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

[Scott Nelson]

And you did ask for fine details. You wanted John to tell you who conceived the story. Well how can he possibly know that? How can anyone?

Why couldn't anybody who insists that Anne and Mike Barrett created and wrote the diary be able to tell us who they think did what? It used to be said they definitely wrote it, now it's "in all likelihood" they wrote it. I wasn't asking for minute detail, just brief answers, unlike your queries.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Asked and answered. It's not about the abstract case, it's about the specific case.

Except that doesn't work for you because you cannot conceive of a conversation between Earl and Barrett that would end in Barrett agreeing to accept an 1891 diary for an 1888 hoax. No amount of semantics or wordplay can bring your argument in any way back from the cliff edge. You're done.

Come up with the convincing dialogue or run away in shame.

I'm done with you until such time as you produce the dialogue for this specific case which convinces us all - scrapbook deniers and scrapbook supporters.

Of course, I can tell my dear readers in advance that no-one can do this so please don't hold your breath, guys. Some people can only live in the abstract because you don't need any plausible rules in the abstract world - you can just wish away what we know and imagine some anodyne world where people function regardless of context. We should call it SholmesWorld, I think.

But my question has always been phrased entirely in the abstract.

I've been asking if an 1891 diary (not the 1891 diary) could have been used for an 1888 diary (not the 1888 diary).

It's such a simple question.

You've not answered it.

The fact that you're not willing to answer it, but, instead, declare your intention, once again, to run away in shame, speaks volumes.

As to the actual, we have no evidence as to what Mike was told about the 1891 diary Earl was trying to sell him.

So, in the absence of evidence, we have to consider what Mike might reasonably have thought an 1891 diary looked like.

You've always been perfectly aware of this.

There is only one possible answer to my question. Yes, of course an 1891 diary could have been used for an 1888 diary.

So there is nothing, on the face of it, implausible about Mike agreeing to purchase an 1891 diary to create an 1888 Ripper diary.

If you have something sensible to say in response please post it, otherwise it's obvious that your long-running, mischievous little game is over.

[Herlock Sholmes]

As RJ Palmer would put it:



I think we have exhausted this exchange. If posters are buying in to your argument, that's their loss.

It's funny that you directly asked me to imagine a conversation between Earl and Barrett and, then, when I tell you what might have happened, you tell me it's worthless!

Or perhaps it was another member of the Iconoclast collective who asked me to imagine a worthless conversation?

The fact of the matter is that you've got it the wrong way round

It's YOU who needs to claim to know exactly what Earl told Barrett, without any evidence. I'm saying we don't know what was said to Barrett in 1992. And I'm saying that in the absence of any evidence or knowledge of what Barrett was told, all we can do is ask whether Mike could reasonably have thought he could use an 1891 diary to create a forged Ripper diary from 1888. As to that, the answer must be a resounding YES!

An 1891 diary need not have the year 1891 emblazoned on the cover. It need not have printed dates on the pages. An 1891 diary could easily be a notebook which someone from 1891 started to use as a diary, thus turning it into "an 1891 diary".

At your express request, I gave you lots of examples of historical diaries without the year on the cover. In response, there was only silence from you. You've previously been provided with lots of examples of historical diaries where the only dates on the pages have been written in by the diarist, and could thus be removed. In response, silence again. You never acknowledge all these many historical diaries which don't have printed years or dates on them. Yet, that could easily be what Mike Barrett was looking for in 1992, and what he anticipated he was buying from Martin Earl when told about an 1891 diary.

It. Is. Not. Difficult.

From my reading of the archives, this conversation was exhausted about 10 years ago and it's only because of your repeated refusal to answer simple questions, combined with a desire to spew out meaningless, endless, evasive waffle, that it's gone on as long as it has.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Why couldn't anybody who insists that Anne and Mike Barrett created and wrote the diary be able to tell us who they think did what? It used to be said they definitely wrote it, now it's "in all likelihood" they wrote it. I wasn't asking for minute detail, just brief answers, unlike your queries.

Because the evidence isn't available, Scott.

Not everyone wants to invent stuff and speculate without evidence in this case.

[Iconoclast]

Supplier: Mr. Earl, we could not locate an 1880-1890 diary but we have located an 1891 one and it is basically blank.

