Mike thought he had a record of Jack the Ripper's thoughts or that he had an old scrapbook? Which one of those two aspects of the Maybrick scrapbook were most pertinent for Mike to focus on when first explaining why he had rung Rupert Crew Ltd.?

So we know that, for Mike, an 1888 or 1889 diary didn't have to have the year on the cover.

No, no, no, no, no. We do not know that that was Barrett's belief at all. Before you see it or know anything about it, a physical book is only a diary if it has got - at the very least - the year printed on the front somewhere. We all know that and no amount of 'trickery' (it's pathetic, but we'll call it 'trickery' for now) is going to change what every one knows is the case. AFTER a document has been used as a diary, then we can still call it a diary (if it was one anyway) or a 'diary' if it has been used as one. But let's not pretend that we don't know what we all mean by a diary. It is not in debate, however many documents of various shapes and sizes can be requisitioned to act as one.

It didn't have to have the dates printed on the pages.

That is true but that would not be the sort of diary that springs to everyone's mind when they hear the word 'diary', but - fair enough - I guess some diary-producers could favour the year-on-the-front approach. I'm sure Barrett would have been perfectly happy with such a diary.

I'm suggesting that's precisely what he envisaged in his mind when he was told that Martin Earl could source an 1891 diary.

You have no way of knowing if this was his thought - but this has to be your desperate position because you know your argument is utterly lost if you don't. I ask my dear readers - when I said a few posts ago that I had a 1971 diary, how many of you instinctively thought it would be undated or just have '1971' on the front or inside cover? None of you? Thought so. If I tell you not to think about a pink elephant, what has your brain just done to you? It's called habituation - your brain ceases to consider any other option than the obvious. When your brain hears the word 'diary', you think document with dates in. But apparently Mike Barrett's brain was less habituated than everyone else's. Not.

And it's a perfectly reasonable thing for him to have envisaged because plenty of 19th century diaries didn't have the date on the cover or the the date printed on the pages.

They were (and still are) called notebooks, journals, scrapbooks, phot albums, and boxes of Cornflakes. Before they are written in and used as a 'diary' they are not yet 'diaries'.

They were written in the nineteenth century notebooks, scrapbooks and the like.

That's correct - but they were not written in diaries. They only became 'diaries' the moment someone started to use it as a 'diary'.

Not in official diaries.

Not in diaries. There was no need to say 'official'. What you meant, of course, was what we all understand as diaries, including you (otherwise you wouldn't have said 'official').

They became diaries because of the way they were used. If I were to start a diary myself today in a notebook or exercise book it would be a 2025 diary but that date need not be printed anywhere on it.

OMG - he knew it all along!!!!!!

You would not have a 2025 diary. You would have a 'diary' (a record of events) purportedly written in 2025 in a notebook or exercise book.

Unless you have some additional evidence about what Mike believed a Victorian diary to look like, we can't take this issue any further.

We can't take this issue any further because it is obviously a non-issue. Someone accepting an 1891 diary knows exactly what they are getting. And if what they end up getting is a notebook or an exercise book, they would have every grounds for returning it under the Trades Descriptions Act of 1312.

We can only say that his agreement to purchase the 1891 diary is not necessarily inconsistent with a desire to use it for a fake Jack the Ripper diary of 1888/89.

Yes we can. Of course we can because we are not trying to shoehorn something into somewhere it cannot ever go.

What we can say with certainty is that Mike didn't originally want a diary from 1891. He wanted a diary from the period 1880 to 1890 with a minimum of 20 blank pages (but not limited to 20 blank pages) ...

That's right. He was expressly looking for what everyone knows is a diary and he was happy to receive one from the year after James Maybrick died which tells us without equivocation or doubt that he was not planning to use it to create a hoaxed diary of James Maybrick. Glad we got that one sorted out because it's been niggling me rather that the blindingly obvious is being ignored.

and you simply can't explain why.

Says whom? Asked and answered with at lest three different plausible reasons why Barrett accepted a diary from 1891, none of which are yours which - of course - fails big style at that crucial step of explaining why someone intending to hoax a James Maybrick diary would think he could do so in a document described to him as an 1891 diary.

The explanation, however, seems pretty obvious to me. He wanted to use that diary, containing paper from the right period which would pass scientific tests, to write a fake diary of Jack the Ripper.

Yes, I think we get what seems pretty obvious to you. Fortunately, what seems pretty obvious to you is of no consequence to anyone else here.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Nope, that's you and RJ and Orsam, mate. I can't think of anyone else who has stretched credulity quite like you three (two?) have in order to try to salvage a point or avoid an awkward piece of evidence.

This one is undoubtedly one of Orsam's finest stupidities and anyone who buys into such depths of special pleading is revealing the one-way vision of a truly unreasonable mind.

So, what is it Orsam was saying? Well, as I recall, he was claiming that Michael Barrett's advert in Bookbinder was effectively a request for genuine 1880 to 1890 paper upon which to scribe his magnum opus. But rather than simply request 'an 1880-1890 document with at least twenty pages', he plumped for the word 'diary'. Well, straightaway there's a problem because - by definition - a true diary must have a date on it and everyone knows that, and so must Michael Barrett so his asking for an 1890 diary and settling for an 1891 diary shows us all that he was not planning a hoaxed James Maybrick diary. Big problem for the Naysayers!

So, in true Orsam fashion, what does he do? Well, he simply reinterprets the facts until the fit his argument. And that's what Sholmes did a couple of posts ago, dear readers. He simply cut and pasted Orsam's argument of a few years ago and embarrassingly claimed it as his own. What was the argument that turned water into wine, though?

Well, it was this: Michael Barrett had not actually wanted what he asked for, he had wanted what Orsam wanted him to have asked for - namely, just paper from that period. And the easiest way around his use of the word 'diary' was to argue that Barrett said 'diary' when he meant anything from that period. How so? Well, because anything from that period once inscribed with Barrett's work of genius must - also by definition - become a 'diary'. Ten boxes of Cornflakes spread out on a table are just ten boxes of Cornflakes - but write a record of your thoughts onto their reverse and you have a diary!

That's because a thing (say, a notebook) that is not the classic definition of some other thing (say, a diary) which is used in a way which resembles the classic definition of some other thing (say, a diary) by necessity retrospectively gains the right to be called that thing. If it functions as something, it has become that thing.

But it's not that thing until it functions as that thing! So a notebook (or a load of Cornflake boxes) is not a diary until such time as it are used as a diary. It doesn't even have to contain a date: we all know what a 'diary' is and something bearing someone's thoughts is a 'diary'.

So that's what Orsam and RJ and Sholmes are doing to get around the fact that Barrett accepted a document that was described to him as an 1891 diary. They are saying he wasn't looking for a diary at all - he was looking for something that could be used as a 'diary' so he didn't care to dig deeper and ask if it was dated on every page. He just assumed it was a blank document that - for some reason - Martin Earl was saying was made in 1891.

If you want to buy into such dreadful special pleading, I can do nothing to stop you. But don't think you'll ever persuade me that a man looking for a diary or a document which could have been used by James Maybrick would have accepted 'an 1891 diary' without asking for clarity around what it was about it that made it so obviously made in or to be used in 1891 (two years after James Maybrick died, remember, everyone). To have not asked Earl, "So what makes you say it is an 1891 diary?" would be a stupidity even greater than anyone arguing that he would have assumed it was completely blank (with perhaps one mention of 1891 at the very front which he could have Typp-Ex'd out).

And to argue that Earl thought it was an 1891 diary because someone had written something in for the year 1891 does not negate the imperative for Barrett to ask, "So what makes you say it is an 1891 diary?" because someone could have written their '1891' entry at any time beforehand (if there was no reference to '1891' printed in it) or indeed afterwards. It's only valid paper from that period if it was manufactured in that period, so he had to dig deeper. The obvious question for Barrett to ask was what was causing Earl to think it was an 1891 diary, to which no amount of special pleading could ever mask the fact that the answer to that question either had to be, "Because the supplier told me" to which Barrett would have had to have asked, "And what caused them to think it was an 1891 diary?" or else, "Because it says so five times on every pair of pages". If it was the former, Barrett would have needed to know it could not actually be the latter but - oh no - he just accepts it.

The reality, dear readers, is that Michael Barrett knew exactly what Martin Earl had procured for him and it was evidently enough for his needs because he accepted it despite it costing £66 in today's money. That's not the actions of a man seeking a document James Maybrick could have written into, and Orsam and RJ and Sholmes know it. They just don't want you to know it.

So they have to create these fantastic flights of fancy around what Barrett thought a diary was. Don't be fooled. They are jerking your chains, and you'd all be much better throwing them off instead.

That's one hell of a waffle, Ike.

The nub of it is your statement that "a true diary must have a date on it and everyone knows that". This is completely false. It confirms that you don't know what a diary is.

I'm not going to repeat everything I've already said which you've basically ignored. I will only repeat that, for the reasons I've set out at length, Mike's agreement to purchase the 1891 diary is (quite clearly) not necessarily inconsistent with a desire to use it for a fake Ripper diary of 1888.

[Herlock Sholmes]

It's that housekeeping moment again...

Anne did not 'admit' to Keith Skinner that Mike had bought the maroon diary from 'Earl'. She didn't have that information on her in 1995. She gave him the diary and the relevant cheque stub and the means to trace the payment.

Palmer asks what choice Anne had, but there was always a choice. Anne chose to be open with Keith and give him all the information she had or could recall, including whatever Mike had chosen to tell her about it. She could have chosen to give Keith as little assistance as possible if she'd known, well before 1995, that Mike had had fraud in mind for the maroon diary, with herself as an active participant. She could have said she no longer had her old cheque books and couldn't remember when she signed the cheque or the name of the payee and, as Palmer admits, she was likely to have been genuinely unaware of how Mike had gone about obtaining it. None of this could have been held against her if the advert had surfaced by other means. Keith was not Bonesy of the Yard, so he couldn't access any of Anne's bank statements if she had chosen to keep them confidential.