...

Earl: Mr. Barrett, I could not locate an 1880-1890 diary but I have located an 1891 one and it is basically blank.

Barrett [Thinks]: Not a problem, £66 is a lot of cash for a 'sight unseen' diary but I'll just remove any very unlikely references to '1891' in this 1891 diary. There probably aren't any anyway. Sheer bloody good luck.

Barrett: That's perfect, I'll take it.

No-one cares about the abstract world (you know, where anything is possible if we want it to be so sufficiently that we will suspend logic). In the real world, people check before they splash out £66 ($90) and order things that cannot reasonably be expected to be what you want without further evidence.

They really do. Human beings actually check. Especially ones struggling to pay the mortgage (apparently).

But - fair enough - me auntie, it transpires, actually can have testicles in the abstract world if you really ignore everything that cries out she can't.

Mike Barrett could have ordered what he thought might have been an actually blank diary that somehow is being called 'an 1891 diary' (God only knows why) in the worst of all possible worlds. Indeed, the more you think about it, the more it just seems so obvious that that's what he must have done.

And - finally - I too am done. It's been an exhausting experiencing dealing with the 1891 diary that possibly was not an 1891 diary at all and - having just returned from holiday - I have loads of stuff to do in the real world.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Just on a parting note regarding the conversations regarding the 1891 diary, here is the briefest it could have been:

Supplier: Mr. Earl, we could not locate an 1880-1890 diary but we have located an 1891 one and it is basically blank.

...

Earl: Mr. Barrett, I could not locate an 1880-1890 diary but I have located an 1891 one and it is basically blank.

Barrett [Thinks]: Not a problem, £66 is a lot of cash for a 'sight unseen' diary but I'll just remove any very unlikely references to '1891' in this 1891 diary. There probably aren't any anyway. Sheer bloody good luck.

Barrett: That's perfect, I'll take it.

Hope that helps the simpleminded get a grip on how Mike Barrett came to commit himself to £66 ($90) for a totally useless diary whilst planning to hoax a record of Jack the Ripper's thoughts.

This is weird. Why would Mike have thought there would "unlikely" be references to 1891 in an 1891 diary? Surely that would be a certainty. But if the references to 1891 were handwritten by the diarist they could be cut out with a Stanley knife, couldn't they?

Might not Mike's thought process not have been: "This might work, an 1891 diary with most pages blank, could be perfect, I'll just rip out the diary entries from 1891, and I don't have to pay in advance; this might solve my problem coz I've already told Doreen that I have the diary and need to take it down to London to show her a.s.a.p."

He would already have been aware that shopping over the telephone meant that he would have to purchase the diary "sight unseen", and £25 in 1992 was hardly a king's ransom, even for Mike. After all, he'd bought a word processor for £399 (exclusive of VAT) six years earlier, or, as you would say, for £1053.36 ($1433.19). With the potential fortune he could make from Jack the Ripper's diary, he was hardly likely to be too worried about £25.

[rjpalmer]

Ike, Old Man.

In the real world, over 1.5 billion people complain to Amazon every year that the item they received wasn't what they had expected.

1.5 billion. And that's just one company. People don't pay attention, they don't read--or hear--the 'fine print.' Their imaginations override their reason; the description was vague or deceptive, etc. etc. or they were distracted or drunk when they ordered it, etc. etc. Many different reasons.

With this in mind, the readers of Society's Pillar won't give a toss about what Barrett received in the mail, because 999 out of 1000 of your readers will have experience the same disappointment of having received a package in the post that contained an item that was not what they had expected. They will sympathize with Bongo Barrett's plight, because they, too, have lived it.

It's commonplace. It has become part of the human condition, and you won't be able to convince people that it is wildly unlikely.

Your readers will instead focus on what is actually documented: Barrett's original request as permanently recorded in Bookdealer, Issue 1044, thanks to Mr. Earl.

I'm being cruel to be kind, Ike.

You need to focus on the other end of the stick, and you're flubbing it.

RP

[rjpalmer]

999 out of 1000 of your readers will have experience the same disappointment of having received a package in the post that contained an item that was not what they had expected. They will sympathize with Bongo Barrett's plight, because they, too, have lived it.