Mike could have subsequently remembered that the cheque was made out to M Earl, in which case all the information we now have could have been obtained independently of any assistance from Anne, so denying all knowledge of the purchase would have been over the top, and an unnecessary lie if it had not represented an inept attempt by Mike to obtain the raw materials for Maybrick's diary.

A little problem for Palmer to grapple with, since he finds it 'wildly unlikely' that Anne could have known in 1995 that Earl had placed an advertisement back in March 1992, 'documenting exactly what Barrett had requested and when', is that she must have known if Mike had been looking for a Victorian diary for her to turn into Maybrick's. So I find it 'wildly unlikely' that it wouldn't have crossed her mind whether Mike had been discreet or had incriminated them both in the process, either over the maroon diary or the awesome auction find. If it's 'wildly unlikely' that Mike was keeping Anne fully informed in March 1992, because she'd never have helped Keith in 1995 if she'd seen the wording of Mike's advertisement, what did he tell her about his search for the raw materials? Why was she not bothered about details coming out as a result of helping Keith, which she never knew about because Mike had lied to her or kept them to himself?

I'd like to think Palmer had a choice too. We know he sees Anne's cooperation over the maroon diary as suspicious, and consistent with her involvement in the diary's creation. He makes no secret of it. But would he have found it more suspicious, or less suspicious, if Anne had responded differently to Keith's questions and had not gone that extra mile to help him look into it?

Or is it wildly unlikely that it would have made the slightest difference? Does Palmer have no choice but to find Anne's every action and reaction consistent with the diary being in her handwriting?

Caz,

I'm not sure in what way that was a "housekeeping" post. It just looked like argument and speculation to me.

When I consult my copy of "Inside Story", I find that it says of the 1891 diary at page 167:

"According to Anne, it was Barrett who ordered it to see what a Victorian diary looked like and to compare it with the journal"

While her exact quote isn't provided (do you have it?), it's presented as a statement of fact by her, not her saying "Mike told me that....". As such, it can't be true yet was included in your 2003 book as a way of explaining why Mike ordered it.

What also misled everyone for many years was the cheque she provided because it was dated 18th May 1992. When Keith questioned Mike at the April 1999 meeting he suggested that this showed that Mike was lying when he said he bought it to write the Jack the Ripper diary. He wrote to Ripperologist on 27th April 1999 to point out that the cheque was dated "AFTER" Mike had handed the diary over to Doreen Montgomery (his capitals) and said: "It therefore raises the question as to why Mike Barrett should have bought a diary at a time when publishers were being lined up to bid for the rights for the journal". As late as 2003, Shirley Harrison wrote in her "American Connection" book (p.296) that: "The red diary was in fact purchased after the Diary had been brought to London. (Anne has the receipt)". Even in your own book of that year it was noted (on page 167) that the cheque is dated "18 May 1992, one month after Barrett had taken the Diary to Doreen Montgomery". The reader has to do well to locate in a completely different part of the book (page 237) that Mike would have received the red diary on 28th March 1992, thus negating the entire point about the date of the cheque.

I'm not necessarily suggesting that Anne deliberately misled Keith Skinner, or allowed him to be misled, although it strikes me that she might have done, but I do wonder why she didn't help him and let him know that although the cheque was dated 18th May 1992 this was because it was a late payment and the 1891 diary had been received some weeks earlier. Any thoughts on that?

Just to add one final comment. When responding to Roger's statement that it was wildly unlikely that Anne knew about the advertisement, you comment that this would mean it was wildly unlikely that Mike "was keeping Anne fully informed in March 1992" and you refer to "Mike's advertisement". Might I suggest, though, that Mike probably didn't know of the existence of the advertisement himself. Why would he? Why would Earl have told him how he sourced his books? And, if Mike didn't know, it's not just wildly unlikely that Anne knew about the advertisement but pretty much a certainty that she did not.

[rjpalmer]

I'd like to think Palmer had a choice too. We know he sees Anne's cooperation over the maroon diary as suspicious, and consistent with her involvement in the diary's creation. He makes no secret of it. But would he have found it more suspicious, or less suspicious, if Anne had responded differently to Keith's questions and had not gone that extra mile to help him look into it?

I find it deeply bizarre---and convenient---that in this one instance you believe Anne was forthright and cooperative with Keith, when your entire theory is based on Anne being anything but cooperative---lying to Keith repeatedly over a period of many years--about seeing the diary in the 1960s, about a family history of Formby and Yapp, etc. etc.

Can't you see how strange that is? Can't you appreciate the cognitive dissonance require to make such a convenient and contradictory leap?

And I didn't say Anne's cooperation with Keith was suspicious--that's your word; I suggested it was unavoidable, provided Anne had two brain cells to rub together.

Keith asked her about the red diary, having gotten wind of it. This odd purchase had never been mentioned before--not by anyone--even though both Anne and Mike had signed a collaboration agreement and had agreed to share their 'research' with Shirley. If this diary was for 'research' purposes as Anne claimed---that Mike wanted to confirm what a Victorian diary looked like---why did neither she nor Mike mention it? Slipped their mind, did it?

Obviously, Keith wanted to know the details. If Anne had lied outright, and denied this purchase, but Keith was able to confirm it by other means, then Anne would have been caught-out in a lie. So, I ask again, what choice did she have, other to risk being caught out?

And it's not a matter of what I think would have been a more suspicious response; I wasn't even there; it's a matter of Keith finding it suspicious (I hope!) had Anne denied a transaction that was later confirmed. Or do you deny that, too?

And there are further complications you ignore. The oddity of how the cheque was filled out, for starters. Or Anne claiming that Mike wanted to 'see what a diary looked like' when Martin Earl's advertisement makes that claim nonsensical. Finally, the fact that as late as 1999 Keith--when he had a chance to directly ask Barrett why he had accepted the 1891 diary--instead focused on a mistaken belief that the red diary was irrelevant because it had been ordered in May.

I lay that at Anne's feet. Had Anne explicitly stressed that she and Mike had been late payers, and the diary had been ordered 'pre-Doreen' why was Keith still under a wrong impression? Why are you bending over backwards to defend her, when elsewhere you think she lied again and again?

Ultimately, you don't need my permission to believe that Anne was being unequivocally cooperative.

But I'm not that naïve.

[Iconoclast]

That's one hell of a waffle, Ike.
The nub of it is your statement that "a true diary must have a date on it and everyone knows that". This is completely false. It confirms that you don't know what a diary is.
I'm not going to repeat everything I've already said which you've basically ignored. I will only repeat that, for the reasons I've set out at length, Mike's agreement to purchase the 1891 diary is (quite clearly) not necessarily inconsistent with a desire to use it for a fake Ripper diary of 1888.

Then allow me to iterate the key part of my 'waffle': everyone - and I mean everyone - knows what a diary is, and accepting one from 1891 tells us everything we need to know about what Barrett's intentions behind seeking one were not.

[rjpalmer]

Just to add one final comment. When responding to Roger's statement that it was wildly unlikely that Anne knew about the advertisement, you comment that this would mean it was wildly unlikely that Mike "was keeping Anne fully informed in March 1992" and you refer to "Mike's advertisement". Might I suggest, though, that Mike probably didn't know of the existence of the advertisement himself. Why would he? Why would Earl have told him how he sourced his books? And, if Mike didn't know, it's not just wildly unlikely that Anne knew about the advertisement but pretty much a certainty that she did not.

Yes, perhaps we need a maid to tidy up after Caroline's housekeeping.

It was not "Mike's advertisement" it was Martin Earl's. Had Barrett known about it, it would have been natural to tell Alan Gray or to have included it in his secret, non-circulating affidavit to show he had specifically asked for a blank or nearly blank diary.

There's no reason to believe Barrett was aware of Earl's methods.

[Iconoclast]

Another desperately stupid argument is that Anne Barrett knew that the little maroon 1891 diary was part of her and Mike Barrett's scheme to hoax a James Maybrick 'diary' and - when asked about it - she went above and beyond the call of duty to provide as much information on it as she could when she could have simply said she had no records of it whatsoever. "Yes, he ordered an expensive diary from 1891 and when I asked him why he told me he wanted to see what a Victorin diary looked like. I ended up paying for it but I no longer have the chequebook nor bank statement, and I don't even have the diary anymore as I binned it long ago". Absolutely end of discussion which is what she would have clearly wanted if she had something to hide.

On the contrary, she just handed everything over to whoever was asking. Such confidence in their crime, eh?

[Herlock Sholmes]

Mike's amazing knowledge would not have been restricted to just the 19th century. Everyone knows that something used as a diary makes it a 'diary'. It's just a different use of the word 'diary'. We all know what a diary is - every one of us knows if we walked into a shop and asked for the diary section we would be directed to the place where documents with dated spaces in were. We would not be sent to the notebook section. And every one of us (including Mike Barrett) knows that if we use something to record our thoughts into can be referred most accurately as a 'diary' if we are referring to the writing. If we are referring to the document, of course, we have to revert to whatever that document's original purpose was: namely, a notebook, a photograph album, a scrapbook, a guard book, or even our boxes of Cornflakes.

So let's not pretend Mike Barrett thought diaries were blank documents simply on the basis that he had a 'diary' that was first manufactured as a scrapbook. Let's not be disingenuous with our worthy readers who are simply not as stupid as you want (and need) them to be.



Because Mike Barrett was a human being and we all know it.