And of course, many people--myself included--will order an item thinking 'I'm not sure, but I can probably make it work.'

I did that with a fuel pump last summer. Try as I might, research it as I might, there was no frickin' way to know whether it actually fit my car---so I bought the damn thinking I could adapt it if necessary.

It's too commonplace, Ike. And Barrett was operating in a time before cell phones and internet websites. Plenty of scope for there to have been confusion.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Supplier: Mr. Earl, we could not locate an 1880-1890 diary but we have located an 1891 one and it is basically blank.

...

Earl: Mr. Barrett, I could not locate an 1880-1890 diary but I have located an 1891 one and it is basically blank.

Barrett [Thinks]: Not a problem, £66 is a lot of cash for a 'sight unseen' diary but I'll just remove any very unlikely references to '1891' in this 1891 diary. There probably aren't any anyway. Sheer bloody good luck.

Barrett: That's perfect, I'll take it.

No-one cares about the abstract world (you know, where anything is possible if we want it to be so sufficiently that we will suspend logic). In the real world, people check before they splash out £66 ($90) and order things that cannot reasonably be expected to be what you want without further evidence.

They really do. Human beings actually check. Especially ones struggling to pay the mortgage (apparently).

But - fair enough - me auntie, it transpires, actually can have testicles in the abstract world if you really ignore everything that cries out she can't.

Mike Barrett could have ordered what he thought might have been an actually blank diary that somehow is being called 'an 1891 diary' (God only knows why) in the worst of all possible worlds. Indeed, the more you think about it, the more it just seems so obvious that that's what he must have done.

And - finally - I too am done. It's been an exhausting experiencing dealing with the 1891 diary that possibly was not an 1891 diary at all and - having just returned from holiday - I have loads of stuff to do in the real world.

If no one cares about the abstract world, why have you found it so difficult to agree to the simple abstract proposition that an 1891 diary could be used to create an 1888 diary?

It's the very fact that you daren't even say it - can't say it - which shows how damaging the point is for you.

Yes, it would be lovely if we knew exactly what Mike was told about the red 1891 diary, but we don't, so we, or rather you, can only speculate, with fictional imaginary conversations, which isn't very helpful.

And of course it's you, and only you, who is trying to make a positive point about the 1891 diary. You're trying to say that because Mike agreed to buy it, this shows he wasn't trying to forge an 1888 diary of the Jack the Ripper during March/April 1992.

But, if you're going to make a positive point, you need at least some evidence. You don't have any. Your argument has collapsed.

I have no positive point to make. I'm saying that Mike's agreement to buy the 1891 diary tells us absolutely nothing.

The advertisement placed on his behalf tells us what Mike was actually looking for. It was an unused or partly used diary from 1880-1890 with a minimum of 20 blank pages. As far as I'm concerned, the only possible reason for him wanting this at that time was to create a fake diary from the period 1880-1890 (specifically 1888/89) which he'd already promised to show Doreen Montgomery in London.

[rjpalmer]

Why couldn't anybody who insists that Anne and Mike Barrett created and wrote the diary be able to tell us who they think did what? It used to be said they definitely wrote it, now it's "in all likelihood" they wrote it. I wasn't asking for minute detail, just brief answers, unlike your queries.

Hi Scott.

I have--you just don't believe me.

Your choice, of course.

Cheers.

[Yabs]

Many diary’s that are pre-dated have blank non dated pages at the back for notes etc, some have more than 20.
Would it not be worth a look at an 1891 diary to see if this was the case?

[Lombro2]

It’s still an If Pigs Had Wings presupposition.

Or an If Gigantopithecus Crossed The Berring Sea Land Bridge…

“Maybe it’s worth looking at the fossil record.”

[Scott Nelson]

Because the evidence isn't available, Scott.

Not everyone wants to invent stuff and speculate without evidence in this case.

You, RJ and John Wheat seem pretty adamant that Mike and Anne wrote it.

[Scott Nelson]

Hi Scott.

I have--you just don't believe me.

Your choice, of course.

Cheers.

It would be nice to see John Wheat's views, however brief.

[John Wheat]

You, RJ and John Wheat seem pretty adamant that Mike and Anne wrote it.

That's because in all likelihood they did.