Simple if you are desperate to be Lord Orsam's love child.



But containing a record of someone's thoughts over a period of time that could be dated so something that every one of us would refer to as a 'diary' in retrospect? What was more important to Mike and Doreen in the course of that conversation, that Mike thought he had a record of Jack the Ripper's thoughts or that he had an old scrapbook? Which one of those two aspects of the Maybrick scrapbook were most pertinent for Mike to focus on when first explaining why he had rung Rupert Crew Ltd.?



No, no, no, no, no. We do not know that that was Barrett's belief at all. Before you see it or know anything about it, a physical book is only a diary if it has got - at the very least - the year printed on the front somewhere. We all know that and no amount of 'trickery' (it's pathetic, but we'll call it 'trickery' for now) is going to change what every one knows is the case. AFTER a document has been used as a diary, then we can still call it a diary (if it was one anyway) or a 'diary' if it has been used as one. But let's not pretend that we don't know what we all mean by a diary. It is not in debate, however many documents of various shapes and sizes can be requisitioned to act as one.



That is true but that would not be the sort of diary that springs to everyone's mind when they hear the word 'diary', but - fair enough - I guess some diary-producers could favour the year-on-the-front approach. I'm sure Barrett would have been perfectly happy with such a diary.



You have no way of knowing if this was his thought - but this has to be your desperate position because you know your argument is utterly lost if you don't. I ask my dear readers - when I said a few posts ago that I had a 1971 diary, how many of you instinctively thought it would be undated or just have '1971' on the front or inside cover? None of you? Thought so. If I tell you not to think about a pink elephant, what has your brain just done to you? It's called habituation - your brain ceases to consider any other option than the obvious. When your brain hears the word 'diary', you think document with dates in. But apparently Mike Barrett's brain was less habituated than everyone else's. Not.



They were (and still are) called notebooks, journals, scrapbooks, phot albums, and boxes of Cornflakes. Before they are written in and used as a 'diary' they are not yet 'diaries'.



That's correct - but they were not written in diaries. They only became 'diaries' the moment someone started to use it as a 'diary'.



Not in diaries. There was no need to say 'official'. What you meant, of course, was what we all understand as diaries, including you (otherwise you wouldn't have said 'official').



OMG - he knew it all along!!!!!!

You would not have a 2025 diary. You would have a 'diary' (a record of events) purportedly written in 2025 in a notebook or exercise book.



We can't take this issue any further because it is obviously a non-issue. Someone accepting an 1891 diary knows exactly what they are getting. And if what they end up getting is a notebook or an exercise book, they would have every grounds for returning it under the Trades Descriptions Act of 1312.



Yes we can. Of course we can because we are not trying to shoehorn something into somewhere it cannot ever go.



That's right. He was expressly looking for what everyone knows is a diary and he was happy to receive one from the year after James Maybrick died which tells us without equivocation or doubt that he was not planning to use it to create a hoaxed diary of James Maybrick. Glad we got that one sorted out because it's been niggling me rather that the blindingly obvious is being ignored.



Says whom? Asked and answered with at lest three different plausible reasons why Barrett accepted a diary from 1891, none of which are yours which - of course - fails big style at that crucial step of explaining why someone intending to hoax a James Maybrick diary would think he could do so in a document described to him as an 1891 diary.



Yes, I think we get what seems pretty obvious to you. Fortunately, what seems pretty obvious to you is of no consequence to anyone else here.

It's very easy to identify the flaw in your logic, Ike.

In fact there are three fundamental flaws.

The first is that if I walked into a shop and asked, "Do you have anything I could use to write a personal diary?", I could quite easily be directed to notebooks or exercise books or blank journals. It is surely much more convenient to write a personal diary in those because there may be some days when you have a lot to write and other days when you have nothing to write. A pre-printed diary, containing dates, gives you the same amount of space for each day and is thus somewhat inconvenient. That is no doubt why so many actual diaries are not written in pre-printed diaries which bear the date emblazoned over them.

Secondly, Mike wasn't walking into a shop to buy a brand new diary. He was attempting to acquire a second hand diary belonging to someone else from history. That makes his situation very different from someone walking into a shop to be directed to the diary section.

Thirdly, it's absolutely untrue to say: "If we are referring to the document, of course, we have to revert to whatever that document's original purpose was: namely, a notebook, a photograph album, a scrapbook, a guard book, or even our boxes of Cornflakes." Just take a look at any library or archive catalogue for a personal diary written by someone in history. Whether it's written in a pre-printed diary or not, it will still always be described as a "diary". The original purpose is irrelevant. The use as a diary supersedes it.

I haven't said that: "Mike Barrett thought diaries were blank documents simply on the basis that he had a 'diary' that was first manufactured as a scrapbook." You misunderstand me, as usual. I suspect that he thought diaries could have once been blank books on the basis of actual historical diaries which exist which were once blank books because there are numerous examples of such things of which Mike might well have been aware. But that is to speculate about his mindset. What I said was that the only actual evidence we have about his knowledge of diaries is that they could be written in blank books such as photograph albums because of how he described what we have today as "the diary of Jack the Ripper". So we know for an absolute fact that he believed a historical diary need not have the year printed on the cover, or dates printed on every page. It's a fact that cannot be challenged.

You talk nonsense when you say :"Before you see it or know anything about it, a physical book is only a diary if it has got - at the very least - the year printed on the front somewhere." That can't possibly be true. The Jack the Ripper diary doesn't have the year printed on the front. So what are you talking about, Ike?We know that Mike regarded it as a "diary". He told Doreen it was a diary. So can you please make what you are saying make sense.

Frankly, it really doesn't matter what "we" would call a diary, or what you would call it. The only thing that matters is whether, when Mike envisaged in March 1992 what he needed to obtain to fake the diary of Jack the Ripper, he could plausibly have imagined the existence of something like what we have as Jack the Ripper's diary today, i.e. an old undated blank or partially blank book with pages of writing in it, whereby the only date is inserted by the diarist. The answer must be a resounding YES. It's not even something that would be odd bearing in mind the existence of so many historical diaries without the year printed on the cover or the dates printed on the pages.

When you say that I have no way of knowing if this was what Mike envisaged you are absolutely right. That's why I worded my post as being that Mike's agreement to purchase the 1891 diary is not necessarily inconsistent with a desire to use it for a fake Jack the Ripper diary of 1888/89. That's as far as I need to take it. And it's unarguable.

It's you who is claiming to know what was in Mike's mind at the time but you have no way of knowing.

Finally I do love your statement that you have put forward "three different plausible reasons why Barrett accepted a diary from 1891" as if it responds to my challenge. What I said which was that you cannot explain why Mike "wanted a diary from the period 1880 to 1890 with a minimum of 20 blank pages (but not limited to 20 blank pages) ". It's the bit in bold you need to explain. Yet you glide over it as if it doesn't exist. No plausible reason has yet been put forward as to this requirement.

[Iconoclast]

Yes, perhaps we need a maid to tidy up after Caroline's housekeeping.
It was not "Mike's advertisement" it was Martin Earl's. Had Barrett known about it, it would have been natural to tell Alan Gray or to have included it in his secret, non-circulating affidavit to show he had specifically asked for a blank or nearly blank diary.
There's no reason to believe Barrett was aware of Earl's methods.

Barrett didn't need to know about Earl's methods. He just needed to know what those methods had produced for him and whether it still served his purpose (which it clearly still did despite being an 1891 diary).

He therefore didn't mention it in great detail in his affidavit of January 5, 1995. You know, the one that Barrett sent to Anne and no-one else. The secret one. The non-circulating one that Alan Gray sent to Melvin Harris who also kept it secret and non-circulating because of all that integrity he had. Oh, and because of all that **** it patently contained.

(One of the greatest disappointments of my life is that I wasn't a fly on the wall when the viper Harris first set eyes upon the secret, non-circulating affidavit.)

[caz]

Who has said that Barrett "was under no pressure whatsoever"? Please tell me. Where do I find this said?

If he'd arranged to meet with Doreen at some point in the near future, he must surely have been under some pressure, even if the date of the meeting had not yet been fixed. The fact that he was desperate and out of options doesn't preclude the fact that he could have delayed meeting Doreen but there was only so much time he could put it off. If we assume he was the forger, he didn't have the luxury of spending months searching around the country for a suitable item in which to write the diary. That's the point I was making. He'd (supposedly) found something and while not perfect it would have to do. Now, he could finally set up the meeting with Doreen. That, at least, is the theory as I understand it.

I made a note to address this one, which was posted back in February, so apologies for the belated response.

If Mike didn't have the 'luxury' of spending months searching around the country for a book he could use for Jack the Ripper's diary, he would only have had himself to blame, for stupidly telling Doreen on 9th March 1992 that he already had it, and it had been in his possession since 1991!

I've known some chumps in my time [thank you, Half Man, Half Biscuit - appropriate track too: 'Jack's Been to the National' ], but why would Mike have put himself under any pressure at all? If he'd been planning this diary for some considerable time, obtaining a suitable book at the earliest opportunity would have lessened the chances of anyone remembering it when he finally went public, and he could then have spent his sweet time researching the story and tinkering at his word processor, with only the handwriting left to do, and plenty of time in which to do it and get it right before committing himself.

The argument against this used to be that Mike would not have wanted the additional expense of sourcing a suitable book, in case there was no interest in a diary by Jack the Ripper. But we know it was Anne who ended up paying the equivalent of £66 in today's money for a totally unsuitable 1891 diary, and Mike claimed that her father paid for the photo album, so it's wildly unlikely that Mike would have spared a moment's thought on their behalf about the cost, before phoning Doreen and getting the green light.

[rjpalmer]

Another desperately stupid argument is that Anne Barrett knew that the little maroon 1891 diary was part of her and Mike Barrett's scheme to hoax a James Maybrick 'diary' and - when asked about it - she went above and beyond the call of duty to provide as much information on it as she could when she could have simply said she had no records of it whatsoever.

Yes, she could have, Ike. If she was stupid.

I know that you are an honest man, Ike, because you have a horribly difficult time imaging the mental workings of a dishonest person who is backed into a corner.

She was asked about the red diary---out of the blue--by a man she knew to be an exacting professional researcher, a human terrier out to dig up the truth--but also a sympathetic ear (I think that's fair to say, based on what Keith has written about Anne).

So, is she going to risk not telling this dogged researcher that no such purchase was made (knowing Mike must have been saying otherwise) or is she going to avoid that risk and instead come up with an 'innocent' explanation that he might believe?

Aren't half-truths safer than outright lies?

And I don't write this in any condescending way. I never met Anne Graham. From what I've seen, she must have been very persuasive in person, because she certainly convinced a lot of people. Maybe I would have been taken in, too.

But seen in the cold, harsh light of objectivity, she certainly seems to have contradicted herself many times and told any number of lies---once even telling Feldman that her name wasn't Anne Graham.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Barrett didn't need to know about Earl's methods. He just needed to know what those methods had produced for him and whether it still served his purpose (which it clearly still did despite being an 1891 diary).

He therefore didn't mention it in great detail in his affidavit of January 5, 1995. You know, the one that Barrett sent to Anne and no-one else. The secret one. The non-circulating one that Alan Gray sent to Melvin Harris who also kept it secret and non-circulating because of all that integrity he had. Oh, and because of all that **** it patently contained.

(One of the greatest disappointments of my life is that I wasn't a fly on the wall when the viper Harris first set eyes upon the secret, non-circulating affidavit.)

A few questions arising, Ike.

Can you remind me: a) when did Alan Gray send Mike's affidavit to Melvin Harris and b) were there any confidentiality conditions attached to it being sent to him? Naturally providing the evidence for both answers rather than just making assumptions as you did last time I asked.

Is it true that Melvin Harris tipped off Paul Feldman about the existence of the 1891 diary prior to July 1995? How does that square with the supposed secrecy?

Why do you imply that it was a responsibility of Melvin Harris to provide documents in his possession to anyone else?

Finally, isn't it true that you refuse to provide myself and RJ Palmer with documents in your possession because you say you don't have permission to share them. Can you explain to me why the rules of document sharing would have been different for Melvin Harris?

[Iconoclast]

It's very easy to identify the flaw in your logic, Ike. In fact there are three fundamental flaws.

Honestly, your posts are really weak when you aren't just parroting Orsam's.

The first is that if I walked into a shop and asked, "Do you have anything I could use to write a personal diary?"

Clearly, if you walk into a shop and phrase it like that, then - yes - you are very likely to get sent off to the notebook section. For about 9 months of every year, notebooks would be pretty much the only answer to that question. But is that what I said? Spoiler alert: no it isn't so you ave attempted to scupper my argument by changing my argument. Now that's very Orsam, by the way.

I could quite easily be directed to notebooks or exercise books or blank journals.

Absolutely, if you change the argument and pretend this was mine then you are correct.

It is surely much more convenient to write a personal diary in those because there may be some days when you have a lot to write and other days when you have nothing to write. A pre-printed diary, containing dates, gives you the same amount of space for each day and is thus somewhat inconvenient. That is no doubt why so many actual diaries are not written in pre-printed diaries which bear the date emblazoned over them.

Where is your evidence for this latter claim? You - the king of demanding evidence - would be the first to expect it of others, so where is yours for this outrageously unprovable claim?

But - note - these are not diaries until someone starts putting their thoughts into them. Then they become 'diaries'. They take on the usual principal characteristic of a diary and - not unreasonably - people call them 'diaries'. It's form versus function. A diary has the form and a 'diary' has the function.

And remember, you only got a notebook because you walked into a shop and asked the very carefully staged question, "Do you have anything I could use to write a personal diary?". "How about a ******* diary, sir?" would be the response you'd get from me if you tried to be such a smartarse when I was behind the counter.

Secondly, Mike wasn't walking into a shop to buy a brand new diary. He was attempting to acquire a second hand diary belonging to someone else from history. That makes his situation very different from someone walking into a shop to be directed to the diary section.

No idea what relevance this has. Mike was trying to acquire a diary from 1880 to 1890. Obviously he would know it was probably already used! You really need to get back to plagiarising Orsam, mate, because your arguing skills are not at his level at all. If Mike had wanted any old Victorian document from 1880 to 1890, he should have asked for - oh, let me think - I know, "Could you find me something from 1880 to 1890 which I could use to write a personal diary?". But he didn't.

Thirdly, it's absolutely untrue to say: "If we are referring to the document, of course, we have to revert to whatever that document's original purpose was: namely, a notebook, a photograph album, a scrapbook, a guard book, or even our boxes of Cornflakes." Just take a look at any library or archive catalogue for a personal diary written by someone in history. Whether it's written in a pre-printed diary or not, it will still always be described as a "diary". The original purpose is irrelevant. The use as a diary supersedes it.

If we are referring to the document then we are not referring to the contents of the document! If the document is a notebook then we are talking about a notebook (form) as opposed to the contents of the notebook (function). Seriously, you just can't keep up when you're doing it for yourself, can you?

I haven't said that: "Mike Barrett thought diaries were blank documents simply on the basis that he had a 'diary' that was first manufactured as a scrapbook." You misunderstand me, as usual. I suspect that he thought diaries could have once been blank books on the basis of actual historical diaries which exist which were once blank books because there are numerous examples of such things of which Mike might well have been aware. But that is to speculate about his mindset. What I said was that the only actual evidence we have about his knowledge of diaries is that they could be written in blank books such as photograph albums because of how he described what we have today as "the diary of Jack the Ripper". So we know for an absolute fact that he believed a historical diary need not have the year printed on the cover, or dates printed on every page. It's a fact that cannot be challenged.

Addressed already so I won't repeat myself. You need Mike to think blank documents were diaries. If you didn't, you wouldn't say such a thing. No-one would say such a thing unless they were reaching, and you're reaching and you know it.

You talk nonsense when you say :"Before you see it or know anything about it, a physical book is only a diary if it has got - at the very least - the year printed on the front somewhere." That can't possibly be true. The Jack the Ripper diary doesn't have the year printed on the front. So what are you talking about, Ike?We know that Mike regarded it as a "diary". He told Doreen it was a diary. So can you please make what you are saying make sense.

Herlock, I'm embarrassed for you. Form versus function. When Maybrick's scrapbook was blank, was it a diary or was it a scrapbook? I can tell you're struggling so I'll help you out - it was just a scrapbook. After Maybrick had used it to record his inner thoughts, it could reasonably be described as a 'diary' but - either way - it doesn't matter. Mike could have called it a 'journal' because it was functioning as a journal or he could have called it a 'diary' because it was functioning as a diary. It's not relevant. The 'Jack the Ripper diary' is not etched in stone somewhere as its God-given name! That's just what it was called for convenience. Have you ever noticed how I never refer to it as a 'diary'? That's because it's not really a diary - it's a journal - but I don't go on about it because it doesn't matter! It doesn't matter one jot what Mike Barrett or anyone else called it.

Frankly, it really doesn't matter what "we" would call a diary, or what you would call it. The only thing that matters is whether, when Mike envisaged in March 1992 what he needed to obtain to fake the diary of Jack the Ripper, he could plausibly have imagined the existence of something like what we have as Jack the Ripper's diary today, i.e. an old undated blank or partially blank book with pages of writing in it, whereby the only date is inserted by the diarist. The answer must be a resounding YES. It's not even something that would be odd bearing in mind the existence of so many historical diaries without the year printed on the cover or the dates printed on the pages.

So - here, I'll play along with you - why did he not request of Martin Earl, "Do you have anything I could use to write a personal diary?"?

When you say that I have no way of knowing if this was what Mike envisaged you are absolutely right. That's why I worded my post as being that Mike's agreement to purchase the 1891 diary is not necessarily inconsistent with a desire to use it for a fake Jack the Ripper diary of 1888/89. That's as far as I need to take it. And it's unarguable.

And you're good at that - arguing in favour of something which is utterly unknowable. It's sort of like 'making it up' with knobs on.

It's you who is claiming to know what was in Mike's mind at the time but you have no way of knowing.

I think I was very clear that what I was saying was that I know what would be in everyone's mind when they hear the word 'diary'.

Finally I do love your statement that you have put forward "three different plausible reasons why Barrett accepted a diary from 1891" as if it responds to my challenge. What I said which was that you cannot explain why Mike "wanted a diary from the period 1880 to 1890 with a minimum of 20 blank pages (but not limited to 20 blank pages) ". It's the bit in bold you need to explain. Yet you glide over it as if it doesn't exist. No plausible reason has yet been put forward as to this requirement.

That's because you're a Johnny-Come-Lately who doesn't know what was argued or proposed before.

All three positions were argued in posts here on the Maybrick section of the Casebook. Please don't say your question hasn't been answered when - in fact - you just weren't reading the answers and now don't know how to find them.

[Lombro2]

A forger would not admit it. (He'd also be admitting he didn't know, or forgot, Maybrick's DOD after doing so much extensive research.)

A fence would admit it because it's part of their plausible deniability. That's how a fence gets away with it.

"I operate a legitimate business, buying from and selling to the public. I can't be held responsible if a ne'er-do-well tricks me into buying stolen property. I'm as much a victim here as anyone!"

How do fences keep from being caught? : r/DMAcademy